Best high fantasy novels
Invented worlds with their own maps, histories and rules of magic.
Ranked by how often each title comes up across 3 reading lists on NextBook — not by our opinion of them.
1 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Bone Season
Samantha Shannon
A criminal underworld with its own hierarchy and its own slang, run out of a not-quite-London by people who treat organised crime as a respectable profession.
2 of 12recommended on 3 listsThe Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
For the flashback architecture and the pleasure of watching a clever poor boy learn a trade. Rothfuss lingers where Lynch cuts, but the swagger is identical.
3 of 12recommended on 2 listsNevernight
Jay Kristoff
An assassin school told with footnotes and enormous relish — the same delight in a narrator who will not stop showing off, plus a considerable body count.
4 of 12recommended on 2 listsRed Sister
Mark Lawrence
A convent that trains assassins, a girl with nothing, and friendships forged under instruction — the Gentlemen Bastards origin story, with more knives and fewer jokes.
5 of 12recommended on 2 listsShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
Bardugo's Ravka is the nearest thing to Camorr on this list: a country of hustlers, patrons and orphans where a poor kid survives on nerve and a good lie.
6 of 12recommended on 2 listsThe Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
A gang of thieves running an elaborate con on a corrupt aristocracy, with the planning scenes you enjoyed most in Mistborn and none of the metals.
7 of 12recommended on 2 listsUprooted
Naomi Novik
For the apprenticeship half of Locke's story: a girl taken on by a difficult master and taught a craft that turns out to be all that stands between her village and ruin.
8 of 12A Court of Thorns and Roses
Sarah J. Maas
Where most Priory readers go next: a human woman pulled into faerie courts, with a romance given the same central weight Shannon gives Ead and Sabran.
9 of 12A Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab
A smuggler with a very good coat, a thief who talks too much, and a partnership that stays a partnership. Lighter than Lynch and similarly moreish.
10 of 12Black Prism
Brent Weeks
The first Lightbringer book and the cleanest way in: a magic system with a countdown built into it and a leader concealing a substantial lie.
11 of 12Black Sun
Rebecca Roanhorse
Pre-Columbian-inspired epic with converging viewpoints, celestial prophecy and a priesthood at war with itself. Structurally the closest thing to Priory published since.
12 of 12Children of Blood and Bone
Tomi Adeyemi
A world where the gods were killed and the magic went with them, and a girl trying to bring both back. Shares Priory's interest in suppressed faith.
Start from one you already loved
A genre is a blunt instrument. Pick the high fantasy book you actually liked and we’ll rank the next one by what you liked about it.
- Books like The Lies of Locke LamoraScott Lynch
- Books like MistbornBrandon Sanderson
- Books like The Priory of the Orange TreeSamantha Shannon
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