5 Fantasy Books With Villains You’ll End Up Rooting For
Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a New York–based journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, where she is an Associate Editor, and The U.S. Sun, where she previously served as a Senior Consumer Reporter.
She specializes in network television coverage, delivering sharp, thoughtful analysis of long-running procedural hits and ambitious new dramas across broadcast TV. At Collider, Amanda explores character arcs, storytelling trends, and the cultural impact of network series that keep audiences tuning in week after week.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is bilingual and holds a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies from the University of New Haven.
In fantasy, villains are beloved characters. All readers need is an evil sorcerer, a cruel king, or a tyrant who only wants to gain more power, and they have plenty of good reasons to hate any of them. Still, some of the most interesting villains in fantasy literature make their readers’ relationships with them complicated. This can happen when villains commit awful deeds but justify their actions; they may be cruel, but they have also suffered cruelty at the hands of others; or, in some cases, they are such unique personalities that readers feel sorry for them when they fail.
The five fantasy novels discussed below show that a villain can be cool even if they're completely unlikable. They need to give readers a reason to understand them. Before long, that understanding can turn into sympathy, sympathy can turn into investment, and suddenly you’re cheering for someone you probably shouldn’t.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
The Poppy War is the debut novel by author R.F. Kuang. It follows the life of subdued Fang Runin, also known as Rin. After hardships as a war orphan, she wants to fight the arranged marriage set for her, and her only escape leads to the dangerous Keju exam, a difficult national test that grants her admission to Sinegard, an elite military school in her nation. The book starts as a run-of-the-mill fantasy novel, but gradually grows darker and more twisted as Rin learns about her shaman powers tied to the Gods. Once the war breaks out, her academics become purely practical, and she has to face the reality of war.
Rin is the type of character who proves that the term villain does not fully encompass her complexity. Her actions turn out to be more reckless and more extreme, and her rage ultimately pushes Rin to commit a horrifying crime. Nevertheless, throughout the story, Kuang helps readers understand why Rin has become such a person. She has been the victim of severe violence and discrimination, had to face manipulations by those in power, and had to endure all these terrible events of war. None of that excuses what she does, but it makes her choices understandable. Her rage becomes a source of power, and Kuang makes it increasingly difficult for readers to separate Rin’s violence from the world that taught her violence was the only language anyone respected.
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
In Vicious by V.E. Schwab, Victor Vale and Eli Cardale are college roommates who become fascinated by the possibility of creating superhuman abilities. Their research reveals that near-death experiences can transform ordinary people into ExtraOrdinaries, and the two decide to test the theory on themselves. It works, but the experiment destroys their friendship. Ten years later, Victor has spent years in prison, while Eli has reinvented himself as a celebrated hero with a very different mission: eliminating other ExtraOrdinaries. Victor escapes prison with his new friend Mitch and sets out to find Eli, turning what began as a scientific experiment into a deeply personal revenge story.
Victor is ruthless, calculating, and perfectly comfortable hurting people if he believes there’s a reason for it. He also has absolutely no interest in pretending otherwise. Eli, meanwhile, has convinced himself that killing other ExtraOrdinaries makes him a hero, giving Vicious a deliciously warped take on the superhero story. Victor’s desire for revenge isn’t noble, but Schwab makes his perspective increasingly persuasive because Eli’s supposed heroism is built on hypocrisy. Victor also develops genuine attachments, particularly to Sydney, that complicate the idea that he’s simply a cold-blooded monster.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch features Locke Lamora, a thief, a con artist, and an exceptionally talented liar. He also happens to be the leader of the Gentleman Bastards, a gang that specializes in elaborate schemes designed to separate wealthy nobles from their money. Their home is Camorr, a sprawling fantasy city inspired by medieval Venice, where the criminal underworld runs by its own rules. Locke and his crew technically maintain a respectable reputation as petty thieves while secretly pulling off enormous cons. That arrangement works beautifully until a mysterious criminal known as the Gray King begins dismantling Camorr’s criminal hierarchy.
Calling Locke a villain isn’t quite accurate, but calling him a hero would be even harder to defend; he lies constantly, steals for a living, manipulates people for money, and has no problem bending or breaking rules when it benefits him. Yet Lynch gives him the qualities that make a morally questionable character impossible to resist. When the Gray King destroys Locke’s carefully constructed world and murders members of his crew, Locke’s desire for revenge becomes nonobjective. Locke is the sort of character who can walk into a disaster of his own making, somehow make everything worse, and still have you desperately hoping he gets out alive.
The Young Elites by Marie Lu
A decade after a horrible blood fever ravaged the kingdom, many of the survivors bear the marks of their ordeal in The Young Elites by Marie Lu. The malfettos are treated like dangerous outcasts, and a smaller group emerges from the disease with wondrous powers and becomes known as the Young Elites, while the Inquisition Axis fervently hunts them down, fearing they will destroy the kingdom. Adelina Amouteru is one of those malfettos. After years of abuse from her father, she kills him by accident after her powers awaken, leading to her being sentenced to death. She is saved by the Dagger Society, a group of Young Elites who oppose the kingdom, although joining them is far from helping Adelina become a true fantasy hero.
Adelina’s narrative gets interesting precisely because she becomes less likable while always remaining understandable. The protagonist is paranoid, selfish, cruel, and increasingly full of rage and fear. Her illusion abilities are tied to these emotions, and the feelings that make her dangerous also make her powerful. Lu shows that Adelina’s bad traits aren't hidden from the reader; instead, she describes the abuse and suffering that made her who she is before showing that she has gained the power to fight back.
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself doesn’t bother with the traditional fantasy distinction between good guys and bad guys. Its world is packed with people who are compromised, selfish, violent, or all three, and the story follows several of them as political conspiracies, wars, and old grudges begin colliding. There’s Logen Ninefingers, a notorious Northman trying to outrun his bloody past; Jezal dan Luthar, a vain nobleman obsessed with fencing and status; and Sand dan Glokta, a former war hero who has become a torturer for the Inquisition after being brutally crippled. Then there’s Bayaz, an enigmatic wizard who claims to be the First of the Magi and quickly becomes entangled in the others’ lives. The result is a fantasy story where almost everyone has a reason to make you uncomfortable.
Glokta might be the clearest example of why Abercrombie’s characters are so difficult to categorize. He’s a torturer. He extracts confessions through agony and works for a deeply corrupt institution. By any conventional standard, he’s a villain; yet Glokta is also one of the most perceptive people in the story, and his investigations expose corruption that the supposedly respectable members of society would rather keep hidden.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.