Best Fantasy Books

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home and remembers an extraordinary summer when he was seven, a magical neighbor girl, and a darkness that threatened to consume the world.

Set in the same world as Perdido Street Station — Bellis Coldwine flees New Crobuzon on a ship that is captured by pirates and brought to Armada, a city built on a raft of lashed-together ships on the open sea.

The first volume of the Merlin trilogy tells the life of Merlin from childhood to the conception of Arthur — a rational, historically grounded retelling of Arthurian legend in which Merlin is a genuine historical figure with remarkable intelligence rather than a supernatural wizard. The finest Arthurian historical novel.

Joe Abercrombie launches a brand-new series outside the First Law world. The Chapel of the Holy Expediency hands an idealistic young monk a band of monstrous misfits — a vampire, a werewolf, a necromancer, an immortal knight and an elf — and a job: escort a foul-mouthed thief to a stolen throne.

The conclusion of the Magicians trilogy. Exiled from Fillory and adrift in the ordinary world, Quentin Coldwater takes a dangerous job and begins to find, at last, a kind of mastery — even as Fillory itself faces the end of all things.

In a small Tokyo café, a seat exists where you can travel back in time — but the rules are strict: you cannot leave your seat, you cannot meet anyone who hasn't visited, and you must return before the coffee gets cold.

The third Bas-Lag novel — as New Crobuzon convulses with revolution, a man named Cutter travels into the wilderness to find the Iron Council: a perpetual-motion train run by the workers who took it decades ago, still running through the badlands.

In 1920s Mexico, a young woman accidentally frees the Mayan god of death from a wooden chest and must accompany him on a quest to reclaim his throne from his usurping brother. A lush fantasy rooted in genuine Mayan mythology, set against the Jazz Age and the Mexican Revolution's aftermath.

In the sprawling city of New Crobuzon, scientist Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is hired to restore a garuda's flight — and inadvertently unleashes nightmare creatures on the city. A landmark of New Weird fiction.

The fourth Earthsea book, written eighteen years after The Farthest Shore, reimagines the world from a feminist perspective. Tenar — last seen as a young priestess in The Tombs of Atuan — is now a middle-aged widow who takes in a burned, abused child named Therru. A deliberate rethinking of Earthsea's values and power structures.

Simon, a kitchen boy in the great castle Hayholt, is swept up in events that threaten the kingdom when the old High King dies and his heir plunges the realm into civil war. The first volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn — a series that influenced George R.R. Martin profoundly and proved that epic fantasy could carry genuine literary ambition.

The Malazan Empire's elite Bridgeburners are caught between imperial ambition and the machinations of gods, ascendants, and ancient powers as the conquest of the city of Darujhistan begins — the first chapter in a ten-volume epic that drops readers into a fully formed world and refuses to explain itself.

The second volume of the Dark Star trilogy retells the story of Black Leopard Red Wolf from the perspective of Sogolon the Moon Witch — the woman whom the Tracker accused of lying in the first novel. An African-mythology-rooted epic that deliberately inverts the reader's assumed loyalties.

An elderly Briton couple journey across post-Arthurian Britain to find their son in a land afflicted by a strange mist of collective forgetfulness, eventually uncovering a buried atrocity that the forgetfulness was designed to conceal.

A convicted murderer has escaped Azkaban prison and is believed to be hunting Harry Potter, forcing Harry to confront the true story of his parents' betrayal and death. The mystery that unravels is more complicated, more painful, and more morally instructive than any straightforward threat.

Bilbo Baggins, a respectable, unadventurous hobbit, is swept away by the wizard Gandalf and thirteen dwarves on a quest to reclaim a mountain kingdom from the dragon Smaug. The predecessor to The Lord of the Rings — shorter, lighter in tone, and the perfect entry point to Middle-earth.

The second volume of The Lord of the Rings splits the broken Fellowship into two threads — the war for Rohan and the lonely road into Mordor — and introduces Treebeard, Gollum, and the impossible burden Frodo and Sam now carry alone.

In the kingdom of Westeros, the death of King Robert Baratheon sets off a brutal power struggle among the great houses. Ned Stark, appointed the King's Hand, finds himself in a web of treachery that threatens not only his family but the entire realm — while beyond the Wall, an ancient threat stirs.

The War of the Five Kings reaches its shattering climax as the Red Wedding, Joffrey's poisoning, and Jon Snow's transformation at the Wall change everything in Westeros.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione abandon Hogwarts to hunt Voldemort's Horcruxes, confronting betrayal, sacrifice, and the revelation that Harry himself is the final Horcrux. The series concludes with the Battle of Hogwarts and a resurrection that draws on the oldest mythological traditions.

Harry is mysteriously entered into the dangerous Triwizard Tournament while Voldemort's followers grow bolder, culminating in the Dark Lord's terrifying return to full power. The death of a fellow student in the graveyard permanently changes what the Harry Potter series is.

As Voldemort's war spreads beyond Hogwarts, Dumbledore guides Harry through Tom Riddle's past to find the key to destroying him, while a mysterious annotated textbook raises questions about the identity of the Half-Blood Prince. The year ends with Dumbledore's death and the series' darkest turning point yet.

An orphaned boy discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard, and begins his education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

A criminal mastermind assembles a crew of six dangerous outcasts to pull off an impossible heist from the world's most secure prison.