Locke Lamora can talk a nobleman out of a fortune. Maia, the reluctant ruler of an empire, has to figure out which courtiers he can trust. Shai has to reconstruct a stranger’s personality under a deadline that could cost her life. All three are clever, but each would be in trouble if they tried to solve their problems the way the others do.
These eight fantasy books make thinking part of the action. The picks range from an elaborate con and a locked-down heist to a murder investigation, court intrigue, and a school where choosing the right allies can keep you alive. Each entry tells you what kind of cleverness drives the story, with the big reveals left for the books.
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Which book should you start with?
| If you want to read about… | Start with |
|---|---|
| A con artist who makes a lie irresistible | The Lies of Locke Lamora |
| A crew whose talents have to fit together | Six of Crows |
| A prisoner who keeps everyone guessing | The Thief |
| Detectives who notice different things | The Tainted Cup |
| An emperor learning to read his own court | The Goblin Emperor |
| A forger who has to understand another person | The Emperor’s Soul |
| A student who questions the rules of survival | A Deadly Education |
| A strategist who understands who controls the money | The Traitor Baru Cormorant |
1. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
The skill is making a lie feel like someone else’s idea.
Locke and the Gentleman Bastards run elaborate cons on the wealthy residents of Camorr. A convincing accent and the right clothes can get him through the door. To get someone to hand over a fortune, he has to work out what they already want to believe. Then a rival threatens the criminal order that has given his crew room to operate, and Locke finds himself improvising in a city he thought he understood.
Start here if you enjoy watching a con unfold in layers. Jean Tannen gives the story an emotional center, and his partnership with Locke makes the difference between a trick worth admiring and a friendship worth worrying about. This is the first Gentleman Bastard novel.
Find the paperback on Amazon Read our Locke Lamora recap after finishing the book
2. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
The skill is knowing who can do what you can’t.
Kaz Brekker puts together a crew for an audacious break-in. The fun is watching his plan depend on specialists with their own loyalties and reasons for saying yes. Inej can get into places Kaz can’t, and the others bring skills that change which risks the crew can take. A job that looks manageable on paper gets more interesting every time one of those people has a decision to make.
Pick this YA fantasy if you want the pleasures of a heist and enough time with the crew to care who makes it home. The story continues in Crooked Kingdom, the second half of the duology.
3. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
The skill is deciding what other people get to know.
Gen boasts that he can steal anything. When a royal adviser recruits him from prison to retrieve a valuable object, Gen’s reputation makes him useful to people who hold considerably more power than he does. On the road, his complaints, jokes, and arguments keep the party occupied. Pay attention to what everyone assumes about the boy doing all that talking.
This is a good pick if you like short fantasy adventures that reward a second reading. Turner gives the journey room for campfire stories and bickering, details that make the world feel lived-in and give you more to notice when you come back. It opens the Queen’s Thief series.
4. The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
The skill is recognizing which odd detail belongs to the case.
A tree erupts from a dead official’s body, giving investigator Ana Dolabra and her assistant Dinios Kol a murder case that only makes sense if they understand the strange biology of their world. Din has been altered to remember what he experiences with extraordinary precision. Ana can take those observations and see a pattern that escaped everyone at the scene.
This is my pick for readers who come to fantasy from detective fiction. The book gives you the pleasure of trying to solve the case alongside Din, and every new clue teaches you something about how the empire works. It opens the Ana and Din Mysteries.
Find the paperback on Amazon · Read our full review of The Tainted Cup
5. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
The skill is figuring out who benefits when a custom goes unquestioned.
Maia has spent years away from court when an airship disaster leaves him on the throne. The people around him know the language of rank, etiquette, and obligation better than he does. He has to learn which rules protect the people he’s responsible for, which ones protect the people advising him, and who will answer a plain question honestly.
Choose this if you enjoy the tension of a private audience or a formal dinner where a few carefully chosen words can change a relationship. Maia’s willingness to listen gives him access to people the court tends to overlook, and that makes his kindness politically consequential.
Find The Goblin Emperor on Amazon· Read our Goblin Emperor ending analysis after finishing the book
6. The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson
The skill is imagining a version of someone that could have existed.
Shai’s captors give her a chance to escape execution if she can forge a new soul for an emperor gravely injured in an assassination attempt. Her magic works by making an alternate history plausible. That means studying the man closely enough to understand which events shaped him and how he might have changed if they had gone differently. She also needs to learn what her captors intend to do with her once the job is done.
Pick this novella if you want a compact story built around one difficult problem. Its best scenes make patient research feel like high-stakes action. You can read it on its own, even if you’ve never opened another Cosmere book.
7. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The skill is working out which survival rules are worth breaking.
El attends the Scholomance, a school full of monsters where having the right allies can determine whether you live long enough to graduate. Her talent for destructive magic gives her frightening options, and she spends much of the book trying to find better ones. The school’s informal economy of favors and protection makes every alliance a question of who can afford to help whom.
Start here if you like a prickly narrator who has opinions about every shortcut the students take to stay alive. El’s running assessment of the people around her is as much fun as the monsters. This is the first book in the Scholomance trilogy.
8. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
The skill is spotting what an empire depends on.
After the Empire of Masks takes control of her homeland, Baru earns a place inside its bureaucracy. Posted to a province with its own history of resistance, she finds that taxes, trade, and debts can change who has room to act. Accounting gives her a way to look past the empire’s official story and see which arrangements keep it in power.
This is the darkest pick on the list. Read it when you want a strategist whose victories come with a moral cost. Baru is good at seeing what people can be made to do under pressure, and the book asks what that talent does to her ability to trust anyone. It opens the Masquerade series.
For a short read, choose The Emperor’s Soul. For a full-length mystery, start with The Tainted Cup. If you want to see a plan come together one specialist at a time, go with Six of Crows.
Find more recommendations in our guide to completed fantasy series.
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