When it comes to fantasy, it’s all about the worldbuilding. Some fantasy lands are built like a Mercedes, pretty to look at, but fall apart under pressure and scrutiny. Other fantasy worlds are built like a Ford, solid, if a little plain. But these fantasy books? They’ve got worlds that’d don’t feel machine made, they feel like they were born. If they were vehicles, they’d rocketships, blasting off to vistas never before seen! Here are 10 fantasy books where the world itself has the mainest main character energy.
The Malazan Book of The Fallen
Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of The Fallen is the literary equivalent of Dark Souls. It’s a sprawling epic that takes place in a demon haunted world, where the whims of gods and mortals alike cause empires to rise and crumble to dust. When you first crack open The Gardens of The Moon, you’ll find yourself instantly lost in the sauce, yet found in the dark fantasy flavor. This is a deep, rich, and storied world that you’ll have to comb through with an archeologist’s toolset if you intend to dust off the major plot points. It’s a challenging read, just as Dark Souls is a challenging play, but you’ll have bragging rights when you come out the other side. You’ll be steeped in lore just like one of the many wizards that populate this world. Whether you use that lore to better or embitter the world is for you to decide – just as it was for the mages of Malazan. I pray you make better choices than they, my child.
The Broken Earth Trilogy
N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth Trilogy introduces the setting as the main character from the second you read the title. It’s a post-post apocalyptic narrative that takes place in a supercontinent known as The Stillness, where civilization is continually threatened by seismic and atmospheric cataclysms called fifth seasons. After a powerful, supernaturally gifted resident of this world caused a fifth season stronger than any other in recent memory, the peoples of The Stillness are plunged into total chaos. As three women navigate their ways across this broken world, they begin to suspect that this blasted landscape is truly out to get them – and might even be making the conscious decision to destroy all living things that dwell on its surface. What do you do when the final boss is the world you call home? Don’t fight, try to make things right – you won’t win any other way.
The Dying Earth
The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance is a part fantasy, part sci-fi speculative fiction series about the end of our pale blue dot. As the sun begins to rapidly cool, magic reasserts itself as the dominant force of this far future world. Holed up in cities to protect themselves from the mutated and magical creatures that haunt the cold wastelands beyond, civilization has turned to cult-like religions in order to find meaning in the madness. Some devote themselves to pleasure, some study magic in hopes of clinging to a shred of power in this ever changing world. Others seek spiritual realms, which, as it turns out, actually exist – but humanity can never get there. There are better worlds out there, but when humanity dies, paradise will forever elude its final grasp. These novels are beautiful bummers, and totally worth the read.
The Book of the New Sun
Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun is one of those sneaky sort of books that wears a high fantasy costume, but rip off the mask Scooby Doo villain style and you’ll find science fiction was the Mr. Jenkins beneath. Set millions of years in Earth’s future, the novel follows Severian, a torturer exiled from his guild after committing the cardinal sin of showing mercy to a captive. Alone with nothing but his ancient head-cutter-offer sword to accompany him, he sets off on a journey to distant lands – Adventure Time style. Like Adventure Time, the reader slowly discovers that this fantasy world is built on the ruins of a highly advanced but ultimately self-destroying civilization. Magic is just misunderstood technology, but don’t tell the nefarious wizards that attempt to harness it for their own dark ends – it’ll ruin the fun.
Piranesi
Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi might be named after its central human character, but the home he lives in is the book’s star. Piranesi’s house isn’t your average piece of real estate, it’s countless millions of square feet! The house is a winding array of labyrinthian hallways, which lead to roomfuls of strange statues, and doors that contain entire oceans on the other side. Piranesi lives there alone, and spends his time cataloguing various aspects of the house at the request of his only visitor – a mysterious man known only as The Other. As the novel progresses, you’ll figure out why this house is so weird, and how Piranesi is able to afford a place that big without roommates. While some might say he’s trapped in a hell-maze, your average New York City apartment renter would surely think that Piranesi is living in a real estate dream.
The Edge Chronicles
Though they set out to write a book for children, author and illustrator Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell cheffed up a better world-recipe than most author could ever. The Edge Chronicles‘ Michelin star setting is The Edge, a continent sized precipice that juts out over the lip of bottomless oblivion. The world itself is just as daunting, full of man-eating bird women, man-eating trees, and even the occasional man-eating space alien that floats in from the void beyond. The only people keeping some semblance of order are the academics that live on a chained up floating rock in the center of the precipice, while sky pirates sail the sea-skies above. It’s a vast, rich and dangerous world – made all the more beautiful and horrifying by Riddell’s childhood trauma inducing illustrations. I’m still working those out in therapy.
The Goblin Emperor
The world of Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor isn’t known for its topographical fantasy landscapes, but its political ones. This novel is the story of the youngest son of the Emperor, who lived his life in exile due to his half goblin heritage. After the rest of the throne’s royal successors die in a bizarre airship crash, young Maia has to rise to the political occasion and take the reins of the kingdom. Intent to establish a rule centered around diplomacy and fairness, Maia attempts to navigate the cutthroat world of imperial politics. The strength of the world building here lies in the richness of the various peoples that make it up, groups that Maia will have to appease in order to establish lasting peace – despite their warlike intentions to the contrary.
City of Stairs
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett is set in the once-divine metropolis of Bulikov, where the citizenry were able to access the powers of the gods themselves. Now that magic has dried up on the world like Kool-Aid on a white t-shirt, people still remember the taste of the stuff, but are unable to quench their thirst again. That’s probably for the best, considering the movers and shakers of Bulikov once used the power of the gods to enslave the rest of the world. In the dying gasp of the empire, traveler Shara Thivani stops in to catch her breath. She’s been dispatched to solve a murder that rocked the metropolis, and soon discovers that the seemingly dead leviathan that was Bulikov is still breathing, and may rear its ugly head up to conquer the world again.
Perdido Street Station
China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station is set in a city built on the ancient remains of a long dead behemoth – and as a result has an unsurprisingly eerie vibe. New Crobuzon is a steampunk nightmare, a festering sprawl of streets and alleys haunted by all manner of strange species. Science is the currency here – a rogue and back alley sort practiced by the most gifted and twisted of minds. Isaac is one such scientist, who has spent a lifetime devoted to his research. His efforts are interrupted by the arrival of a bizarre bird being known as a Garuda, who tasks him with completing a new sort of experiment, one that inadvertently opens a portal to a dark dimension at the edge of his own – where Stranger Things style beasts are attempting to claw their way inside.
The Vorrh
Brian Catling’s The Vorrh is named after the mythic and possibly world-covering forest that sits next to the colonial town of Essenwald. If you thought New England and Appalachian forests were spooky, The Vorrh is another haunted beast entire. It’s populated by all manner of beings both demonic and divine, along with warring factions searching for the Garden of Eden said to lie within its dark heart. Like a Dark Souls player who spec’d all his skill points into dexterity, a lone English soldier armed with nothing but a bow has decided to become the first to traverse the Vorrh, or the last of many to die trying.
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