Best Fantasy Books

The conclusion of the original Riftwar Saga — Pug and Jimmy the Hand must stop the Pantathian serpent priests from resurrecting Murmandamus and unleashing a catastrophe that could destroy both worlds. The book that concludes one arc while opening the larger Riftwar Cycle.

The Reckoners track the source of Epic powers to Ildithia — the former Atlanta — and David confronts the cosmic force behind Calamity itself, with the future of both Epics and ordinary humans at stake.

The maji have their powers back — but so do the kosidan nobles who once oppressed them. As civil war breaks out across Orïsha, Zélie and Amari must fight enemies on multiple fronts, including each other. The second book in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy deepens the world's moral complexity and raises the cost of revolution.

Clary Fray must protect those she loves as Valentine prepares to raise a demon army, while the revelation about her relationship to Jace casts a shadow over everything.

Spensa enters the Nowhere — a dimension outside normal space-time — to master her cytonic abilities and find a way to save humanity from the Superiority, encountering fragments of ancient civilizations and the truth about why cytonics are feared.

In a world where a magical city of gods has fallen and its inhabitants are cursed with a living death, a prince, a princess, and a priest navigate politics, religion, and the mystery of what destroyed Elantris.

In a world where humans have nearly vanished, a young man named Vic lives in a forest with his found family of robots. When Vic's mechanical father is taken by the Authority — the machine system that controls what remains of civilisation — Vic and his companions must venture into a world of metal and memory to bring him home. Klune's retelling of Pinocchio.

A kitchen boy named Pug is apprenticed to the court magician and discovers he has an unusual gift for magic — a discovery that will change his life as the Kingdom of the Isles faces invasion from another world. The first half of the original Magician novel, and the foundation of the Riftwar Saga.

Twilight retold from Edward Cullen's point of view. After a partial manuscript leaked online in 2008, Stephenie Meyer spent twelve years completing the full novel. Reading the original story through Edward's immortal, analytical, perpetually-conflicted mind transforms a familiar love story into something darker and more psychologically complex.

August moves to New York and meets Jane on the Q train — a punk girl stuck in 1977 who should not exist in 2020. Impossible and inexplicable, Jane is somehow trapped in a moment in time, and August is the only one who can see her. A queer love story about memory, identity, and what we're willing to change to keep something worth keeping.

The Pevensie children return to Narnia to find it transformed: a thousand years have passed, the Narnian world has been suppressed by the Telmarines, and Caspian, the rightful king, is fighting to restore the old ways.

Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen have fled Camorr for Tal Verrar, where they plan the most ambitious con of their careers — robbing the impregnable Sinspire casino — until a naval commander forces them to become pirates instead.

Alina is trapped underground, her power diminished and her allies scattered. To defeat the Darkling and end the Fold, she must find the firebird — the third amplifier — before he does. The fate of Ravka and all of its Grisha rests on a choice that will cost Alina everything.

The second volume of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn expands the world of Osten Ard while multiple groups pursue their separate quests toward the gathering storm. Simon is growing up; the Storm King's power is growing; and the three swords of the title prophecy become clearer in their significance.

Croaker, the Black Company's physician and annalist, chronicles the mercenary band's bloody journey as they are hired into the service of a terrifying sorceress called the Lady — and slowly realise there may be no good side in this war.

Two city-states occupy the same geography but citizens must 'unsee' the other city on pain of intervention by a mysterious force called Breach. A noir detective novel and a meditation on perception.

Poppy learns the truth about her origins and what she truly is — a revelation that shifts the entire Blood and Ash series into a larger, more mythological conflict. The third book takes the story from personal stakes to civilisational ones.

Set between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla, the ka-tet takes shelter from a deadly storm called a starkblast. As they wait, Roland tells a story from his early days as a gunslinger, within which young Roland tells a fairy tale to a frightened boy. Three nested narratives — frame, memory, and fable — make this the series' most structurally playful and tonally gentle entry.

Roland and his ka-tet arrive at Calla Bryn Sturgis, a farming village terrorised by the Wolves — armoured riders who sweep in every generation to steal one child from every pair of twins, returning them as 'roont' adults, permanently diminished. King structures the novel as a western, drawing directly on The Magnificent Seven, as the gunslingers agree to help the Calla defend itself.

The second Merlin novel covers Arthur's childhood in hiding, his education, and his discovery of Excalibur — following Merlin as he watches over the boy who will become High King from a careful, loving distance. Less structurally ambitious than The Crystal Cave but emotionally rich.

A false Aslan, an ape called Shift, and the Calormenes threaten Narnia in its final days. The seventh and final Narnia chronicle is Lewis's Revelation — an apocalyptic ending to a children's fantasy that is also a theological argument about the nature of reality.

The sixth and final Earthsea novel revisits the question that has haunted the series since The Farthest Shore — the nature of death and the afterlife in the world of the Archipelago. A sorcerer haunted by the dead comes to Roke, and the answer found will transform Earthsea's understanding of what comes after.

Carter and Sadie Kane discover they are descended from the most powerful magicians in ancient Egypt. When their father accidentally unleashes the chaos god Set, the siblings must master Egyptian magic fast enough to prevent Set from destroying the world — and find out why their family has been lying to them.

The mythological history of Middle-earth, from the creation of the world by the god-like Ainur through the ages of the Elves, the forging of the Silmarils, and the great wars of the First Age — assembled posthumously by Christopher Tolkien from his father's lifelong writings.