Fantasy Books Worth Reading: 11 Titles Our Readers Return To Most
Fantasy covers an enormous amount of ground. Assassins in corrupt kingdoms, dragon riders, wandering circuses, carnivals that age you backwards and rabbits with their own mythology all sit under the same heading. This list gathers eleven fantasy books that span those extremes, with a short summary of each so you can tell at a glance whether it suits you.
The order comes from our own data on which covers readers look at most, so the titles at the top are the ones generating the most interest right now. Beyond that, every book here has something concrete behind it: New York Times bestseller status, a major award such as the Carnegie Medal, a place on the BBC Big Read or Modern Library lists, or a decades-long position as a cornerstone of the genre.
Everything below comes from the published record of each book, not from a personal reading diary. Expect facts, plot outlines and context.
Throne Of Glass
Sarah J. Maas began her epic fantasy series here in August 2012, following Celaena Sardothien, a teenage assassin in a kingdom ruled by the tyrannical King of Adarlan. As the story develops she forms unexpected alliances and uncovers a conspiracy. The series reached the New York Times bestseller list and ran to eight books, concluding in October 2018. It was optioned for television by Hulu and Disney-ABC Domestic Television in 2016, though the rights eventually returned to the author.
The Dark Tower
The seventh and final volume of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, published on King's birthday in September 2004 and illustrated by Michael Whelan. It brings Roland's ka-tet to the Tower itself by way of the Dixie Pig, the Breakers of Devar-Toi and the freezing badlands beyond. King writes himself into the book as a character the gunslingers must save. The four subtitles are "Reproduction", "Revelation", "Redemption" and "Resumption".
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern's 2011 debut was drafted across three National Novel Writing Month competitions and became a New York Times bestseller. It is set in Le Cirque des Rêves, a magical circus that opens at night and vanishes at dawn, near an ahistorical Victorian London. The circus is also a battleground for two young magicians, Celia Bowen and Marco Alisdair, raised by rival masters to compete without knowing each other's identity. The narrative is nonlinear and moves between several viewpoints.
The House In The Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune's New York Times bestseller follows Linus Baker, a case worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, sent to assess an orphanage on the remote island of Marsyas. Six extraordinary children live there, including a wyvern, a forest sprite, a shapeshifter and a boy named Lucy who is the Antichrist. Their guardian, Arthur Parnassus, insists they should not be defined by other people's fear of them. Published by Tor in March 2020, it is a warm book about found family and difference.
Watership Down
Richard Adams's debut was rejected by several publishers before Collings took it, then won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize. A group of rabbits flee their doomed Sandleford warren after the seer Fiver's vision and cross dangerous Hampshire country in search of a new home. Adams gives them their own language, proverbs, poetry and mythology. It appears on the BBC Big Read and has been adapted three times for screen, most recently as a 3D animated series on Netflix.
The Gunslinger
This is where the Dark Tower begins, with one of the most quoted opening lines in modern fantasy: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." First published as a novella in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1978, it was collected with four related stories in 1982. Roland's pursuit of Walter O'Dim takes in the town of Tull and its grim fate. King revised the text in 2003, expanding the Tull section and altering the famous first paragraph.
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho's 1988 novel has been translated into more than 65 languages and sold over 150 million copies worldwide. Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy, dreams of treasure at the Egyptian pyramids and sets out across North Africa to find it. He is robbed in Tangiers, works for a crystal merchant, falls in love at an oasis and meets the alchemist of the title. A short, allegorical book about following what Coelho calls a Personal Legend.
Fourth Wing
Rebecca Yarros's 2023 novel sends Violet Sorrengail, trained all her life to be a scribe, into the Riders Quadrant of Basgiath War College on her mother's orders. Cadets must bond with a dragon to survive, and Violet ends up bonded to two. Viral success on BookTok drove it to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and it sold more than two million copies in six months. It won International Book of the Year at the 2024 TikTok Book Awards.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury's 1962 dark fantasy, the second book in his Green Town Trilogy, takes its title from a line spoken by the witches in Macbeth. Two boys about to turn fourteen, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, watch a carnival arrive in their Illinois town in late October. Its carousel can age a rider forwards or backwards, and Mr Dark who runs it has designs on them both.
Onyx Storm
The third book in Yarros's Empyrean series, published in January 2025, which had already hit bestseller charts on pre-orders by August 2024. Violet, Xaden and their dragons travel to isles in the south, hunting for irid dragons, allies against the venin and a cure for Xaden's transformation. The war reaches Tyrrendor before the book is done. It closes on a cliffhanger, so read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame first.
Gregor The Overlander
Suzanne Collins wrote this children's epic fantasy in 2003, years before The Hunger Games. Eleven-year-old Gregor falls through a grate in his New York apartment building into the Underland, a world of pale-skinned humans, giant bats, rats and insects on the brink of war. A prophecy names him as the warrior who will decide the outcome. It was named one of the New York Public Library's 100 Books for Reading and Sharing and opens The Underland Chronicles.
Between them these eleven books cover most of what fantasy can do, from a children's quest underneath New York to the end of a seven-book epic. If you are building a reading list, the newer titles like Fourth Wing and Onyx Storm come with sequels waiting, while Watership Down and The Alchemist stand complete on their own.