Best dark fantasy novels
Fantasy with the lights off. Morally grey, frequently bloody, rarely consoling.
Ranked by how often each title comes up across 4 reading lists on NextBook — not by our opinion of them.
1 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Bear and the Nightingale
Katherine Arden
Russian folk stories treated as literal fact by everyone except the priest, told in prose that keeps the cadence of the tales it grew from.
2 of 12recommended on 2 listsA Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab
Four Londons, one man licensed to walk between them, and a smuggled object that should have stayed where it was. Doorways with consequences, played as an adventure.
3 of 12recommended on 2 listsAn Ember in the Ashes
Sabaa Tahir
A military academy where cadets are executed for failing, seen from a slave's side and a soldier's. Nevernight's savagery, with rather more heart in it.
4 of 12recommended on 2 listsRed Sister
Mark Lawrence
Warrior nuns training children to kill, handled with more control than Kristoff manages. If the Red Church was your reason for reading, this is the better version.
5 of 12recommended on 2 listsThe Book of Lost Things
John Connolly
A grieving boy walks into a country made of the fairy tales he was raised on, and finds them rewritten in blood. The same argument that stories are not safe.
6 of 12recommended on 2 listsThe Cruel Prince
Holly Black
Black writes faeries as Albert does: beautiful, indifferent, lethal. And Jude is the same kind of protagonist — angry, calculating, not remotely interested in being liked.
7 of 12recommended on 2 listsThe Golem and the Jinni
Helene Wecker
Two beings built for someone else's purpose trying to work out what they owe themselves — Rin's question exactly, asked slowly in 1899 New York.
8 of 12recommended on 2 listsThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
The nearest thing to Albert's atmosphere in print: black-and-white wonder with something predatory behind the tent flap. Come for that, not for the plot.
9 of 12recommended on 2 listsThe Ten Thousand Doors of January
Alix E. Harrow
A girl, a strange inherited book, and doors between worlds that powerful men would rather stayed shut. It runs on exactly the machinery Albert built.
10 of 12Caraval
Stephanie Garber
A game on an island where nothing shown to you is trustworthy. It shares Albert's rule that the story has its own agenda — with a far lighter touch.
11 of 12Coraline
Neil Gaiman
The purest version of the premise: a door in an ordinary flat, a mother waiting on the other side who is not your mother. Short, and much scarier than its shelf suggests.
12 of 12Godsgrave
Jay Kristoff
Book two: Mia sells herself into the gladiator arena to get close to her targets. The direct continuation, and its late twist justifies the whole series.
Start from one you already loved
A genre is a blunt instrument. Pick the dark fantasy book you actually liked and we’ll rank the next one by what you liked about it.
- Books like The Hazel WoodMelissa Albert
- Books like NevernightJay Kristoff
- Books like The Poppy WarR. F. Kuang
- Books like The Ocean at the End of the LaneNeil Gaiman
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