Why start another famous series about some milquetoast Chosen One’s quest to defeat the Dark Lord when you could start an actually COOL fantasy series that no one else has ever heard of? Think of how much people will love you at parties! As you gush to them about a series they don’t know about and will probably never read because you kinda annoyed them! If you’re looking for under the radar, hipster, most interesting reader in the room fantasy novels to possibly excite whoever’s ear your talking off in the house party kitchen, you must check out these 10 underrated fantasy books.
Kill Six Billion Demons
Allison Ruth is business major, a barista, and a soon to be slayer of gods. While she began Tom Parkinson Morgan’s Kill Six Billion Demons as those first two things, she’s thrown into a quest to become the third after a runaway demigod teleports her to the multiverse while she’s in the middle of losing her virginity. All alone and blessed with newfound divine power, Allison must navigate Heaven – which is a corpse city ruled by all manner of otherworldly beings. Transgender stone angels, gold hoarding dragon gods, an imp with a penchant for fanfiction, all of these creatures and more Allison is forced to cross paths (and sometimes swords) with on her quest to defeat a divinity that seeks to destroy reality itself.
The Thousand Names
Looking for more Napoleonic fantasy in the style of His Majesty’s Dragon? The Thousand Names by Django Wexler is the “never heard of it” fantasy book for you. Set in a land reminiscent of 19th century North Africa, The Thousand Names revolves around a colony under the control of the militaristic Vordanai Empire. After their garrison is rocked by a sudden rebellion, two Vordanai soldiers are forced to follow a mysterious new commander into battle. These two enlisted types couldn’t be more different, one is a bored captain and the other is a woman in disguise fleeing from her unboring past. While opposites, they both agree on one thing: there’s something a little off about their new commanding officer. He’s been dabbling in strange magics, and he might be trying to reconquer more than just a colony, he might just wanna rule the world – Tears For Fears style.
The Killing Moon
While her Broken Earth trilogy has become the stuff of modern fantasy legend, N.K. Jemison’s The Killing Moon is an equally lustrous fantasy gem. The story is set in the city-state of Gujaareh, where peace is upheld by a group of phantasmal guardians called Gatherers. Gatherers maintain order by siphoning off magic from the minds of the sleeping, and killing those whose mind-scapes are corrupt. Gatherer Ehiru is content to abide by this morally grey status quo, until a fresh conspiracy in the Gather’s temple causes him to question everything. Someone is killing off innocent dreamers, and Ehiru needs to figure out why – how else will he be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience?
A Cavern of Black Ice
A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones is an unsung grimdark fantasy classic about Ash Marsh – who was found abandoned at the foot of a mountain as a child. After being taken in and raised by a powerful lord, Ash begins having visions strange and terrible! Haunted dreams! Potential whispers of dark prophecy! Meanwhile, young Raif Sevrance of a brutal warrior clan begins manifesting strange powers of his own, and through the twisted laws of causality, the two budding heroes are thrown together in order to prevent an ancient prediction of doom from coming to fruition. Naturally, they’ll have to abandon everything they love to do so, just like you’ll all those popular fantasy books you used to love in order to devour this one.
The Dying Earth
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance is the story of a planet on life support. Our sun has cooled to the point of near exhaustion, and magic has returned as the dominant power on Earth. The wastelands of the slow-freezing world are haunted by all manner of demons and mutants, and the few human settlements that remain aren’t doing much better. Most of humanity belongs to some sort of cult or another, devoting to chasing pleasure, magic power, or some semblance of spiritual enlightenment. This whacky world is essentially a melancholy version of the Land of Ooo from Adventure Time, haunted by weird wizards, strange monsters, and one or two hopefuls trying (and usually failing) to become the hero the world so desperately needs.
Up Jumps The Devil
Up Jumps The Devil by Michael Poore is the low fantasy account of Lucifer himself, who, contrary to those Bible stories, isn’t all that bad of a guy. Lucifer loves humanity, and has spent countless lifetimes attempting to lead mortals to greatness by fostering their creative talents. Known in the modern era as John Scratch, Satan has become a famed musician and mentor many of the world’s most leading artists. Why is he trying to make the world a better place? For a devilishly selfish and woefully romantic reason: he’s trying to lure an angelic ex-lover out of Heaven by turning the Earth into Paradise. Prince of Darkness? That’s a bit of an overstatement. He’s more of a Prince of Employing Off-White to Morally Grey Morality For An Ultimately Good Cause.
Tread of Angels
A theological, mythological neo-Western, Rebecca Roanhorse’s Tread of Angels is two smoking barrels of high fantasy fun. In the frontier mining town of Goetia, prospectors come from far and wide to dig for Divinity. I don’t mean that as a metaphor for the search for spiritual enlightenment, I mean they literally mine the divine – the valuable corpse of a fallen angel. Chunks of Divinity are used to power all manner of technology, but there’s a catch, only descendants of demons are able to see the stones. This makes things complicated for a mining town ruled by angelic forces, who view the demonic Fallen as a necessary (but still very evil) evil. After a Fallen named Mariel is accused of killing an angel, her sister Celeste is chosen to defend her in a celestial trial. It’s a religious cowboy courtroom drama! Ya don’t see those every day, do ya partner?
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld
Another little known work of classic fantasy, Patricia A. McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is the story of a mountain princess and her magical menagerie. Sixteen-year-old Sybel lives high on a remote summit, where her only company is an assortment of magical creatures summoned there by her dead father. Content to spend her days tending to the beasts, Sybel’s monster-care routine is thrown off balance when a new creature shows up at her home: a human child. The child was brought in the arms of a young lord named Coren, and twelve years later, Coren returns to take it back. Sybel isn’t keen on letting her surrogate baby go, even if the kid is of royal blood like Coren says. Unwillingly drawn into a political rebellion against the crown, Sybel has to decide whether to stoke the fires of revolution or get one of her beasts to stamp them out.
The Edge Chronicles
Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell’s The Edge Chronicles is a children’s fantasy series that I sometimes wonder if I hallucinated reading, but a quick google tells me otherwise! Set on a continent sized cliff jutting out into oblivion, The Edge is home to all manner of peoples and beasts. Man-eating bird women. Scholars that live on floating rocks. Sky pirates that sail beyond the lip of the precipice – The Edge takes all kinds. Why am I unsure if this series actually existed? Because 1. I never knew any other kids who read it, and 2. the illustrations are so downright terrifying that I’m pretty sure I know why they didn’t. As blissfully whimsical as it is dreadfully scary, this series has the power to delight and traumatize children and adults alike.
In The Watchful City
In The Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu is a heady mix of cyberpunk and fantasy, a genre cocktail that I previously wouldn’t have believed to exist! Set in a semi-organic city that monitors its populace through an organic network, the novel follows Anima, a nonbinary Watcher whose extrasensory abilities allow ær to tap in and surveil the citizenry. Anima’s world is thrown into chaos with the arrival of mysterious visitor from a faraway land, one that introduces the by-the-book city to unorthodox ideas. As Anima contemplates new ways of living, the Watcher wonders whether or not living in a biological surveillance state is really all it’s cracked up to be. Unsurprising spoiler alert: it ain’t
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