The 10 Best Fantasy Hidden Gem Books of the Last 10 Years
Diego Pineda has been a devout storyteller his whole life. He has self-published a fantasy novel and a book of short stories, and is actively working on publishing his second novel.
A lifelong fan of watching movies and talking about them endlessly, he writes reviews and analyses on his Instagram page dedicated to cinema, and occasionally on his blog. His favorite filmmakers are Andrei Tarkovsky and Charlie Chaplin. He loves modern Mexican cinema and thinks it's tragically underappreciated.
Other interests of Diego's include reading, gaming, roller coasters, writing reviews on his Letterboxd account (username: DPP_reviews), and going down rabbit holes of whatever topic he's interested in at any given point.
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Fantasy has been one of literature's most prolific genres for so long that, inevitably, every year sees the publication of at least a few hundred exceptional books that end up slipping under most people's radars and becoming hidden gems. Over the last 10 years in particular, there have been several great fantasy books that nevertheless haven't received nearly as much love as they deserve.
Whether we're talking about a release by a major voice in the genre, such as Guy Gavriel Kay's A Brightness Long Ago, or a self-published masterpiece like The Umbral Storm, the best hidden fantasy gem books published from 2016 until the present are, indeed, must-read material for fans of the genre. Creative, entertaining, and oh so special, they're a testament to what fantasy has offered throughout the last decade.
'Vermis, Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods' (2023)
It's undeniably a book, but Vermis, Lost Dungeons and Forbidden Woods isn't actually a novel. Instead, it's a fascinating art book by artist Plastiboo, drawing obvious inspiration from tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and video games like the Dark Souls series. It's designed like an official retro video game guide for a video game that doesn't actually exist.
The result is one of the best fantasy books that you haven't read, a marvelously realized piece of dark fantasy packed with atmospheric lore, cool maps and bestiaries, stunning lo-fi pixel-art illustrations, and plenty of winks that fans of grimdark fantasy and weird fiction should appreciate very much. It's obviously not for people specifically looking for a great new fantasy novel to read, but those interested in delving into a wholly different kind of fantasy literature should consider it essential reading.
'Illborn' (2021)
Illborn is the debut epic science fantasy novel of Daniel T. Jackson, and the first installment in the saga that carries its title. Set in a Medieval world where religious persecution is the norm, it follows four 18-year-olds starting to develop mysterious supernatural powers, which they must use to flee from a church that labels them as heretics. What follows is one of the best character-driven epic fantasy books in recent memory.
Jackson's grim, remarkably sensorial worldbuilding makes it so that it never ceases to be an absolute delight to follow these characters over more than 700 pages. Combined with the powerfully mysterious and emotionally nuanced character writing, you get a piece of epic speculative fiction that deserves infinitely more love and attention along with its two just-as-great sequels.
'Master of Sorrows' (2019)
Yet another exceptional debut novel which proves just how great fantasy debuts have been throughout the last decade, Justin Call's Master of Sorrows is arguably one of the best YA books of the last 10 years, the first in the Silent Gods series. It's the tale of Annev, a student in an academy that trains warrior-thieves to eradicate magic. There, he slowly realizes that he's the prophesied reincarnation of an evil god destined to destroy the world.
Younger readers looking for a great, modern piece of epic high fantasy to pick up are quite likely to have an absolute blast with Master of Sorrows, and even older readers who tend to enjoy YA fantasy should find it thoroughly entertaining. It's a fast-paced, morally complex page-turner that takes the usual tropes of YA high fantasy and turns them on their head in all sorts of compelling ways.
'Dreams of the Dying' (2020)
Enderal: Forgotten Stories is a free, fan-made total conversion mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, one of the most legendary RPG video games of modern times. Its story was written and directed by Nicolas Lietzau, who self-published his debut fantasy novel six years ago: Dreams of the Dying, the first book in The Twelfth World series, and a must-read both for those who love Enderal and for those who have never even played Skyrim but love fantasy horror nonetheless. It's about Jespar, an ex-mercenary hired to infiltrate the nightmares of a comatose merchant king in order to avoid a catastrophic war.
Inspired by games like Skyrim, authors like George R. R. Martin, and Lietzau's past struggles with mental health, Dreams of the Dying earned instant acclaim from critics and die-hard fans of indie dark fantasy—but even that acclaim isn't nearly widespread enough. Psychologically profound and full of richly layered world-building, Dreams of the Dying is a sort of fantasy twist on Inception that feels surprisingly and refreshingly original.
'The Ember Blade' (2018)
Chris Wooding published his first novel at age 19, all the way back in 1998, and 20 years after that came the publication of what many fans would confidently call his best book to date: The Ember Blade, one of those forgotten fantasy books that are perfect from the first page to the last. It's the first book in The Darkwater Legacy series, following a young man who joins an underground rebellion to steal a king's sword after his father is executed and he's sent to a prison mine.
It's a masterful blend of classic high fantasy tropes and clever grimdark subversions of the genre, resulting in a novel that feels like literary fantasy comfort food just as often as it feels delectably original and fast-paced. Throughout a little more than 800 pages, Wooding offers some of the most riveting plotting, worldbuilding, and character dynamics of any high fantasy epic from the late 2010s.
'Pilgrim: A Medieval Horror' (2023)
Though it's always a delight for fantasy literature fans to find a great new series to dive into, it's also always refreshing to find an equally incredible standalone title—one, perhaps, like Mitchell Lüthi's self-published historical dark fantasy masterpiece Pilgrim: A Medieval Horror. In it, a devout 14th-century pilgrim on a grueling journey to a sacred shrine discovers that his destination's healing powers are fueled by a cosmic, flesh-eating plague.
One of the best Medieval fantasy books of the decade so far, Pilgrim is great for those who love Gothic horror, historical fiction, dark fantasy, and—of course—those who find the idea of a masterpiece combining all three tempting. It's incredibly atmospheric and masterfully surreal, constantly prioritizing thematic and philosophical depth over fast pacing.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in return.
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
- This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat, fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
- You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
- The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
- You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is finding out what is over there.
- One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
- You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
- The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
- You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of it.
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the people are where it all gets complicated.
- Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
- You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
- The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
- You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story got told wrong.
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as everybody kept telling you.
- Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners, which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
- You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for something nobody thought to test for.
- The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
- Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
'Blackwing' (2017)
The first book in Ed McDonald's Raven's Mark series is Blackwing, a gritty dark fantasy debut novel that, despite having been a commercial and critical success, still doesn't receive nearly as much mainstream praise as it should. In it, a hard-drinking mercenary and his former lover must uncover a massive political conspiracy before the immortal Deep Kings overrun the Republic.
It's morally gray grimdark fantasy at its very best, led by one of the most relatable and compelling anti-heroes that any fantasy book has had to offer throughout the last 10 years. Structured like a fast-paced neo-noir mystery, Blackwing brilliantly blends high fantasy with post-apocalyptic elements à la Mad Max and Weird Western elements à la Stephen King's The Dark Tower.
'The Umbral Storm' (2022)
Self-published by Alec Hutson, The Umbral Storm is the epic first installment of The Sharded Few series, one of the best LitRPG books that would make for great TV shows. Set in a world where warriors seek transcendence by bonding shattered fragments of an ancient divine heart to their bodies, it's about an orphaned slave who collides with a brewing power and an awakening global conflict.
Ideal for people who love Dungeons & Dragons, multi-POV fantasy epics, and intricately detailed magic systems, The Umbral Storm really is one of the greatest fantasy books of the 2020s so far. The worldbuilding is utterly engrossing from top to bottom, the hugely engaging characters make the book's nearly 700 pages a delight throughout, and the lore-heavy story is nevertheless perfectly paced from cover to cover.
'The Mirror's Truth' (2016)
The first book in Michael R. Fletcher's Manifest Delusions series, Beyond Redemption, was published by Harper Voyager. Sales were so low, however, that the publisher passed on The Mirror's Truth, the sequel, leading Fletcher to self-publish. The plot follows Bedeckt, an aging mercenary being hunted by his former companions as he escapes the afterlife to assassinate a god trying to remake the world in his image.It's pure fantastical death metal at its most hardcore, a grimdark masterpiece with a dark sense of humor that thankfully performed quite well both critically and commercially, at least by indie fantasy literature standards. Built with the kind of moral ambiguity that grimdark fans might expect and an admirable level of psychological and philosophical depth, it's an incredible piece of work with one of the most inventive magic systems that dark fantasy has seen throughout the last decade.
'A Brightness Long Ago' (2019)
Legendary Canadian speculative fiction writer Guy Gavriel Kay isn't a household name, as many of his fellow masters of modern fantasy may be, but he's nonetheless one of the most interesting voices to have graced the genre in years. One of his latest works is A Brightness Long Ago, the fifth installment in the Sarantine Universe, about a low-born scholar who helps a rebellious noblewoman escape the assassination of a tyrant.
Kay has written several fantasy books that are a masterclass in prose, and A Brightness Long Ago is no exception, a fantasy book so well-written that it's genuinely surprising that it's still such a hidden gem. Exquisitely poetic prose, deep philosophical reflections on themes like memory and agency, and an evocative Renaissance setting are but a few of the reasons why this modern masterpiece is a must-read for all those who love the fantasy genre as a whole.
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