Overview
Every fantasy reader has that one series that changed everything. The one that kept them up past midnight, made them genuinely grieve fictional characters, and left a world so vivid it felt more real than the actual one outside the window. Finding the best fantasy book series of all time is not just about picking the most popular titles. It is about finding the series that delivers on the full promise of the genre: worlds you can lose yourself in, characters worth caring about, and stories with genuine stakes and emotional depth.
This list covers 15 series that do exactly that, spanning epic fantasy, high fantasy, urban fantasy, and sci-fi fantasy, with honest descriptions of what makes each one worth your time. Whether you are a lifelong fantasy reader looking for your next obsession or a first-time reader who wants to know where to begin, professional book publishers and the broader literary world agree that these series represent the very best the genre has to offer.
What Makes a Fantasy Book Series One of the Best?
Before we get into the list, it helps to understand what separates a great fantasy series from a merely enjoyable one.
The best fantasy series share a few qualities regardless of subgenre. The world feels internally consistent and genuinely inhabitable. The magic system, if there is one, follows rules that the story respects. The characters grow and change in ways that feel earned rather than convenient. The stakes are real, meaning not every character is safe and not every problem has an easy solution.
The best epic fantasy book series of all time also tend to be the ones that use their fantastical elements to say something true about the real world. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is beautiful, but it is also a meditation on industrialization, war, and the corrupting nature of power. Le Guin’s Earthsea is a story about wizards, but it is really about identity, responsibility, and the limits of knowledge. The fantasy scaffolding carries real human weight.
With that in mind, here are 15 series that earn their place on any definitive list.
1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Goodreads Rating: 4.52 / 5
Recommended Age: 13 and up (younger readers with adult guidance)
Number of Books: 3 main volumes (plus The Hobbit as prequel and The Silmarillion for deeper lore)
No list of the best fantasy book series of all time begins anywhere else. Tolkien essentially created the template for modern epic fantasy with The Lord of the Rings, and almost every series on this list owes something to what he built.
The story follows Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from the peaceful Shire, who inherits a ring of extraordinary and terrible power. The quest to destroy it before it falls into the hands of the Dark Lord Sauron takes Frodo and his companions across a world of extraordinary detail, invented languages, deep history, and genuine mythological weight.
What sets Tolkien apart even seventy years later is the completeness of Middle-earth. This is not a world built around a plot. It is a world that existed in Tolkien’s imagination for decades before the story found its way through it. The appendices, the genealogies, the languages, the histories all point to something that feels genuinely ancient and real.
If you have only seen the films, reading the books is a different and richer experience. The prose has a pace and texture that cinema cannot fully replicate.
Best for: Readers who want foundational epic fantasy and a world of unmatched depth.
2. The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
Goodreads Rating: 4.65 / 5
Recommended Age: 16 and up
Number of Books: 5 published (10 planned)
If Tolkien is the father of modern epic fantasy, Brandon Sanderson is its current reigning architect. The Stormlight Archive is his most ambitious project: a ten-book series set on the storm-wracked world of Roshar, where humanity has been in decline for millennia and a long-forgotten war is about to restart.
Sanderson is famous for his rigorously designed magic systems, and The Stormlight Archive features some of his most inventive work. Stormlight itself, a supernatural energy harvested from the planet’s violent storms, powers the abilities of the Radiants, an ancient order of warriors that the story slowly reveals and rebuilds.
The characters, particularly Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar, each carry deep personal histories and genuine psychological complexity. The books are long, with individual volumes running to a thousand pages or more, but they earn their length. Each one ends with a climax that redefines everything that came before.
Best for: Readers who love intricate world-building, hard magic systems, and characters with real emotional depth.
3. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
Goodreads Rating: 4.44 / 5
Recommended Age: 18 and up (adult content, graphic violence)
Number of Books: 5 published (7 planned)
George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire changed what readers and writers thought fantasy was allowed to do. Beginning with A Game of Thrones, the series introduced a political, morally complex, and ruthlessly unpredictable approach to epic fantasy that influenced everything that followed it.
The story is set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, where multiple factions compete for control of the Iron Throne while an existential threat grows in the frozen north. Martin’s willingness to kill major characters, subvert heroic conventions, and resist easy resolutions created a series that felt genuinely dangerous to read in the best possible way.
The series currently consists of five published novels with two more planned. The television adaptation, Game of Thrones, brought it to global attention, but the books offer a depth and complexity that the show never fully captured, particularly in its later seasons.
Best for: Readers who want morally complex political fantasy with real consequences and unpredictable plotting.
4. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
Goodreads Rating: 4.18 / 5
Recommended Age: 14 and up
Number of Books: 14 main novels plus a prequel novella
The Wheel of Time is one of the defining works of epic fantasy and one of the most ambitious series ever attempted. Robert Jordan’s fourteen-volume saga, completed after his death by Brandon Sanderson working from Jordan’s notes, follows a group of young people from a rural village who discover they are destined to play roles in the rebirth of a legendary hero.
The scope of the series is almost without parallel. Dozens of major characters, hundreds of secondary ones, multiple continents, and a magic system divided along gender lines that has shaped the history of Jordan’s world for thousands of years. Jordan’s world-building is extraordinarily detailed and rewarding for readers willing to invest in it.
The series does have pacing challenges, particularly in the middle volumes, but the final three books, completed by Sanderson, deliver one of the most satisfying conclusions in the history of epic fantasy.
Best for: Readers who want the most complete and detailed epic fantasy world ever built, and who are prepared for the full commitment that scale requires.
5. The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin
Goodreads Rating: 4.14 / 5
Recommended Age: 12 and up (accessible to younger readers; rewards adult re-reading)
Number of Books: 6 novels plus short story collections
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea is the series most likely to be overlooked by readers who associate the best fantasy book series with sprawling epics and political intrigue. It is quieter, more philosophical, and more interested in questions of identity and responsibility than in battles and kingdoms.
Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea, the series follows Ged, a young man from the island of Gont who becomes one of the most powerful wizards in an archipelago world built on the magic of true names. The prose is precise, the world-building is elegant, and the moral questions the series raises are genuinely profound.
Le Guin’s work stands apart from most fantasy in its depth of philosophical engagement and its commitment to diverse characters at a time when the genre was far less interested in such things. The series grew and deepened over decades, with the later books exploring gender and identity in ways that feel entirely contemporary.
Best for: Readers who want literary depth, philosophical substance, and elegant prose alongside their fantasy world-building.
6. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Goodreads Rating: 4.26 / 5
Recommended Age: 8 and up (ideal family reading; rich for adult readers too)
Number of Books: 7
C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia is one of the most beloved fantasy series in the history of the genre and one that continues to find new readers of every age decades after its completion.
The seven-book series begins with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which four children discover a magical world hidden inside a wardrobe. Narnia is ruled by the White Witch, imprisoned in eternal winter, and awaiting the return of Aslan, the great lion whose resurrection brings spring and hope.
The series works on multiple levels simultaneously. As children’s fantasy it offers extraordinary adventure, vivid characters, and a world of genuine wonder. As allegorical fiction it contains Lewis’s Christian theology presented with enough subtlety and imagination that many readers engage with it purely as story without engaging with the allegory at all.
Best for: Readers of all ages, particularly as an introduction to fantasy for younger readers and as a rich, layered read for adults returning to it.
7. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
Goodreads Rating: 4.47 / 5 (series average)
Recommended Age: 8 and up (early books); 12 and up (later books grow darker)
Number of Books: 7 main novels plus companion volumes
The Harry Potter series is arguably the most commercially successful fantasy series ever published and certainly one of the most widely read. Beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the seven-book series follows an orphan boy who discovers on his eleventh birthday that he is a wizard and has been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
What made Harry Potter connect with readers across generations is Rowling’s ability to build a world that feels simultaneously magical and deeply familiar. Hogwarts feels like a school anyone might have attended. The friendships, the rivalries, the teachers, the institutional absurdities all resonate with lived experience even as the setting is fantastical.
The series grows darker and more complex with each volume, moving from the relatively light adventure of the early books to the genuine tragedy and moral seriousness of the final entries. It remains one of the clearest examples of how fantasy can reach readers who would not normally identify as fantasy readers.
Best for: All ages, especially as an entry point to the genre and as a series that rewards rereading at different life stages.
8. The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
Goodreads Rating: 4.45 / 5
Recommended Age: 16 and up
Number of Books: 2 published (3 planned; third volume still in progress)
Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle consists of two published novels, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, with a third and concluding volume still in progress. Despite being unfinished, the series regularly appears on lists of the best fantasy book series of all time because the quality of the first two books is genuinely exceptional.
The story follows Kvothe, a legendary figure whose name appears throughout the world’s folklore, as he tells his own life story over three days to a chronicler. The frame narrative creates an elegiac distance between the legend and the man, and the contrast between who Kvothe is said to be and who he reveals himself to be is one of the most interesting structural choices in modern fantasy.
Rothfuss’s prose is the finest of any writer on this list. His sentences are literary in a way that the genre does not always reward, and his magic system, which involves understanding and manipulating the underlying principles of reality, is both intellectually elegant and emotionally resonant.
Best for: Readers who prioritize prose quality and character depth and who can tolerate the uncertainty of an unfinished series.
9. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
Goodreads Rating: 4.46 / 5
Recommended Age: 14 and up
Number of Books: 3 in the original trilogy; 7 across the full era series
Brandon Sanderson appears on this list twice because Mistb1orn deserves its own entry separate from The Stormlight Archive. Beginning with The Final Empire, the original Mistborn trilogy is a tighter, more contained fantasy experience than Sanderson’s longer work, and arguably the best entry point into his writing.
The premise is genuinely original: the prophesied hero failed. The Dark Lord won. The story begins a thousand years into the reign of the Lord Ruler, a tyrannical immortal whose empire keeps a slave class under literal ash that falls from the sky. The magic system, which involves swallowing and burning metals to achieve different supernatural abilities, is one of the most inventive and rigorously designed in the genre.
The original trilogy has since been expanded into a series spanning multiple eras of the same world, making Mistborn one of the best sci-fi fantasy book series frameworks currently being written.
Best for: Readers new to Sanderson, readers who want a complete story in three books, and anyone who appreciates original magic systems.
10. The Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett
Goodreads Rating: 4.32 / 5 (series average)
Recommended Age: 12 and up (some books better suited to older teens and adults)
Number of Books: 41 novels
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is unique among the best epic fantasy book series of all time because its primary mode is comedy. Set on a flat world that travels through space on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle, the series uses fantasy conventions to satirize politics, religion, culture, war, and human nature with extraordinary wit and genuine insight.
Spanning 41 novels over more than thirty years, Discworld is best read not in publication order but by following one of the several character groupings that Pratchett developed over the series. The City Watch books, the Death books, and the Witches books each represent distinct tonal approaches within the same world.
Beneath the comedy, Discworld contains some of the most genuinely humane writing in fantasy fiction. Books like Small Gods, Night Watch, and The Fifth Elephant deal with serious themes of belief, justice, and identity with more honesty and depth than many literary novels.
Best for: Readers who want wit alongside their fantasy, and anyone who thinks fantasy must be earnest to be meaningful.
11. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie
Goodreads Rating: 4.32 / 5
Recommended Age: 18 and up (graphic violence, mature themes)
Number of Books: 3 in original trilogy; 6 total including standalones and second trilogy
Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy, beginning with The Blade Itself, is the defining work of grimdark fantasy, a subgenre that takes the moral ambiguity of works like A Song of Ice and Fire and applies it with even more unflinching commitment.
The series follows a cast of deeply compromised characters, including a crippled torturer, a barbarian warrior, a cowardly nobleman, and a brilliant but sinister wizard, through a world where heroism is consistently deconstructed, and the difference between heroes and villains is often just a matter of perspective and timing.
Abercrombie’s plotting is meticulous, and his reversals are genuinely shocking. The trilogy has since been expanded with several standalone novels and a second trilogy set in the same world, all of which reward readers who have invested in the original three books.
Best for: Readers who prefer morally complex, realistic fantasy without heroic conventions and with dark but intelligent plotting.
12. The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
Goodreads Rating: 4.26 / 5
Recommended Age: 16 and up (mature themes, oppression, violence)
Number of Books: 3
N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is the most decorated fantasy series of the modern era. Beginning with The Fifth Season, the three volumes each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, making Jemisin the first author to win the award in three consecutive years and the first to do so for a consecutive trilogy.
The series is set on a continent called the Stillness, a world of constant geological catastrophe where periodic global apocalypses called Fifth Seasons have shaped every aspect of culture, survival, and oppression. The narrative centers on orogenes, people with the ability to control seismic activity, who are both desperately needed and brutally oppressed by the society that depends on them.
The storytelling is formally innovative, with one timeline told in second person present tense in a way that creates an unusual and deeply effective intimacy. The trilogy is genuinely unlike anything else in the genre and rewards careful, attentive reading.
Best for: Readers who want formally adventurous, socially engaged, literary-quality fantasy.
13. The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
Goodreads Rating: 4.18 / 5
Recommended Age: 16 and up (emotional maturity required; not graphic but deeply intense)
Number of Books: 3 in the original trilogy; 16 total across all connected series
Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy, beginning with Assassin’s Apprentice, is one of the most emotionally devastating series in the genre and one of the most beloved among readers who have discovered it.
The story follows FitzChivalry Farseer, the illegitimate son of a prince who is raised in the castle but never acknowledged, trained as an assassin, and possessed of a forbidden magical ability. The series is primarily a character study, and what Hobb does with Fitz over the trilogy and its many sequels is extraordinary: she allows her protagonist to be flawed, to make genuinely bad decisions, to suffer real consequences, and to grow in ways that feel organically right rather than narratively convenient.
The world of the Six Duchies is beautifully realized, the magic is inventive, and the secondary characters are as fully drawn as the protagonist. Hobb has returned to this world multiple times across subsequent trilogies, creating one of the richest connected fantasy worlds in the genre.
Best for: Readers who prioritize character above all else and who are not afraid of emotionally demanding fiction.
14. Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Goodreads Rating: 3.85 / 5 (polarizing; dedicated readers rate it much higher)
Recommended Age: 18 and up (extremely complex; graphic violence; emotionally heavy)
Number of Books: 10 main novels plus numerous companion volumes by Ian Esslemont
Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen is the most demanding and arguably the most ambitious fantasy series ever written. The ten-volume series spans multiple continents, hundreds of characters, and thousands of years of history across multiple narrative threads that only gradually reveal their connections to each other.
Beginning with Gardens of the Moon, the series drops readers into an ongoing war between a vast empire and the cities and peoples it is conquering, with no exposition and no hand-holding. The learning curve is genuinely steep. Many readers abandon the series in the first hundred pages and return later to discover one of the most profound and rewarding reading experiences in the genre.
Erikson’s philosophical ambitions are greater than almost any other fantasy author’s. The series engages seriously with questions of power, compassion, mortality, and what it means to be human in ways that accumulate across thousands of pages into something genuinely moving.
Best for: Experienced fantasy readers willing to commit to a serious and demanding series that pays back the investment fully.
15. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Goodreads Rating: 4.25 / 5
Recommended Age: 12 and up (accessible to confident younger readers; fully rewarding for adults)
Number of Books: 3 in original trilogy; 2 published in the companion Book of Dust trilogy
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, beginning with The Golden Compass (published as Northern Lights in the UK), is one of the greatest fantasy series ever written for any audience. The trilogy follows Lyra Belacqua, a girl raised in an Oxford that exists in a parallel universe where every person’s soul takes the form of an animal companion called a daemon.
The series operates as a direct response to Lewis’s Narnia, engaging with themes of religion, authority, free will, and consciousness from a secular humanist perspective. Pullman’s world-building is extraordinary, his prose is beautiful, and Lyra is one of the most compelling protagonists in the genre’s history.
The trilogy was expanded with La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth, creating the Book of Dust trilogy that explores Lyra’s story from different angles. Both original trilogy and sequel series are worth reading in full.
Best for: Readers who want philosophical depth, outstanding prose, and a story that takes its readers seriously regardless of age.
Quick Reference: All 15 Series at a Glance
| Series | Author | Rating | Age | Books |
| The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R. Tolkien | ⭐ 4.52 | 13+ | 3 |
| The Stormlight Archive | Brandon Sanderson | ⭐ 4.65 | 16+ | 5 (10 planned) |
| A Song of Ice and Fire | George R.R. Martin | ⭐ 4.44 | 18+ | 5 (7 planned) |
| The Wheel of Time | Robert Jordan | ⭐ 4.18 | 14+ | 14 |
| The Earthsea Cycle | Ursula K. Le Guin | ⭐ 4.14 | 12+ | 6 |
| The Chronicles of Narnia | C.S. Lewis | ⭐ 4.26 | 8+ | 7 |
| Harry Potter | J.K. Rowling | ⭐ 4.47 | 8+ (later books 12+) | 7 |
| Kingkiller Chronicle | Patrick Rothfuss | ⭐ 4.45 | 16+ | 2 (3 planned) |
| Mistborn | Brandon Sanderson | ⭐ 4.46 | 14+ | 3 (original trilogy) |
| Discworld | Terry Pratchett | ⭐ 4.32 | 12+ | 41 |
| The First Law | Joe Abercrombie | ⭐ 4.32 | 18+ | 3 (+ standalones) |
| The Broken Earth | N.K. Jemisin | ⭐ 4.26 | 16+ | 3 |
| The Farseer Trilogy | Robin Hobb | ⭐ 4.18 | 16+ | 3 (+ connected series) |
| Malazan Book of the Fallen | Steven Erikson | ⭐ 3.85 | 18+ | 10 |
| His Dark Materials | Philip Pullman | ⭐ 4.25 | 12+ | 3 (+ Book of Dust) |
Key Takeaways
- The best fantasy book series of all time span decades of publishing history and multiple subgenres, from classic epic fantasy to grimdark, literary fantasy, and comedy.
- Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings remains the foundational text of the genre, but contemporary authors like Sanderson, Jemisin, and Hobb have expanded what fantasy can do.
- The right series depends on what you want from your reading: world-building, character depth, moral complexity, prose quality, or humor.
- Age suitability varies significantly across the list. Harry Potter and Narnia welcome readers from age 8, while A Song of Ice and Fire, The First Law, and Malazan are firmly for adult readers.
- Reading broadly within the genre — including the Benefits of Reading Books research shows — produces measurable cognitive and emotional benefits that make the investment worthwhile at every level.
Ready to Write Your Own Fantasy Story?
Reading the best fantasy series of all time is one kind of adventure. Writing your own is another. If this list has inspired you to create your own world and tell your own story, NY Book Publishers offers comprehensive book Publishing Services that support authors from manuscript development through to professional publication. Your story could be the next one on a list like this.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best fantasy book series of all time?
There is no single definitive answer because the best series depends on what you want from fantasy. However, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien is the most consistently cited foundational series, while The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, and The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan are among the most acclaimed contemporary epic fantasy series. For literary quality, His Dark Materials and The Earthsea Cycle regularly appear on top lists.
What are the most popular fantasy book series to read?
By sales and readership, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling and The Lord of the Rings are the most widely read fantasy series in history. A Song of Ice and Fire, The Wheel of Time, and Mistborn are consistently among the most popular with dedicated fantasy readers. On Reddit’s fantasy communities and Goodreads, Brandon Sanderson’s works regularly top reader polls.
What is the best fantasy book series for beginners?
Harry Potter is the most accessible entry point for new fantasy readers of all ages, suitable from age 8 upward. The Chronicles of Narnia works equally well for readers of any age who prefer a shorter commitment. For adult beginners who want epic fantasy, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson offers a complete story in three books with an inventive magic system and strong character work without requiring the huge commitment of a fourteen-volume series.
Which fantasy book series has the best world-building?
The Lord of the Rings and The Wheel of Time are consistently cited for exceptional world-building depth. Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere is praised for its rigorous, detailed approach to magic systems and world consistency. Discworld by Terry Pratchett offers 41 novels worth of extraordinarily detailed satirical world-building. The Stormlight Archive earns the highest average rating on this list at 4.65 and is particularly celebrated for its world-building innovation.
What is the difference between epic fantasy and high fantasy?
High fantasy is set entirely in a secondary world rather than the real world, with no connection to our reality. Epic fantasy refers to high fantasy that operates on a large scale: grand quests, world-threatening stakes, multiple point-of-view characters, and extensive world-building. Most epic fantasy is also high fantasy, but not all high fantasy is epic in scope. The Lord of the Rings is both. The Earthsea Cycle is high fantasy but not epic in the scale-and-scope sense.
Are there any fantasy book series similar to Harry Potter?
For readers who love Harry Potter’s school setting and coming-of-age structure, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss features extensive sequences set at a magical university, recommended for readers 16 and up. Garth Nix’s Sabriel series shares the same accessible tone and strong character work and is appropriate from age 12. For adult readers ready to move beyond the young adult range, The Magicians by Lev Grossman offers a darker, more complex take on magical education.
What is the longest fantasy book series?
Discworld by Terry Pratchett spans 41 novels, making it the longest completed major fantasy series by number of volumes. The Wheel of Time at 14 volumes is the longest in terms of total word count among completed epic fantasy series, estimated at approximately four million words. Robin Hobb’s connected Realm of the Elderlings series, which begins with the Farseer trilogy, spans 16 novels in total.
Which fantasy book series is best for adults?
A Song of Ice and Fire (18+), The First Law (18+), The Broken Earth trilogy (16+), and Malazan Book of the Fallen (18+) are all specifically suited to adult readers who want complex, morally serious fantasy. His Dark Materials works brilliantly for adults despite its young protagonist and is accessible from age 12 with full reward for adult readers. The Farseer Trilogy (16+) by Robin Hobb is one of the most emotionally mature and character-driven series in the genre.
