Loved The Song of Achilles but still paying therapy bills due to the emotional trauma you sustained while reading it? Girl, same. You know what’s cheaper than therapy? Drowning your sorrows in new books with actually uplifting endings. If you’re tired of getting your tender fantasy heart stomped by a sadistic author’s torturous definition of emotional catharsis, you need to give these cheer-up novels a try. These are the 10 best fantasy books with happy endings, ones that don’t come with a traumatic donkey kick to the heart on the last page. It’s a donkey kick of joy instead!
The House In The Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune’s The House In The Cerulean Sea starts out as a serious bummer, but like winter turning to spring, the vibes get better and better as time goes on. Linus Baker is an employee of the Department In Charge of Magical Youth, which sounds like a fufilling job on paper until you realize sorting paperwork is about all Linus does. Everything changes for our sad bureaucrat hero when he’s assigned to monitor a titular seaside orphanage, the supernatural children within, and their charming adult guardian. While Linus’ best hopes are to find everything up to code, his expectations are succeeded when he ends up finding found family instead. Reading this novel feels like drinking a hot cup of tea on a rainy afternoon – your insides feel warmer and warmer as time goes on. By novel’s end, your cup is empty but your heart is full.
The Return of The King
The culmination of The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of The King is the ultimate high fantasy feel good ending. Spoiler alert: the Dark Lord is defeated, the orcs fall into a giant hole in the ground, and our headcanon gay hobbit heroes soar out of Mordor on the wings of eagles (whose help they really could have used on the way there). Good triumphs over evil, the rightful king returns, and everything in Middle Earth changes for the better. Fair warning: though this book ends happily, you’re certain to shed a few tears. When Bilbo and Frodo depart for the Undying Lands, it’s a one way trip. The ring-cursed hobbit is off to live a better life, but he sadly has to leave his Fellowship friends behind. According to Stephen King, endings are heartless. This ending is all heart, all happy, but somehow still manages to hurt. No matter how sweet it may be, endings always involve a goodbye.
Legends and Lattes
In Travis Baldtree’s Legends and Lattes, the queer fantasy couple doesn’t have to say goodbye to one another at the end (sorry Frodo and Sam). The novel is about an Orc named Viv who is sick of the adventurer’s grind, and decides to spend the next phase of her life pursing a successful small business rather than the standard orc retirement plan of dying on the battlefield. After converting an old stable into a coffeeshop, Viv is closer to her dream than ever before. With the help of an artistic succubus willing to give the place a makeover, she and her infernal girlfriend are sure to make a nest egg that’ll last a lifetime. This novel isn’t without drama, but when things go bad, characters pick up the pieces and rebuild – sometimes literally. And by novel’s ending, things have been built back better than ever – to crib a Biden campaign slogan.
Howl’s Moving Castle
Just like the Studio Ghibli movie that ignited audience thirst, Howl’s Moving Castle ends with an uplifting bang that many of us can only dream of (i.e. banging a hot wizard). When Sophie Hatter started her adventure, she didn’t expect to end up with the land’s most eligible magical bachelor in his perambulatory castle, but fate happened to do her a solid. Considering fate did her dirty when she was cursed by a witch to grow old before her time at novel’s beginning, poor Sophie deserved a little bit of cosmic reimbursement. While it’s no secret that Sophie and Howl get together at the end of this magical romance novel, the fun comes from watching it unfold – like a Rue Goldberg machine that kisses you on the mouth at the end. Hot.
The Goblin Emperor
Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor is the story of Maia, the new emperor of a sprawling elven kingdom. The half goblin royal didn’t think that he’d end up seated on the throne, but after the rest of the realm’s heirs perished in an heirship accident – I mean, airship* accident – Maia was the only choice left. Like Aang at the start of Avatar The Last Airbender, Maia has a lot to learn before he’s ready to save this kingdom from ruin. Honestly, he should be worried about saving his own skin from assassins before he turns his attention to other people’s problems. While Maia as faces a steep, often life threatening learning curve with regard to ruling, he rises to the royal occasion by novel’s and becomes the hero that Gotham – I mean – Ethuveraz deserves.
A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking
A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking by Ursula Vernon is exactly what’s written on the box – a non-sense guide on cheffing up magical confectionaries capable of protecting you and your loved ones. For teenage wizard Mona whose magic is capable of making bread rise, but not much else, this guidebook grants the perfect recipe for success. With the help of the sourdough starter that serves as her familiar, Mona learns to defend her city from a nefarious plot that begins with a mysterious bakery murder. You know how in goth lesbian necromancer fantasy Gideon The Ninth they’re always raising bone constructs and hurling them at one another? Mona learns to do the same thing, but with gingerbread men. We’ve all seen Shrek 2, we know what kind of weapon of massive destruction a gingerbread man can become when commanded.
The Princess Bride
A classic of feel good fantasy, The Princess Bride is perhaps the greatest “and they lived happily ever after” story ever told. I don’t need to tell you, you’ve seen the movie, right? If you have, read the book – it’s all the cinematic thrills with a little more substance. If you haven’t, break your lease on the rock you’ve been living under and do it. This is the romantic tale of a young princess saved by a dashing hero, who just so happens to be a lost lover from long ago. Along the way, the pair come across giants, Sicilians, eleven fingered men, rats of unusual sizes – The Princess Bride has got it all.
The Night Circus
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is the story of the greatest show on Earth (suck it, Barnum & Bailey). Named after a bigtop bonanza that only appears at night, the novel follows two of the Le Cirque des Rêves’ finest illusionists, who are locked in a magical battle with one another. Trained from a young age to be each others’ rival, these two magicians dazzle audiences with competing acts of magic as part of a lifelong “game”. While the pair have never met, they begin to slowly fall in love with another after witnessing each other’s work. That’s a problem, considering one of them is technically supposed to die at game’s end. Don’t worry, true to the magicians they are, they come up with a creative (and woefully romantic) workaround by story’s end.
The Once and Future Witches
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow is a history fantasy novel about a world where witchcraft has been nearly snuffed out by the patriarchal powers that be. After the three Eastwood sisters perform a spell by mistake, they become swept up in a growing suffragist movement in New Salem, Massachusetts. But winning the right to vote isn’t enough, the Eastwoods also want the right to pursue magic as well. The witch hunters of the world certainly won’t like that. A novel about women creating community outside of traditional power structures, The Once and Future Witches ends the way the witch trials of old should have: with women free to pursue the arcane as they please, left blissfully alone by any dongus who disagrees.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune
Set in a mythical kingdom modeled after ancient China, The Empress of Salt and Fortune tells the tale of the titular royal’s meteoric rise to power. Once a princess from a rebel kingdom, Empress In-yo has been forcibly married to the Emperor of Pines and Steel in order to solidify his rule. A stranger in a strange land, the In-yo has to use her political savvy (along with a little help from her handmaiden/lover Rabbit) in order to survive the treacherous imperial court. Survive and thrive, more like. Through quiet resistance and cunning political maneuvers, In-yo is eventually able to oust her tyrannical husband from power, live with her sapphic lover, and establish a lasting peace throughout the kingdom. Endings don’t get much happier than that.
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