Best Literary Fantasy Books
If you're tired of those same old boy villager finds magic sword / talisman / super power, meets a company of sidekicks (with the requisite princess in disguise and old man mentor who's also probably also likely a wizard), then goes to beat down some Dark Lord / evil wizard / corrupt god, then you'll want to find some fantasy books of substance. These type of fantasy books with substance are called "literary fantasy." In short, they are the result when a truly talented writer decides to pen a fantasy book.
In a genre filled with hack writers and wasted tree pulp, it's hard to find a fantasy novel that actually explores MORE than just fighting some dark lord or completing some boneheaded quest. Literary fantasy explores the meaning of life or looks at real issues. Often, the fantastical landscape is just a means to posing a bunch of questions. Sometimes the quest the hero faces is in fact an allegory for something else. Literary fantasy tends to be written by men and women who can actually write -- not only are the words and sentences pregnant with meaning, but they are often beautifully constructed. Literary fantasy is often more than the sum of its parts; that is, there is more "to" the book then just the words.
These literary fantasy novels presented h ere are what I consider the best in the genre.
#1: Shadow and Claw (Gene Wolf)
Shadow and Claw is a book that's jam packed with literary allusions, allegories, and all that good stuff that makes reading such a pleasure. The hero is an anti hero -- a man who's vocation is to torture people. Severian is a dark guide to a disturbing and fascinating world -- a distant time in the future when the sun is starting to die. It's a baroque and disturbing world. Ok so this book falls more under that science fiction / science fantasies genre rather than strictly "fantasy" but the book is so damn literary I HAD to mention it here. If you want to a purely fantasy book, read his awesome Knight Wizard.
Wolf's Book of the New sun has often been compared to literary works such as Lord of the Rings and Dune. This is not a banal comparison either - this is actually the truth.
Before reading this book, you must understand that you can't read this book like an ordinary novel. The book is the autobiography of the protagonist, Severian, and his word cannot be trusted to describe things with total accuracy. This means you have to pay attention and separate fact from fiction in some ways. The book is full of such literary convections.
You can think of The Book of the New sun as a working combination of Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Marvyn Peake's Gormenghast.
Drink deep into the well that is The Book of the New Sun -- you'll never find a book like it.
#2: Gormenghast (Marvyn Peake)
For the less intelligent reader, this series is confusing and plotless -- too heavy on the descriptions and rich English words.
But for those who love deeper books where you can lose yourself in baroque settings and indelible characters, Peake's marvelous Gothic masterpiece Gormenghast can't be beaten. Gormenghast is not a novel to be read, it's a novel to be experienced. The focus of the novel is on the breathtaking visual descriptions; Gormenghast is a landscape that's painted on the canvas of Peake's remarkable command of the English language. Really, if there was any book that could be called a visual painting made of words, then Gormenghast would be it. When reading this novel the journey itself if the destination. You will never ever forget the characters and landscape created by Peake. Sadly, Gormenghast has remained almost unknown by North American reader. But don't you, literary fantasy reader, make the same mistake.
#3: The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
The book that created fantasy as we know it. Can I stop here? No, but for reasons I'm not going to bother detailing, this is an astounding work of imagination. Lord of the Rings is not just another fantasy books, it is THE fantasy book and represents the work of a man's lifetime. Tolkien didn't just churn this work out over a three month period on his typewriter, the book represented the man's lifetime work creating a mythology, history, and even languages (Tolkien was a linguistic scholar).
#4: Lyonesse (Jack Vance)
This is probably a fantasy novel most of you have not yet read. But it's a novel that everyone should read.
For those of you who appreciate the art of good prose, Vance delivers. I've come to the conclusion that unlike most of the other fantasy authors out there, it's practically impossible for Vance to put together a bad sentence, paragraph, or page of writing. Every word BELONGS on the paper.
This is a high fantasy series that's completely untainted by the modern epic fantasy churned out en mass by hack authors. So banish thoughts of evil dark lords, village boys, and awkward sentences. If I could recommend a modern version of Homer's Odyssey, then Lyonesse would be that novel.
So for a grown up fantasy tale with some serious literary merits to it, read this series.
#5: The Worm Ouroboros (E. R. Eddison)
If there was an award given out for the Most Influential Fantasy Novel Ever Written That No One Ever Reads, this book would get it.
The book tells a stylized story of the epic battle between the Lords of Demonland and the evil King Gorice of Witchland, set in an world ripped straight from the pages of a classic Norse saga.
Like most of the authors mentioned on this recommendation list, Eddison's prose is beautiful -- a work of art in itself. If you are one of those readers who's got a phobia about classic English (read archaic English), I suspect this novel is not one that will appeal to your senses. If you do enjoy classic English (read: English in the style of the King James Bible), then this book is going to make you might happy.
This book harkens back to the Greek Classics and the Norse sagas in form and style. Eddison is a man obsessed with the concept of the Heroic, in much the same way of Homer's own fascination. The doomed hero, the passionate hero, the reckless hero, the hero that combines all of these. This is what Eddison wants to detail in his epic style and write about heros he does! The Worm Ouroboros is Eddison's ode to heroism -- and what an ode it is.
This is a book that features the All Star Team of some of the most courageous and honorable heros and the most villainous of villains.
Keep in mind that Eddison's work predates Tolkien's works. So don't go into the novel expecting to read about the elves, demons, sorcerous, and fairies that you're used to in a Tolkien-derrived novel.
It's a strange world created by Eddison, but also a wonderful, romantic world too. So if you want a book that celebrates the reckless hero, dressed up in a stylized language and format that would have Homer himself proud, The Worm Ouroboros is that book.
#6: The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle)
I'll describe this one as a post modern fairy tale. Like all fairy tales this one begins with "A once upon a time..." Like all fairy tales, things happen in a predictable sequence. At first.
The unicorn meets a bumbling magician and a talkative (and somewhat annoying) spinster, both characters more than they appear to be. All three characters find themselves at the gates of a rather forbidding castle, where resides a gentle prince and evil king. Inside the castle lies the truth of things. But, is the truth really worth learning? This question is the crux of this marvelous literary novel.
Peter S. Beagle has created a fairy tale for the ages, a story about of the deepest love, of the darkest loss, and of the beauty of hope. The characters in the story are lovingly painted, reservoirs of humanity. This folks is a novel about the soul -- of it's brightest beauty and darkest horrors.
As you may surprise, The Last Unicorn is far more than just a simple meandering quest for unicorns. At it's heart it's a story about what people will do (or won't do) for love. What is the meaning of really being a hero. What is the cost of being a hero? These are all issues The Last Unicorn tackles -- successfully I might add.
#7: King Elfland's Daughter (Lord Dunsany)
If there is one book that started started the fantasy ball rolling, it's not Lord of the rings, but rather the much less well known King Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany. This book started the sword and & sorcery genre; his pen transformed high fantasy into what it's become. Tolkien, Lovecraft, and even Neil Gaiman were all profoundly influenced by this man.
If you want to read a work of astounding value that people will still be talking about in a hundred years, this is one such work (sorry, Wheel of Time fans, Jordan will likely be forgotten by than).
King Elfland's Daughter is one of those books that stand completely on it's own, marches to the beat of it's own drum and all that. It's not a book that's easily cauterized as this type of fantasy or that type of fantasy.
So if you want to read one of the true masterworks of early fantasy, King Elfland's Daughter should not be missed.
#8: The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis)
This classic kid's story is home to the biggest Christian allegory ever written. Lewis was a prolific (Christian) writer with his masterpiece being his children's story -- the Chronicles of Narnia. Call it a ham-fisted attempt to bash readers with Christian allegory after allegory, call it a timeless classic, call it the perfect story to read your kids to bed with, or simply call it a series that's had a profound influence on the fantasy genre. Whatever you decide to call it, the series should be read, even if you are an adult.
#9: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
This book is a monstrosity at almost 1000 pages. It's also a book that's rich in descriptions, harkening back to the days of Jane Austin where books were written not only to entertain with plot but to entertain with words themselves.
There's a lot going on in this novel -- there's the slow pedantic life of the 1600's lovingly detailed by the author, there's the baroque descriptions and flowery language used to paint every little minutia, but there's also the dark struggle between two magicians locked in a death struggle to one up the other, there's inimical faeries plotting on the sideline; when it all comes to magical head, the novel is a full force dark decent into the madness of magicians gone mad.
#10: Elric of Melinbone (Michael Moorcock)
Elric is a hero that would give any "princess" saved the chills. He is the definition of an anti-hero. He takes drugs to transform himself from a physical weakling to a bad ass killer, he's the prince of a dying kingdom he himself has destroyed, and he calls on dark beings who by every standard of the word are evil. And on top of that, the guy's a freaky-looking albino.
Basically, in any other story, Elric would be the antagonist to the real hero. Michael Moorcock is one of the lesser well known fantasy writers than the usual suspects you see on the shelf, but the man has put in his dues and crafted one of the most interesting anti-heroes in the genre. Reading Elric of Melinbone is like reading a tragedy that keeps on getting worse but one that you simply can't stop watching until the final sordid end.
Some More Literary Fantasy Book Recommendations
The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Technically, this is science fiction novel, but for this list we are using a "broad" definition of fantasy. The Left Hand of Darkness was Ursula Le Guin's monumental work -- probably her best work to date. Le Guin takes her storytelling craft to a new level with this work, creating an alien society and intertwining philosophy, anthropology, and humanity in a mesh that works on a lot of different levels.
The Stolen Child (Keith Donohue)
An interesting take on the faerie genre. A story about a boy stolen from his parents, forced to live in the forest with the faeries that stole him.
The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Gregory Maguire)
For a good wrestle with the nature of good and evil, you should give
The Wizard Knight (Gene Wolf)
A visual feast in the high fantasy tradition
Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
For a look into the New Weird fantasy genre, let Perdido Street Station be your dark guide.
American Gods (Neil Gaiman)
A deep look into American culture and myth AND a wildly entertaining novel to boot
Mythago Wood (Robert Holdstock)
A man ventures into myth to save his love.
The Darkness That Comes Before R Scott Bakker
Epic high fantasy that's actually philosophical.
The Subtle Knife (Philip Pullman)
The anti-narnia series in every way.
Do you have your own literary fantasy novels recommendations? Do you disagree with the best literary fantasy books list? Share your Nay or Yay by posting a comment below!
Subtle knife...I object to that book being here. Buy hey wth, this isn't my list right?
I think The Magicians by Lev Grossman should be considered for this list.
John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things. Very much in the Lord Dunsany mold. He's better known for his Charlie Parker detective novels, so this one is easily overlooked.
Where is Lovecraft? He is perhaps the greatest one of all!
Watership Down should be on this list... if not other lists, no?
While I can't argue with any of the books on this list, there are a few more underrated masterpieces that aren't mentioned here (or any fantasy list, really) that deserve to have awareness of their existence raised. "The Well at the World's End" by William Morris, "Phantastes" by George MacDonald, and "The Gods of Pegana" by Lord Dunsany definitely deserve to be in additional recommendations or some other list, due to their MASSIVE influence. Dunsany pretty much invented the concept of mythopoeia with Pegana, and influenced not just fantasy, but sci-fi and horror as well.
Thanks for the list! Some of the stuff I definitely agree with, some I haven't read yet.
You also might find interesting some of the C.J. Cherryh books (especially The Paladin); also fun are the edited collections in the series Thieves' World. They're grim, but some of the biggest names in the genre have put their heads together to come up with a universe. They're worth it for that alone.
Where is The Once and Future King?
Thank you for the lists at this website, I have been looking all over the net for similar lists, but usually recoil in horror when they include Goodkind or Dragonlance in the top 5.
Every book that I recognise, I agree with(except for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that I cannot stand, but I can't argue that the writing is accomplished). And now I have, spread out through the lists, many new books to read 
Can't argue with you. Excellent list. Might want to find a place for Shriek: An Afterword.
Thank you!
This is precisely the sort of list I wanted.
A good list. But no James Branch Cabell. How would the masterpiece 20 book set of the story of Manuel the Redeamer not be in a list like this.