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series2 books1937
completed
part of Tolkien's legendarium
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The Hobbit (1937) is J. R. R. Tolkien's children's fantasy novel following the reluctant burglar Bilbo Baggins, who joins a company of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf on a journey to reclaim treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug. It stands as a complete adventure on its own, but shares its setting with the rest of Tolkien's legendarium and leads into the events of The Lord of the Rings.
universe6 books1989
Start hereElenium · Start here
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Sir Sparhawk is not a young man, and he has little patience for the pageantry his order pretends to. A Pandion Knight of the militant Elene Church, he rides home from a long exile to find his kingdom rotten with intrigue and his young queen, Ehlana, poisoned — kept alive only inside a shell of living crystal. To wake her he must find Bhelliom, a jewel with the power to remake the world or unmake it. So begins a long ride across the continent of Eosia. This is warm, character-first epic fantasy from David Eddings, told across two trilogies. The Elenium — The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose — pits Sparhawk against a corrupt church and a hungry elder god. The Tamuli — Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City — carries him east into the vast Tamul Empire, where older enemies stir. Around him gathers a quarrelsome company: the Styric sorceress Sephrenia, the thief-boy Talen, the plain-spoken squire Kurik, and a small, imperious goddess who plays a set of pipes and always, somehow, gets her way. The pleasure here is the talk — grizzled knights trading dry insults between miracles and murders, a hero who solves as many problems with patience as with a sword. It never reaches for grimness or grand obscurity; it wants your good company for a long journey. Newcomers begin with The Diamond Throne and read the six in order: the Elenium stands whole on its own before the Tamuli widens the map.
series3 books1989
completed
part of Sparhawk
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The Elenium is a series of fantasy novels by American writer David Eddings. The series consists of three volumes: The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, and The Sapphire Rose. The series is followed by The Tamuli. The Elenium is Eddings' third fantasy series.
William Morrisstandalone novel1896
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The Well at the World's End is a high fantasy novel by the British textile designer, poet, and author William Morris. It was first published in 1896 and has been reprinted repeatedly since, most notably in two parts as the 20th and 21st volumes of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, in August and September 1970.
series13 books1954
part of Tolkien's legendarium
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The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
series15 books2010
part of Cosmere
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The Stormlight Archive is a high fantasy novel series written by American author Brandon Sanderson, planned to consist of ten novels. As of 2024, the series comprises five published novels and two novellas, set within Sanderson's broader Cosmere universe. The first novel, The Way of Kings, was published on August 31, 2010. The second novel, Words of Radiance, was published on March 4, 2014 and debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller List. This was repeated by Oathbringer and Rhythm of War. The fifth novel, Wind and Truth, was released December 6, 2024. Sanderson has indicated that he will start drafting the latter half of the series after he finishes writing the upcoming Era Three Mistborn trilogy and the two Elantris sequels. The series has been adapted as a VR Experience and a tabletop roleplaying game.
series3 books1976
completed
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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.
series10 books1997
completed
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Lord of the Isles is a series of books by author David Drake. In 1997, Drake began his largest fantasy series, Lord of the Isles, using elements of Sumerian religion and medieval-era technology. The series consists of nine books broken into two distinct parts, the Lord of the Isles consisting of the first six books, and a final trilogy dubbed the Crown of the Isles.
series7 books1982
part of The Riftwar Universe
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The Riftwar Saga is Raymond E. Feist's debut fantasy trilogy, opening with Magician, in which an orphaned apprentice named Pug is swept up when otherworldly invaders emerge through a dimensional rift into the frontier kingdom of Midkemia. Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon carry the resulting war to its close, and the trilogy became the founding entry of Feist's much larger Riftwar Cycle.
series6 books2004
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Furies of Calderon opens The Codex Alera in a Rome-flavored fantasy world where nearly everyone commands elemental spirits called furies, except Tavi, a teenager with none, whose resourcefulness becomes the series' recurring answer to raw magical power. Jim Butcher's six-book series, continuing through Academ's Fury, Cursor's Fury, Captain's Fury, Princeps' Fury, and First Lord's Fury, builds from small-scale political maneuvering into full-scale war.
series26 books1950
part of Narnia Universe
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The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven portal fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, the series is set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals. It narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the Narnian world. Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are sometimes called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician's Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle.
David Eddings & Leigh Eddingsstandalone novel2000
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The Redemption of Althalus is a stand-alone fantasy novel by David and Leigh Eddings. Its main character is Althalus, a professional thief enlisted by the Goddess Dweia to save the world from the desolations of her evil brother Daeva and his henchman Ghend.
series5 books2003
completed
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The Dreamers is the title of a fantasy book series by American writer David Eddings and his wife Leigh Eddings. The story revolves around four beings known as The Elder Gods residing in the land of Dhrall: Dahlaine of the North, Veltan of the South, Zelana of the West and Aracia of the East. They must recruit the help of outlanders to destroy the fiendish Vlagh and prevent its attempt at world conquest. The Elder Gods are not permitted to use their powers to kill, but the young Dreamers can use their dreams to predict and affect the future.
universe44 books1982
Start hereRiftwar Saga · Start here
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On the world of Midkemia a tear opens in the air itself, a rift hung between stars, and through it march the armies of an empire from another world entirely. So begins the chronicle Raymond E. Feist has kept for three decades: the tale of Pug, a castle kitchen boy apprenticed to a magician on the very day the invasion lands, and of Tomas, his friend, who inherits the armor and the ancient fury of a dead dragon-lord. Around these two the Riftwar Cycle turns, widening book by book from one besieged frontier keep into the whole history of a world of kingdoms, guilds, thieves' dens and mage-towers. The cycle runs to roughly thirty novels, gathered into arcs a newcomer can enter and finish on their own. The founding Riftwar Saga (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon) sets the board; the Serpentwar Saga, Krondor's Sons and the Conclave of Shadows carry the story down the generations; the Darkwar, Demonwar and Chaoswar sagas bring it toward its close. Crossing the rift to the rival world of Kelewan, Feist and Janny Wurts wrote the Empire trilogy, opening with Daughter of the Empire, a court intrigue told wholly from the invaders' side and for many the finest thing here. Shorter Legends of the Riftwar and the game-born Riftwar Legacy fill the corners; later still, Feist opens an altogether new world in the Firemane books. Feist writes fantasy in its most companionable key: apprentices who grow into archmages, tavern boys who become spies and dukes, a world you return to the way you return to an old inn. The mood is adventure before dread, friendship and rank and hard-won craft, wars that cost something, all of it rendered plainly and at a gallop. Begin where it began, with Magician, then follow the arcs in the order they were written, and the rift will carry you the rest of the way.
universe50 books1977
Start hereWord and the Void · The very beginning of the timeline
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Long after the world we know has burned itself to slag in the Great Wars, the Four Lands rise green over the bones of the old age. Science is a forbidden memory; magic has come back into the world, and with it the old divisions — Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes, each Race a splinter of what humanity became. This is the far-future Earth of Shannara, where the ruins buried beneath the soil are ours, and the only keepers of the vanished knowledge are the Druids of Paranor, who wake once a generation to meet the darkness rising again. Terry Brooks opened the Four Lands in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara and has charted its history for four decades since — a legendarium ordered not by throne but by a single bloodline, the Ohmsfords, each generation inheriting an Elfstone, a blade, or a wishsong when the age demands a hero. The original trilogy gives way to the Heritage of Shannara, the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, the High Druid, Dark Legacy, Defenders, and the concluding Fall of Shannara; the Genesis of Shannara books reach back to the apocalypse itself, and the Word and the Void trilogy back further still, into a demon-haunted version of our own present that is the root of everything after. In 2025 Brooks passed the histories to Delilah S. Dawson to carry forward. What sets these books apart is their long memory: a world where every triumph is provisional, where the same evil returns wearing a fresh shape each age, and magic always exacts its price. The reading is warm and headlong — questing companies, old talismans, journeys across a mapped and named wilderness — shadowed by the knowledge that all of it stands on the wreckage of a former world. Enter as readers first did: with The Sword of Shannara, then onward in publication order. The chronological path, beginning with Word and the Void, rewards a second journey, once the Four Lands already feel like home.
series4 books1988
part of Paksenarrion
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Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion follows Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, a sheepfarmer's daughter who leaves home to become a mercenary soldier and, over the course of three novels, a paladin. Grounded in the practical, unglamorous realities of military life before turning toward divine calling, the trilogy was originally published in 1988-89 and later collected as one omnibus. It's known for its grounded approach to fantasy soldiering, informed by Moon's own military background.
Kristine Kathryn Ruschstandalone novel1991
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Synopsis -An innocent excited boy, a prince and heir, takes his first journey to the city. It is like nothing he imagined. Hands pound against his carriage: voices call for a coin, Sir just one, spare me some money, sir, I haven’t eaten in days. The streets teem with merchants in velvet robes, magicians, half mad preachers, with life and colour and noise. He doesn’t want to miss any of it. But it is the last journey of his life as a prince. Soon he will be abandoned and declared dead. Soon with survival and what will be the driving force of his life: the quest to recover his stolen inheritance, his usurped throne. His home. A story of cities and palaces, of power hungry lords and ladies scheming inside a magically threatened land...Intricate, compelling.
series2 books2009
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The Elder Scrolls is a series of action role-playing video games primarily developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The series focuses on free-form gameplay in an open world. Most games in the series have been critically and commercially successful, with The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002), The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) all winning Game of the Year awards from multiple outlets. The series has sold more than 90 million copies worldwide.
series5 books2002
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Maerad has spent most of her life enslaved on a remote farm, until the wandering Bard Cadvan recognizes in her the Gift -- a rare and powerful magical ability -- and takes her from captivity into training. Alison Croggon's Books of Pellinor follow Maerad across the world of Edil-Amarandh as she's drawn into a prophecy naming her the only one who might stop the Nameless One, an ancient and corrupting sorcerer, while she also searches for her lost family. The series runs through The Gift, The Riddle, The Crow, The Singing, and the later prequel The Bone Queen.
series1 book2012
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Saladin Ahmed's The Crescent Moon Kingdoms opens with Throne of the Crescent Moon, set in a realm of djenn and ghuls where a power struggle between an iron-fisted Khalif and a mysterious master thief called the Falcon Prince erupts alongside a series of brutal, supernatural murders. A handful of reluctant heroes must uncover the truth behind the killings before the kingdom tears itself apart.
series6 books1971
part of Moorcock's Multiverse
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Alex Asterstandalone novel2026
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Hundreds of years ago, a brutal war split a land in two. Starside is the realm of magic and immortals—the descendants of the gods, living in a power-rich paradise. Stormside is where mortals fight for scraps of that magic. Every fifty years, the gates between them open, and fifty challengers are allowed to journey across Starside on a deadly quest to access a pool of magic that can heal, grant wealth, or extend life. Everyone has their reasons for entering, but Aris has only vengeance. As a child, a goddess set fire to her village, killing her family. Aris isn’t after the gods’ magic—she’s going to kill them. First, she must survive the Culling, the king’s deadly competition to choose his fifty challengers. An orphaned blacksmith’s apprentice, Aris doesn’t have the superior weapons of the heirs from the Great Houses. But the greatest swords—ones that contain power—are not inherited or bought, they are claimed, by both sides. And when Aris claims a great sword, it makes her not just a real competitor—but a target. Getting past the gates is only the beginning. Starside is deadlier than it seems. If the ancient creatures, magic-wielding beasts, and bloodthirsty immortals weren’t dangerous enough, a new peril has even immortals fearing what rises from the ground at night. With a blade most would kill to claim, Aris can’t trust anyone. Especially not Harlan Raker, the merciless and mysterious king’s guard who betrayed her years ago—and who may now be the key to her survival. But Aris is hiding a secret tied to her family’s death. And when it’s revealed, not even the gods will be able to stop what’s coming…
series2 books1871
completed
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