The 6 Best Fantasy Books Released Since 2000, According to Goodreads
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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Officially launched in 2007 and owned by Amazon since 2013, Goodreads is the biggest social reading platform and book review website on the planet, where users can—among several other things—rate and review whatever books they read. There are several books on the site with remarkably high ratings, and over the course of the last 26 years, there have been so many noteworthy fantasy novels with nearly impeccable ratings that it becomes undeniable that the genre is alive and well in the 21st century. Fantasy has been delivering some of the greatest speculative fiction masterpieces for years, and since the year 2000, it has continued to do just that.
Whether we're talking about a giant pop-cultural event that brought a popular series to a resounding close, like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; or an equally massive book that actually kicked off a successful series, such as The Way of Kings, many fantasy books have proven themselves worthy of remarkably high Goodreads ratings over the course of the last 26 years. There are plenty of things that fantasy fans on Goodreads tend to look for in a book: Character depth, compelling magic systems, fleshed-out world-building, and strong pacing are but a few. It just so happens that the six highest-rated fantasy books published since 2000 meet those qualities and many more.
6 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' (2007)
Goodreads Rating: 4.62
Published back in 1997, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (published in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) wasn't an overnight success, but rather a children's novel that, over the course of the next couple of years, would become an absolute commercial, critical, and pop-cultural juggernaut. Fittingly, it sparked the creation of the most financially successful fantasy book series of all time, leading all the way to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a decade after the first book's publication. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it holds the Guinness World Record for the most volumes sold by a book within 24 hours of release, making it one of the fantasy books that marked the end of an era.
It subverts the series' coming-of-age tropes by breaking away from the typical Hogwarts formula.
It's often the case that the deeper you get into a long-running series, the higher ratings tend to be on Goodreads, partly because the people who don't like the series have been weeded out long before they get to its seventh installment—but that should in no way detract from just how perfect of a conclusion Deathly Hallows is. On Goodreads, readers love it not only for how it subverts the series' coming-of-age tropes by breaking away from the typical Hogwarts formula, but also for how mature and grounded in tone it is, bringing the Harry Potter series to a deeply moving close. From beginning to end, it's a novel full of satisfying payoffs and high-stakes set pieces.
5 'A Court of Mist and Fury' (2016)
Goodreads Rating: 4.63
Romantasy blew up in popularity just a few years ago purely through online virality, but romance has been predominantly present in the fantasy genre for years. One of the biggest pioneers of modern romantasy is Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses series, which began back in 2015 with the publication of the eponymous first book in the series, A Court of Thorns and Roses. The second-highest-rated installment in the series is A Court of Mist and Fury, the first sequel of the bunch, whose cultural impact was vital in the romantasy phenomenon becoming a widespread thing with the rise of BookTok's popularity.
Court of Mist and Fury is by no means fantasy erotica, but it's definitely quite a spicy romantasy novel. Those who prefer their fantasy SFW won't likely be converted by this masterpiece, but readers who already enjoy these kinds of stories unsurprisingly have nothing but praise and love to throw Court of Mist and Fury's way. Many Goodreads users call it a massive leap in quality from book one, a novel capable of subverting expectations and deconstructing fantasy clichés while offering some of the most layered storytelling of any fantasy novel the past decade has seen. Its slow-burning romance is delightful, its grounded depictions of themes of trauma and healing are deeply compelling, and its plotting is downright flawless.
4 'The Way of Kings' (2010)
Goodreads Rating: 4.66
Brandon Sanderson has for years been one of modern times' most prolific and beloved speculative fiction authors, his overarching Cosmere universe being one of the most acclaimed fantasy book series the 21st century has thus far seen. It's composed of several subseries, the greatest of which easily being The Stormlight Archive. The series kicked off in 2010 with The Way of Kings, one of the best heroic fantasy books of all time. It's a 1,000-page long behemoth that may look quite a bit daunting for those who have never read such a massive epic high fantasy novel before, but it's oh so worth the effort and time investment that it demands.
Goodreads users have loved Sanderson's work for years, but Way of Kings in particular is among the author's highest-rated works on the site, with roughly 73% of readers giving the novel a full five stars. It is, after all, one of the most perfect introductions to a high fantasy book series that the world has ever seen. It perfectly balances the responsibility of introducing a new world and characters with feeling like an entirely satisfying and self-contained story in its own right, making it irresistible to move on to the sequel but also never feeling like it exists only in service of setting up a saga. It's deeply immersive, the magic system is brilliantly constructed, and the level of psychological depth that Sanderson approaches the character arcs with is remarkable.
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.
3 'Assassin's Fate' (2017)
Goodreads Rating: 4.67
Robin Hobb (the pen name of Margaret Lindholm Ogden) is best known for her work in the Realm of the Elderings series, which is composed of five subseries. The last of those subseries is titled The Fitz and the Fool, and it's no coincidence that it's composed of three of the highest-rated books in the whole series. The most universally acclaimed of the bunch is the momentous final volume in the entire Realm of the Elderlings saga, Assassin's Fate, which is widely acclaimed as one of the most potent conclusions to any fantasy book series of the 21st century.
[Realm of the Elderlings'] following has raved about Assassin's Fate's status as one of the most emotionally cathartic fantasy novels they have ever read.
While it definitely has a relatively smaller readership than the Harry Potter, Court of Thorns and Roses, or Stormlight Archive series on Goodreads, Realm of the Elderlings nevertheless has a massively dedicated following that has raved about Assassin's Fate's status as one of the most emotionally cathartic fantasy novels they have ever read. It's the masterful culmination of an equally masterful series, with plenty of profound character writing, well-earned emotional moments, and clever uses of the layered world-building that has been established by the past 15 books in the series. The first half of the book moves at a perfectly slow-burning pace, only to explode in excitement in the latter part.
2 'Kingdom of Ash' (2018)
Goodreads Rating: 4.71
It's not just A Court of Thorns and Roses: Sarah J. Maas is also well known and widely celebrated for the epic fantasy novel series Throne of Glass, which began with the book of the same name back in 2012. Though there are definitely some elements of romance, this series is more aptly described as YA high fantasy—and it's one of the best in the category, at that. The climactic seventh and final novel in the series is Kingdom of Ash, which earned immediate acclaim from fans in spite of a more relatively mixed reception from literary critics.
In the end of the day, the court of public opinion is all that matters when it comes to Goodreads ratings, and Goodreads users absolutely adore Kingdom of Ash. With perfect five-star ratings from around 77% of readers, it's an emotional rollercoaster that perfectly brings a massive journey to a satisfying end with huge emotional and thematic payoffs, high-stakes moments, and every single major character getting their time to shine. It's the biggest and most cinematic volume in the Throne of Glass series, and that's why Goodreads users think that it's absolutely phenomenal.
1 'Words of Radiance' (2014)
Goodreads Rating: 4.76
Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance is the first sequel to The Way of Kings, and on top of being Sanderson's highest-rated novel to date, it also happens to be one of the highest-rated fantasy books in history on Goodreads by a pretty decent margin. It was the book that made it abundantly clear that The Stormlight Archive was going to continue being a genre-defining masterpiece, a 1,100-page doorstop of a literary monster that is nevertheless a must-read for anyone and everyone who enjoys epic heroic fantasy on a titanic scale.
The stakes? Sky-high. The pacing? Absolutely faultless. The prose? Just as flawlessly utilitarian as Sanderson's writing has always been. Everything about Words of Radiance makes it one of the most ambitious high fantasy books of all time, and saying that those ambitions paid off would be quite the understatement. With nearly 80% of users who rated Words of Radiance giving it an admirable five-star rating, it's a downright faultless masterpiece where the character writing is wonderfully nuanced, the narrative momentum is surprisingly exhilarating for such a long novel, and the world-building continues to be masterful. At least according to Goodreads users, there is no 21st-century fantasy book better than this.
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