Sick of taking notes to remember all the names and places in fantasy books? Don’t feel like committing to a 10 part yet-to-be finished series? Elves just not your vibe? While dwarves would have you back on that last one, I get it, cracking open a fantasy book can be a daunting task. That’s why I have consulted the lore and come up with a list of fantasy books for people who are not a fan of the genre. While I can’t make you love hobbit genealogies, I can at least spare you the trouble of dealing with authors that do – sorry, Tolkien.
The Song of Achilles
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is a modern retelling of Homer’s The Iliad – if you think that means it’ll feel like snoozeville high school English class assigned reading, you’re wrong. Written with the aching grace of a Jeff Buckley song, The Song of Achilles is the ultimate tragic romance story. It revolves around Achilles (the guy with the heel) and his lover Patroclus, following their friendship as boys, their blossoming ardor as teenagers, and the incendiary culmination of their love in the fires of the Trojan War. Feel like you can’t connect emotionally to fantasy characters? This novel will have you ugly crying for Achilles and Patroclus for the last fifty pages. While the novel ends on a hopeful note, your eyes will have leaked more water than the River Styx before you get there – and you’ll love every second.
Interview With The Vampire
Sick of fantasy without sex appeal? Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire is just what the plague doctor ordered. A deliciously dark novel, this tale revolves around a vampire named Louis de Pointe du Lac – who lived a morally challenged life in late 18th century Louisiana. After being turned into a vampire by the murderously alluring Lestat de Lioncourt, the pair create a screwed up found family with a plague-ridden girl given new unlife via vampire bite. This story is sinister, repugnant, and rife with messy drama. After reading this novel, you’ll go from hating fantasy to simping for Astarion on your umpteenth Baldur’s Gate 3 playthrough. Who is Astarion and what is a Baldur’s Gate 3? You might not know now, but after Anne Rice unlocks the vampire kinks in you, you will .
Piranesi
Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi is a fantasy novel so unlike any other that the Reddit threads are having a field day deciding if it even counts as fantasy at all! Is it magical realism? Is it literary fiction? Who cares! The plot revolves around Piranesi, an inhabitant of a very funny house. Not funny “haha” but funny “this quirky house is large enough to contain infinite hallways, doors, and even oceans inside.” The joke is on Piranesi, who is forced to spend his days cataloguing the house’s many intricacies – instructed to do so by a mysterious man who visits from time to time. New York City dwellers will love this novel for allowing them to fantasize about a place with more square footage than whatever shoebox they’re shelling out $3000 a month for. Everyone else? They’ll love this novel for its mysterious, poetic and entirely original story – fantasy haters included.
The House In The Cerulean Sea
Does reading fantasy stress you out? All the nobles sticking knives in one another’s backs? T.J. Klune’s The House In The Cerulean Sea has none of that. A paragon of the emerging “cozy fantasy” genre, this novel is the tale of Linus Baker: bureaucrat extraordinaire. A caseworker for the Department In Charge of Magical Children, Linus spends more time pushing pencils than actually helping kids in need. All that changes when the burned out employee is tasked to visit a seaside orphanage, and make a report on the magical children who live there with a mysterious caretaker. On the hunt for policy discrepancies, the lonely Linus ends up finding found family instead. This adorable queer romance between middle-aged men is enough to light a fire in anyone’s heart – even a heart hardened against the fantasy genre.
The Night Circus
Wait a minute, I thought fantasy books were supposed to be about boring historical events and inscrutable magic systems? Not fun things like circuses! Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus didn’t get the memo – and is all the better for it. The plot revolves around two rival illusionists working for Le Cirque des Rêves – a traveling circus that only appears at night in 18th century Europe. As the illusionists compete to see who can better enchant audiences, they begin to enchant one another in the process. As the love between the two rivals grows, the leaders of the circus begin to take notice – and try to egg on the competition towards a fatal conclusion. Enemies to lovers magic under the stars? Even the coldest of cold hearted fantasy haters won’t be able to resist buying a ticket.
Gideon The Ninth
When you hear the word “fantasy”, do you immediately think of cis dudes swinging swords in not quite Medieval Europe? Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir will change your association with the word to “sapphire goth necromancers in space.” The gloriously Hot Topic version of Dune, this novel is set in a star system ruled by an undead emperor and nine planet controlling Houses. Gideon Nav is a swordswoman indentured to the Ninth House and its necromantic heir Harrowhark Nonagesimus – and hates every minute of it. In exchange for freedom, Gideon is offered a choice by Harrow. All she has to do is serve as the necromancer’s bodyguard during a series of trials in a spooky mansion on a faraway planet. Sweet deal. At least, it would have been, until the bodies started piling up. A queer murder mystery space opera, Gideon The Ninth will have you questioning everything you thought you knew about fantasy – and maybe your sexuality in the process.
The Terror
While Dan Simmons is primarily known for his Hyperion Cantos (a sprawling Dune-esque space opera you probably won’t be a fan of) his historical horror fantasy The Terror is sure to hook you. It’s the fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s very real expedition to the Arctic Circle, and the horrors that he and his doomed crew uncovered there. Unfolding with the same sense of cold dread as John Carpenter’s The Thing, the novel pits hapless explorers against forces of nature that they can’t possibly understand. The far north is haunted by hungry spirits, spirits who devour anyone foolish to cross their paths. Sir John Franklin hoped to find the Northwest Passage, but he and his men ended up finding Hell’s frozen ninth circle instead.
Perdido Street Station
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville is shelved as fantasy, but it reads like a work of mad scientist horror. In the steampunk city of New Crobuzon, back alley scientist Isaac toils away in his lab like a fantastical Dr. Frankenstein. After he’s visited by a grounded bird-creature looking to fly again, Issac begins to collect airborne critters of all sorts to solve his client’s problem with science. After Isaac gets his hands on a biological government experiment that was raised on a steady diet of hallucinogens, Isaac discovers that science sometimes creates more problems than solutions. After the juvenile beastie matures into a full grown Lovecraftian horror, Isaac must fight to save his city from total doom. This creature doesn’t feast on human flesh, but human minds – your human mind will be absolutely obsessed.
His Dark Materials
My personal favorite series, Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials is one of the most original fantasy trilogies ever written. Set in a world almost but not quite like our own, the plot revolves around Lyra – a twelve year old girl who discovers a metaphysical secret that a world-ruling church would rather keep under wraps. Accompanied by a shapeshifting animal companion that serves as the physical embodiment of her soul, Lyra romps through the multiverse guided by a mysterious compass that points her towards ultimate truth. A subversion of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, His Dark Materials examines the Christian notion of “original sin” – the belief that each human is born flawed. According to Pullman, our inevitable loss of innocence is not the source of our damnation, but our divinity. The ex-religious are gonna love this one. Plus, it has talking polar bears, who doesn’t love those?
Attack On Titan
A story unlike any other, Hajime Isayama’s Attack On Titan is a double whammy – people who say they don’t like fantasy or manga find themselves smitten. The action takes place in a massive walled city, where humanity lives in safety from “titans” – man-eating giants that roam the world beyond. After the wall is breached, the doomed populace turns its hopeful gaze to Erin Jaeger, a young soldier who has the mysterious ability to transform into a monster. As the military launches a counterattack, Eren and his comrades discovery a conspiracy within the city walls – one that dates back to an ancient lineage of kings that could once control the titans’ power. Equal parts epic and horrifying, Attack On Titan will have you ravenous for more.
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