Already Missing The Stormlight Archive? Read These 10 Epic Fantasy Series While Waiting For Arc 2

Fans of Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy series The Stormlight Archive are currently struggling with two major heartbreaks – the climactic ending of the latest Stormlight novel Wind and Truth, and the unfortunate reality that Sanderson won’t release the next book in the series for at least six years. In his December 2024 State of the Sanderson blog post, the author laid out his road map for his Cosmere multiverse, including the unfortunate necessity that the next arc of Stormlight books will have to wait for him to get through the next Mistborn era, now titled Mistborn: Ghostbloods.

Thankfully, a six-year break is just long enough to indulge in some of the other incredible fantasy novels out there. From long-running mainstays of the genre like Terry Brooks’ Shannara novels to powerful but concise trilogies like Phillip Pullman’s theological masterpiece His Dark Materials, there are enough excellent fantasy series out there to keep someone busy reading for the next six years and far beyond.

10

The Dinosaur Lords

By Victor Milán (2015 – 2017)

The Dinosaur Lords books are best described, as George R. R. Martin himself put it, as “a cross between Jurassic Park and Game of Thrones.” Set on the verdant world of Paradise, the books tell of the sweeping battles between armies of knights on dinosaur-back, as empires clash for dominance. While in parts the books struggle from Milán’s overuse of certain low-fantasy genre tropes – the comparison to Game of Thrones is apt in more than one way, including some portrayals of sexual violence – Stormlight Archive fans will be right at home with the battles and imperial ambition.

The main character of the series, the mercenary Dinosaur Lord Karyl Bogomirsky, finds himself amid intrigue that goes beyond the political and military violence that is the status quo on Paradise, and he starts finding answers to questions that may have been better left unanswered. Unfortunately, Victor Milán passed away from cancer in 2018, leaving the series only half-finished.

9

The Bifrost Guardians

By Mickey Zucker Reichert (1987 – 1991)

Mickey Zucker Reichert has made a career off of her work using Norse mythology as the basis for her fantasy novels, the most well-known of which are the long-running Renshai Chronicles, which span nine books. Yet her earlier and equally Norse series, The Bifrost Guardians, is an underrated gem – and also, in what will surely appeal to modern genre preferences, technically an isekai.

When young American soldier Al Larson cries out to the Norse gods as he dies amid the chaos of a firefight with the Vietcong, his soul is plucked away and reincarnated as an elf in a strange, wintry land. Stranger still is the man claiming to be the Norse god Freyr, who charges Al with a quest to prevent Ragnarok, the End of All Things.

8

The Shannara Chronicles

By Terry Brooks (1977 – Present)

Terry Brooks’ Shannara novels are one of the longest-running fantasy series to date; however, most have been released as trilogies, following various sets of characters over several thousand years of the world’s history. The setting of Shannara is a post-post-apocalyptic version of the Pacific Northwest, now called the Four Lands, where magic and monsters are now the norm.

The original Shannara trilogy follows several generations of the Ohmsford family as Allanon, the last of the Druids, calls on them to aid in various quests to protect the Four Lands from various evils. The second book of this trilogy, The Elfstones of Shannara, was the source for the short-lived Shannara Chronicles TV show.

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Later trilogies explore the eventual fate and even the origin of the enigmatic Druids, and the more recent Genesis of Shannara trilogy details the strange magical cataclysm that changed the face of the world. Although Brooks said on the release of 2020’s The Last Druid that he was done with the series, that’s turned out to be false – Galaphile, the initial book of The First Druids of Shannara, is set to be released on March 11, 2025.

7

Codex Alera

By Jim Butcher (2004 – 2009)

While Jim Butcher is significantly better known for his urban-fantasy Dresden Files books, his Codex Alera is an interesting approach to fantasy worldbuilding, to say the least. After being challenged to write as good a novel as possible based on as bad an idea as possible, and doubling down on the challenge, Butcher somehow managed to succeed with aplomb by combining the painfully disparate elements of Pokémon and the historical mystery of the fate of the 9th Hispanian Roman Legion, which vanished from the historical record around AD 120.

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The world of Carna, where the books are set, is home to the Aleran Empire, a clear successor to Rome right down to the Latin-adjacent names. Yet it’s also home to elemental spirits, called furies, which bond with people and help with everyday tasks. The main character, a young boy named Tavi, is a shepherd who gets drawn into events so great they threaten the very Empire’s stability; watching his rise from peasantry to power across the six-book series is a wild ride.

6

His Dark Materials

By Philip Pullman (1995 – 2000)

Books with heavy theological messages can often struggle to make a cohesive point, especially when they take up the torch of legendary works like John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Yet Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy succeeded in that regard in a way few authors could dream of, starting off feeling like a fantastical young adult adventure and eventually reaching a climax that swings for the theological fences.

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For those who enjoy film adaptations of their epic fantasy, HBO’s His Dark Materials series was extremely well-received; the 2007 film adaptation of the first book, The Golden Compass, was a critical failure, currently sitting at only 42% on Rotten Tomatoes. The initial trilogy also has a sequel series, The Book of Dust, of which two books have been released; Pullman said on the site formerly known as Twitter that the third book is complete and hopefully will release later this year (via X).

5

The Dark Tower

By Stephen King (1982 – 2004)

When Stephen King first published The Gunslinger in 1982, it was a standalone novel that knit together five short stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1978 and 1981. As King continued writing The Dark Tower series, he realized the version of The Gunslinger that existed didn’t fit tonally with the other books, so he revised it to better fit the details of the world he’d since created. The revised edition of The Gunslinger was released in 2003, shortly before the rapid-fire publication of the final three books in the trilogy.

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In many ways, The Dark Tower is King’s magnum opus. While the books rarely feel like overt horror like the rest of his work, the grotesque set-dressing King is so famous for is on full display throughout the series, from the small details of disgusting creatures like slow mutants and lobstrosities to the presence of King’s ubiquitous villain Randall Flagg. There’s a beautifully cyclical and metatextual nature to The Dark Tower that makes it feel like high fantasy, even with all the guns and murder-happy talking trains.

4

Vampire Hunter D

By Hideyuki Kikuchi (1983 – Present)

Hideyuki Kikuchi’s series about an apocalyptic far future ruled by despotic vampire overlords has been ongoing for over 40 years; the most recent book, 2024’s Wicked Resurrection, is the 55th novel in the main series, although only the first 25 have been translated into English so far. The series follows the titular D, an enigmatic half-vampire bounty hunter in the distant 13th millennium who fights to protect humans against the vampire Nobles who rule the world.

Vampire Hunter D, as a series, has a grim beauty to it, heavily reinforced by the aesthetic of the novels’ covers, which have been consistently illustrated by legendary Japanese artist Yoshikata Amano, best known for his work on the early Final Fantasy video games. The series’ anime adaptations Vampire Hunter D (1985) and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000), which are based on the first and third books, respectively, have been out of circulation for some time, but will be remastered for streaming and theaters in 2025.

3

The Earthsea Cycle

By Ursula K. Le Guin (1968 – 2001)

Decades before a certain British boy went to school so he could become a wizard cop, Ursula Le Guin was defining the very bones and tropes of wizard schools in the Earthsea novels. The first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, was meant as a standalone novel initially, but Le Guin was so swept up in tying up what she saw as loose ends that she quickly followed it with the stellar The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore.

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Le Guin’s Earthsea was written as her direct argument against what she saw as the common flaw of fantasy novels at the time – the assumed default that all fantasy books took place in worlds that were deeply European in nature, steeped in the trappings of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic mythology. Her Earthsea is a vast archipelago of a world, full of vibrant cultures and mysteries and even the occasional dragon.

2

The Iron Widow Saga

By Xiran Jay Zhao (2021 – Present)

Chinese-Canadian author Xiran Jay Zhao exploded onto the publishing scene in 2021 with the release of their debut novel, Iron Widow. The first in a planned series intended as a reinterpretation of the story of the historical Empress Wu, the only legitimate female sovereign of China, the book infused medieval Chinese history with the tropes and trappings of modern Chinese political dramas, with a healthy dollop of the fantastical thanks to giant mecha called Chrysalises.

Iron Widow hit #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List within a week of its release, helped in part by Zhao’s heavy presence on TikTok, and remained on the list for over eight months. Although billed as a young adult novel, there’s plenty of action and romance for adult readers, particularly those inclined to such a pastiche as the combination of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Neon Genesis Evangelion. The series’ second book, Heaven’s Tyrant, was one of the most-anticipated books of December 2024, hitting #1 on the Best Seller List in January 2025.

1

The Memoirs of Lady Trent

By Marie Brennan (2013 – 2017)

While epic fantasy, conceptually, tends to involve wizards and the vast intricacies of empires and dynasties, Marie Brennan’s Memoirs of Lady Trent finds a different path towards epicness: that of the fantasy naturalist. The titular Lady Trent is a young woman in a society that is deeply analogous to Victorian England, right down to the systemic misogyny that prevents her from acting on her life’s desire to study the many kinds of dragons that live all over her world.

The first book, A Natural History of Dragons, tells of how Lady Trent’s stubbornness and determination led to her achieving her dream despite an entire society positioned to oppose her. By the end of the series, she has become one of the most famous scientists in the world, responsible for discoveries that genuinely changed the course of human history.

The Memoirs of Lady Trent are a breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre, looking at the wonders of dragons through a naturalist’s eye. The books are full of phenomenal illustrations of Lady Trent’s observations, detailing draconic anatomy, environments, and even the occasional foray into fantastical archaeology as her work on understanding dragons leads her to unravel the secrets of the lost civilization of the Draconeans.

Sources: Rotten Tomatoes, X