Reading lists · August 9, 2026

The Best Fantasy Books to Read in 2026

Epic fantasy is surging as romantasy readers branch out. Here are the best fantasy books to read in 2026, sorted by how much commitment they ask for.

Fantasy is in an unusual place in 2026. The romantasy boom brought in an enormous new audience, and a good portion of that audience is now looking for the heavier stuff — epic fantasy and science fiction are picking up readers who arrived through dragons and romance.

Standalones, if you want to be done in a week

• Piranesi — Susanna Clarke. Short, strange, unforgettable.
• The Priory of the Orange Tree — long, but it ends.
• Legends & Lattes — the cosy fantasy that started the subgenre.
• The Spear Cuts Through Water — formally daring, gorgeous.
• Uprooted — Naomi Novik. Folkloric and complete.

Trilogies you can actually finish

• The Daevabad Trilogy — S. A. Chakraborty. Djinn politics, superb world.
• The Broken Earth — N. K. Jemisin. Three consecutive Hugo wins, deservedly.
• The Folk of the Air — Holly Black. Sharp, mean, finished.
• The Poppy War — R. F. Kuang. Brutal; check content warnings.
• The Last Binding — Freya Marske. Edwardian magic and manners.

The big commitments

• The Stormlight Archive — Sanderson. The current gold standard for epic scale.
• Red Rising — starts as Hunger Games, becomes something far angrier.
• The Will of the Many — the most-recommended new epic of the past two years.
• Realm of the Elderlings — Robin Hobb. Sixteen books; nothing else does character like it.
• The Wheel of Time — the genre's monument, with a slow middle nobody denies.

If you came from romantasy

Start with Red Rising or The Will of the Many. Both keep the propulsive pacing and the high emotional stakes, with the romance dialled down rather than removed.

A word of warning: epic fantasy series are where reading tracking stops being optional. Book four of sixteen, six months since book three, and no memory of who anyone is — a record of where you stopped and what you thought is the difference between finishing a series and abandoning it.

Shelfies is a modern, mobile-first reading tracker with AI recommendations, progress tracking, streaks, and quotes — built to replace Goodreads and StoryGraph for readers who want a faster, prettier experience.