Fantasy has always been my go-to genre.
No other genre makes it quite as easy for me to disappear into a book for hundreds of pages, or more often, disappear into an entire series and suddenly wonder where the last few weeks went.
But after reading hundreds of fantasy novels over the years, I have also learned something important: not all fantasy books are created equal.
Some novels have incredible worlds but forgettable characters. Others have fascinating magic systems but plots that never quite come together. And then there are those special fantasy books that get almost everything right.
Those are the books on this list.
Some are classics that helped define modern fantasy. Others completely changed what I thought the genre could do. And a few are simply books that I couldn’t stop thinking about after finishing them.
You’ll probably recognize many of these titles. That’s intentional. Popular books aren’t automatically great, but some fantasy novels become enormously popular because they really are that good.
One of the series that reminded me just how much fantasy has to offer was The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski. I discovered the books before diving deeper into the enormous world surrounding Geralt of Rivia, and it quickly became one of my favorite fantasy series.
But The Witcher barely scratches the surface.
Whether you love epic fantasy, grimdark, magical schools, assassins, sprawling worlds, urban fantasy, or strange standalone novels that don’t resemble anything else you’ve read, there should be something here for you.
These are 20 of the best fantasy books and series that I think every fantasy fan should read at least once.
20 Fantasy Novels That Fantasy Fans Must Read
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien
- A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R.R. Martin
- His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
- Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson
- American Gods by Neil Gaiman
- The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan
- Dune by Frank Herbert
- The Night Angel by Brent Weeks
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie
- The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski
- The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
- A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
- Discworld by Terry Pratchett
- The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
- The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
- Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
- The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1 by Patrick Rothfuss
- The Gentlemen Bastards by Scott Lynch
The Lord of the Rings Top the List
There was never much debate over what would take the top spot.
If you love fantasy and haven’t read The Lord of the Rings, this is the book I would immediately put at the top of your reading list.
Tolkien didn’t invent fantasy, but it is almost impossible to talk about modern epic fantasy without talking about his influence.
Middle-earth feels ancient in a way few fictional worlds ever manage to achieve. There are histories, languages, songs, legends, kingdoms, wars, and cultures that seem to exist far beyond the pages you are reading.
More importantly, underneath all that worldbuilding is an unforgettable adventure about friendship, courage, temptation, sacrifice, and hope.
And yes, I would include The Hobbit as essential reading alongside it.
You might not end up calling The Lord of the Rings your favorite fantasy series. But every serious fantasy reader should experience Middle-earth at least once.
Read this if you love: epic quests, immersive worldbuilding, classic fantasy, unlikely heroes
A Song of Ice and Fire
I have a love and hate relationship with A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. I love this fantasy series and while I do I have a complicated relationship with A Song of Ice and Fire.
On one hand, it contains some of the best political intrigue, characterization, and world building I’ve encountered in fantasy.
On the other hand, waiting for the series to be completed has become an adventure of its own.
Still, ignoring how long readers have been waiting for the remaining novels, what Martin accomplished with these books is remarkable.
Characters you hate can suddenly become sympathetic. Characters you love can make horrible decisions. Alliances constantly change, politics actually matter, and nobody feels completely protected by the story.
Martin took many familiar fantasy ideas and made them messier, darker, and much less predictable.
Whatever you thought about HBO’s Game of Thrones, the books are their own experience and deserve to be read.
Read this if you love: political fantasy, morally gray characters, huge casts, unpredictable stories.
His Dark Materials
One opinion I will defend forever is that His Dark Materials belongs in the conversation about the greatest fantasy series ever written.
Philip Pullman’s trilogy is sometimes categorized as children’s fantasy, which may cause adult readers to overlook it.
Don’t.
The adventures of Lyra Belacqua begin with enough mystery, magical creatures, and excitement to pull in younger readers, but the series quickly develops into something much more ambitious.
Pullman explores authority, freedom, consciousness, religion, love, growing up, and what people are willing to sacrifice for the people they care about.
It is imaginative without becoming overwhelming and philosophical without forgetting that readers still want a great story.
Alongside series such as Harry Potter, it also became the kind of fantasy that helped generations of younger readers fall in love with books.
Read this if you love: adventurous fantasy, parallel worlds, philosophical themes, unforgettable characters.
Mistborn
Mistborn is the series that made me a Brandon Sanderson fan.
I know many readers consider The Stormlight Archive his defining fantasy series, but Mistborn connected with me even more.
The premise immediately stands out: what if the prophesied hero had already failed and the villain had won?
From there, Sanderson builds an incredible world around ash, oppression, rebellion, political power, and one of the most memorable magic systems in modern fantasy.
Allomancy feels almost scientific in the way its rules operate, yet Sanderson never allows those rules to replace good storytelling.
Vin’s journey is what really makes the series work.
If you’ve heard people constantly recommending Brandon Sanderson but haven’t tried one of his books yet, Mistborn: The Final Empire remains one of the best places to start.
Read this if you love: hard magic systems, heists, rebellions, huge plot twists.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
American Gods doesn’t feel like traditional fantasy, and that’s exactly why it belongs here.
Neil Gaiman imagines a version of America where gods brought over by immigrants exist alongside newer gods created by modern obsessions and technology.
The result is strange, atmospheric, philosophical, occasionally disturbing, and completely unlike most fantasy novels.
Shadow Moon’s journey across America turns into something between a road novel, a mythology lesson, and a battle between old and new beliefs.
This isn’t the fantasy book I’d recommend if you’re looking for swords, castles, and enormous battles.
But if you want to see just how flexible the fantasy genre can be, American Gods is essential reading.
Read this if you love: mythology, dark fantasy, strange worlds, unconventional stories.
The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time is one of fantasy’s biggest commitments.
And I mean that literally.
Robert Jordan created a massive series filled with cultures, magic, prophecies, politics, friendships, wars, and enough characters to make keeping track of everyone a challenge.
The early books clearly draw from the traditions established by Tolkien, but Jordan gradually expands the story into something much larger and more distinctly his own.
I’ll admit that this series didn’t connect with me as much as it has with many other fantasy readers. Parts of the journey dragged for me.
But its importance to modern fantasy is impossible to ignore.
Some readers finish The Wheel of Time and consider it the greatest fantasy series they’ve ever read. That alone makes it worth discovering for yourself.
Read this if you love: enormous fantasy worlds, long series, prophecy, detailed magic systems.
Dune
Yes, Dune is primarily science fiction.
I’m including it anyway.
Fantasy and science fiction frequently overlap, and Dune contains many elements fantasy readers will immediately recognize: powerful dynasties, prophecy, ancient traditions, political scheming, mysterious abilities, and a hero whose destiny may not be as straightforward as it first appears.
Frank Herbert’s worldbuilding can be overwhelming at first, but Arrakis is unforgettable once you become immersed in it.
The politics, environmental ideas, religion, and questions surrounding power make Dune much more than a simple adventure story.
Interestingly, J. R. R. Tolkien himself strongly disliked Dune but chose not to publicly explain his criticism because he felt it would be unfair to another author.
I couldn’t disagree with him more on this one.
Read this if you love: political intrigue, dense worldbuilding, science fantasy, morally complicated heroes.
The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks
If assassins, secret abilities, political conspiracies, and dark fantasy sound like your kind of book, The Night Angel Trilogy deserves a place on your list.
The series follows Azoth, a young boy desperate to escape a brutal life who apprentices himself to the legendary assassin Durzo Blint.
Things only become more complicated from there.
Brent Weeks creates a fast-moving fantasy story that leans heavily into action, violence, secret identities, and dangerous magic.
It isn’t as literary as some books on this list, but sometimes you want a fantasy novel that simply refuses to let you put it down.
The Night Angel Trilogy does that very well.
Read this if you love: assassins, dark fantasy, action, fast-paced series.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Not every great fantasy novel needs a war or world-ending threat.
The Night Circus proves it.
Erin Morgenstern’s magical circus appears without warning and opens only at night. Behind its spectacular attractions is a competition between two young magicians whose lives have been shaped by forces beyond their control.
But the plot isn’t necessarily what makes this book memorable.
It’s the atmosphere.
Few fantasy novels have made me want to physically step inside their worlds as badly as The Night Circus did.
It captures the feeling of magic rather than simply explaining how magic works.
When you’ve spent months reading enormous epic fantasy series filled with kingdoms and battles, this is the perfect change of pace.
Read this if you love: magical settings, romantic fantasy, atmospheric novels, standalone fantasy.
The First Law
When I first started working through the most popular fantasy series, The First Law caught me completely off guard.
Joe Abercrombie’s world is violent, cynical, brutal, and populated by characters who would be villains in almost any other fantasy novel.
And somehow you still end up loving them.
Or at least loving to read about them.
Abercrombie became one of the authors most closely associated with grimdark fantasy because he refuses to romanticize war or pretend that heroes always behave heroically.
The dialogue is fantastic, the characters are memorable, and the series constantly plays with your expectations about how fantasy stories are supposed to work.
Read this if you love: grimdark fantasy, morally gray characters, dark humor, brutal battles.
The Witcher
The Netflix adaptation introduced millions of people to Geralt of Rivia, but The Witcher books are where this world truly shines.
Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski created a fantasy universe influenced heavily by European folklore, fairy tales, monsters, politics, and moral ambiguity.
Geralt is technically a monster hunter, but the humans he encounters are frequently more dangerous than the creatures he’s paid to kill.
That tension gives The Witcher much of its personality.
The books can be funny, dark, philosophical, violent, and surprisingly emotional.
And Geralt remains one of my favorite fantasy protagonists.
Read this if you love: monster hunters, folklore, morally gray fantasy, sword fights.
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
What happens when you combine fantasy with a detective novel?
You get The Dresden Files.
Harry Dresden is a professional wizard working in modern-day Chicago, where supernatural crimes tend to be a little beyond the capabilities of the normal police.
Jim Butcher mixes mysteries, vampires, demons, faeries, magic, humor, and increasingly large supernatural conflicts into one addictive series.
The earliest novels are smaller and more episodic, but the world expands dramatically as the series continues.
If epic fantasy intimidates you or you simply want something different, The Dresden Files is a great gateway into urban fantasy.
Read this if you love: mysteries, urban fantasy, wizards, supernatural creatures.
A Wizard of Earthsea
Long before the modern explosion of magical-school fantasy, Ursula K. Le Guin gave readers A Wizard of Earthsea.
The novel follows Ged, a naturally gifted young magician whose pride leads him to make a terrible mistake.
What follows isn’t simply an adventure. It is a story about fear, identity, arrogance, responsibility, and accepting the parts of ourselves we’d rather avoid.
Le Guin’s approach to magic, particularly the importance of true names, became hugely influential within fantasy.
But what impresses me most is how much she accomplishes without writing an enormous novel.
A Wizard of Earthsea feels larger than books twice its length.
Read this if you love: coming-of-age fantasy, wizards, philosophical stories, classic fantasy..
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
A boy named Nobody Owens grows up in a graveyard after his family is murdered.
That premise alone should tell you you’re reading a Neil Gaiman novel.
The Graveyard Book is dark, strange, funny, creepy, and surprisingly comforting.
Bod is raised by ghosts and other supernatural inhabitants of the graveyard while the danger responsible for his family’s death remains somewhere outside.
The novel works for younger readers, but adults will find plenty to appreciate in its ideas about family, mortality, independence, and growing up.
Sometimes the best fantasy novels are the ones that make impossible situations feel completely natural.
Gaiman is particularly good at that.
Read this if you love: gothic fantasy, ghosts, coming-of-age stories, Neil Gaiman.
Discworld by Terry Pratchett
Where do you even begin with Discworld?
Terry Pratchett created dozens of novels set on a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle.
And somehow that isn’t even the strangest part.
The comedy gets readers through the door, but Pratchett’s observations about humanity, politics, religion, greed, prejudice, bureaucracy, and power are what make the books endure.
The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to read every Discworld novel in publication order.
There are several interconnected character arcs and plenty of different entry points.
Just pick one and start exploring.
Read this if you love: funny fantasy, satire, huge fictional worlds, clever writing.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
There are books you finish and immediately wonder why it took you so long to read them.
The Fifth Season was one of those books for me.
N. K. Jemisin creates a world regularly devastated by catastrophic geological events, where people with the ability to manipulate the earth are both necessary and brutally oppressed.
The novel plays with structure, perspective, and expectations in ways I don’t want to spoil.
More importantly, Jemisin uses fantasy to explore oppression, survival, parenthood, environmental catastrophe, power, and what happens when a society builds itself around exploitation.
This is one of the books that makes me excited about the future of fantasy.
Read this if you love: ambitious fantasy, unusual storytelling, apocalyptic worlds, complex themes.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
If Mistborn is my recommended introduction to Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings is where you go when you’re ready for something enormous.
The first Stormlight Archive novel throws readers into Roshar, a world shaped by devastating storms, ancient conflicts, magical weapons, political rivalries, and mysteries that stretch back thousands of years.
It takes patience.
Sanderson has a lot of pieces to put into place.
But when those pieces start coming together, few fantasy authors can match the feeling of watching one of his enormous plots unfold.
Kaladin’s storyline alone makes this book worth reading.
Read this if you love: epic fantasy, enormous worlds, intricate magic, long character arcs.
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
Foundryside is one of the books I’d recommend to anyone tired of reading the same fantasy ideas over and over again.
Robert Jackson Bennett creates a magic system built around objects being convinced that reality works differently than it actually does.
A normal wheel might “believe” it should roll faster. A weapon might be manipulated into behaving differently. Reality itself becomes something that can essentially be rewritten.
That concept is fascinating, but Bennett also gives readers a fast-moving story involving thieves, corporations, conspiracies, and dangerous technology.
It feels both familiar and completely new.
Read this if you love: unique magic systems, heists, clever worldbuilding, fantasy technology.
The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
Few unfinished fantasy series inspire as much discussion as The Kingkiller Chronicle.
And there’s a reason readers are still talking about it.
Beginning with The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss tells the story of Kvothe, a legendary figure recounting the events that turned him into one of the most famous and infamous people in his world.
Rothfuss’s prose is one of the biggest reasons the series stands out.
Music, storytelling, magic, love, tragedy, myth, and unreliable memory all become part of Kvothe’s story.
Yes, readers have been waiting a very long time for the next book.
But the novels we already have are still worth experiencing.
Read this if you love: beautiful prose, magical universities, legendary heroes, character-driven fantasy.
The Gentleman Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch
Sometimes I just want fantasy characters who are clever enough to get themselves into terrible situations and arrogant enough to believe they can talk their way back out.
That’s where The Gentleman Bastard Sequence comes in.
Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora introduces Locke Lamora and his crew of thieves, con artists, and troublemakers operating in the city of Camorr.
The friendship between the characters is fantastic, but the elaborate cons are what make the story so much fun.
Lynch mixes crime fiction with fantasy and creates something that feels completely different from traditional epic fantasy.
If you love heists and sharp dialogue, you need to meet Locke Lamora.
Read this if you love: heists, thieves, witty dialogue, fantasy cities.
What Is the Best Fantasy Book to Start With?
If you’re new to fantasy, I wouldn’t necessarily start with the longest or most complicated series on this list.
I’d recommend choosing based on what you already enjoy.
Want classic fantasy? Start with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Want modern epic fantasy? Read Mistborn.
Want something dark and unpredictable? Try The Blade Itself.
Want beautiful atmospheric fantasy? Pick up The Night Circus.
Want urban fantasy and mysteries? Start The Dresden Files.
Want something completely different? Read The Fifth Season.
And if you want to lose yourself in one gigantic fantasy world for months, The Wheel of Time or The Stormlight Archiveshould keep you busy.
Which Fantasy Series Is the Best of All Time?
If I had to choose one, The Lord of the Rings would still take the crown.
Its influence alone is almost impossible to overstate, but influence isn’t the only reason it remains at the top. Middle-earth still feels magical decades after Tolkien introduced readers to it.
My personal favorites would also include His Dark Materials, Mistborn, The Witcher, and The Fifth Season among the fantasy series I enjoyed the most.
But that’s what makes this genre so much fun.
Ask ten fantasy readers to rank their favorites and you’ll probably get ten very different lists.
Final Thoughts on the Best Fantasy Books
Fantasy has given us some of the most imaginative stories ever published.
That’s why I keep returning to the genre.
One month I can be wandering through Middle-earth with Frodo. The next I can be watching Vin fly across Luthadel, following Geralt as he hunts monsters, exploring the Stillness in The Fifth Season, or watching Locke Lamora attempt another ridiculous scheme.
No other genre gives authors quite the same freedom.
These 20 books and series aren’t the only great fantasy novels worth reading. I could easily make this list twice as long—and probably will eventually.
But if you’re trying to build a fantasy reading list, these books are an excellent place to start.
How many have you read? And which fantasy book do you think absolutely deserves a spot on the list? Let me know in the comments.
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This is a great list! I will definitely be adding some of these to my TBR list.
I now so much love fantasy novels. Thanks