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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 definitely talk books with her on Litsy and Goodreads. Depending on social media’s stability maybe also Twitter and Bluesky.

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