Best Fantasy Books

In a world inspired by Tang Dynasty China, giant mechas called Chrysalises are piloted by male pilots who drain the life force of their female co-pilots — until Wu Zetian engineers her own revenge from the inside.

A long-sunk island rises from the sea, and Ankh-Morpork and Klatch both claim it — and stumble toward war. Commander Sam Vimes drags the City Watch into the conflict, determined to police a battlefield and arrest two armies, in Pratchett's blistering satire of patriotism and jingoism.

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.

A high school dropout who can see ghosts is offered a full ride to Yale — in exchange for policing its secret societies and their real, dangerous magic. Leigh Bardugo's first adult novel is a dark, propulsive thriller about privilege, trauma, and the occult beneath the Ivy League.

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.

A standalone novella set in the Crowns of Nyaxia world, in which a dying woman strikes a desperate bargain with a reclusive vampire to save her plague-stricken village — and finds far more than a cure.

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.

Ursula K. Le Guin's collection of five stories and an essay deepening the world of Earthsea. Ranging across the archipelago's history — from the founding of the wizards' school on Roke to the eve of the events of The Other Wind — these tales enrich one of fantasy's most beloved creations.

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.

An empire is maintained by a dark magic: bone shards cut from the living are used to power constructs — mechanical servants and soldiers. Lin, the Emperor's daughter, must uncover a conspiracy that threatens everything she thinks she knows about her family and her world.

Devon is a Book Eater — one of a secret species that literally consumes books rather than food, absorbing their contents. Her son Cai is different: a mind eater who craves the stories inside human minds. She will do anything to protect him.

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.

Still trapped as a mortal teen, Apollo journeys to Indianapolis to free a captive Oracle from the cruel emperor Commodus. Rick Riordan's second Trials of Apollo book deepens the fallen god's humbling, adding new allies and a chilling second member of the Triumvirate.

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.

Seven years after the Shades of Magic trilogy, the four Londons are uneasy. A rebellion stirs, a new Antari emerges, and old favorites return as V.E. Schwab launches a sweeping sequel series about who deserves power and what it costs to hold the worlds together.

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.

The fifth and final novel of the main Witcher saga. As the war between the Northern Kingdoms and Nilfgaard reaches its bloody climax and Ciri's destiny draws her between worlds, Sapkowski brings the stories of Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri to a haunting, melancholy close.

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.