Best Fantasy Books

When seventeen-year-old Bella Swan moves to rainy Forks, Washington, she falls in love with the mysteriously compelling Edward Cullen — who turns out to be a vampire.

Bella and Edward's wedding triggers a chain of consequences — including an impossible pregnancy — that will draw the entire vampire and werewolf worlds into an explosive confrontation.

After Edward leaves Forks to protect Bella, she descends into depression — and finds unexpected comfort in Jacob Black, whose own supernatural secret will complicate everything.

Tom Hazard was born in 1581 and ages so slowly he has lived through Shakespeare's London, Captain Cook's voyages, and 1920s Paris — now working as a history teacher in present-day London while belonging to a secret society that forbids its members from falling in love.

A Sicilian girl makes a dangerous pact with a demon prince named Wrath to uncover who murdered her twin sister in 1800s Sicily, weaving Italian folk magic and Dante's Seven Princes of Hell into a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers mystery.

Alice follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and falls into Wonderland — a world where size is unstable, logic is inverted, authority is arbitrary, and language itself has become unmoored from meaning. Carroll's 1865 masterpiece is ostensibly a children's fantasy but operates simultaneously as linguistic philosophy, dream narrative, and one of the strangest and most sustained acts of imagination in the English literary tradition.

The Infernal Devices reaches its devastating, then beautiful, conclusion. Mortmain's clockwork army threatens every Shadowhunter, but it is the question of Will, Jem, and Tessa — and whether love can survive impossible choices — that makes this ending one of the most discussed in young adult fiction.

Shai is the greatest Forger in the world — able to rewrite the history of objects and grant them new properties. Caught attempting to steal the Moon Scepter, she is given an impossible ultimatum: secretly forge a new soul for the Emperor, who was left brain-dead after an assassination attempt, before the political deadline expires.

Percy and Annabeth fall into Tartarus while their friends fight to close the Doors of Death from the mortal side. Both storylines push the series into darker territory, with character revelations that changed how the fandom understood these heroes.

The second volume of The Stormlight Archive follows Shallan and Kaladin as ancient evils stir and the order of Knights Radiant must be reborn to face an apocalyptic threat.

The penultimate book in the Zodiac Academy series — the battle for Solaria reaches its most devastating point, and the cost of the throne becomes almost unbearable.

The final book in the Zodiac Academy series — the Vega twins face their ultimate destiny in a battle that will determine the fate of Solaria and everyone they love.

The London Institute is threatened with closure unless its leader can be vindicated. Will and Jem must uncover the Magister's true identity before a deadline expires — while Tessa finds her feelings for both of them becoming impossible to deny or resolve. The love triangle deepens into something that resists easy resolution.

Con man Moist von Lipwig is offered a choice: the gallows or running Ankh-Morpork's collapsed Post Office. He chooses the Post Office, finds it haunted by the ghosts of undelivered letters, and faces the ruthless monopoly of the Clacks communications network. A reformed fraudster versus corporate villainy — Pratchett at his most satirically urgent.

Emma and Julian's investigation into the ritual murders leads them across the Atlantic to London and the Shadowhunter Academy, while the Cohort — a faction of Shadowhunter extremists — gains political power. The middle volume of the Dark Artifices trilogy expands the world's politics and brings back characters from across the Shadowhunter Chronicles.

Death takes on an apprentice: Mort, a gangly, earnest boy who proves to be terrible at the job in the worst possible way. When Mort uses his new scythe to save a princess who was scheduled to die, reality begins to fracture. Death, meanwhile, discovers he has always wanted to try being human.

The third Stormlight Archive novel follows Dalinar Kholin's attempt to unite the nations of Roshar as ancient evils return and the secrets of his past are finally revealed.

FitzChivalry Farseer returns to Buckkeep Castle after his first quest, only to find the kingdom crumbling from within. King Shrewd is failing, Prince Regal schemes for the throne, and the Red-Ship Raiders continue to Forge the people of the coastlands into walking shells. Fitz is bound to his king, his Wit bond, and a love he cannot act on.

The Liveship Traders trilogy reaches its conclusion as the Vestrit family, the serpents migrating north, the sea-serpent wizards, and the full history of the Rain Wilds converge. Hobb resolves every storyline with characteristic emotional force, and the origins of the liveships are among the most devastating and most earned reveals in the entire Realm of the Elderlings.

As the world begins to end, Vin, Elend, and their companions race to find the Hero of Ages and uncover the true nature of the powers that have shaped their world from the beginning.

The seven demigods of the Prophecy finally unite aboard the Argo II for a dangerous quest to Rome. Annabeth carries the burden of a solo quest following the Mark of Athena — a path that no child of Athena has survived — while the team races to prevent war between Greek and Roman demigods.

The revolution has won. The old order has fallen. The Age of Madness concludes in a storm of terror, betrayal, and the discovery that liberation is easier to promise than to deliver. Abercrombie brings his First Law world to its most devastating reckoning — and finds that the most interesting question is not how revolutions begin but what they become.

The darkest instalment yet — as the prophecy surrounding the Vega twins comes into sharper focus, betrayals shake the alliances they have built, and the battle for Solaria approaches.

Alliances are forged and fractured as the Vega twins draw closer to claiming their throne — and the final confrontation with the forces threatening Solaria becomes inevitable.