Best Fantasy Books

A standalone epic fantasy featuring three women across three continents facing the return of a world-ending dragon, woven through with questions of faith, queerness, and the nature of historical truth.

In an alternate-history United Isles of America, Joel attends Armedius Academy alongside Rithmatists — students who can bring chalk drawings to life as warriors. When Rithmatist students begin disappearing, Joel and his unconventional mentor Professor Fitch must investigate before the killings reach the school itself.

Eustace and his schoolmate Jill Pole are sent to Narnia to rescue the lost Prince Rilian, held captive underground by the Lady of the Green Kirtle.

Carter and Sadie have three days to find the three sections of the Book of Ra and awaken the sun god before the chaos serpent Apophis escapes his prison. Racing against a countdown across multiple continents, the Kane siblings fight gods, demons, and each other's stubborn pride.

Tenar is taken from her family as a young child to become the High Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan — a buried labyrinth serving nameless, ancient powers. Her world is enclosed, complete, and entirely certain. Then Ged the wizard breaks in, and Tenar must decide whether to kill him or help him — and what that choice means for everything she has been.

William de Worde accidentally invents the newspaper in Ankh-Morpork when a chance encounter with dwarfish printers gives him the idea of distributing his letter of city news more widely. Within days he has a press, a staff, and enemies. Someone is trying to frame the Patrician Vetinari, and the Ankh-Morpork Times is the only institution positioned to find out the truth.

Grieving and battered, Apollo arrives at Camp Jupiter as the Roman legion braces for an assault by two undead emperors. Rick Riordan's penultimate Trials of Apollo book is a war story full of sacrifice, courage, and a fallen god learning what it means to be human.

Jude holds the power behind the throne, controlling the High King she placed there — but court intrigue and her impossible feelings for Cardan threaten everything she has built.

The second Witcher novel and the fourth book in the saga. As war gathers and a coup splits the Wizards' Guild, Geralt and Yennefer try to protect Ciri — until a night of betrayal scatters them all and changes the series forever.

Chaol Westfall and Nesryn Faliq travel to the Southern Continent to seek an alliance with the Khagan of the Southern Continent — and to find healers who might restore Chaol's ability to walk. What they discover in the Torre Cesme will change everything they thought they knew about the war.

Two sisters from a conservative mountain kingdom are sent to the colorful, decadent city of the Gods, where the divine Returned don't believe in their own religion and a war is being engineered by forces neither fully understands.

Three witches journey across the Disc to stop a servant girl from marrying a prince — because someone is using the power of fairy tales as a weapon, forcing real people to live out happy endings whether they want them or not. Granny Weatherwax has a score to settle.

Twin sisters Tory and Darcy Vega discover they are Fae royalty and heirs to the throne of Solaria — but they must first survive Zodiac Academy, where the four powerful Heirs will stop at nothing to drive them out.

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 third Witcher novel. Gravely wounded and cut off from Ciri, Geralt gathers an unlikely band of companions and sets out across a war-torn continent to find her, in a road novel that becomes the warm, weary heart of the saga.

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.

Curmudgeonly Cambridge faerie scholar Emily Wilde travels to a remote Norwegian village to research hidden faeries for her encyclopaedia, accompanied by her brilliant, insufferable colleague Wendell Bambleby — who has secrets of his own about the world she's studying.

The first book of the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Years after his adventures, FitzChivalry Farseer is living quietly as a country gentleman — until grief, a mysterious child, and the return of old dangers pull him back into a life he thought he had left behind.

The second Shattered Sea novel. Thorn Bathu, a girl who lives to fight, is condemned as a killer and then trained for a deadly mission across the Shattered Sea, in a coming-of-age adventure that pairs her with the thoughtful Brand in Abercrombie's grittier take on YA fantasy.

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.