Standalone Fantasy Books That WOW
- Mar 10
- 10 min read
When you think of fantasy books you typically think of long running series of epic proportions. These 21 standalone fantasy books are more epic in scope rather than length as each one stands perfectly on its own as a fully complete story.
VenCo
Cherie Dimaline
Lucky St. James is barely hanging on when she discovers she will soon be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, she finds a silver spoon etched with the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.
Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. As a reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. To find the last spoon, Lucky embarks on a dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.
Wild Reverence
Rebecca Ross
Born in the firelit domain of the under realm, Matilda is the youngest goddess of her clan, blessed with humble messenger magic she uses to carry words and letters through the realms. But the gods will kill for power, and Matilda holds a secret she must hide from even her dearest allies.
Ten years ago, Vincent of Beckett wrote to Matilda on the darkest night of his life—begging the goddess he befriended in dreams to help him.
Matilda and Vincent were fated to find each other beyond dreams. But to rewrite the blood-soaked ways of the gods, Matilda will have to face something she fears even more than losing her magic.
The Everlasting
Alix E. Harrow
Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters—but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.
Centuries later, Owen Mallory falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives—and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.
But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend they’ll have to rewrite history itself.
4.
A Master of Djinn
P. Djèlí Clark
Cairo, 1912: Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, so when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Fatma is called onto the case.
This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.
Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city.
The Spear Cuts Through Water
Simon Jimenez
The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.
But that god cannot be contained forever.
With the aid of Jun, a guard broken by his guilt-stricken past, and Keema, an outcast fighting for his future, the god escapes from her royal captivity and flees from her own children, the triplet Terrors who would drag her back to her unholy prison. And so it is that she embarks with her young companions on a five-day pilgrimage in search of freedom—and a way to end the Moon Throne forever.
Babel
R.F. Kuang
Robin Swift is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland.
Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. An utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements.
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. However, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.
The Deep
Rivers Solomon
Yetu holds the memories for her people.
Her people, the wajinru – descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners – live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too painful to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one.
The memories – harrowing and wonderful, traumatic and terrible – are destroying Yetu. And so she flees to the surface, escaping her expectations and responsibilities – and discovers a world the wajinru left behind long ago.
Gods of Jade and Shadow
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico.
One day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother.
In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.
Blood Over Bright Haven
M.L. Wang
Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally becomes a highmage, she finds that her challenges have just begun - her new colleagues giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.
Thomil survived the perilous crossing that killed his family, but working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe and keep the Tiranish in power.
Can mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever.
Immortal
Sue Lynn Tan
Liyen knows she must ascend the throne and renew her kingdom’s pledge to serve the immortals who once protected them from a vicious enemy. But when she is poisoned, Liyen’s grandfather steals an enchanted lotus to save her life. Enraged at his betrayal, the immortal queen commands the powerful God of War to attack Tianxia.
When Liyen is summoned to the Immortal Realm, she seizes the opportunity to learn their secrets and to form a tenuous alliance to safeguard her people, all with the one she should fear and mistrust the most: the ruthless God of War. As they are drawn together, a treacherous attraction ignites between them—one she has to resist, to not endanger all she is fighting for.
An Education in Malice
S.T. Gibson
Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua's College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls.
On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine.
But as their rivalry blossoms into something far more delicious, Laura must confront her own strange hungers. Tangled in a sinister game of politics, bloodthirsty professors and dark magic, Laura and Carmilla must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in their ruthless pursuit of knowledge.
The First Bright Thing
J.R. Dawson
Ringmaster — Rin, to those who know her best — can jump to different moments in time as easily as her wife, Odette, soars from bar to bar on the trapeze. And the circus they lead is a rare home and safe haven for magical misfits and outcasts, known as Sparks.
With the world still reeling from World War I, Rin and her troupe — the Circus of the Fantasticals — travel the midwest, offering a single night of enchantment and respite to all who step into their Big Top.
But threats come at Rin from all sides. It takes the form of another circus, with tents as black as midnight and a ringmaster who rules over his troupe with a dangerous power. Rin's circus has something he wants, and he won't stop until it's his.
The Maiden and Her Monster
Maddie Martinez
As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the curse of the woods has plagued her village, but when the Ozmini Church comes to collect their tithes, they don’t listen to the warnings about a monster lurking in the trees. After a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes a bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings him the monster, he will spare her mother from execution.
When she ventures into the blood-soaked woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only after Malka helps her free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.
Tress of the Emerald Sea
Brandon Sanderson
The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?
The Sky on Fire
Jenn Lyons
Anahrod lives only for survival, preferring to thrive in the jungles of the Deep with the titan drake she keeps by her side. When an adventuring party saves her from capture by the local warlord, Sicaryon, she is eager to return to her solitary life, but this is no ordinary rescue. Anahrod's past has caught up with her. And these cunning misfits intend to spirit her away to the cloud cities, where they need her help to steal from a dragon’s hoard.
There’s only one in the cloud cities, dragons rule, and the hoard in question belongs to the current regent, Neveranimas―and she wants Anahrod dead.
The Incandescent
Emily Tesh
"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."
Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.
Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.
Hemlock & Silver
T. Kingfisher
Healer Anja regularly drinks poison. Not to die, but to save— seeking cures for those everyone else has given up on.
But a summons from the King interrupts her quiet, herb-obsessed life. His daughter, Snow, is dying, and he hopes Anja’s unorthodox methods can save her.
Aided by a taciturn guard, a narcissistic cat, and a passion for the scientific method, Anja rushes to treat Snow, but nothing seems to work. That is, until she finds a secret world, hidden inside a magic mirror. This dark realm may hold the key to what is making Snow sick.
Or it might be the thing that kills them all.
The Isle in the Silver Sea
Tasha Suri
In a Britain fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.
Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen's court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?
As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.
The Carnivale of Curiosities
Amiee Gibbs
There is no more coveted ticket than Ashe and Pretorius' Carnivale of Curiosities. Each performance is a limited engagement, and London's elite boldly dare the dangerous streets of Southwark to witness the Carnivale's astounding assemblage of marvels. Rumors abound that the show’s proprietor, Aurelius Ashe, is more than an average magician, and no one knows the truth of this claim better than Lucien the Lucifer, the Carnivale's star attraction.
When Odilon Rose comes calling with a proposition regarding his young and beautiful charge, Charlotte, Ashe is tempted to refuse. After revealing, however, that Rose holds a secret that threatens the security of the troupe's most vulnerable members, Ashe has no choice but to sign an insidious contract.
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