Most Read Epic Fantasy Books

With Voldemort in control of the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts no longer safe, Harry, Ron and Hermione abandon school and go on the run, tasked with finding and destroying the remaining Horcruxes — the objects in which Voldemort has hidden fragments of his soul to escape death. The hunt takes them to the Ministry, to Gringotts, and finally back to Hogwarts, and it is gruelling: the three are isolated, hunted, and fractured by the pressure while the Wizarding World collapses around them. Threading through the quest is a second mystery — the legend of the Deathly Hallows, three objects said to make their possessor the master of death. Voldemort is chasing them too, and what Harry decides to do about them shapes the confrontation both are moving toward. The seventh and final Harry Potter novel resolves the series' major threads in a battle at Hogwarts, and closes with an epilogue set nineteen years later. It is, above all, a book about death — about facing it, and about what a life given in love can accomplish that no amount of power can undo.

• chosen one
• quest
• coming of age

When the hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits a plain gold ring from his uncle Bilbo, the wizard Gandalf reveals a terrible truth: it is the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron to control all other rings of power and dominate Middle-earth. To destroy it, Frodo must carry it to the fires of Mount Doom — deep in the land of Sauron's shadow. He leaves the Shire with three friends and eventually joins eight companions representing the free peoples: men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. Their journey takes them through the mines of Moria, the forests of Lothlórien, and down the great river Anduin, as the shadow of the Ring grows heavier and the Fellowship is slowly torn apart by fear, grief, and the corruption that the Ring spreads among those who carry it. Tolkien's first volume sets a mythological scale against an intimate, human emotional register — a combination that defined an entire genre.

• quest
• found family

The Fellowship has broken. Frodo and Sam press on toward Mordor alone, guided — and stalked — by the treacherous Gollum, who knows the way through the Dead Marshes and to the black gate of the enemy's land. Their path will take them into the lair of a monstrous, ancient evil that guards the pass into Mordor itself. Meanwhile Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli pursue the orc-band that has captured Merry and Pippin, a chase that carries them into the ancient forest of Fangorn and to the towers of Isengard, where the wizard Saruman has turned traitor and the Ents, oldest of all speaking creatures, are stirred at last to war. In Rohan, the Riddermark stands on the edge of ruin under a king held captive by his own councillor's treachery, and Aragorn must help rally its people before Saruman's armies overwhelm them. The second volume of The Lord of the Rings splits its narrative between these two threads — the small, grim journey toward Mount Doom and the mounting war across Middle-earth — building toward the fall of Isengard and the desperate defense of Helm's Deep.

• quest

Bilbo Baggins is a comfortable, respectable hobbit who wants nothing more than a quiet life in his hole at Bag End. That peace ends when the wizard Gandalf arrives with thirteen dwarves and recruits a reluctant Bilbo as the burglar for an expedition to the Lonely Mountain. There the dragon Smaug guards a vast treasure that once belonged to the dwarves, and their leader Thorin Oakenshield means to reclaim both the gold and his ancestral kingdom. The journey takes the company across a perilous landscape of trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and shape-shifters, testing a homebody who never expected adventure. Along the way Bilbo stumbles upon a magic ring and a strange creature named Gollum in the dark beneath the mountains, an encounter that will matter far beyond this tale. As the company nears its goal, Bilbo grows from timid passenger into the resourceful heart of the expedition, and the prospect of recovered treasure draws armies toward a single mountain. Written for younger readers but rich enough for any age, it is a tale of courage found in unlikely places, the pull of home, and the cost of greed, set in the world that would become Middle-earth.

• reluctant hero
• quest

Having survived her brutal first year in the Riders Quadrant, Violet Sorrengail returns to Basgiath War College to find the rules have changed. The new leadership—led by a sadistic vice commandant—makes it clear that cadets who don't fall in line won't survive to graduate, and Violet's loyalties are under a microscope. She and Xaden Riorson are more entangled than ever, but the secrets he's still keeping put a wall between them at the worst possible moment. As the physical trials grow crueler and the interrogations more dangerous, Violet is forced to decide who she can trust with the truth about Navarre's crumbling defenses. The threat she glimpsed at the end of her first year is no longer a rumor, and proving it will mean risking everything—her rank, her dragons, and the people she loves. The second book in Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series raises the stakes on both the battlefield and the romance, pushing Violet from a fight for personal survival toward a fight for the kingdom's future. Expect brutal training, hard-won alliances, and a relationship tested by secrets and impossible choices.

A Game of Thrones opens A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin's sprawling epic of power, family, and survival in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, and as the long summer ends, a chill gathers in the North beyond an ancient wall of ice. When King Robert Baratheon asks his old friend Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell to serve as his Hand, Ned is drawn south into a nest of court intrigue where a single misstep means ruin. As the great houses of Westeros — Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, Targaryen — maneuver for advantage, alliances are made and broken, and the realm slides toward war. Far across the Narrow Sea, the exiled Daenerys Targaryen begins a journey that could one day threaten every throne in the land. Told through many rotating points of view, Martin's novel is prized for its moral complexity, unsentimental brutality, and refusal to guarantee any character's safety. It reshaped modern epic fantasy and became the basis for HBO's Game of Thrones.

• court intrigue
• multiple povs
• morally grey

For a thousand years, ash has fallen and mists have dominated the night. For a thousand years, the Lord Ruler has reigned as an immortal god-king, and the skaa — the lower class — have lived in brutal subjugation. Into this world comes Vin, a young skaa street thief with a hidden gift: she is a Mistborn, capable of swallowing metals and burning them to achieve superhuman abilities. Recruited by the charismatic rebel Kelsier — the only man ever to survive the Lord Ruler's most feared prison — Vin joins a ragtag crew of thieves and magic-wielders in an audacious heist to steal the Lord Ruler's fortune and topple an empire that has endured for a millennium. Allomancy, the magic system at the book's heart, gives each metal a distinct power when burned, making action scenes function like strategic puzzles. Published in 2006, The Final Empire was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.

• chosen one
• found family
• heist

On the desert planet Arrakis, the only source in the universe of the spice melange — a substance that extends life, expands consciousness, and makes interstellar travel possible — power is everything and water is worth more than gold. When the Emperor grants stewardship of Arrakis to House Atreides, Duke Leto knows the gift is a trap laid by his mortal enemies, House Harkonnen. He takes it anyway, moving his family and household to the harsh world of sand, sandworms, and the fierce, blue-eyed native Fremen. At the center of the story is Leto's young son, Paul Atreides, heir to a noble house and the possible fulfilment of a centuries-old breeding program and prophecy. Betrayal scatters his world, and Paul is forced into the deep desert, where he must survive among the Fremen and reckon with a destiny that could reshape the galaxy — and cost far more than he imagines. Frank Herbert's landmark novel is a dense, layered epic of ecology, religion, politics, and the perils of messianic power. Winner of the first Nebula Award and co-winner of the Hugo, it founded one of science fiction's most influential universes and remains a touchstone of the genre.

• chosen one
• court intrigue

On the shattered plains of Roshar, where highstorms of supernatural force regularly devastate the land, Kaladin Stormblessed is a slave forced to fight in a war he does not understand. Once a proud soldier and surgeon's apprentice, he struggles to protect the men in his bridge crew from certain death while discovering he can manipulate a mysterious energy called Stormlight. Across the world, Shallan Davar travels to study under the brilliant heretic scholar Jasnah Kholin, whose secrets may determine the fate of her family — and all civilization. Meanwhile, highprince Dalinar Kholin is haunted by visions during the highstorms that show him ancient warriors called the Knights Radiant. Built on over a decade of world-building, The Way of Kings launches one of the most ambitious fantasy series in the genre — with an original magic system, a vast world of alien ecology and spren, and interlocking perspectives that reward thousands of pages of investment.

• quest

With the Valg threat mounting and her kingdom of Terrasen weakened by years of Adarlan's occupation, Aelin Galathynius moves across the continent gathering allies and securing the resources she needs for the war ahead. Her crew — Rowan, Aedion, Lysandra, Elide, and Lorcan — navigates treacherous coastlines, pirate politics, and a Fae queen whose agenda crosses Aelin's own. Meanwhile, Manon Blackbeak confronts the full horror of what the Ironteeth covens have been used to do, and begins to make choices that will pull her from the orbit of her obedience. Empire of Storms is the largest in scope of any Throne of Glass book prior to Kingdom of Ash, sprawling across geography and character arcs while steadily closing off the narrative space available before the war. Its ending is one of the series's most devastating sequences — a full-scale assault on characters the reader has spent five books learning to love, culminating in a sacrifice whose weight will carry through the final book.

• found family
• court intrigue
• quest

Aelin Galathynius — formerly known as Celaena Sardothien, the truth of her identity now acknowledged — travels to Wendlyn on a mission that is, on the surface, an assassination job. What the king doesn't know is that Wendlyn is also where Rowan Whitethorn lives, an ancient Fae warrior who serves the Fae queen Maeve, and who has been tasked with training Aelin in the raw, barely controlled magic she has spent years suppressing. Their training is brutal, their early relationship a sustained antagonism, but through it Aelin begins to claim the fire and power she was born with. Back in Adarlan, Chaol Westfall risks everything to support a rebel movement, and Dorian Havilliard struggles to hide his growing magic from his murderous father. Heir of Fire is the point at which the Throne of Glass series transforms from a court-centred story into an epic fantasy — expanding the cast, the geography, and the scale of the war to come.

• enemies to lovers

As the armies of Mordor march on Gondor, Gandalf and Pippin race to Minas Tirith to rally its defense while Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli lead the Grey Company along the Paths of the Dead to gather an army of the forsworn. The Battle of Pelennor Fields becomes the war's turning point, as Rohan's charge, Éowyn's stand against the Witch-king, and Aragorn's arrival with the dead combine to break Sauron's assault — buying time, but not victory. While the armies of the West march on the Black Gate as a final, desperate diversion, Frodo and Sam, guided and betrayed in turns by Gollum, struggle through Mordor's wasteland toward Mount Doom, the Ring's corruption growing heavier with every step. The fate of Middle-earth rests not on armies but on whether one exhausted hobbit can complete an impossible task. The concluding volume of The Lord of the Rings resolves the quest, the war, and the fellowship's individual fates, including Aragorn's crowning, the Scouring of the Shire, and the Grey Havens — Tolkien's meditation on loss, the passing of an age, and what victory costs those who win it.

• quest
• found family

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swathe of near-impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters that feed on human flesh. Alina Starkov, an orphaned junior cartographer in the First Army, has never been remarkable at anything — until her regiment is attacked crossing the Fold and a dormant power erupts out of her, a light strong enough to save them all. Torn from everything she knows, including her lifelong friend Mal, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, Ravka's magical elite. There she comes under the wing of the Darkling, the enigmatic and dangerous leader of the Grisha, who believes Alina's gift as the Sun Summoner may finally be the key to unmaking the Fold. But as she is drawn deeper into a glittering world of luxury and intrigue, Alina begins to realise that nothing at court is what it seems — and that the fate of a nation may rest on her shoulders alone. The opening book of Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy and the gateway to the sprawling Grishaverse, this is Russian-influenced young-adult fantasy rich with magic, court politics, and a fraught love triangle.

• chosen one
• love triangle
• court intrigue
• coming of age

Aelin Galathynius returns to Rifthold — the capital of the empire that enslaved her — with a list of scores to settle. Arobynn Ahamar, who sold her and Sam to their fates, is at the top of it. So is the Valg prince possessing the body of her former friend and ally. So is breaking Dorian Havilliard free from the demon that has taken him. Aelin moves through the city with Rowan at her side, building alliances, collecting debts, and playing multiple political angles simultaneously — her old court savvy now combined with the full force of her claimed power. Meanwhile, Manon Blackbeak's arc takes a decisive turn as the truth about the witches' history and the cost of their alliance with Adarlan comes into focus. Longer and more structurally complex than its predecessors, Queen of Shadows is the instalment where Aelin fully inhabits her role as a player rather than a pawn — and begins to build the coalition that will carry the war's final stage.

• revenge
• court intrigue

Eighteen months of war college have left Violet Sorrengail battle-hardened, but the threats closing in on Navarre are bigger than anything Basgiath prepared her for. With enemies pressing from outside the wards and treachery festering within, Violet realizes the kingdom cannot hold without help—and the only allies who might turn the tide lie across uncharted seas. The search takes Violet and her fellow riders far beyond the map they know, into unfamiliar lands where the rules of power, magic, and loyalty are different, and where every potential ally comes with a price. As she races to secure the army and the magic Navarre desperately needs, the secret she's guarding grows heavier, and the cost of the truth climbs higher. The third book in Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series widens the world beyond the college walls, trading some of the classroom trials for a perilous quest across new territory. It's a high-stakes middle chapter that deepens the mythology, tests the central romance under fresh pressure, and sets the board for the conflicts still to come.

As the war against Erawan reaches its critical phase, Chaol Westfall — former Captain of the Guard, now hobbled by a spinal injury sustained in Queen of Shadows — travels to the Southern Continent with Nesryn Faliq to seek military aid from the Khagan of the Southern Continent and his army. What begins as a diplomatic mission becomes a murder investigation and a reckoning as Chaol works with a healer named Yrene Towers — whose journey to the Torre Cesme was enabled years ago by a young assassin who passed through Innish — to heal not just his body but the wounds he has been carrying since Crown of Midnight. Set in the city of Antica and the Khagan's palace, Tower of Dawn expands the Throne of Glass world beyond Adarlan into a richly developed Southern Continent with its own politics, culture, and stakes. It takes place simultaneously with the events of Empire of Storms and converges with Kingdom of Ash.

• court intrigue

A war orphan from the rural south of the Nikara Empire, Rin shocks everyone by acing the Keju, the empire-wide examination that decides a child's future. Her perfect score wins her a place at Sinegard, the elite military academy in the capital, and a way out of the marriage her foster family has arranged for her. But surviving Sinegard is its own kind of war: dark-skinned, poor, and a girl, Rin is despised by her wealthier classmates and tested by cruel instructors. Under the guidance of an eccentric master, she uncovers a dangerous, half-forgotten power, the ability to call on the gods and wield fire through the lost art of shamanism. When the militaristic Federation of Mugen launches a new invasion, Rin's gift becomes a weapon her empire desperately needs, and as atrocity follows atrocity she learns exactly what that power can do, and what it will cost her to use it. Drawing on the history of twentieth-century China, this is a grim, ambitious fantasy that moves from boarding-school rivalry to the horrors of total war, asking how much of herself Rin is willing to burn away in order to win.

• academy
• coming of age
• morally grey

In a quiet inn in a troubled corner of the world, a red-haired innkeeper named Kote is not what he seems. He is Kvothe: arcanist, musician, and legend — a man said to have killed a king, burned down a town, and talked to gods. When a chronicler tracks him down, Kvothe agrees to tell his true story over three days. This is the first. He begins with his childhood among the Edema Ruh, a travelling troupe, and the night the mythical Chandrian murdered his family and left him alone. What follows is a story of survival on the streets of Tarbean, of talent and stubbornness, and of a boy who talks his way into the University to study sympathy, naming, and the arcane — driven by a need to understand the creatures who destroyed everything he loved. Patrick Rothfuss's debut is a lushly written, first-person fantasy about music, magic, obsession, and the gap between a legend and the truth beneath it. It also introduces Denna, the elusive woman Kvothe cannot stop chasing.

• coming of age
• unreliable narrator

With the power of Ruin released into the world, ash is falling faster, crops are failing, and the mists are killing. Vin and Elend spread out across the crumbling Final Empire seeking caches left behind by the Lord Ruler — caches that may hold the key to survival. But the question at the heart of the final Mistborn volume is not military or magical: it is theological. Sazed, Keeper of religions and one of the trilogy's moral centers, has lost his faith entirely after loss after loss, and must reckon with whether any of the hundreds of religions he carries in his metalminds has the truth that could save the world. The Hero of Ages resolves threads planted in the first two books and answers questions readers have carried for thousands of pages, with a climax that recontextualizes everything that came before.

• quest

With the Lord Ruler dead, Vin and Elend Venture must hold Luthadel — the capital of a crumbling empire — against three besieging armies while navigating the chaos of a world that has never known freedom. Elend, now king of a nascent democracy, struggles to hold his throne against political machinations from within and military threat from without. Vin, still learning the full extent of her Mistborn powers, is haunted by the mists that are changing, appearing in daytime when they should not, and by a second Mistborn whose motives she cannot read. The Well of Ascension is the most politically complex volume of the Mistborn trilogy, trading the heist structure of the first book for a siege narrative that examines what happens after a revolution succeeds — and how power corrupts even the most idealistic.

• court intrigue

The concluding volume of the Throne of Glass series brings every thread of seven books to convergence. Aelin Galathynius, captured by the Fae queen Maeve at the end of Empire of Storms, is being tortured in a bid to break her will and use her power to forge a new Wyrdkey. Rowan and her companions tear the world apart searching for her. Meanwhile the armies of Erawan march, Terrasen is besieged, and every alliance Aelin spent the series building is now called to its purpose. Kingdom of Ash is the longest book in the series — over 900 pages — and the most operationally complex: multiple armies, multiple POV characters, and converging storylines across two continents. It is written in the awareness that every character who has survived to this point has earned their place, and it does not spare them. The resolution it delivers is hard-won, earned across seven books, and Maas has said she wrote the final pages first.

• quest

Hunted across the True Sea, Alina Starkov and her childhood friend Mal are trying to outrun the reach of the Darkling and the burden of Alina's growing power. But a life of quiet anonymity was never truly possible for the Sun Summoner, and the ties that bind her to Ravka — and to the Fold — cannot be severed by distance alone. Soon Alina is pulled back into the fight for her country, and into a widening war for its throne. Back on Ravkan soil, Alina must take up the mantle of leadership she never wanted, uniting the Grisha and the common people against a threat that grows stronger with every passing day. Her search for a legendary second amplifier to boost her powers brings danger, temptation, and a charismatic new ally: the daring privateer prince Nikolai Lantsov, whose ambitions for Ravka may rival even the Darkling's. The second book in Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy raises the stakes of the Grishaverse, deepening its political intrigue and its central conflict as Alina is forced to choose what kind of leader — and what kind of person — she intends to become.

• chosen one
• love triangle
• court intrigue

The Darkling rules Ravka from the shadows, and the Shadow Fold has swallowed the land in darkness. Weakened and half-broken, Alina Starkov is hidden away underground, kept from the daylight that fuels her power and increasingly at the mercy of the fanatical priest known as the Apparat, whose followers have begun to worship her as a living Saint. Cut off from the throne and the war she once tried to lead, Alina must find a way to break free. Reunited with Mal and the ragged remnants of her friends, Alina sets out on a final, desperate hunt for the last of Morozova's amplifiers — the legendary firebird — the one thing that might give her the strength to face the Darkling and end the ruin he has unleashed. But the deeper she digs into the mystery of the amplifiers, the more she learns about their true cost, and about the ties that bind her to the enemy she is sworn to destroy. The concluding book of Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone trilogy brings Alina's story to its reckoning, testing every loyalty and every sacrifice as the fate of Ravka hangs in the balance.

• chosen one
• love triangle
• sacrifice

This one-volume edition collects the whole of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, along with the appendices. When the hobbit Frodo Baggins inherits a plain gold ring, the wizard Gandalf reveals it to be the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron to rule Middle-earth. Frodo sets out to carry it to Mount Doom, the only place it can be destroyed, joined by a fellowship of men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. As armies gather and the fellowship is scattered, the fate of the free peoples comes to rest on the endurance of ordinary people and small, unlooked-for acts of mercy. Read as a single continuous story, Tolkien's epic moves from the pastoral quiet of the Shire to the full sweep of a world at war, and closes on victory shadowed by loss. Its invented languages, deep history, and moral seriousness reshaped modern fantasy.

• quest
• found family

The Union teeters on the brink of war with the Northmen and the Gurkish Empire, but in its gilded capital of Adua three very different lives are about to collide. Logen Ninefingers—the Bloody-Nine, most feared warrior in the North—finds himself adrift after his crew is scattered, and is reluctantly drawn south by the scheming First Mage, Bayaz. Jezal dan Luthar is a vain and comfortable young officer who cares chiefly about his appearance and his tournament scores, completely unaware that the world he inhabits is already shifting under his boots. Sand dan Glokta was once the Union's finest swordsman; now he is a broken, tortured inquisitor who extracts confessions for the Closed Council and has long since stopped believing in anything. Set in a secondary world where the last war against the demonic Shanka left deep scars, The Blade Itself subverts classic high-fantasy conventions at every turn. Heroes are compromised, villains have reasons, and the institutions men fight to protect are no better than what threatens them. Abercrombie introduces a cast of extraordinary moral complexity—each perspective honest about its own ugliness, each voice darkly funny—and sets them on a collision course whose full reckoning comes in the two volumes that follow. This first volume is largely a novel of characters and world-building, moving deliberately to establish a world in which cynicism is the only honest response.

• morally grey

The Third Poppy War is over, but Rin's troubles are only beginning. Haunted by the atrocity she committed to end the conflict, addicted to opium, and tormented by the god whose fire she commands, she wants one thing above all: revenge on the Empress who betrayed their nation. When her plan to assassinate the Empress collapses, Rin throws in with the Dragon Warlord, a charismatic and ruthless leader who dreams of toppling the throne and founding a republic in its place. His campaign draws in the fractious southern warlords and, more dangerously, the Hesperians, a powerful Western people whose missionaries and soldiers have their own designs on the empire. As Rin learns to fight within an army rather than a small band of shamans, she must navigate shifting loyalties, master a power that threatens to consume her, and decide whom she can trust. Set against a world modeled on early Republican China and its warlord era, this middle volume of the Poppy War trilogy is a darker, more politically tangled story of civil war, foreign intervention, and the corrosive cost of vengeance.

• anti hero
• morally grey
• revenge

Betrayed by those she trusted and left for dead, Rin returns to the rural south where she was born. To the peasants who have suffered most in the empire's endless wars, she is no longer an outcast but a goddess of vengeance, and they will follow her. At the head of a ragtag southern army, Rin sets out to take back her country from the Dragon Republic and the foreign Hesperians who back it, fighting on every front at once. But her hardest battle is within: the Phoenix whose fire she commands whispers constantly that she should burn the world and everything in it, and the line between liberator and tyrant grows thinner with every victory. The conclusion of the Poppy War trilogy fuses twentieth-century Chinese history with a world of gods and monsters, following Rin's rise from despised orphan to revolutionary leader and asking what kind of country, if any, can be built on so much blood. It is a bleak, ambitious finale about power, sacrifice, and the ordinary people crushed beneath the march of history.

• morally grey

Book four of A Song of Ice and Fire. With the great war spent, an exhausted Westeros turns to the aftermath. In King's Landing, Dorne, and the Iron Islands, new players rise and old ambitions resurface. This volume follows half the cast, its parallel unfolding in A Dance with Dragons.

• court intrigue
• multiple povs
• morally grey
• family saga

Elantris was once the city of gods — a shining beacon where its inhabitants were transformed by a mysterious force called the Shaod into divine beings of immense power. Then, a decade ago, the magic failed. Those taken by the Shaod now become rotting, pain-wracked husks, trapped in the decaying city and unable to die. Prince Raoden of Arelon is the latest victim, cast into Elantris by his own father before his planned wedding to the Teoish princess Sarene, who arrives to find him officially dead. As Sarene navigates treacherous court politics, and the Fjordell high priest Hrathen moves to convert the kingdom before his armies arrive, Raoden discovers the secret of what killed Elantris — and whether it can be restored. Published in April 2005 as Sanderson's debut novel (his sixth completed manuscript), it won the Romantic Times award for Best Epic Fantasy of that year.

• court intrigue

Book two of the Stormlight Archive. Six months after the Battle of the Shattered Plains, Kaladin captains Dalinar's guard while struggling to master — and hide — his growing Radiant powers, and Shallan races toward the Shattered Plains carrying dangerous secrets and the key to the lost city of Urithiru. As the Assassin in White strikes again and a world-changing storm gathers, old oaths and buried pasts surface. Widely regarded as one of the series' high points, it won the 2015 David Gemmell Legend Award.

• multiple povs
• found family
• court intrigue