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 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Cornwell · 1995 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Gaiman · 2001 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Pullman · 1995 Adapted
Lyra Belacqua follows stolen children north into a mystery about Dust. It ends in a war against the Authority itself. Books like this →
Tsongas · 2026 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Adams · 1972 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Donaldson · 1977 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Anderson · 1954 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Powers · 1983 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Lewis · 1950 Adapted
Children step through a wardrobe and other doors into Narnia. There the lion Aslan calls them into its battles from creation to last days. Books like this →
Riordan · 2005 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Hughart · 1984 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Dinniman · 2020 In production
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. Books like this →
Martin · 1996 Adapted
Noble houses tear Westeros apart over the Iron Throne. Meanwhile an older threat gathers beyond the Wall in the north. Books like this →
Holdstock · 1984 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
King · 1982 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Gardner · 1971 Adapted
The monster from Beowulf tells his own story. He is lonely, mocking and searching for meaning in the meadhall's songs. Books like this →
Twain · 1889 Adapted
A nineteenth-century factory boss wakes in Camelot. He sets out to modernize it with gunpowder, newspapers and his own brand of showmanship. Books like this →
White · 1958 Adapted
Arthur grows from the boy Merlyn tutors into the king who founds the Round Table. He then watches the dream break apart. Books like this →
Pratchett · 1983 Adapted
On a flat world riding on four elephants and a turtle, wizards, witches, watchmen and Death himself stumble through satires of our own world. Books like this →
Howard · 1932 Adapted
A Cimmerian barbarian cuts his way through the Hyborian Age as thief, pirate, mercenary and king. Books like this →
Lawhead · 1987 Adapted
The Arthurian saga is retold from the fall of Atlantis through Merlin's Celtic and Christian Britain. Books like this →
Apuleius · c. 170 Unverified
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. Books like this →
Nix · 1995 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Kipling · 1906 Unverified
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. Books like this →
Bradbury · 1962 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Moorcock · 1961 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Cook · 1984 No adaptation
A mercenary company's annalist records their service to a sorceress called the Lady, and what it costs them. Books like this →
Anderson · 1961 No adaptation
A Danish resistance fighter in 1943 is thrown into a world of Carolingian legend, where he is a hero he has forgotten. Books like this →
de Lint · 1984 No adaptation
Two friends in a sprawling Ottawa house find a doorway to an otherworld of Celtic and Indigenous spirits, and an ancient enemy behind it. Books like this →
Zelazny · 1970 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Jordan · 1990 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Abercrombie · 2006 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Kay · 1990 No adaptation
A sorcerer-king's curse has erased a province's very name from memory. A few survivors plot to win it back. Books like this →
Sapkowski · 1992 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Stover · 1998 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Lawrence · 2011 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Grossman · 2009 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Sanderson · 2010 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Sanderson · 2006 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Stroud · 2003 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Garner · 1967 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Swanwick · 1993 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Burroughs · 1912 Adapted
Confederate veteran John Carter is transported to Mars, where he fights green Tharks and wins the hand of the princess Dejah Thoris. Books like this →
Fforde · 2001 No adaptation
In an alternate England where literature is a national obsession, a literary detective chases criminals into the plots of classic books. Books like this →
Haggard · 1887 Adapted
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. Books like this →
de Camp & Pratt · 1941 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Kearney · 1995 No adaptation
As faith fractures and a holy city falls, a castaway king's ship sails west into the unknown in search of a new world. Books like this →
McClellan · 2013 No adaptation
After a coup topples a king, a powder mage field marshal faces royalist plots, foreign armies and a god threatening to return. Books like this →
Leiber · 1939 No adaptation
A towering northern barbarian and a small, quick thief roam the city of Lankhmar, stealing, drinking and getting into trouble with wizards. Books like this →
Cameron · 2012 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Myers · 1949 No adaptation
A shipwrecked cynic washes up in the Commonwealth, where every character and place comes from world literature. He reluctantly grows through his journey. Books like this →
Alexander · 1964 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Gemmell · 1984 No adaptation
An aging axeman, Druss the Legend, and other heroes of the Drenai stand against impossible odds at fortresses like Dros Delnoch. Books like this →
Beagle · 1968 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Wexler · 2013 No adaptation
A veteran captain and a disguised woman soldier serve a mysterious new colonel through a gunpowder-and-magic colonial war. Books like this →
Farmer · 1965 No adaptation
A man from Earth is pulled into a series of pocket universes built by godlike Lords. They play deadly games with their creations. Books like this →
Abraham · 2006 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Goldman · 1973 Adapted
Westley, the farm boy, sets out to rescue Buttercup from Prince Humperdinck. Fencing masters, giants and the Cliffs of Insanity lie in his way. Books like this →
Bancroft · 2013 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Williams · 1988 No adaptation
Simon, a kitchen boy at the Hayholt, is swept into a war as an undead elf-king returns to claim Osten Ard. Books like this →
Fletcher · 2015 No adaptation
In a city where belief becomes reality, a mad priest and his hallucinated companions find that the gods are whatever people fear and want. Books like this →
Weeks · 2010 No adaptation
The Prism, who wields every color of light, hides a secret, while his newly discovered son must learn the magic and survive the war. Books like this →
MacDonald · 1858 No adaptation
A young man wakes to find his bedroom turning into a forest. He wanders through Fairy Land in search of an ideal of beauty. Books like this →
Wight · 2016 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Vance · 1983 No adaptation
In the drowned kingdoms of the Elder Isles before Arthur, kings scheme, a fairy-raised princess grows up, and wizards keep their own counsel. Books like this →
Carroll · 1865 Adapted
Alice falls down a rabbit hole, and later steps through a looking-glass, into worlds that run on nonsense logic. Books like this →
Lynch · 2006 No adaptation
Locke Lamora and his crew con the nobility of the canal city of Camorr, until a mysterious killer starts taking apart its underworld. Books like this →
Jacques · 1986 Adapted
When a warlord rat besieges Redwall Abbey, a young mouse searches for the lost sword of the legendary Martin the Warrior. Books like this →
McDonald · 2017 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
J. Carroll · 1980 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Gwynne · 2012 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Baum · 1900 Adapted
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. Books like this →
Brust · 1983 No adaptation
A human assassin climbs the underworld of an elf-like Dragaeran empire, with a witty familiar on his shoulder. Books like this →
Wagner · 1970 No adaptation
Kane, cursed by a mad god to wander forever, is a scheming swordsman and sorcerer who works with any side that suits him. Books like this →
Tchaikovsky · 2008 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Islington · 2014 No adaptation
Three students at a school for the gifted are drawn into a war tied to a prophecy, a closing magical Boundary and fate itself. Books like this →
Niven · 1978 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Hayes · 2019 No adaptation
A boy who cannot die gathers great warriors to kill an emperor. He brings them back from death to do it. Books like this →
Staveley · 2014 No adaptation
After their emperor father is murdered, his three heirs must face assassins, ancient beings and the secret hidden behind their faith. Books like this →
Newman · 2015 No adaptation
A silent man carrying an infant and a sentient sword walks through a broken land overrun by the demonic Infernal. Books like this →
Parker · 2005 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Eames · 2017 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Morgan · 2008 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Brett · 2008 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
de Castell · 2014 No adaptation
The King's travelling magistrates were disbanded when the king was killed. Falcio val Mond keeps the king's final order and keeps judging. Books like this →
J.L. Howard · 2009 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Merritt · 1919 No adaptation
An American scientist descends beneath a Pacific island, following a shining entity into a lost underground civilization. Books like this →
Buehlman · 2021 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Cahill · 2019 No adaptation
A wandering bard and a trapped noble woman face the gods' meddling in a world on the verge of war. Books like this →
Redick · 2008 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
Ryan · 2011 No adaptation
Vaelin al Sorna, given to a warrior order as a boy, rises through its brutal training into war, faith and a hidden gift. Books like this →
Sullivan · 2008 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
French · 2015 No adaptation
Half-orc riders on war hogs patrol a lawless borderland and uncover a plot that could doom their brotherhood. Books like this →
Rothfuss · 2007 No adaptation
Kvothe, now an innkeeper, tells the true story of how a gifted orphan became the most notorious magician and musician alive. Books like this →
Silverberg · 1980 No adaptation
A wandering juggler with no memory on a vast planet of many species learns he is the rightful Coronal. His body has been stolen. Books like this →
Bellairs · 1969 No adaptation
Two wizards, the eccentric Prospero and his friend Roger Bacon, investigate a creeping evil that twists reality in their kingdoms. Books like this →
Polansky · 2011 No adaptation
Warden, a disgraced former agent who now deals drugs, hunts the killer of a child in the slums he controls. Books like this →
Morris · 1894 No adaptation
A merchant's son follows a vision of three strangers into an enchanted wood ruled by a sorceress, a dwarf and a captive maiden. Books like this →
Modesitt · 1991 No adaptation
In a world balanced between Order and Chaos magic, young people sent out from the island of Recluce must find their place. Books like this →
Barker · 2017 No adaptation
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. Books like this →
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, 427 pages, 54 original images, one opening each chapter.