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The 72 Most Popular Fantasy Novels of the Past Three Years
Fantasy literature is arguably the single oldest genre in all of storytelling. Contemporary fantasy has its roots, overtly or not, in world mythology and folklore, which in turn have their roots in oral traditions that extend back beyond recorded history. Old!
But today we’re interested in new fantasy. Gathered below are the most popular fantasy books of the past three years, as determined by reader shelvings and reviews. All books listed here were published in 2019 or later, in the U.S., and for fantasy series with multiple titles (Armentrout! Butcher! Maas!) we’ve listed the first series book published in that time period.
History nerds will find that all this makes for a fascinating reading list, with explorations and riffs on dozens of literary archetypes and world mythologies. Books are listed in order of overall popularity, most popular at the top.
Take a leisurely scroll over the book covers below for more details about each title, and add any likely suspects to your own Want to Read shelf.
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SlowRain wrote: "Hi, everyone! I'm a lapsed Fantasy reader. I used to read it in my teens, but went a different path in my 20s. Recently there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in Fantasy, with new author..."Hi I would recommend A Tale of Stars and Shadow by Lisa Cassidy. Absolutely one of my favourite high fantasies! Amazing characters, found family, politics. it has it all!
Read 15 of these and can't wait to add many more! Thanks for the heads up!
I have a lot of these books on my to read list.
9 already read, 15 already on my TBR, 12 just added to my TBR :)
SlowRain wrote: "Hi, everyone! I'm a lapsed Fantasy reader. I used to read it in my teens, but went a different path in my 20s. Recently there seems to have been a resurgence of interest in Fantasy, with new author..."Give Anthony Ryan, Giles Kristian and Django Wexler a try.
☘Misericordia☘ wrote: "B. wrote: "I'm also curious about why She Who Became the Sun is fantasy; perhaps the author plans to introduce more fantastical elements to later books and the publisher is calling it fantasy now? ..."A fantasy book is normally set in a fictional world, with fictional creatures, has magic, has it's own history and mithology, and so on and so forth.
Of course if you look into the genre itself you'll find all of the sub-genres some of which more realistic than others. But still they carry a lot of fantasy aspects (see for example Shadowhunters).
She who became the sun is an historic fiction, where the author added a magical aspect, which only appears in maybe a third of the total book lenght. It doesn't really apply to the standard Fantasy canons.
And mind that this is not a critic of the book which i loved, but its a fact, if you look at some of the books in this list, and then at SWBTS you'll see what i mean.
Still I wouldn't want this book to be any different that it actually is.
I think this list was made by someone who isn't really into fantasy, 'cause also a lot of the books mentioned are mythological retelling and generally most of these are not the most famous fantasy books of the last 3 years.
I would dare say that She who became the sun might be closer (in genre) to a retelling like the song of achilles, circe etc.. than to a fantasy (like priory for example).
I decided to read one book from this list that I hadn't read. I picked The Priory of the Orange Tree, not realising it was 800+ pages. I bought it despite its chonky-ness. I really enjoyed it. Excellent world building, interesting characters. I don't usually read high fantasy, but if this is what I can expect I'd happily read more. Thank you for the recommendation :)
kristi turner wrote: "The Night Circus by Erin Morganstein "Wonderful book, but it's older than the "last three years" bounds of the list.
I'm reading her "The Starless Sea" right now. In fact, I finished it last week and immediately start reading it again.
Recommended emphatically:
I'm sure I'll add some of these to this category whenever I get around to them:
Recommended:
Reasonably good:
Emphatically NOT rec'd: