6 Highest-Rated Fantasy Books On Goodreads

Published Oct 18, 2026, 11:22 AM EDT

Ambrose Tardive is an editor on ScreenRant's Comics team. Over the past two years, he has developed into the internet's foremost authority on The Far Side. Outside of his work for ScreenRant, Ambrose works as an Adjunct English Instructor.

Scrolling through Goodreads looking for books to add to your "to read" pile? Looking to dive deeper into the fantasy genre? This ranking is a guide to the highest rated fantasy according to Goodreads. Together, let's break down the data in order to get a better grasp on the current trends in genre readership.

Just a few notes before starting. More than any other book genre, even science fiction, fantasy is the domain of the series. The saga. The sprawling multi-book epic. That can make things messy, when it comes to narrowing down the most highly rated fantasy books. For starters, this list only looks at novels that have been rated on Goodreads more than one million times.

As such, there are many classics that don't make the cut. Including multiple highly regarded, and well-rated, titles by authors like Brandon Sanderson. (Though one of his books does appear below.) The other big thing this ranking does is limit authors, and series, to one book per entry. Also, and perhaps controversially, Harry Potter is excluded here entirely, despite being one of the highest rated book on Goodreads overall.

That is because this list focuses on "harder" fantasy, but also because including Potter, or more than one entry for a particular series, would lead to a list dominated by J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Sarah J. Maas. Those latter names do appear on this list, room has also been made for a few deeper cuts that meet the ranking's criteria.

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6 Six Of Crows

Written By Leigh Bardugol; 4.45 Average Rating

Six of Crows is the first book of a duology by author Leigh Bardugol. It was followed by the equally lauded Crooked Kingdom, and Bardugol also published a novel set in the Crowsverse, A Darker Shore: Letters from Ketterdam. Both of the main books share a nearly identical Goodreads score: 4.45 for Six of Crows, and 4.46 for its sequel. When it comes to their overall number of reviews, however, there is a slight disparity. Six of Crows has garnered over 1.2 million responses on the site, while Crooked Kingdom is sitting at just above 800,000.

59% of readers have given Six of Crows 5 stars, while another 29% gave it 4 stars. Barely more than 10% of readers have lukewarm or negative thoughts about the book. Overall, it is a series that flies under the radar for many readers, even those who are up on their contemporary fantasy, but fans hail it as a modern masterpiece of the genre. Making it a can't-miss classic that shouldn't be slept on.

5 Mistborn: The Final Empire

Written By Brandon Sanderson; 4.48 Average Rating

Brandon Sanderson's first Misborn novel, The Final Empire, is actually tied for the second-highest rating for the series. It shares its 4.48 Goodreads average with the seventh book in the series, The Lost Meal. Yet The Final Empire has more ratings by about a factor of ten, over one million compared to a little more than 100,000.

The highest rated entry in the Mistborn saga, The Hero of Ages, has 662,000 ratings and counting. The Final Empire is the only one to crack the one million threshold so far, a common occurrence on Goodreads for many multi-book series. In fact, for basically all but the most wide-reaching, commercially successful franchises. Similar to Six of Crows, The Final Empire's average comes from 59% 5 star reviews, 30% 4 star reviews, and a minority share of dissatisfied outliers who ranked it 3 stars or less.

4 A Game Of Thrones

Written By George R.R. Martin; 4.45 Average Rating

Those wide-reaching franchises we mentioned in the previous entry? Obviously, A Song of Ice and Fire is one of them. George R.R. Martin's sprawling franchise, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, was beloved by hardcore fantasy fans from the jump, yet the massive success of its HBO adaptation Game of Thrones made it a worldwide phenomenon.

And even then, only the first two books in the series, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings, have over one million Goodreads ratings. Of the two, the first book has the slightly higher average at 4.45 stars. (A Storm of Swords' 4.55 average is the highest for ASoIaF, with 800k ratings.) 61% of users awarded Thrones 5 stars, and 27% gave it four.

Which highlights a familiar pattern with Goodreads data. To score a rating as high as the books listed here, 80-90% of respondents have to have an overwhelming positive perspective on the book. A successful novel will always have its critics, and even haters, but they maintain a strong reputation with the majority of their readers.

3 The Name Of The Wind

Written By Patrick Rothfuss; 4.52 Average Rating

This masterpiece franchise has been left unfinished since the last volume was published in 2011. Wait, we're not talking about A Song of Ice and Fire anymore? Nope. The same goes for The Kingkiller Chronicles, the incomplete trilogy from fantasy wunderkind Patrick Rothfuss. The series is widely regarded among the best the genre has to offer from the last 25 years, but it has been stuck at two books with no sign of more on the horizon for a long time now.

That said, the two extant volumes are highly regard as impeccable fantasy. The second book, The Wise Man's Fear, has a 4.55 average on Goodreads, though less than 650,000 ratings. Book one, The Name of the Wind, boasts 1.1 million and counting, and despite nearly double the numbers, it still has an impressive 4.52 rating. Once again, check the breakdown: 67% 5 stars, 21% 4 stars, 7% 3 stars, and just a scattering of 2 and 1 star reviews equally less than 50k in total.

2 The Return Of The King

Written By J.R.R. Tolkien; 4.59 Average Rating

Of course The Lord of the Rings had to be represented on this list somehow. And as noted above, if it weren't restricted to just one entry here, the Rings books would dominate most of the list. All three Rings novels, plus The Hobbit, boast several million Goodreads ratings, and each volume holds above a 4-star average rating.

Of the bunch, The Return of the King has the highest average, at 4.59. Just shy of 70% of users awarded it 5 stars, while just over 20% were stingy with the fifth star and only gave it four. There are a scant 5,000 1-star reviews if Return. What do these look like? "Well, I tried," reads one. "Nothing interesting or notable happens," another hilariously, and extremely inaccurately, concludes.

Judging a book by its Goodreads rating can be tricky, especially one that has such a monolithic reputation, but in the case of The Return of the King, it is fair to say its positive reviews are generally more valuable than the negative ones.

1 A Court Of Mist And Fury

Written By Sarah J. Maas; 4.63 Average Rating

A Court of Thorns and Roses is among the most popular modern fantasy franchises, and also one of the most highly rated on Goodreads across all its entries. In fact, Goodreads has been a driving factor in the success of the books. In a rare feat, all the Thorns and Roses books released so far have far surpassed one million ratings on Goodreads.

Of those, the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, leads the pack with 4.63 stars, on average. That's the result of a staggering 72% 5 star reviews, or 2.5 million out of 3.5 million total. Another 20% give the book 4 stars. 3-star ratings and below are negligible. That is a massive accomplishment for a book franchise, and once again, if Sarah J. Maas wasn't restricted to one entry here, she would have a hegemonic hold over the entire list, highlighting her domination of the modern fantasy genre as a whole.