Best Fantasy Books

Beginning with The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman's trilogy follows Lyra Belacqua — a girl who can read the alethiometer — across multiple worlds, uncovering a vast conspiracy involving the Church, the nature of Dust, and the meaning of consciousness itself. A fantasy epic of rare philosophical ambition.

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is thrown back in time to the days of his youth, forced to take the place of his old mentor and train his younger self during one of the city's defining revolutionary moments.

Percy leads the defense of Olympus against Kronos's army as the Great Prophecy — the one that has shadowed his life since birth — finally comes true in a battle for the fate of the gods.

A young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets — until she finds a man who remembers her.

Three converging storylines — a desperate quest across a dying world, a brutal siege in the frozen North, and a city drowning in political corruption — deepen the First Law's devastating subversion of every fantasy trope it deploys.

The eighth Discworld novel and first in the City Watch sub-series: a secret brotherhood summons a dragon to seize power in Ankh-Morpork, and the only thing standing between the city and a new dragon king is the most incompetent police force in fantasy history.

Lyra Belacqua lives in Jordan College, Oxford, in a parallel world where human souls exist outside the body as animal companions called daemons. After her friend Roger is kidnapped by the mysterious Gobblers, she embarks on a journey north that leads her to the Magisterium's most terrible secret.

Four children stumble through a wardrobe into Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter under the White Witch's tyranny, where the return of Aslan the lion sets in motion a conflict between sacrifice and redemption.

Milo, a bored boy who finds no meaning in anything, drives his toy car through a mysterious tollbooth and enters the Lands Beyond — a kingdom where words and numbers are at war and only he can restore balance by rescuing the banished Princesses Rhyme and Reason.

Rand, Mat, Perrin, and Egwene each pursue separate paths as the world fractures: Rand journeys to the Aiel Waste to learn his destiny while Perrin races home to defend the Two Rivers from a Shadowspawn invasion. Widely regarded as the pinnacle of the series.

On a continent prone to catastrophic seasons that end civilizations, a woman searches for her daughter while the world tears itself apart — told in an unusual second-person POV.

A black and white circus appears without warning and vanishes just as suddenly — and within it, two young magicians trained from childhood are competing in a contest whose rules neither fully understands.

The first book in Brandon Sanderson's epic Stormlight Archive series, set on the storm-ravaged world of Roshar and following three protagonists navigating war, politics, and the discovery of ancient magic.

The Shade of Essen Tasch has fallen, and a darkness worse than the black stone threatens all three Londons. Kell, Lila, Rhy, and Holland must confront an enemy powerful enough to consume worlds — and the cost of stopping it may be more than any of them can pay.

An angel and a demon who have grown rather fond of the Earth team up to prevent the Apocalypse, while a small boy in Tadfield may or may not be the Antichrist.

In the city of Camorr — a fantasy Venice — a gang of elite con artists and thieves called the Gentlemen Bastards pull off elaborate heists while a supernatural criminal element threatens everything.

Kvothe — innkeeper, legend, the most infamous man alive — agrees to tell his life story to a Chronicler over three days. Day One: his childhood with a troupe of travelling performers, his time as a street orphan in Tarbean, and his legendary entry to the University where magic is studied.

In the remote mountain village of Kaigen, Misaki — a wife and mother who has suppressed her own formidable past — must confront both a devastating invasion and the lies her family and society have built their identity upon.

Tress has never left her small island. When the boy she loves is kidnapped and taken across the deadly spore seas, she sets out to rescue him — becoming a sailor, a pirate, and eventually a hero on a world she's never seen.

A rare magician who can travel between parallel Londons teams up with a street thief to prevent a dark power from destroying all the worlds.

Le Guin's first Earthsea novel follows Ged, a boy of extraordinary power who attends a school for wizards on the island of Roke and, in his pride, releases a shadow upon the world that only he can face.