Fantasy offers authors the opportunity to illustrate the best, worst and, most significantly, somewhere-in-between of human beings by setting them within a context that allows the reader to experience all the foibles of humanity through a more comfortable lens.

This list is intended to provide a forum for the most character-centric and thought-provoking fantasy novels. Kudos for world-building and other skills reside elsewhere.

However, if you've read a fantasy novel that made you consider who you are as a person--one that called into question or reverberated with the choices you've made in your life--in other words, a book that seemed to be about you despite its fantastic setting, please add it here.