Top Ten Fantasy Books
The list below are my selection for the absolute best that Fantasy has to offer. This is far from an exhaustive list and my choices, and/or exclusions, are bound to cause some disagreement. I’ve also avoided including more than one book in the same series, even where it might be justified.
This list is also limited to books that I have read, there are some mighty works of Fantasy that I simply haven’t got to yet. As a result of this, the list may change over time.
If you’ve got any suggestions for additions, then do let me know in the comments. I love discussing books and am happy to take reading suggestions if you think a true travesty has been committed.
Pete Richmond
Editor
1 – Magician – Raymond E Feist
For those readers looking for classic Fantasy reading, you can’t get any better than this. Feist’s masterpiece is in some ways a typical story of two young friends discovering new powers and their place in the world by saving a princess, and in other ways a cross dimensional political drama filled with alien creatures, classical-esque society and also the traditional Elves, Dwarves, Trolls and Dragons.
This is right up there as one of my top three books, from which I’m never able to pick an outright winner.
The magnificence of Feist’s writing comes from his ability to mesh the two narrative types with a masterful ease. It is the story of two young boys fulfilling their destiny to rise as heroes in a time of need. It is an epic of war depicting the clashing of two alien cultures unexpectedly together. It’s also a morality tale as the characters struggle to come to terms with the darker aspects of their own natures, against the backdrop of new lands and environments that push them to their limits.
More than that, it is also a heartfelt story of two people, trying to make sense of the changes around them. A reader, any reader, can relate to this. You care for the characters and, more than wanting them to win the war, you want them to win their personal battles and find peace. That Feist manages to keep this string to your heart at the forefront of his writing in a fantasy epic of such grand scale is what marks this book out as one of the best of the best.
2 – American Gods – Neil Gaiman
There aren’t many books written that have enjoyed the critical success of American Gods. A joint Hugo and Nebula award winner, it also won the Bram Stoker, SFX Magazine and Locus awards, while being nominated for the BSFA, World Fantasy, International Horror Guild, Mythopoeic and British Fantasy Awards. Recently adapted for television by Starz, it’s safe to say that this book hasn’t flown under the radar.
What I can say, is that every single piece of praise for Gaiman’s best known work is absolutely justified.
It follows the protagonist, Shadow, an ex-con just out of prison as he takes a job as a bodyguard for a con-man, Mr. Wednesday. The adventure that follows ties Norse Mythology into a modern American setting, all written with Gaiman’s world renowned captivating story telling ability.
If you haven’t yet read this most masterful of works, then you’ve majorly missed out.
3 – The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
What needs to be said here? Tolkien invented the Fantasy genre.
Everything that includes Elves as long-lifed, ethereal, “super”-humans from playing Skyrim on the Xbox to listening to a Critical Role D’n’d podcast (other games and podcasts are available) started with Tolkien telling his children a story.
The gruff bearded dwarves, the slender elves, the green skinned goblins and orcs were all his creation.
Obviously, not entirely. He borrowed heavily from his knowledge of Norse myth, particularly the great Old English poem, Beowulf. But he wanted to create an English Mythology and succeeded wonderfully.
The Lord of the Rings is a story of love, not romantic love, but comradely love. It’s a story of bravery in the face of absolutely insurmountable odds. It’s the story of taking one step at a time to achieve the impossible. It’s the story of reconciliation between estranged races. It’s the story of how one person, no matter how small, can change the world.
4 – A Storm of Swords – George RR Martin
Any modern Fantasy fan will be familiar with the media behemoth that is George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones series, spawning not only the Game of Thrones series but also the sequel House of Dragons. The HBO series of Game of Thrones introduced the whole world to Fantasy darker than Tolkien’s and had people that wouldn’t dream of picking up a doorstop sized novel waiting with bated breath for next week’s installment.
For those of us that read our Fantasy stories, the Game of Thrones series is synonymous with something else entirely, an unfinished work. As I write this today, the last installment of the series came out fourteen years ago and the next, The Winds of Winter, has been coming “next year” for most of those intervening years. Most of us have accepted that there will never be a conclusion.
That being said, A Storm of Swords is George RR Martin at his peak. The first two installments, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings, laid the groundwork of the deeply complicated political intrigue of the Seven Kingdoms, the alliances made and broken, the battle lines drawn and the scene set. A Storm of Swords in the breathless and action-packed pay-off to those first two books. It is utterly brilliant from start to finish and it is no surprise that many of the most iconic moments from the TV series occur in this book.
From this point in the series Martin seemed to struggle to get his stories lined up, with storylines meandering and the pacing dragging horribly, particularly in A Dance with Dragons, but this is a true highlight of the Fantasy Genre and well worth reading the series for.
5 – The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson has, in recent years, become an absolute titan of modern fantasy. His works exist in the loosely linked “Cosmere” universe which spans his hugely successful Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series, alongside several standalones and graphic novels.
Mistborn is the titular starter to the Mistborn trilogy. The premise of Mistborn is the antithesis to the fantasy of the generation before, the prophesied hero arose to defeat the Dark Lord and lost, and now the Dark Lord has been ruling unopposed for a thousand years. Honestly, when reading through it, this didn’t feel the real focus of the story. Rather it felt a more conventional trope of a small band of rebels uniting to take on an Evil Empire. But that’s more the generation of storytelling that I’ve grown up with.
The beauty of this book is in how compelling the story is, how it builds up slowly to an absolute crescendo of twists, reveals and action. It has become such a hallmark of Sanderson’s writing and he is so skilled at achieving this that it has spawned the term “Sanderlanche” (or Sanderson Avalanche) just to describe this effect.
Mistborn is a brilliant Action-Fantasy novel in its own right, even if you have no intention of exploring the wider Cosmere, it’s worth a read.
6 – A Wizard of Earthsea – Ursula K Le Guin
A Wizard of Earthsea is a classic, and for good reason. The book follows the prodigiously talented, but somewhat impatient, Ged as a young apprentice of the local wizard on the remote island of Gont, through his exploration of his powers and on to his time at the School of Wizards on the island of Roke and to adventures beyond.
It is, at the same time an adventure story filled with magic, wizards and dragons and also the story of a young man making mistakes and being forced to confront his own shortcomings. Ged remains now as compelling as when I first met him when we were both children, and it is the humanity in his mistakes and flaws that keeps me coming back to world of Earthsea.
The first in “The Earthsea Quartet” (now extended to “The Earthsea Cycle”) it’s not just a series opener but a wonderful book in its own right and I read this first book many times before I ever embarked on the rest of the series.
7 – Night Watch – Terry Pratchett
This is perhaps the entry on the list I had the most difficulty in choosing. I knew that Pratchett’s Discworld series had to feature on the list somewhere, but how on Earth could I choose just one book from the myriad of wonderful, colourful, satirical and clever outings in the series?
Carpe Jugulum? Featuring Granny Weatherwax’s most dramatic moments of “headology”. Small Gods? A standalone treatise on religion set a hundred years before the main narrative and on a different continent. Going Postal? Thud!?
In the end, of course, it had to be a Vimes novel, and in Night Watch we have the most Sam Vimes that Sam Vimes ever is. (Barring maybe the “Who watches the watchman?” and “Where’s My Cow?” in Thud!)
Alongside A Storm of Swords, this is the only novel on the list that I’d say shouldn’t be read as a standalone. One of the beautiful things about Pratchett and Discworld is that it absolutely could be, but the development of the Duke of Ankh himself is a journey of character growth that really should be experienced from the start. So please don’t read this first. There are a hundred different ways to read the Discworld, and I won’t get into that here, but trust me that when you do get to this one, however you get there, it is a highlight.
8 – Northern Lights – Phillip Pullman
Northern Lights, or The Golden Compass to our American readers, is the start of Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and it is one of the greatest and most imaginative works around.
Ostensibly a children’s story, it certainly swept up the awards for children’s literature, it is one I will not hesitate to recommend to children of all ages, from eight to eighty eight (and beyond). Lyra is an iconic protagonist, delightfully stubborn, headstrong and at times oblivious to the greater machinations going on around her. She’s on her adventure because that’s what needs to be done, nothing is impossible.
Ranging from the Oxford colleges of Pullman’s alternate reality England to the frigid north with Iorek Byrnison the armoured polar bear and eventually (in the sequels) to other wondrous worlds beyond, Northern Lights is a marvellous adventure. The trilogy as a whole lifts this to classic status, but it all starts here in Northern Lights.
9 – The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch
In any discussion of Fantasy books, The Lies of Locke Lamora will come up, and with good reason. Only this year did I manage to get round to reading it myself, and what a ride it is!
It picked up nominations for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy and Locus awards for best novel on publication in 2007, and has been on my reading list since then. Having finally got round to it in 2025 my overriding thought on finishing it was “Why did I wait so long?”. If you take nothing else away from this list, just know that I finished this book and immediately ordered the next two books in the trilogy.
The eponymous Locke is a classic protagonist, the outrageously talented orphan who immediately shows up his elders and betters before getting into enough trouble that a benevolent mentor trains him to point his skills in the right direction. He fits the more modern stereotype of being smarter, but not stronger, than everyone else, relying on his friends, Jean and the Sanza twins when any kind of muscle is needed.
At its core, it’s a heist book. Clever people trying to outmatch each other, an underdog taking on the establishment, magic and sword fights and final gambits in desperate situations. The Lies of Locke Lamora has it all.
10 – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – CS Lewis
There is a close to zero chance that you’ve stumbled across this list without knowing about this book. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first book in the world-renowned The Chronicles of Narnia series, (side note: I will argue this point to death. The Magician’s Nephew is a prequel that should be read later and is a poor place to start!) and features four small children Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy finding a fantastical land through a doorway in the back of a wardrobe.
Much of what I can say here is already so embedded in popular culture, Aslan the Lion, The White Witch, Mr Tumnus the faun, the temptations of Turkish Delight.
Unlike Northern Lights listed above, The Chronicles of Narnia very much are children’s stories and are best enjoyed if you first encounter them when you’re still the same age as the children themselves. However, if you have somehow missed them in your youth, or not even embarked on your Fantasy journey until later in life then it is still worth going back and taking your turn in going through the back of the wardrobe to Narnia.
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