The best fantasy books

Three characters -- a soldier, a scholar, and a thief -- converge on an ancient mystery that could change their world forever.

A legendary figure recounts the true story of his life -- from orphaned street-rat to the most feared wizard in the world.

In a world where the prophesied hero failed and the Dark Lord won a thousand years ago, a crew of thieves plans a heist against an immortal emperor.

A by-the-book caseworker is sent to evaluate an orphanage for magical children on a remote island -- and finds a family he never knew he needed.

A hobbit inherits a ring that every dark power in the world wants -- and a fellowship of nine sets out to destroy it before it destroys them.

A teenage criminal mastermind assembles a crew of six outcasts to pull off the most impossible heist in the world -- breaking into the most secure prison ever built.

A comfort-loving hobbit is recruited by a wizard and thirteen dwarves on an unexpected quest to reclaim a mountain.

An angel and a demon who've grown fond of Earth team up to prevent the apocalypse they're both supposed to support.

A swashbuckling adventure story about true love, revenge, and rescue -- told by a delightfully unreliable narrator with a sharp eye for absurdity.

A woman searches for her daughter across a dying continent after her husband murders their son, in a world where catastrophic earthquakes are a way of life.

A war orphan from the rural south aces the imperial exam and is accepted into the country's most prestigious military academy -- and discovers she has powers she does not want.

A con artist in a Venetian-style fantasy city is running the most elaborate long con imaginable -- until a far more dangerous criminal decides to use him as a pawn.

A Scholar girl infiltrates the Empire's most brutal military academy to rescue her brother -- and the soldier tasked with unmasking her may be the only person she can trust.

A sorcerer conquered a province and erased its name from all memory as an act of revenge -- so only its last survivors know what they are fighting to restore.

A man lives alone in a vast, impossible house of infinite halls and tidal seas -- and slowly realises he has forgotten who he is.

The daughter of a sun god discovers witchcraft, defies the Olympians, and forges her own immortal story on a lonely island.

A crippled torturer, a pompous nobleman, and a barbarian warrior are drawn into a war they don't understand -- a fantasy that takes all the genre's tropes and breaks them.

A royal bastard is secretly apprenticed to the court assassin and learns to serve a king who will never publicly acknowledge him -- one of fantasy's most painful coming-of-age stories.

An ambassador from a tiny mining station arrives at the heart of a vast empire carrying her predecessor's memories in a neural implant -- and discovers he was murdered.

A group of young villagers are driven from their home by dark riders seeking one of them -- the beginning of a fourteen-volume epic that reshaped the genre.

A mapmaker's assistant discovers she has the rarest magical power in the world -- and the man who promises to train her may want something more than her gift.

Every ten years a wizard chooses a girl from the valley to serve him -- everyone knows he'll choose Kasia, and he chooses Agnieszka instead.

A girl in medieval Russia can see the household spirits that her village has always fed -- and when a Christian priest arrives and stops the offerings, something old and hungry wakes in the forest.

An ex-convict becomes bodyguard to a con man who claims to be an old god -- and a war between forgotten deities and new American idols is brewing.

A mortal huntress kills a wolf in the woods and is taken to a world of dangerous, immortal fae as payment -- where nothing is quite as it appears.

The story of King Arthur from the education of a boy called the Wart to the dissolution of the Round Table -- written as a meditation on why good intentions are not enough.

The daughter of the Abhorsen -- the necromancer who sends the Dead back to death -- must cross into a magical country she barely knows to rescue her father from beyond the grave.

A moneylender's daughter discovers she can turn silver into gold -- and makes a bargain with the king of winter that she must outwit before it destroys her.

A young mage unleashes a shadow upon the world and must face it alone -- a quietly profound fable about knowing yourself.

A mysterious black-and-white circus appears without warning -- and two young magicians compete inside it in a deadly duel.

Queens, dragon riders, and ancient magic collide in a sweeping standalone epic where the fate of the world rests on alliances forged across enemy lines.

A retired barbarian orc hangs up her sword to open a coffee shop -- and discovers that building a life is harder than any dungeon.

Two very different magicians revive English magic during the Napoleonic Wars -- and discover that the old powers have a will of their own.

A Narnia-obsessed teenager discovers a secret college for magicians -- and finds that real magic is technically brutal and emotionally does not save you from yourself.