The wider fantasy shelf: epic quests and fallen empires, grimdark cities, retold myths, quiet cosy stories and the odd talking animal. 685 books so far, across 241 series, plus 223 titles with no series listed. This is page 8 of the shelf.
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Rating coming soonYadriel is queer, trans and Latino, and in his family the boys become brujos who summon and release the spirits of the dead while the girls become brujas who heal. His relatives have not accepted him as a man and expect the healing powers they think he should have, so he sets out to prove otherwise by summoning a ghost on his own.
Rating coming soonRandolph Carter dreams three times of a marvellous city at the edge of the sunset, and then cannot find it again. He sets out through the dreamlands to reach it, and the route runs through places that the gods of that world keep guarded, past creatures that have no interest in whether he arrives, and through cities of the dead that answer questions only in their own way.
Rating coming soonDown an alley beside a pub, through a small iron door in a brick wall, there is a house that is not always there. Those who find it see what they most want to see, including people and places that cannot be real, and the brother and sister who live in it have been waiting a long time for guests.
Rating coming soonBetsy Bobbin and Hank the mule are shipwrecked on the coast of Oz and fall in with an army on the march. Ann Soforth, the Queen of Oogaboo, has decided to conquer the Nome King, and she has the clockwork man Tik-Tok to help her do it. He can think, speak and act, but only while his springs are wound.
Rating coming soonFor centuries dragons have told stories about another continent across the ocean, a land populated by tribes very different from the ones they know. There has never been any proof and most dragons have dismissed the stories as fairy tales, which leaves one young dragon with a grand story, a nobody's name and a decision to make.
Rating coming soonFor years Grace has watched the wolves that live in the woods behind the house, and she has been drawn to one of them in particular: a yellow-eyed wolf who watches her back with an attention of his own. Then a local boy is killed by wolves and the town's hunters go into the woods after the pack.
Rating coming soonArtemis Fowl has taken fairy technology and built a computer far beyond anything the human world can produce. Then he shows it off to an American businessman, who simply takes it from him, and the only way to get it back is to work alongside the fairies he has spent years outwitting and robbing blind.
Rating coming soonJohn Carter is on Mars with the woman he loves imprisoned in a place he cannot reach, held there by a religion's rules rather than by walls. He has a year to find a way in, and the planet's politics, its warring nations and its strange temples all stand between him and her.
Rating coming soonA castaway wakes on the shore of an island with no memory of how they arrived and no idea where they are. The world works by rules that nobody explains, and staying alive means working those rules out one experiment at a time, from what can be eaten to what comes out after dark, while the island keeps its own secrets.
Rating coming soonKindan has taken a place as an apprentice at the Harper Hall, where he has to deal with a bully, a relationship the people around him consider forbidden, and the responsibility that comes with being a protector of the hall's new female apprentices after the Masterharper ends the old prohibition on women becoming harpers. Then an illness arrives that spreads like influenza, and it threatens to do what centuries of Threadfall never managed: kill every human being on Pern. The book sits shortly before the third return of Thread.
Rating coming soonJohnny Maxwell is twelve and takes a shortcut home through the local cemetery, where he meets the spirit of Alderman Thomas Bowler and discovers that he can talk to the dead. The other occupants of the cemetery object to being called ghosts, and they have a problem: the council has sold their neglected graveyard to a developer. Johnny and his friends take on the job of stopping it.
Rating coming soonCordelia Carstairs is a Shadowhunter, a warrior with the blood of the angel Raziel, and when her father is accused of a crime she travels to London with her mother and brother to clear his name. There she finds her childhood friends James and Lucie Herondale and is drawn into their world of parties and obligations, while hiding what she feels for James, who is sworn to marry somebody else. Then Shadowhunters begin to be killed in the city.
Rating coming soonHarry Dresden is the only wizard in Chicago with an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, and he spends a good deal of his time helping the police with the cases nobody else wants. In this second Dresden Files novel he is asked to consult on a homicide where the body has been savaged and the ground nearby is marked with wolf-shaped paw prints, and his inquiries put him in the way of werewolves of more than one kind.
Rating coming soonCenturies ago the Dominator and his wife the Lady founded an empire famous for its evil, and they were overthrown by a rebellion led by the White Rose. They could not be killed, only imprisoned in the Barrowland, and in time the Lady escaped and rebuilt the empire, leaving her husband where he was. The Black Company, an elite mercenary unit, has spent years working for the Lady, and the third book of the series brings the first White Rose back into the story.
Rating coming soonFjerda's army is preparing to invade, and Nikolai Lantsov will need all of his ingenuity and charm, and the monster he keeps hidden, to win the fight. Zoya Nazyalensky has lost too much to war already: she watched her mentor die and her worst enemy come back, and she will not bury another friend. In Shu Han a blot of darkness resembling the Shadow Fold is spreading past the Unsea, and the final novel of the King of Scars duology follows the five people whose choices decide what happens.
Rating coming soonDeka is sixteen and lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will decide whether she can be accepted as a member of her village. She has always been different, because of an intuition she cannot explain, and she prays for red blood so that she will finally belong. On the day of the ceremony her blood runs gold, which is the colour of impurity, and she knows the consequence will be worse than death.
Rating coming soonKarou is a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague, and the family she has is made up of chimaera, the creatures she draws in her sketchbook. They demand teeth in exchange for wishes, and they send her out to collect them without explaining what the teeth are used for, or why there are rules like no baby teeth and no rotting ones. On one of those errands she meets a seraph named Akiva, who finds something familiar in her.
Rating coming soonIt is said that Hood waits at the end of every plot, every scheme and every ambition, and in this eighth Malazan novel the Lord of Death is there at the beginning. Darujhistan swelters in the summer heat and seethes with rumours and whispers: strangers have arrived, a murderer is abroad, tyrannies that were thought finished are stirring, and assassins are at work. The book turns on the legacy of Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness and Lord of the Tiste Andii.
Rating coming soonThe Black Company's latest employer is the Lady, who once helped her husband the Dominator build an empire of legendary evil and was imprisoned with him in the Barrowlands before a foolish wizard was tricked into setting her free. The company is ordered to march thousands of miles across her empire to the Barrowland. In the city it passes through, a small detachment of the company discovers that the mute girl it has rescued and sheltered is the White Rose, and decides to protect her from the mercenaries who are out to destroy her.
Rating coming soonA forty-foot specimen of giant squid, preserved in formalin, disappears overnight from the Natural History Museum in London, and a murder victim is found folded into a glass bottle. A naive member of the museum staff, a secret squad of London constables and a number of other interested parties all want the squid back. China Mieville has described the book as a dark comedy about a squid-worshipping cult and the end of the world.
Rating coming soonReuben Golding is a journalist on assignment for the San Francisco Observer, sent to write about a grand historic mansion on a bluff above the Pacific that its owner is being forced to sell. A chance encounter there changes him: he is attacked and becomes a werewolf. He spends the rest of the book keeping ahead of the authorities, the media and the DNA analysts who would like to know what he is.
Rating coming soonThomas Covenant is a writer whose life falls apart when he is diagnosed with leprosy; after six months of treatment he returns home to find that his wife has divorced him and his community has cast him out. Accosted by a beggar on a rare trip into town, he stumbles into the path of a police car and wakes in the Land, a fantasy world where he meets the evil Cavewight Drool Rockworm and Lord Foul the Despiser, who tells him to carry a warning to the Lords.
Rating coming soonGalaxy Stern is the least likely member of Yale's freshman class: she dropped out of school early in Los Angeles and by the age of twenty was the sole survivor of a multiple homicide. In her hospital bed she is offered a second chance, a place at Yale, and she takes it. She can see ghosts, and she has been recruited into Lethe, the ninth house, to keep watch over the eight secret societies that practise dangerous occult magic.
Rating coming soonThe vampire world is in crisis. Vampires have been proliferating out of control, and burnings have begun around the world, massacres on the scale of those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned. Old vampires, roused from their sleep in the earth, are doing the bidding of a Voice that commands them to burn the mavericks of their own kind in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto and San Francisco.
Rating coming soonSavaged by the K'Chain Nah'Ruk, the Bonehunters march for Kolanse, where an unknown fate is waiting for them. The army is tormented by questions and stands on the edge of mutiny, and Adjunct Tavore will not relent: one final act remains to her, if she can hold the soldiers together and if the alliances she has forged can survive what is coming. Awaiting her and her allies are the Forkrul Assail, the final arbiters of humanity.
Rating coming soonThe Alexandrian Society looks after the lost knowledge of the great civilisations of antiquity, and it is the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. A place in it brings wealth, power and prestige, and once a decade the six most uniquely talented magicians alive are selected as candidates. The newest six include two rivals who between them control the physical world, a naturalist who can read the language of life, a telepath and an empath.
Rating coming soonThe warhammer Aegis-fang has ended up in the hands of the pirate captain Sheila Kree, and Wulfgar is following her. When Drizzt Do'Urden and his companions leave Mithral Hall in search of Wulfgar, they find themselves on the trail of the hammer as well, a path that will lead them to a reunion and to the last battle for the heart and soul of their friend.
Rating coming soonAelin Galathynius has gone from slave to king's assassin to the queen of a kingdom that was once great, and the war that will decide what happens to her world has begun. Locked in an iron coffin by the Queen of the Fae, she endures months of torture and holds on to the knowledge that yielding would doom the people she loves. With Aelin captured, Aedion and Lysandra are the last line of defence for Terrasen.
Rating coming soonEight years after the Battle of the Serpent, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has taken back the Ice Needle Citadel, where she is using an ancient relic to make monsters of stick and snow that will carry out her revenge. Suren, the child queen of the Court of Teeth and the only person with power over her mother, has fled into the human world and lives wild in the woods, until the storm hag Bogdana hunts her through the night streets.
Rating coming soonThe ice is advancing, the Corridor is narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west, with the emperor's armies retreating everywhere. Nona Grey faces the final challenges she must overcome to become a full sister in the order of her choice, and it is beginning to look as though she and her friends will not have time to earn a nun's habit before the war arrives.
Rating coming soonIt is said that a god will return when the earth and sky converge under the black sun in the holy city of Tova. The winter solstice usually means celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, which the Sun Priest has declared an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile a ship sails from a distant city towards Tova carrying a single passenger: Serapio, a blind and scarred young man wrapped in prophecy.
Rating coming soonThe Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers has spent centuries keeping magic working in England, and it has recently fallen into disgrace: it has named a freed slave with no familiar as its Sorcerer Royal, and the country's stores of magic are bleeding away. Zacharias Wythe sets out for the border of Fairyland to discover why, and meets an unusual companion on the way.
Rating coming soonIndustry has come to Adua, and the world is full of new opportunities, but old scores run as deep as ever. On the borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock is trying to win a name for himself against the armies of Stour Nightfall while hoping for help from a crown whose heir, Prince Orso, specialises in disappointments. Savine dan Glokta, socialite and investor, plans to climb to the top of society by whatever means are necessary.
Rating coming soonBryce Quinlan never expected to see a world other than Midgard, and now that she has, all she wants is to get back to it: her family, her friends and her mate are all there. Stranded in a strange world, she needs every bit of her wit to find a way home, and she has no idea who she can trust. Meanwhile Hunt Athalar is back in the Asteri's dungeons, stripped of his freedom.
Rating coming soonThe Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. The series that began in 1990 with The Eye of the World reaches its conclusion here, with the final scenes that its readers had been waiting more than twenty years to see. The Last Battle is fought, and the prophecies and the wars of the thirteen preceding books arrive at the point they were made for.
Rating coming soonDeep below the University is a dark place that few people know about: a broken web of ancient passages and abandoned rooms. A young woman called Auri lives down there, settled in among the sprawling tunnels of the Underthing, and she is full of mysteries. The book is a short account of her life in that forgotten place, and the small adventure that belongs to her alone.
Rating coming soonEvery hundred years the island of Lightlark appears in order to host the Centennial, a deadly game that the rulers of the six realms are invited to play. It is their last chance to break the curses that have afflicted their realms for centuries, and each ruler has something to conceal: to destroy the curses, one ruler has to die. Isla Crown rules Wildling, a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone they fall in love with.
Rating coming soonChildren disappear under the right conditions: through the shadows under a bed, out of the back of a wardrobe, down a rabbit hole or into an old well, and they come out somewhere else. Magical lands have little use for used-up miracle children, though, and Nancy has come back. The children under Miss West's care understand what that is like, and each of them is looking for a way home.
Rating coming soonLady Mara of the Acoma clan has been named Servant of the Empire by Ichindar, Emperor of the Tsuranuanni, whom she raised from figurehead to true ruler, and for the first time in her life she feels safe from her enemies. Then an assassination attempt aimed at her kills her young son and heir instead. Convinced that her old enemy Jiro of the House Anasati is responsible, she prepares for war.
Rating coming soonNobody has tried to kill Harry Dresden for almost a year, and his life has finally begun to settle down; for once the future looks reasonably bright. But the past casts a long shadow, and an old bargain has left him in debt to Mab, the monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe and the Queen of Air and Darkness, who has come to call in her marker. It is a small favour he cannot refuse.
Rating coming soonBorn without magic, Joram was one of the Dead and was denied the throne of Merilon, and for years he lived among outlaws and survived by his wits. Now he carries the Darksword, a weapon that absorbs magic, and he returns to the enchanted kingdom that was once his home to take revenge and claim his birthright. There he will test Bishop Vanya and the army of Duuk-tsarith.
Rating coming soonA single day in the torture chambers of the Abyss would be enough to break most people, and the barbarian Wulfgar spent years there. When he returns to his friends they find him a changed man, and not changed for the better. His road to redemption is one he has to travel on his own, even if it leads him to the bottle, and the penultimate chapter of the Legend of Drizzt follows him along it.
Rating coming soonGansey has spent years searching for a lost king, and one by one he has drawn other people into the hunt: Ronan, who steals things out of dreams; Adam, whose life is no longer his own; Noah, whose life is no longer a life; and Blue, who loves Gansey and is certain that she is destined to kill him. Now the endgame has begun, and dreams and nightmares are converging.
Rating coming soonSome believe that the Lady, newly risen from centuries of imprisonment, stands between humankind and evil; others believe that she is evil itself. The hard-bitten men of the Black Company take her pay and do what they are told, burying their doubts along with their dead. Then comes a prophecy: the White Rose has been born again somewhere, to embody good once more, and the company is set to find her.
Rating coming soonBeka Cooper is sixteen, a rookie with the Provost's Guard, and her first posting is the Lower City. She can hear the voices of the dead riding on the wings of pigeons, which the rest of the Guard finds peculiar and the two worst men in the district should find alarming. With the force busy on another killer, Beka sets her mind on finding the one they call the Shadow Snake.
Rating coming soonBobby Pendragon is a fourteen-year-old boy with a family, a house and a dog, and no idea that any of that is about to become a set of stories he writes down for other people to read. His uncle Press arrives, tells him he is going to save the world, and takes him through a portal to Denduron, a territory of strange creatures, a magical tyrant and something worse stirring underneath it.
Rating coming soonAfter the defeat of the Dominator, the Black Company is down to seven men, and they march south in search of the place their annals say they belong. On the way they are hired again, this time by the crown prince of Taglios, whose commission is to stop the advance of the Shadowmasters before his city is swallowed like the ones behind them.
Rating coming soonThe Dominator was a wizard his enemies could not kill, so they imprisoned what was left of him in a silver spike instead. The object is enormously powerful, some people are willing to steal it and others are determined that nobody should have it, and the men who have to decide what to do with it have all left the Black Company behind.
Fantasy here is the whole shelf, not one flavour of it. Epic and high fantasy sit next to grimdark, historical fantasy, myth and fairy-tale retellings, portal stories, urban fantasy and cosy books where the stakes are a shop, a tea menu and a found family.
A book lands here when the fantastic is the point of the story rather than the wallpaper. Romance can be part of it, and the books tagged romantasy sit on this shelf as well as on romance, but a book does not need a love story to qualify.
Tags are cross-cutting markers, not genres. They have their own landing pages.
The love story is the plot: fantasy courts, dragon academies and modern cities all count.
676 booksPrimary genreGeneration ships, dying empires, robots with opinions and one very unlucky astronaut.
536 booksPrimary genreHaunted houses, old vampires, cosmic dread and the odd very bad week.
381 booksPrimary genreDetectives, spies, locked rooms and the people who lie to the police.
599 booksPrimary genreCathedrals, courts, trenches and revolutions, all of it set in a past that is doing the work.
580 booksPrimary genreNovels where the prose carries the book: families, cities, memory and the modern self.
575 booksPrimary genreShipwrecks, expeditions, chases, frontiers and people who should have turned back.
324 books