Riot Recommendation

15 Of Your Picks For The Best Modern Fantasy Series

Jamie Canaves

Contributing Editor

Jamie Canavés is the Tailored Book Recommendations coordinator and Unusual Suspects mystery newsletter writer — in case you’re wondering what you do with a Liberal Arts degree. She’s never met a beach she didn’t like, always says yes to dessert, loves ‘80s nostalgia, all forms of entertainment, and can hold a conversation using only gifs. You can always talk books with her on Bluesky, Litsy, Goodreads, and her substack Multitudes Contained.

This Riot Recommendation asking for the best modern fantasy series is sponsored by In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). Welcome to Dale Bailey’s In the Night Wood, where fairy tales are not just for kids. In this contemporary, spellbinding fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world that consumed his subject. Bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler praises In the Night Wood claiming “Every story is a ghost story. But not every ghost story is as haunting as this one. Nor as luminously written, literate, absorbing, transporting, and all-around excellent. I couldn’t put it down.”
Magic and creatures set in modern times—yes, please! Thank you. More! We can’t wait for this list, which will break our TBR (because we’re going to read them all)! So we asked for the best modern fantasy series and here are your picks: Zoraida Cordova’s Brooklyn Brujas Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss Trail of Lightning, The Sixth World #1 by Rebecca Roanhorse Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor Throne of Glass series by Sarah J Maas Inheritance Trilogy or Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin The Iron Druid Series by Kevin Hearne Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire Dresden Files by Jim Butcher The Soul Stone Trilogy by Matt Moss Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey