Wrede, Tamora Pierce, Terry Pratchett), tucking into a T. Jemisin’s The World We Make (the second and final book in her Great Cities duology), Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves (the final book of the Scholomance trilogy), and Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth (third in the Locked Tomb series).įor those of us who grew up on a diet of a certain kind of ’80s and ’90s fantasy (think Patricia C. Larkwood’s The Thousand Eyes (the second entry in her Serpent Gates series), N.K. In the interest of covering the widest variety of books and authors, we’re not including sequels or series entries here, but 2022 was a rich year for those, too. The books on this list are the cream of this year’s crop, from dark academia to mythological retellings to epic journeys, set in alternate versions of our reality and in worlds completely foreign to us. There’s room for door stoppers, to be sure, but there’s so much more out there. Today’s fantasy fiction refuses to be constrained by the dominant cultural stereotype. If, in the year of our Lord 2022, the phrase fantasy books evokes nothing but decades-old series of thousand-page sword-and-sorcery door stoppers set in slightly altered versions of medieval Europe, well, we’re thrilled to tell you that you have some catching up to do. Photo-Illustration: Rowena Lloyd and Susanna Hayward Photos: Courtesy of the Publishers

Tor fantasy novels