Fantasy author George R.R. Martin published A Game of Thrones, the first book in his A Song of Ice and Fire novels, in 1996. He published four more books in the series over the next 15 years, ending with A Dance With Dragons in 2011. Since then, fans have been waiting for him to complete The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in the saga, without luck. In fact, Martin has now been working on The Winds of Winter for longer than it took him to write the first five books in the series.
That is a sobering statistic, and it’s hard not to look at it and wonder if The Winds of Winter will ever be finished. Happily, there are plenty of already-finished fantasy series out there that are just as good.
The Earthsea Cycle
Ursula K. Le Guin’s war on war
Ursula K. Le Guin published A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, and would write four more books in the main series over the next 33 years. The Earthsea Cycle is probably the most atypical fantasy saga on our list. Set on an archipelago, it roughly follows a wizard named Ged, who is a student of magic in A Wizard of Earthsea and a retired advisor by the time of The Other Wind, the final book in the series. The Earthsea Cycle isn’t one long story like A Song of and Fire, but a series of discrete stories that share some of the same themes and characters.
In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged is battling with his inner demons. In The Farthest Shore, he’s trying to solve a mystery about why magic is vanishing from the world. Le Guin deliberately tried to write a series that didn’t revolve around war, which is a crutch that a lot of epic fantasy sagas lean on. As a result, her books feel like little else in the genre, but are magical nonetheless.
The Warlord Chronicles
King Arthur meets A Song of Ice and Fire
The Warlord Chronicles are a trio of books written by Bernard Cornwell, a master of historical fiction who wrote another series of books adapted by Netflix as the fantastic show The Last Kingdom. The Warlord Chronicles is a remix of the Arthurian legend, with iconic characters like Merlin, Guinevere, and Lancelot all accounted for. But Cornwell tries to bring them down to earth, imagining a version of the King Arthur legend that feels more like history than fantasy.
That said, there is still magic in this story, but it’s so subtle and ambiguous that it can be interpreted in multiple ways. It’s a deeply felt, wonderfully written trilogy, and the best work of Cornwell’s long career.
- Release Date
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2023 – 2023-00-00
- Showrunner
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Kate Brooke, Ed Whitmore, Bernard Cornwell
- Writers
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Kate Brooke, Bernard Cornwell, Ed Whitmore
The Wheel of Time
Doubles as a doorstop
The Wheel of Time is an epic fantasy series so huge it took more than one author to finish; original author Robert Jordan passed after writing 11 volumes, leaving then up-and-coming fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson to pen the next three based on Jordan’s notes. It’s a sprawling story about a young man named Rand al’Thor who learns he is the Dragon Reborn, a messianic figure destined to either save the world or destroy it. Over the course of 13 books, we get to know Rand and his friends intimately, explore the far corners of this fantasy world, and learn its fascinating history which goes back thousands of years. It all adds up to one of the biggest and best epic fantasy sagas ever written.
Amazon made a few seasons of a Wheel of Time TV show, but stupidly canceled it just as it was hitting its stride. Happily, the books are still there.
- Release Date
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2021 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Rafe Judkins
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Rosamund Pike
Moiraine Damodred
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Daniel Henney
al’Lan Mandragoran
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Josha Stradowski
Rand al’Thor
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Zoe Robins
Nynaeve al’Meara
Mistborn
Read them before they become a major motion picture event
Speaking of Brandon Sanderson, he went on to pen several popular fantasy series of his won. His flagship series is The Stormlight Archive, but that one is ongoing. If you want something that’s already completed, check out his Mistborn books.
The first Mistborn trilogy is set in a world where select people can perform a form of magic called Allomancy, ruled over by a seemingly immortal tyrant. Sanderson wrote a second cycle of four books that jumps ahead 300 years into the future, when the world has left the medieval period and is in the midst of an industrial revolution. Sanderson is planning one more cycle, but the first two are already finished and ready to read.
Sanderson’s books are direct, digestible, plot-driven page-turners. Apple is working on turning the first Mistborn trilogy into a series of movies, so now is the perfect time to read it.
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The First Law
Grimdark fantasy at its finest
Like the Mistborn series, The First Law series is broken up into a few different cycles: author Joe Abercrombie has written two separate trilogies, three standalone works, and one story short collection. But all of them are set in the same bleak fantasy world where hope is scarce, magic is arcane, and war is constantly on the horizon.
Abercrombie’s books are distinguished by their black humor, morally grey characters, and unrelenting brutality. If you liked the parts of Game of Thrones where characters die horribly and unexpectedly, these books may be up your alley.
The Lord of the Rings
Why not just reread the classics?
The Lord of the Rings is an obvious recommendation, but there’s a good reason for that: over half a century later, there’s still little that can beat J.R.R. Tolkien’s iconic trilogy when it comes to scale, beauty, and wonder.
We all know the story of The Lord of the Rings: the dark lord Sauron is threatening to return to power and plunge Middle-earth into despair, and the hobbit Frodo Baggins must stop him by taking his magic ring to the land of Mordor and casting it into the fires of Mount Doom. The books worked when they were originally published in the 1950s, they worked when Peter Jackson adapted them as movies in the early 2000s, and they work today.
- Release Date
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December 19, 2001
- Runtime
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178 Minutes
- Director
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Peter Jackson
Or if you want to tempt fate…
There are other completed fantasy series out there well worth reading, including Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams, The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee, and The Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb.
That said, if you enjoy the possibly never-ending wait for The Winds of Winter, you may want to check out The Kingkiller Chronicle series by Patrick Rothfuss. These books have won acclaim from fans and critics alike, but the most recent book — The Wise Man’s Fear — was published in 2011, the same year that A Dance With Dragons came out. Fans have been waiting for the follow-up book ever since, which will feel very familiar to fans of the Song of Ice and Fire series.
