There is no better escape from the stresses and strains of everyday life than a good fantasy novel. Within these magical tomes you will find a portal to worlds of pure imagination – brimming with roaring dragons, fearless warriors and plucky heroes with hairy feet and sorcerous rings, reports BritPanorama.
Yet, not every fantasy novel is forged in the image of JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. There are as many varieties of fantasy as shades of blue in a churning ocean.
Here is a selection of the 14 best – though please don’t get too “precioussss” about it if your favourite isn’t there.
14. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Familiar to many from its animated adaptation, Wynne Jones’s original 1986 novel is worth celebrating in its own right. It’s a sharp, wry take on classic fairytales about a young girl turned into an old woman by a wicked witch who seeks refuge in a wandering fortress belonging to a vain wizard. Howl’s Moving Castle is a very funny novel about the trials of growing up and how people are not what they might seem to be. For instance, Howl is rumoured to be a wicked sorcerer who consumes the hearts of women and girls but is revealed to be much more human than reputation suggests.
13. Jade City by Fonda Lee
The idea that a great fantasy novel must feature wizards, knights and various pointed-eared elf-like beings is knocked into a stylish gangster’s fedora by Fonda Lee in the first volume of her Green Bone saga from 2017. The setting is a fantastical version of 1970s Hong Kong, dominated by warring criminal dynasties. Magic is real, but so too are the ambitions of the Triad-like families who battle for supremacy over Janloon, a “silkpunk” megapolis where the precious mineral jade fuels a complicated magical system. In the tradition of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Lee focuses on one major crime family – the “No Peak” clan – and the struggle for control between three siblings.
12. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Fantasy becomes fever dream in this brilliantly evocative 2011 book about a travelling circus that operates only after dark, where two young magicians battle for supremacy. Heady with atmosphere, it’s a book to be experienced almost as much as read and overflows with memorable imagery, such as gardens made from ice that cannot be melted, a maze carved out of clouds, and acrobats who can defy physics.
11. Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Urban fantasy has long been overshadowed by the school of heroic derring-do and its traditionally medieval setting. However, contemporary fantasy set in the real world has a huge following of its own. There is no better example than Clive Barker’s 1987 opus, Weaveworld. Barker is best known as a horror writer and the creator of the Hellraiser series and its villain Pinhead, but he goes full-on fantasy in this magical book about an enchanted rug that contains an entire world within its patterns – and which has somehow ended up in 1980s Liverpool, where it spreads mischief and mayhem.
10. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Billed as a feminist retelling of the legend of St George and the Dragon, Samantha Shannon’s 2019 doorstopper quickly reveals itself to be much more than a new take on an old legend. It imagines a Tolkien-esque universe dominated by Western-style dragons (destructive and fire-breathing) and their Asian equivalent (serpentine, mysterious and sympathetic to humanity). Throw in court intrigue, a resourceful heroine, sweeping battles, and the result is a 21st-century twist on classic heroic fantasy that leaps off the page, spouting flames and soaring through the clouds.
9. Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Before fantasy fell entirely under the spell of Tolkien and his acolytes, the genre had room for all sorts of voices. One of the most distinctive was American pulp writer Roger Zelazny, who wrote in the hardboiled style of an old-school crime novelist. His stand-out work is the Amber saga – which opened in style with a first volume from 1970 in which a fast-talking narrator wakes in a hospital in New York with a thumping bout of amnesia. He gradually discovers that he is a member of the ruling family of the world of Amber and that he has been the victim of a war of succession after his father, the King, vanishes without a trace. His long journey home is a rip-roaring romp, delivered in Zelazny’s signature fast-talking style.
8. A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
Game of Thrones put fantasy on the radar of mainstream readers – until Martin started to dawdle over the ending of his planned seven-book saga. With just five volumes published, many openly question whether the 77-year-old will ever complete his life’s work. Even if he doesn’t, the series contains at least one stone-cold classic in the form of the third entry, A Storm of Swords. This is the book where Game of Thrones achieves greatness as Martin springs a trap on his readers with the fateful Red Wedding scene where many of our favourite characters come to the stickiest of endings.
7. Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson
“Epic” is a word that gets chucked around a lot when it comes to fantasy. Yet it is the only way to describe Steven Erikson’s sprawling, bonkers and occasionally mind-bending Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence of 10 novels (plus sequels, prequels, and spin-offs). Erikson does not make it easy for newcomers. Each volume unleashes a torrent of characters, locations, magic systems and ancient prophecies that it is up to the reader to untangle. It’s worth it, however, as Erikson tells the story of ancient gods and feuding demons clashing across a vast continent. Chills and thrills are guaranteed – particularly in the second volume, in which tough-as-nails soldiers lead refugees across a punishing desert with a variety of terrifying enemies on their heels.
6. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
As big as a brick and just as hard-hitting, Miéville’s 800-page-plus “weird fantasy” masterpiece from 2000 is set in a fantastical city of New Crobuzon – a dystopian metropolis that is a mix of Victorian London and Mega-City One from the 2000AD comics. It is a place of horror and wonder, as the book’s scientist hero Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin discovers when he meddles with powers beyond his understanding and unleashes a deadly plague of psychological violence against the population. It sounds bonkers – and often is – but Miéville also throws in elements of David Lynch surrealism and a complicated murder mystery worthy of a James Ellroy potboiler and somehow makes the whole thing sing like a soprano. Weird, beautiful, terrifying, gripping – it is a fantasy like no other.
5. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
The 1990s were a time of huge change in fantasy, as writers brought new levels of grittiness and explicitness to a genre that in the Tolkien version at least had been prudish and puritanical, perhaps to a fault. One such figure was George RR Martin, whose Game of Thrones books were full of brutal conspirators being nasty to each other. But if he was the Oasis of 1990s fantasy, then the Blur of the era was Robin Hobb, whose books were every bit as boundary-breaking. She writes unflinchingly, depicting fantasy realms where the biggest threat isn’t a rampaging dragon but a power-hungry nobility willing to burn the world to the ground if it means achieving dominance. Her crowning achievement is the Farseer Trilogy – which is off to a wrenching start with 1995’s Assassin’s Apprentice and which tells the story of Fitz, the illegitimate offspring of a dashing Prince who trains to become the King’s personal assassin. This is down-and-dirty fantasy, where magic is more myth than reality – but with characters who are richly drawn human beings, full of flaws and all the more compelling for it.
4. The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
In NK Jemisin’s eerie post-apocalyptic masterpiece from 2015, humanity lives in constant fear of nature’s wrath. The setting is an earth-like planet devastated by earthquakes, where magic users with the ability to control these seismic events are shunned and terrorised by the rest of society. But it also tells the powerfully human story of a middle-aged woman who sets off in pursuit
