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- The Black Magician Trilogy
series3 books2001
part of Kyralia series
similar bymagic schoolssecondary worldfantasy+1 more
Trudi Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy (The Magicians' Guild, The Novice, The High Lord, 2001-2003) opens in the city of Imardin, where the ruling magicians' guild's annual purge of the slums goes wrong when a street girl named Sonea unknowingly shatters their protective shield with raw, untrained power. The guild must hunt her down and decide whether to control her or train her, and the trilogy follows Sonea's forced initiation into magical society and the guild's internal politics. It's Canavan's best-known trilogy and the founding story of her Kyralia setting.
- Kairos
series11 books1962
completed
similar byscience fiction+1 more
The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).
- The Kingkiller Chronicle
series8 books2002
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more
The Kingkiller Chronicle is a planned fantasy trilogy by the American writer Patrick Rothfuss. The first two books, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, were released in 2007 and 2011. The books released in the series have sold over 10 million copies.
- The Licanius Trilogy
series3 books2014
similar bysecondary worldpolitical intrigue+3 more
Twenty years after a war that toppled the god-like Augurs and stripped magic from the world, James Islington's Licanius Trilogy follows Davian, a young man bound by laws written to suppress the powers the Augurs once had, who discovers he can still reach forbidden abilities. His awakening coincides with the stirring of an ancient enemy and the appearance of an amnesiac stranger whose fate is bound to his. The three books trace how the old war's cover-up starts to unravel.
- Mordant's Need
series2 books1986
similar bysecondary worldpolitical intriguefantasy+2 more
Mordant's Need is a fantasy two-part book series by American writer Stephen R. Donaldson, comprising the novels The Mirror of Her Dreams (1986) and A Man Rides Through (1987).
- Rithmatist
series1 book2013
similar bymysteriousmagic schoolssecondary worldfantasy
The Rithmatist series is a young adult fantasy series written by American author Brandon Sanderson. At least two books are planned in the series: The Rithmatist (2013) and a second volume, titled The Aztlanian, is planned.
- The Quest of the Riddle-Master
series3 books1976
completed
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+2 more
Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy follows Morgon, prince of the small island of Hed, whose discovery of three star-shaped birthmarks on his forehead draws him into a search for his own hidden identity and a confrontation with ancient, shape-shifting powers. Drawing on Celtic myth, the three books are prized for their lyrical prose and riddle-based magic, and are often cited among the best high fantasy of the 1970s.
- The Old Kingdom / Abhorsen milieu
series11 books1995
similar bysecondary worldfantasy
The Old Kingdom, or Abhorsen in North America and the UK, is a fantasy series written by Australian author Garth Nix. It originated in 1995 with the novel Sabriel and has continued in the novels Lirael (2001), Abhorsen (2003), Goldenhand (2016), and Terciel & Elinor (2021), as well as a prequel novel titled Clariel (2014). The Old Kingdom also consists of the novella The Creature in the Case (2005) and various other short fiction.
- His Dark Materials Universe
universe13 books1995
Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here
similar byfantasy+2 more
In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.
- Magisterium
series5 books2014
similar bymagic schoolssecondary worldfantasy+1 more
The Magisterium Series is a five-book children's fantasy series written by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. It is their first collaboration. The series was acquired by Scholastic in April 2012. The first book, The Iron Trial, was published on September 9, 2014, and hit third on the New York Times Middle Grade Bestseller List. The series is set in an underground school where mages train apprentices to control the elements. The books are illustrated by Scott Fischer. The final book, The Golden Tower, was published on September 11, 2018.
- The Library Trilogy
series4 books2023
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+3 more
The Library Trilogy is Mark Lawrence's 2023-2025 fantasy sequence: The Book That Wouldn't Burn, The Book That Broke the World and The Book That Held Her Heart. It centers on an endless, reality-spanning library and the people who guard, exploit or seek to unravel it, carrying Lawrence's grimdark instincts into a more meta, books-about-books premise. It is a complete three-book arc, distinct from his earlier Broken Empire trilogy.
- Estcarp
series8 books1963
completed
part of Witch World
similar bysecondary world+2 more
Estcarp is the founding cycle of Andre Norton's Witch World series, beginning with Witch World (1963) and continuing through books such as Web of the Witch World, Three Against the Witch World, and Sorceress of the Witch World. It is set on a world where magic long ago displaced science and, for centuries, was wielded almost exclusively by women, following outsiders and native witches who defend the ancient realm of Estcarp against rival powers from beyond its borders. Norton wrote most of the cycle alone before bringing in collaborators later in her career, as part of the wider Witch World universe.
- Ile-Rien
series12 books1993
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more
The Ile-Rien books are a series of fantasy novels by Martha Wells set in the fictional country of Ile-Rien. It is a centralized monarchy governed by the Fontainon dynasty, governing from their ornate capital of Vienne. It is also the home of the university-city of Lodun, a great center of learning, producing world-renowned scholars in medicine, law and sorcery. Its neighbors are the nations of Adera, Umberwald and Parscia, as well as Bisra, its long-standing enemy. Ile-Rien shares a coastline along the Western Ocean with Parscia.
- Cosmere
universe54 books2005
Start hereThe Final Empire · Start here
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more
Before the worlds, there was Adonalsium, and then there was not. A god shattered into sixteen Shards of raw creative power, and those who seized them carried their fragments across the void to seed new planets, new peoples, new ways of working the impossible. The Cosmere is the one universe those Shards made: a scattering of worlds that seem, at first, to share nothing but a sky, until you notice the same law running quietly beneath each of them, and the same silent traveler passing through their margins. Every world keeps its own book and its own magic. On Scadrial, the Mistborn cycle burns metals into power: a self-contained trilogy of thieves and tyranny, followed by a second era that drags the same world into gunslinging early industry. On storm-battered Roshar, The Stormlight Archive raises its vast, ongoing epic around knights, spren, and oaths spoken aloud. Elsewhere stand the shorter keystones: Elantris, a city of fallen gods; Warbreaker, a tale of returned dead and living color; White Sand, told in graphic-novel form under the twin suns of Taldain. Threaded between them run the novellas, from Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter to The Sunlit Man and the pieces gathered in Arcanum Unbounded, where the hidden connections surface most plainly. All of it is the design of one hand, Brandon Sanderson, working a single pattern across two decades. What sets this universe apart is its faith in rules: magic here is a system, lawful and learnable, so discovery feels less like wonder handed down than like physics worked out. The cross-connections reward the patient reader, a symbol here, a name there, one immortal wanderer everywhere, but no book demands you have read another first. Newcomers do best entering through Mistborn: The Final Empire, the most self-contained doorway, or the standalone Elantris or Warbreaker; readers who prefer their epics vast can begin with The Way of Kings. The deeper links, and the novellas that expose them, wait for whenever you are ready to look.
- Millennium's Rule
series4 books2014
similar bysecondary world+2 more
Millennium's Rule is set across multiple worlds that only certain travelers can cross between, opening with Tyen, an archaeology student who unearths a sentient, centuries-old book named Vella, and Rielle, a dyer's daughter hiding forbidden magical talent in a society ruled by priests who forbid it. Trudi Canavan follows both of them as their discoveries chip away at what their worlds have taught them about magic, history, and who holds power. The series runs Thief's Magic, Angel of Storms, and Successor's Promise.
