Listen, I know you’re a sensible person. You live in the real world. You read books about real people doing real things. You reject escapism in all of its forms. Tales of malaise, heartbreak, middle-aged angst? All great. Is there suffering? Is a recession involved? Even better. You’ve put away childish things: “Harry Potter” is for kids, “Twilight” is for teenagers and “Game of Thrones” is for people who can’t be bothered with the War of the Roses unless it includes dragons.
I don’t agree with you, but I hear you and I’m going to meet you where you are. I won’t try to sell you on sexy faeries or sagas of wizards and orcs that stretch across 12 books. There will be no traveling bands of companions with complementary skills on this list; hot bounty hunters boning vampire lords need not apply.
But there will be magic. Just a little. Enough to push us past the literary safe space of magical realism and into fantasy, but not enough to send you running for more grounded ground.
Here is my thesis: All reading — of fiction or nonfiction — is, in its own way, a kind of escapism. We crack the cover, turn the page and leave our reality for another. Fantasy simply gives us the chance to explore our world, and all of its problems and politics, through a slightly broader lens.
And here is my promise: You won’t be required to memorize a map or a glossary to read any of these books. You will meet characters who intrigue and surprise you. You will come to understand that magic is merely one more metaphor for the way power operates in our world. And despite the occasional appearances of phantoms, gods and a tiger who tends bar, it will all feel gloriously real.
Interview With the Vampire
by Anne Rice
For many authors and readers, “Interview With a Vampire” was our first seduction into genre fiction. At its heart, this is a midlife crisis book — because, yes, apparently even immortals feel the weight of ennui. The atmosphere Rice renders as she takes the reader from 18th-century Louisiana to 19th-century Paris and beyond is impeccable in its detail, and the ache of human longing — for connection, for novelty, for beauty — infuses every scene. It’s also very sexy, so much so that I sought out Rice’s erotica thinking her text would be even hotter than her subtext. I was mistaken.
The Golem and the Jinni
by Helene Wecker
Wecker’s 2013 novel fixes us more firmly in a single time period (late 19th-century New York City) and reads like historical fiction despite the presence of two immensely powerful, intensely lonely supernatural creatures. It’s a deeply romantic story — and, should you hesitate at the title, rest assured that the narrative belongs just as much to the humans with whom these creatures find themselves in conflict and communion as it does to Chava, the woman made of magically imbued clay, and Ahmad, the enslaved spirit.
Read our review.
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
When I released my novel “Ninth House,” my friend Kurt described it as “Harry Potter as directed by Darren Aronofsky.” I’m going to recommend two slightly (only slightly) gentler introductions to dark academia, the fantasy subgenre that marries the elitism and internecine squabbles of higher education with a touch of the uncanny.
Many of us will recognize the overachiever’s experience of entering a world where you are so surrounded by gifted folks, you find you aren’t special after all. When Quentin is accepted into a secretive, elite institution and granted access to knowledge he has longed to discover, he finds it frustrating, inaccessible and pedantic: In short, he goes to college. Grossman’s “The Magicians” trilogy is full of competitive wunderkinds and angst, the pleasures and perils of briefly becoming something other than human and a brutal quest that challenges the fantasies of childhood.
Read our review.
Babel
by R.F. Kuang
Kuang uses a magic grounded in language, specifically translation, to tackle bigger social issues in this dense, bloody alternate history set at Oxford University in the early 1800s. . This version of the ivory tower is just as populated as Grossman’s with overachievers, but they come from wildly different backgrounds and have necessarily different relationships to British rule. The stakes for Robin, born and orphaned in China and raised in London by a British professor, are as political as they are personal, and the consequences of the book’s cataclysmic third act are far-reaching.
Read our review.
The Reformatory
by Tananarive Due
I suppose you’ll tell me these next two books are horror, but so are “Dracula” and “Frankenstein,” and if you want to squabble about whether they also qualify as fantasy, then pistols at dawn, my friend.
What are ghosts but reckonings? Since before Hamlet’s father paid a posthumous call to his son, we’ve understood ghosts to be the embodiments of our sins. Here the violent and very real history of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida is explored through the story of two young siblings: Robbie, a boy trapped at the deadly Gracetown School, and Gloria, the big sister fighting to get him out. I firmly believe that if this novel hadn’t been marketed as horror, it would have been nominated for a National Book Award. Harrowing does not begin to cover it.
Read our review.
The Only Good Indians
by Stephen Graham Jones
“The Only Good Indians” begins with a murder that reveals a decade-old crime — a moment so cruel it could only beget more brutality, as a vengeful spirit seeks justice. I will warn you: A lot of women and a lot of dogs die in this book. But none of the violence is gratuitous; each incident teases out the damage done to and by the main characters — four best friends from a Blackfeet reservation — and reveals why they’ve been brought to a place of such desperation. The unrelenting monster on the hunt for victims is a staple of horror fiction, but here that monster’s pain is so palpable and understandable, you will struggle to envision an ending that could provide any kind of catharsis. Somehow, Jones delivers.
Read our review.
The Book of Love
by Kelly Link
I’m ending with a couple of palette cleansers in case my other recommendations have sounded too gory or dark for your tastes. These are books that offer a backdrop of big magic and a central puzzle to solve, but whose focus is on human drama — sibling rivalries, thwarted ambitions, good mothers, bad mothers and all manner of family secrets.
“The Book of Love” features one of my favorite fictional settings: the coastal town of Lovesend, Mass., where, one stormy night, three (possibly four) young people return from the dead. This is an eldritch “Our Town” full of grief and desire, small kindnesses with big repercussions and a very petty embodiment of the moon.
Read our review.
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
by Zoraida Córdova
I don’t know if Córdova’s novel sits properly in fantasy or magical realism, but maybe that makes it the perfect place for you to test the waters. You will be hooked by the mystery of Orquídea (not to mention her five husbands and her flair for spectacle) as her descendants travel to Ecuador after her death hoping to unravel her secrets, understand the magical powers that have manifested in each of them and escape the mysterious figure who has begun hunting them down.
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