High Fantasy is my favorite kind of fantasy. High fantasy has an alternate world filled with magic and even fantastical species. There’s usually high stakes filled with loads of characters who embark on a quest or adventure, and broader themes like good versus evil.
- A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.44
Must I introduce this one? You’ve heard of it either through the tv show or the books. Full of rumors, death, dragons, and the fight for the crown of Westeros, this is the epitome of high fantasy.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.18
When Feyre kills a faerie to provide for her family, she must face retribution. To pay the blood price, Feyre must live with the High Lord of the Spring Court in faerie lands. But something even more sinister is going on there, a curse much bigger than her captor.
- Poison Study
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.08
The punishment for Yelena’s crime is death, but she has one other option. She can become the food taster for the king to ensure no one would poison him. Taking on this role and learning about poisons and potions, Yelena seems safe. For now. But when she starts to discover magic, things in her land are not quite as they seem.
- The Golden Compass
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.00
Lyra heads north where she suspects her best friend Roger was taken and where her uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. She wants to help them both, but she will have to choose between them.
- The Cruel Prince
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.09
Jude grew up in Elfhame with her similarly mortal twin sister, her half-fae sister, and her adoptive redcap father. Being mortal in faerie land is hard–she is constantly teased and tortured by the other fae, especially the cruel Prince Cardan. But when she has an opportunity to work through all the palace schemes, she gets caught deep in the royal intrigue, and might regret her wish to become as revered as the fae.
- The Wrath and the Dawn
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.08
Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan, is a murderous monster. Every night he marries a new bride and each dawn he slaughters her. When Shazi’s friend becomes one of the victims, she vows to take revenge, and volunteers to be the new bride. In order to survive the first night, she tells him a story–and makes him wait to hear more. The longer Shazi lives, the more she learns that this boy might not be a monster, and there is a deeper curse than a monstrous ruler.
- A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.07
Prince Rhen of Emberfall is cursed to repeat the season of his eighteenth birthday until he finds a girl to love him. The catch? By the end of the season, Rhen turns into a monster and murders everything around him. Harper of Washington, D.C., through a bizarre set of circumstances becomes the next chosen girl, carried to a parallel fantasy world, where she has to decide whether to escape or help break the curse, even if she can’t fall in love with her captor.
- Wicked
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.54
You know the story of The Wizard of Oz, but do you actually know what happened to The Wicked Witch? What’s her origin story? What was her life really like? Is she actually wicked?
- Cinderella is Dead
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.74
200 years after Cinderella’s story, laws to honor her rule the land. Including that every eligible teenage girl must go to an annual ball in hopes of being matched with a gentleman. If they aren’t matched by the time they reach eighteen, they are considered forfeit. For sixteen year old Sophie, she couldn’t be less thrilled with her first ball–she’d rather marry a princess than a prince. At the ball, Sophie decides to flee, and that decision risks the lives of herself and her family. Sophie knows there has to be a better system, and vows to take down the king.
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