Ranked October 2026 · 101 books and series
One hundred and one fantasy novels and series, each scored on eleven criteria. A series counts as one entry and is dated by its first book. Romantasy and cozy fantasy are excluded.
Each criterion is scored 1 to 10. Real-world blend and Climax and fights count double, so the highest possible total is 120. Equal totals are ordered by Structure. Outlined chips mark the two double-weighted scores.
Tolkien · 1937
A hobbit is handed the One Ring and must carry it into the land of its maker to destroy it. The road runs through Moria, Rohan and Minas Tirith while the free peoples fight for time.
Cornwell · 1995
Arthur fights to hold post-Roman Britain together against Saxons, rival kings and Merlin's dying gods. The tale is told by Derfel, a warrior turned monk.
Gaiman · 2001
Shadow Moon walks out of prison into the service of a con man named Wednesday. A war is brewing between America's old gods and its new ones.
Pullman · 1995
Lyra Belacqua follows stolen children north into a mystery about Dust. It ends in a war against the Authority itself.
Tsongas · 2026
A dragon is the real reason King Leonidas and his three hundred died at Thermopylae. Sixty-two years later the gods send a Spartan boy of the agoge to kill it. The book takes lessons from tragedy and the cost of sacrifice, as is the Greek way.
Adams · 1972
A handful of rabbits flee a doomed warren on a seer's warning and cross the Berkshire downs to found a new home. They must outwit the tyrant General Woundwort to survive.
Donaldson · 1977
A leper from our world is pulled into the Land, where his illness is cured and the people hail him as a saviour. He refuses to believe any of it is real.
Anderson · 1954
A human child stolen by elves and the changeling left in his place grow up to wage a Norse-saga war, armed with a cursed sword.
Powers · 1983
A scholar of Romantic poetry travels back to 1810 London to hear a lecture by Coleridge. He is stranded among Egyptian sorcerers, beggar kings and a body-switching werewolf.
Lewis · 1950
Children step through a wardrobe and other doors into Narnia. There the lion Aslan calls them into its battles from creation to last days.
Riordan · 2005
A twelve-year-old with dyslexia and ADHD discovers he is the son of Poseidon. He must stop a war among the Greek gods, who are alive in modern America.
Hughart · 1984
When the children of his village fall into an enchanted sleep, young Number Ten Ox hires the aged, disreputable sage Master Li. Their hunt for the Great Root of Power crosses a China that never was.
Dinniman · 2020
Alien showrunners demolish Earth, and the survivors must fight down through a televised dungeon. Carl, his ex's cat and his loot try to stay alive.
Martin · 1996
Noble houses tear Westeros apart over the Iron Throne. Meanwhile an older threat gathers beyond the Wall in the north.
Holdstock · 1984
In an English wood after the Second World War, a man finds the forest bringing myths to life from his family's unconscious, including the woman his brother loves.
King · 1982
Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger of a dying world, crosses deserts, cities and our own reality in pursuit of the Tower at the center of everything.
Gardner · 1971
The monster from Beowulf tells his own story. He is lonely, mocking and searching for meaning in the meadhall's songs.
Twain · 1889
A nineteenth-century factory boss wakes in Camelot. He sets out to modernize it with gunpowder, newspapers and his own brand of showmanship.
White · 1958
Arthur grows from the boy Merlyn tutors into the king who founds the Round Table. He then watches the dream break apart.
Pratchett · 1983
On a flat world riding on four elephants and a turtle, wizards, witches, watchmen and Death himself stumble through satires of our own world.
Howard · 1932
A Cimmerian barbarian cuts his way through the Hyborian Age as thief, pirate, mercenary and king.
Lawhead · 1987
The Arthurian saga is retold from the fall of Atlantis through Merlin's Celtic and Christian Britain.
Apuleius · c. 170
Lucius dabbles in witchcraft in Thessaly and is accidentally turned into a donkey. Robbers, priests and millers pass him from hand to hand until the goddess Isis restores him.
Nix · 1995
Sabriel, daughter of the Abhorsen, crosses the Wall from her English-style boarding school into a land where the dead will not stay dead. She must walk into Death itself.
Kipling · 1906
Two Sussex children summon Puck, the last of England's fairies. He brings them Roman soldiers, Norman knights and other figures from the island's past.
Bradbury · 1962
A carnival arrives in an Illinois town in October with a carousel that can make you younger or older. Two boys and one father stand against Mr. Dark.
Moorcock · 1961
Elric, the albino emperor of Melniboné, is kept alive by drugs and by Stormbringer, a black sword that drinks souls. He brings ruin to those he loves.
Cook · 1984
A mercenary company's annalist records their service to a sorceress called the Lady, and what it costs them.
Anderson · 1961
A Danish resistance fighter in 1943 is thrown into a world of Carolingian legend, where he is a hero he has forgotten.
de Lint · 1984
Two friends in a sprawling Ottawa house find a doorway to an otherworld of Celtic and Indigenous spirits, and an ancient enemy behind it.
Zelazny · 1970
Corwin wakes in a hospital on Earth with no memory and discovers he is a prince of Amber, the one true world. His siblings are fighting over the throne.
Jordan · 1990
Rand al'Thor, a farm boy from the Two Rivers, learns he is the Dragon Reborn. He is destined to fight the Dark One and to break the world again.
Abercrombie · 2006
A crippled torturer, a barbarian with a body count and a vain young nobleman are drawn into an old wizard's war. Their paths cross at the Union's heart.
Kay · 1990
A sorcerer-king's curse has erased a province's very name from memory. A few survivors plot to win it back.
Sapkowski · 1992
Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter, finds the men who hire him are often worse than the beasts. He is bound by destiny to a princess named Ciri.
Stover · 1998
Caine, a celebrity assassin from a future Earth, is sent into a fantasy world as entertainment for viewers back home. He must rescue his wife from a god-emperor.
Lawrence · 2011
Jorg Ancrath, a prince turned road-brigand at thirteen, fights his way back to a throne in a ruined future that was once our world.
Grossman · 2009
A brilliant, unhappy Brooklyn teenager is admitted to a secret college of magic. He then finds that the land from his favorite childhood books is real.
Sanderson · 2010
On a storm-scoured world, a slave-soldier, a scholar and a guilt-ridden assassin take up the oaths of the broken Knights Radiant as an ancient enemy returns.
Sanderson · 2006
Under an ash-choked sky ruled by a god-king for a thousand years, a street thief learns to burn metals for power. She joins a crew planning the impossible heist of the Final Empire.
Stroud · 2003
In an alternative London run by magicians, a boy summons a sardonic five-thousand-year-old djinni to settle a grudge. He sets a revolution in motion.
Garner · 1967
Three teenagers in a Welsh valley find a pattern of owls on a dinner service. They are forced to replay a tragedy from the Mabinogion.
Swanwick · 1993
A changeling girl is enslaved in a faerie factory that builds war dragons. She escapes with one of them into a world as grim as our own.
Burroughs · 1912
Confederate veteran John Carter is transported to Mars, where he fights green Tharks and wins the hand of the princess Dejah Thoris.
Fforde · 2001
In an alternate England where literature is a national obsession, a literary detective chases criminals into the plots of classic books.
Haggard · 1887
A Cambridge scholar and his young ward follow an ancient potsherd into Africa. They find Ayesha, an immortal queen who has waited two thousand years.
de Camp & Pratt · 1941
A psychologist uses symbolic logic to travel into the worlds of Norse myth, The Faerie Queene and other legends, where magic runs on rules he can learn.
Kearney · 1995
As faith fractures and a holy city falls, a castaway king's ship sails west into the unknown in search of a new world.
McClellan · 2013
After a coup topples a king, a powder mage field marshal faces royalist plots, foreign armies and a god threatening to return.
Leiber · 1939
A towering northern barbarian and a small, quick thief roam the city of Lankhmar, stealing, drinking and getting into trouble with wizards.
Cameron · 2012
A young mercenary captain called the Red Knight takes a contract to guard a convent in an Alba where the Wild is at war with humanity.
Myers · 1949
A shipwrecked cynic washes up in the Commonwealth, where every character and place comes from world literature. He reluctantly grows through his journey.
Alexander · 1964
Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper leaves his farm to chase a lost oracular pig. He grows into a hero in the war against Arawn, Lord of the Land of Death.
Gemmell · 1984
An aging axeman, Druss the Legend, and other heroes of the Drenai stand against impossible odds at fortresses like Dros Delnoch.
Beagle · 1968
A unicorn learns she may be the last of her kind and sets out to find what became of the others. A hapless magician and a hard-bitten cook go with her.
Wexler · 2013
A veteran captain and a disguised woman soldier serve a mysterious new colonel through a gunpowder-and-magic colonial war.
Farmer · 1965
A man from Earth is pulled into a series of pocket universes built by godlike Lords. They play deadly games with their creations.
Abraham · 2006
Poets in the Khaiem cities bind ideas into captive spirits that guarantee their wealth and their safety. Two men's rivalry over one of them reshapes an empire across a lifetime.
Goldman · 1973
Westley, the farm boy, sets out to rescue Buttercup from Prince Humperdinck. Fencing masters, giants and the Cliffs of Insanity lie in his way.
Bancroft · 2013
On his honeymoon, a schoolteacher loses his wife in the crowds at the foot of the colossal Tower of Babel. He climbs ring after ring to find her.
Williams · 1988
Simon, a kitchen boy at the Hayholt, is swept into a war as an undead elf-king returns to claim Osten Ard.
Fletcher · 2015
In a city where belief becomes reality, a mad priest and his hallucinated companions find that the gods are whatever people fear and want.
Weeks · 2010
The Prism, who wields every color of light, hides a secret, while his newly discovered son must learn the magic and survive the war.
MacDonald · 1858
A young man wakes to find his bedroom turning into a forest. He wanders through Fairy Land in search of an ideal of beauty.
Wight · 2016
Lindon is the weakest boy in a clan of martial artists, forbidden to learn their sacred art. He refuses to accept his fate and sets out to become the strongest.
Vance · 1983
In the drowned kingdoms of the Elder Isles before Arthur, kings scheme, a fairy-raised princess grows up, and wizards keep their own counsel.
Carroll · 1865
Alice falls down a rabbit hole, and later steps through a looking-glass, into worlds that run on nonsense logic.
Lynch · 2006
Locke Lamora and his crew con the nobility of the canal city of Camorr, until a mysterious killer starts taking apart its underworld.
Jacques · 1986
When a warlord rat besieges Redwall Abbey, a young mouse searches for the lost sword of the legendary Martin the Warrior.
McDonald · 2017
Ryhalt Galharrow, a bounty hunter, works for a sorcerer called Crowfoot at the edge of the Misery. The Misery is a poisoned, warped wasteland left by a weapon.
J. Carroll · 1980
A teacher goes to the small Missouri town of his favorite children's author to write the man's biography. He finds the town's people may be his characters.
Gwynne · 2012
In a world where an ancient war between Elyon and Asroth is about to be fought again through mortals, a young man trains to be a warrior.
Baum · 1900
A Kansas cyclone carries Dorothy to Oz. With a scarecrow, a tin woodman and a cowardly lion, she follows the yellow brick road to the Wizard.
Brust · 1983
A human assassin climbs the underworld of an elf-like Dragaeran empire, with a witty familiar on his shoulder.
Wagner · 1970
Kane, cursed by a mad god to wander forever, is a scheming swordsman and sorcerer who works with any side that suits him.
Tchaikovsky · 2008
Kinden take traits from insect totems such as beetles, spiders and wasps. An aging scholar tries to warn the Lowlands that the Wasp Empire is coming.
Islington · 2014
Three students at a school for the gifted are drawn into a war tied to a prophecy, a closing magical Boundary and fate itself.
Niven · 1978
Magic is a finite natural resource and it is running out. An aging sorcerer and his companions set out to steal power from the moon.
Hayes · 2019
A boy who cannot die gathers great warriors to kill an emperor. He brings them back from death to do it.
Staveley · 2014
After their emperor father is murdered, his three heirs must face assassins, ancient beings and the secret hidden behind their faith.
Newman · 2015
A silent man carrying an infant and a sentient sword walks through a broken land overrun by the demonic Infernal.
Parker · 2005
Ieuan Vaatzes, an engineer exiled for one small improvement to a design, turns his skill with machines into a weapon of revenge against the city that cast him out.
Eames · 2017
Clay Cooper, the retired member of a famous mercenary band, is pulled back for one last tour across a monster-filled world to rescue a friend's daughter.
Morgan · 2008
Three veterans of a war against lizard-invaders now live on its bitter fringes. They are drawn back to face a stranger threat, the dwenda.
Brett · 2008
Demons rise from the ground each night and only magic wards stand between them and humanity. A boy determined to fight back becomes a legend.
de Castell · 2014
The King's travelling magistrates were disbanded when the king was killed. Falcio val Mond keeps the king's final order and keeps judging.
J.L. Howard · 2009
A necromancer sold his soul for knowledge. To win it back, he has a year to collect a hundred souls, by running a demonic travelling carnival.
Merritt · 1919
An American scientist descends beneath a Pacific island, following a shining entity into a lost underground civilization.
Buehlman · 2021
Kinch Na Shannack, a thief in debt to the guild that trained him, is pulled into a quest against giants with a battle-scarred knight he was supposed to rob.
Cahill · 2019
A wandering bard and a trapped noble woman face the gods' meddling in a world on the verge of war.
Redick · 2008
Aboard a six-hundred-year-old ship carrying a peace mission, a tarboy, a young bride and a crew of tiny ixchel are caught in a plot to restart a war.
Ryan · 2011
Vaelin al Sorna, given to a warrior order as a boy, rises through its brutal training into war, faith and a hidden gift.
Sullivan · 2008
A cynical ex-assassin and an idealistic swordsman, thieves for hire, are framed for a king's murder and pulled into a scheme to restore an ancient empire.
French · 2015
Half-orc riders on war hogs patrol a lawless borderland and uncover a plot that could doom their brotherhood.
Rothfuss · 2007
Kvothe, now an innkeeper, tells the true story of how a gifted orphan became the most notorious magician and musician alive.
Silverberg · 1980
A wandering juggler with no memory on a vast planet of many species learns he is the rightful Coronal. His body has been stolen.
Bellairs · 1969
Two wizards, the eccentric Prospero and his friend Roger Bacon, investigate a creeping evil that twists reality in their kingdoms.
Polansky · 2011
Warden, a disgraced former agent who now deals drugs, hunts the killer of a child in the slums he controls.
Morris · 1894
A merchant's son follows a vision of three strangers into an enchanted wood ruled by a sorceress, a dwarf and a captive maiden.
Modesitt · 1991
In a world balanced between Order and Chaos magic, young people sent out from the island of Recluce must find their place.
Barker · 2017
A young assassin in a plague-ridden kingdom learns the cost of her craft. She follows a killer whose secrets are bound to the kingdom's fate.
Nothing matches that.
A dragon is the real reason King Leonidas and his three hundred died at Thermopylae. Sixty-two years later the gods send a Spartan boy of the agoge to kill it. Illustrated hardcover, 422 pages, 54 original images, one opening each chapter.