The wider fantasy shelf: epic quests and fallen empires, grimdark cities, retold myths, quiet cosy stories and the odd talking animal. 685 books so far, across 241 series, plus 223 titles with no series listed. This is page 4 of the shelf.
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Rating coming soonIn an effort to bring peace to a troubled Narnia, Prince Caspian blows his magic horn to summon Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund to help him with the task. The four children return to a country that has changed almost beyond recognition since their last visit, and the book is the only one in the series in which human beings dominate Narnia and the talking animals and mythical creatures have been oppressed.
Rating coming soonThe seven demigods of the prophecy set out on their final journey to defeat Gaea, while Nico di Angelo, Reyna and Coach Hedge attempt to carry the Athena Parthenos to Camp Half-Blood before war breaks out between the Roman and Greek demigods. Nico has warned that passing through the House of Hades will stir the demigods' worst memories, and their ghosts will not stay quiet.
Rating coming soonFor centuries gleemen have told the tales of the Great Hunt of the Horn, and there have been as many Hunters as there are stories about them. Now the Horn of Valere itself has been found, the horn long thought to be only legend, the one that will raise the dead heroes of the ages. And it is stolen. The hunt that follows covers a continent and cannot be abandoned.
Rating coming soonThe fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sequence, which its own publisher describes as a trilogy of four, follows Arthur Dent after his return to a version of Earth. Its title is the message the dolphins left when they departed the planet shortly before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and the book treats that joke as the starting point for a much quieter story.
Rating coming soonA boy and a talking horse share a dangerous journey north towards Narnia in order to warn of an invading army. The story is set during the period covered by the last chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, while the four Pevensie children rule as kings and queens, and the travellers are two children and two talking horses escaping from Calormen.
Rating coming soonEragon and his dragon Saphira have saved the rebel state from the forces of King Galbatorix, the ruler of the Empire, and Eragon must now travel to Ellesmera, the land of the elves, for further training as a Dragon Rider in magic and swordsmanship. The journey opens his eyes to new places, and chaos and betrayal follow him until he no longer knows whom to trust.
Rating coming soonMare Barrow's world is divided by blood, into those with red blood and those with silver. Mare's family are Reds, conscripted into service for the Silver elite, whose supernatural abilities make them close to gods. When her best friend is conscripted into the army she gambles everything to win his freedom, and a twist of fate takes her to the royal palace, where she discovers she has a power of her own.
Rating coming soonRoland the gunslinger and his followers must contend with a sentient monorail that wants to kill itself and take them with it. While they try to return to the Path of the Beam that leads to the Dark Tower, Roland tells his companions the story of his first love, Susan Delgado, and of how he lost her.
Rating coming soonThe last days of Narnia arrive, and all hope appears lost as lies and treachery threaten to destroy everything. Battle lines are drawn and old friends are summoned back to Narnia, though none of them can predict how the story will end. The novel is set some two hundred Narnian years after The Silver Chair and ends the sequence with the world's conclusion.
Rating coming soonBranded a traitor, betrayed by a friend and hunted by the vampire clan, Darren Shan faces what looks like certain death. His initiation on Vampire Mountain is drawing to a bloody conclusion, and the question is whether he can reverse the odds and outwit a Vampire Prince, or whether thousands of years of vampire rule end in this book.
Rating coming soonRoland's group remains intact but scattered across different places and times. Susannah has been carried from the Dixie Pig to a chamber in Thunderclap; Jake and Father Callahan have entered a restaurant on Lexington and Sixty-first with weapons drawn, not knowing how many enemies are waiting; Roland and Eddie are in Maine in 1977, looking for where the walk-ins have been seen. They want to get back to each other.
Rating coming soonDarren Shan and Mr Crepsley set out on a dangerous trek to the heart of the vampire world, and they face more than the cold on the way, because the vampaneze have been there before them. A meeting with the Vampire Princes may restore Darren's human side or push him further towards the darkness, and his initiation into the clan is more deadly than he imagined.
Rating coming soonAfter travelling with Mr Crepsley, the vampire who made him into a half-vampire, Darren returns to the freak show known as the Cirque du Freak. There he continues to fight his need to drink human blood, and the book follows his attempt to live among the performers while managing what he has become.
Rating coming soonDarren Shan, now a Vampire Prince and a killer of vampaneze, is obliged to attend school. Homework turns out to be the least of his problems, because bodies are piling up, time is running out and the past is catching up with the hunters. The school is cover for an investigation into whether the vampaneze have taken territory in the town.
Rating coming soonA stranger comes to the veterinarian Tess Culver more dead than alive, a towering man in black riddled with bullets and losing blood fast. As she works to save him she does not know that the man calling himself Dante is not a man at all but one of the Breed, vampire warriors fighting a desperate war. In one charged moment she is pulled into his world, where bands of rogue vampires hunt at night.
Rating coming soonIn the hamlet of Wall, named for the high stone wall that runs along its eastern edge, the young Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to Victoria Forester. On a crisp October evening he makes her a promise, an impetuous vow that sends him through the only breach in the wall and into the land of Faerie beyond it, where the object of his quest is not what he expected.
Rating coming soonThe third book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sequence continues the travels of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and the rest of the crew through a universe that keeps producing absurd explanations for itself. The title refers to the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, which the earlier books had already established as a number rather than a solution to anything.
Rating coming soonOutnumbered, outsmarted and desperate, the hunters are on the run, pursued by the vampaneze, the police and an angry mob. With their enemies calling for blood, the vampires prepare for a battle they may not survive, and the question is whether this is the end for Darren and his allies. The chase is fought on three fronts at once, which is what makes the position hopeless.
Rating coming soonChicago, 1954. When his father Montrose goes missing, the twenty-two-year-old army veteran Atticus Turner sets off for New England with his uncle George, who publishes a travel guide for Black motorists, and his childhood friend Letitia. At the manor of a Mr Braithwhite they encounter the ordinary terrors of white America and malevolent spirits that seem to come straight out of the weird tales George reads.
Rating coming soonElena Gilbert's love, the vampire Stefan Salvatore, has been captured and imprisoned by demonic spirits who are causing havoc in the town of Fell's Church. To find him she entrusts her life to Stefan's brother Damon, a deadly vampire who wants Elena body and soul, and the two of them set out for the slums of the Dark Dimension, where Stefan is being held.
Rating coming soonDarren faces a final confrontation with his archenemy Steve Leopard, and he looks for a way to trick destiny and avoid the requirement that one of them must die and the other become the Lord of the Shadows, fated to destroy the world. The oath that binds them is the problem rather than the fight.
Rating coming soonTarquin Blackwood, heir to a powerful old family in New Orleans, has been haunted all his life by a spirit called Goblin. Made a vampire in his youth, he seeks out Lestat de Lioncourt for help in ridding himself of Goblin, who has become steadily more malevolent, and the account he gives of his family and his transformation is how Lestat comes to understand the spirit's reach.
Rating coming soonMr Vane owns a library that seems to be haunted by its former librarian, a figure who resembles him. Following him leads into a world where life, death and salvation are the material of the story, and where the characters have to work out what is required of them. It is among the darkest of George MacDonald's works and among the most serious.
Rating coming soonRoland Deschain, the last gunslinger, has been chasing his adversary, the man in black, for years. The novel follows his trek through a vast desert and beyond in pursuit of him, and the people he meets on the way, including a boy named Jake Chambers who travels with him for part of the journey. It fuses western fiction with fantasy, science fiction and horror.
Rating coming soonThe Dark One has grown in power with many of the seals on his prison broken, and the world is being changed by it. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, holds a throne at Caemlyn, where an unexpected visitor may change everything. In Salidar the White Tower in exile prepares an embassy to him, in Emond's Field Perrin prepares to march, and to the south lies Illian.
Rating coming soonRichard Cypher's father was murdered a month ago, in his own home, and Richard is still dealing with the loss when he rescues Kahlan Amnell from four mercenaries. With help from his grandfather the three of them flee to the midlands to stop the expansion of Darken Rahl's empire, and the journey involves secrets, deaths and the beginning of a legend.
Rating coming soonA dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to the eighth son of an eighth son who is being born at that very moment. The fact that the child is a daughter is discovered a little too late, and the consequence is a girl who has inherited a wizard's staff and a wizard's business in a world where that is not permitted.
Rating coming soonTwelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fitted into her life. She has skipped several grades and does not connect with the older pupils, and she is not comfortable at home either, because Sophie is a telepath who can read minds. Then she meets Fitz, who is a telepath too, and who tells her that the reason she has never felt at home is that she is not.
Rating coming soonAlice climbs through a large looking-glass into a world she can see beyond it, and finds that things are reversed there, including logic. Running keeps a person in the same place and walking away brings them closer. The book is built on chess rather than cards, and it opens indoors on a snowy November night exactly six months after the earlier book.
Rating coming soonThe city of Ember was built as a last refuge for the human race, and two hundred years later the great lamps that light it are beginning to flicker. When Lina finds part of an ancient message she becomes sure it holds a secret that will save the city, and she and her friend Doon have to work out the clues before the lights go out for good.
Rating coming soonAfter angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as an ordinary teenage boy, and the four-thousand-year-old deity has to learn to survive in the modern world until he can find a way to regain Zeus's favour. Apollo has enemies, and the only place he can think of to go is Camp Half-Blood.
Rating coming soonMagnus Chase has lived alone on the streets of Boston since the night two years ago when his mother told him to run, surviving by his wits and staying ahead of the police and truant officers. Then his uncle Randolph begins looking for him, and Magnus falls into his clutches. Randolph talks about Norse history and about a weapon lost for thousands of years, and then a fire giant attacks the city.
Rating coming soonThe life of a ten-year-old boy in rural Virginia expands when he becomes friends with a newcomer who then dies trying to reach their hideaway, Terabithia, during a storm. Jesse Aarons is an artistic boy from a poor family, and Leslie Burke is a tomboy from a wealthy one, and together they create a kingdom for themselves that only the two of them enter.
Rating coming soonAt 11.44 on the morning of 21 October, the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is separated from the outside world by an invisible, semipermeable barrier of unknown origin that appears out of the sky without warning. The novel follows the town's inhabitants over the eight days that follow, as the community becomes a domed city.
Rating coming soonIn the medieval kingdom of Goredd, women are expected to be ladies, men are their protectors and dragons may be whoever they choose. Tess is none of those things: she speaks out of turn, has wild ideas and cannot keep away from trouble. When she goes too far her family decides the only path for her is a nunnery, and on the day she is to go she cuts her hair, puts on her boots and leaves instead.
Rating coming soonLyra and Will are in severe danger in the final part of the trilogy. With help from Iorek Byrnison the armoured bear and two tiny Gallivespian spies, they have to journey to a dank, grey-lit world where no living soul has ever gone, while Dr Mary Malone builds the Amber Spyglass and Lord Asriel fights his rebellion with a troop of angels.
Rating coming soonHarry Dresden is Chicago's only professional wizard, and for his first case he is called in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with the blackest of magic. At first the less-than-solvent Harry sees only the fee, but where there is black magic there is a black mage, and that mage now knows Harry's name.
Rating coming soonIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was an interruption. For Brutha the novice, who is the Chosen One, that means wanting peace and justice and brotherly love while also wanting the Inquisition to stop torturing him. The novel tells the origin of the god Om and his relations with Brutha, and it satirises philosophy, religious institutions and the role of religion in political life.
Rating coming soonGranny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick have fairy godmotherhood thrust upon them. King Verence of Lancre is murdered by his cousin Duke Felmet after the Duke's ambitious wife persuades him to do it, and the King's crown and child are given by an escaping servant to the three witches, who have to decide what to do with both.
Rating coming soonSusannah, now pregnant, has another personality taking control of her. The demon-mother Mia uses her and Black Thirteen to travel to New York City in 1999, and Jake, Oy and Pere Callahan have to rescue her while Eddie and Roland travel to Maine in 1977. A vacant lot in New York becomes the object that has to be saved.
Rating coming soonThe second novel featuring the private detective Dirk Gently is a humorous fantasy detective story. Its plot involves a Norse deity in difficulties, an advertising agency, a contract that cannot be broken and a client who is found dead in a locked room, and the investigation proceeds by the detective's own methods rather than by deduction in the ordinary sense.
Rating coming soonTaking up where Charlie and the Chocolate Factory leaves off, Charlie, his family and Mr Wonka find themselves launched into space in the great glass elevator. Their journey takes them out of the factory and into orbit, where they encounter situations that require the same kind of improvisation the earlier book had confined to the building, and the sequel's scale is deliberately larger.
Rating coming soonKell is one of the last travellers, magicians with the rare ability to move between parallel universes connected by one city. There is Grey London, without magic and with one mad king; Red London, where magic is revered and where Kell was raised alongside the heir to the empire; and White London, where people fight for control of magic and the magic fights back. There was also a Black London, once.
Rating coming soonTen years after girls were first permitted to train for knighthood in Tortall, no girl has come forward. Keladry of Mindelan is the first, and the training master is openly against her, so she is placed on probation and told she will be sent home unless she proves herself in a year of hazing, drills and study.
Rating coming soonOn the Discworld the eighth son of an eighth son is always a wizard, so when such a wizard has a son of his own the child is a sourcerer: a source of magic rather than a user of it. This one is a small boy, and the wizard Rincewind, lately fallen off the edge of the world, is one of the few people who could stop him.
Rating coming soonMoist von Lipwig is a fraudster who is hanged for his crimes and then offered a choice: take charge of the city's derelict post office or be hanged properly. He accepts, and finds a building full of undelivered letters, a staff of two, a rival in the clacks company, and a golem watching his every step.
Rating coming soonOn Hogswatchnight, the Discworld's version of Christmas Eve, the Hogfather goes missing, and Death takes his place in the sleigh so that the sun will rise and the year will turn. His granddaughter Susan, a governess with a firm grasp of what is real, sets out to find who arranged the disappearance and why.
Rating coming soonArtemis Fowl II is twelve years old, a criminal mastermind, and the heir to a family fortune he intends to rebuild by kidnapping a fairy. He gets more than he bargained for when the fairy police send a reconnaissance officer to negotiate and then a full retrieval team into the tunnels beneath his house.
Fantasy here is the whole shelf, not one flavour of it. Epic and high fantasy sit next to grimdark, historical fantasy, myth and fairy-tale retellings, portal stories, urban fantasy and cosy books where the stakes are a shop, a tea menu and a found family.
A book lands here when the fantastic is the point of the story rather than the wallpaper. Romance can be part of it, and the books tagged romantasy sit on this shelf as well as on romance, but a book does not need a love story to qualify.
Tags are cross-cutting markers, not genres. They have their own landing pages.
The love story is the plot: fantasy courts, dragon academies and modern cities all count.
676 booksPrimary genreGeneration ships, dying empires, robots with opinions and one very unlucky astronaut.
536 booksPrimary genreHaunted houses, old vampires, cosmic dread and the odd very bad week.
381 booksPrimary genreDetectives, spies, locked rooms and the people who lie to the police.
599 booksPrimary genreCathedrals, courts, trenches and revolutions, all of it set in a past that is doing the work.
580 booksPrimary genreNovels where the prose carries the book: families, cities, memory and the modern self.
575 booksPrimary genreShipwrecks, expeditions, chases, frontiers and people who should have turned back.
324 books