Best Fantasy Books

Jorg Ancrath, thirteen years old and already a murderer leading a band of road brothers, pursues a path of calculated brutality toward the throne of the Hundred Kingdoms in a dark post-apocalyptic world where the remnants of modern civilization lie buried beneath a medieval fantasy veneer.

An orphaned soldier discovers she harbors a rare power that could end a centuries-long darkness threatening her country — and draws the attention of a mysterious and dangerous commander.

The second All Souls novel — Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont timewalk to Elizabethan London, where Diana must learn witchcraft and retrieve the enchanted manuscript that holds the secrets of all creatures.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard and private detective, investigates a pair of murders that required enormous magical power — and discovers something far darker than a simple killer.

The six Alexandrians have been initiated into the Alexandrian Society — the secret organisation that controls the world's most powerful knowledge. Now they must each prove their worth to the Caretakers, competing and conspiring among themselves while an external threat to the Society itself emerges. The second book in Olivie Blake's Atlas series.

The ka-tet fractures across time and world: Susannah is drawn to New York, 1999, carrying a demonic child that may doom or save the Tower; Roland and Eddie travel to Maine, 1977, where they must obtain the land for a vacant lot and encounter a young writer named Stephen King working on a novel called The Gunslinger. The meta-fictional stakes escalate dramatically.

Matty, a boy from Gathering Blue, now lives in Village — a community of outcasts and refugees — as it begins to close itself off to newcomers and the surrounding forest becomes deadly.

Alice steps through a mirror into a reversed world organized as a chess game. Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland introduces Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty, and the White Queen — and refines his philosophical games with language, identity, and time.

Tracker, a hunter with a nose that can follow anyone anywhere, is hired to find a missing boy across a mythological Africa of shapeshifters, witches, and ancient gods. The first volume of the Dark Star Trilogy, told as Tracker's interrogation-room account of what happened and why the boy is now dead.

Multiple storylines converge around the aftermath of Rand's cleansing of saidin, each character reacting to a distant magical event they witnessed but did not understand. The series' most divisive entry for its pacing, yet a necessary bridge to the series' final acceleration.

Three thousand five hundred years after the events of Children of Dune, Leto II — now half-human, half-sandworm — rules as God Emperor. He has seen all possible human futures and chosen the only path that ensures humanity's survival: a brutal peace that will ultimately shatter into the Scattering. The most philosophical and challenging book in the Dune series.

A giant squid specimen disappears from the Natural History Museum, and Billy Harrow, a cephalopod specialist, is drawn into London's hidden world of apocalyptic cults, squid-worshippers, and magical London underbelly.

Fifteen-year-old twins Sophie and Josh Newman discover that their employer Nick Fleming is actually Nicholas Flamel — the legendary medieval alchemyst — and are drawn into a centuries-old battle between immortal figures from history and mythology over the Book of Abraham the Mage.

Six magicians are recruited into the Alexandrian Society, a secret organization that guards the world's most dangerous knowledge — but only five will be initiated.

The conclusion of the All Souls trilogy — Diana and Matthew return to the present, the mysteries of Ashmole 782 are resolved, and the conflict between creatures and the Congregation reaches its conclusion.

Polly O'Keefe — daughter of Meg Murry — discovers a time gate near her grandparents' New England farm that opens into the world of three thousand years ago, where she becomes entangled in a conflict between two ancient peoples and a druid named Karralys.

Eragon travels to the elvish homeland to train with the Dragon Riders while Roran leads the villagers of Carvahall in a desperate flight from the Empire. The second Inheritance Cycle novel deepens its world's mythology and pushes Eragon's powers and understanding to new levels.

On the night the seventh son of the seventh son is born to the Heap family, the baby is presumed dead — but Septimus Heap's story is only beginning, as a decade later a young girl with a mysterious past arrives to turn the magical world upside down.

Ten years after the events of Wicked, Liir — possibly Elphaba's son — stumbles out of the wilderness near death and must piece together what happened to him and what he is meant to do. The Wicked Years sequence continues as Oz descends further into political darkness.

The Cowardly Lion — here called Brrr — tells his life story to the oracle Yackle, revealing a history of cowardice, survival, and self-deception that reframes the familiar character as a study in moral failure and its long consequences.