There are certain books that settle into the chambers of one’s heart and simply refuse to leave. A Wizard of Earthsea is such a book—a tale of young Ged upon his island of Gont, learning the true names of things and fleeing the shadow of his own making. If you have loved this story as we have, then you shall want more.
And so we have gathered here a collection of tales equally fine, equally strange, equally wondrous—books in which magic is not merely spectacle but a matter of wisdom, consequence, and becoming who you truly are.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Here is a tale that would have made Ged himself sit down and listen, for it concerns a young man named Kvothe who possesses the rarest gift of all—the ability to discover the true names of things. Like Ged entering the School on Roke, Kvothe finds his way to a University where magic is taught with scholarly precision.
The magic here operates by fixed principles, particularly the art of Sympathy, wherein one creates links between similar objects to produce wondrous effects. Young Kvothe learns these arts while navigating poverty, rivalry, and the memory of a tragedy that haunts him still. Rothfuss writes with such musicality that one feels transported entirely.
Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Fitz is a royal bastard—which is to say, he matters and he doesn’t, all at once. Brought to Buckkeep Castle as a small boy, he is trained in the quiet arts of the assassin while discovering he possesses two forbidden gifts: the Skill, which allows minds to touch across great distances, and the Wit, which permits communion with animals.
Robin Hobb writes with such tenderness for her characters’ inner lives that one feels quite personally invested in young Fitz’s struggles. Like Earthsea, this is a story about the cost of power and the long journey toward understanding oneself. George R.R. Martin called these books “diamonds in a sea of zircons,” and we find ourselves quite unable to disagree.
The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper
On the morning of his eleventh birthday—which falls, significantly, upon the winter solstice—Will Stanton discovers he is no ordinary boy. He is the last of the Old Ones, ancient beings who serve the Light in its eternal struggle against the Dark. This discovery arrives with rather more drama than Will might have preferred.
Cooper weaves Arthurian legend and Celtic mythology into a tale of a young person suddenly burdened with tremendous power and responsibility. The series earned both a Newbery Honor and, for its fourth book, the Newbery Medal itself. Like Le Guin, Cooper understood that the best fantasy speaks to something true about growing up.
The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan
Sonea is a young woman of the slums, and slum-dwellers are not meant to possess magic. Yet when she hurls a stone at the magicians’ protective shield during the annual Purge of the poor, her fury carries that stone straight through—and strikes a magician unconscious. Thus begins a most inconvenient discovery of power.
The Magicians’ Guild must find her before her untrained abilities harm herself or others. But Sonea has no reason to trust these fine folk who drive her people from their homes each winter. Canavan explores questions of class and belonging alongside the familiar pleasures of a young person learning to master her gifts within the halls of a magical institution.
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
Aerin is the king’s daughter, yet she is treated as something shameful—for her mother was foreign and strange, and Aerin has inherited her red hair and pale skin. She does not fit, and fitting is everything at court. So she teaches herself to fight dragons, beginning with small ones and working her way up.
This Newbery Medal winner tells the tale of a young woman who earns her heroism through sheer persistence and courage rather than destiny or birthright. McKinley was part of a generation of authors who insisted that girls could be heroes too, and The Hero and the Crown remains a shining example of that truth.
The Belgariad by David Eddings
Garion is merely a farm boy, raised by his Aunt Pol in comfortable obscurity. He knows the old legends about the Orb of Aldur and the dark god Torak, but they are only stories—until an elderly storyteller named Mister Wolf arrives, and Garion learns that the stories are quite terribly true, and that he is caught up in the very middle of them.
This five-book series offers the pleasures of a grand quest undertaken by a company of colorful companions. Garion must come to terms with the astonishing fact that he is not merely a farm boy but a sorcerer and heir to an ancient throne. The series was called “one of the founding megasagas in modern English-language fantasy.”
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
“Unicorns are gone from the world,” whispers the rumor that reaches a unicorn living alone in her enchanted wood. And so she ventures forth to discover what has become of her kind, joined along the way by an incompetent magician named Schmendrick and a practical woman named Molly Grue.
Beagle’s prose is poetry—The Atlantic called this book “one of the best fantasy novels ever.” Like Le Guin, Beagle understood that immortality is as much curse as blessing, and that even eternal beings may learn and change. This is a fairy tale that knows itself to be one, and is all the more beautiful for that knowing.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
Maia never expected to become Emperor. As the despised half-goblin son of a loveless marriage, he was exiled to a remote estate and forgotten. Then an airship accident kills his father and all his brothers, and Maia finds himself ruler of a realm he does not understand, surrounded by courtiers whose motives he cannot discern.
This is a quieter tale than most—a story of kindness and persistence in the face of cruelty and tradition. Maia navigates grief, anxiety, and loneliness while trying to become a good emperor despite having no training and no allies. The book won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and possesses that same thoughtful, melancholy quality that graces Le Guin’s finest work.
Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist
Pug is an orphan working in the kitchens of Castle Crydee when he is chosen as apprentice to the court magician. His studies proceed indifferently—until invaders from another world tear through a magical rift, and Pug’s life changes entirely. Captured and taken through the rift to the alien world of Kelewan, he will return as someone transformed.
Feist’s saga spans twenty-five years and two worlds, following both Pug’s magical education and his friend Tomas’s equally remarkable journey. For readers who loved the sense of scope in Le Guin’s Earthsea archipelago, this series offers worlds upon worlds to explore.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
What if you discovered magic was real, attended a secret college to study it, and found that it still didn’t make you happy? Quentin Coldwater arrives at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy expecting wonder; he finds instead that magic is difficult, tedious work requiring mastery of dead languages and precise hand positions.
Grossman explicitly cites A Wizard of Earthsea among his influences, and the debt is visible—yet this is a decidedly grown-up tale, complete with the complications of adult relationships and the persistent question of what, exactly, one should do with one’s life. The New York Times aptly called it “Harry Potter for adults.”
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
In the village of Emond’s Field, three young men discover that servants of the Dark One are hunting them—though none know which of them is the true quarry. They flee with an Aes Sedai, a wielder of the One Power, and thus begins one of fantasy’s grandest epics.
Jordan consciously evoked Tolkien’s Shire in his opening chapters, creating a sense of cozy normalcy about to be shattered. The series explores the nature of power with particular attention to gender—for in this world, only women can safely wield magic. Men who can channel the One Power go inevitably mad. It is a complication young Rand al’Thor will come to understand all too personally.
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Bilbo Baggins is a most respectable hobbit who wants nothing to do with adventures, thank you very much—until a wizard and thirteen dwarves arrive at his door and sweep him off toward a dragon’s hoard. Like Ged, Bilbo is transformed by his journey, discovering courage and resourcefulness he never knew he possessed.
This is the book that taught generations of readers what fantasy could be. Le Guin herself acknowledged Tolkien’s influence, though she took fantasy in her own distinctive direction. If somehow you have not yet visited Middle-earth, there is no better place to begin than this tale of an unlikely hero.
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
For those who loved the archipelago of Earthsea with its many islands and ways of magic, Schwab offers four Londons existing in parallel—Grey, Red, White, and Black—each with its own relationship to magic. Kell is one of the last travelers able to move between them, a gift both rare and dangerous.
When he encounters a thief named Lila who refuses to remain in her proper world, events spiral toward catastrophe. Schwab’s prose crackles with energy, and her exploration of magic’s costs and consequences echoes Le Guin’s understanding that power always extracts its price.
The Riddle-Master Trilogy by Patricia McKillip
Morgon is the Prince of Hed, a small island kingdom where nothing exciting ever happens. He has three stars on his forehead, placed there at birth, and absolutely no idea what they mean. His quest to answer this riddle will take him across a world where land-rulers are bound to their lands by ancient magic.
McKillip writes with a prose style as luminous as Le Guin’s own. Her fantasy works have been compared to Le Guin’s repeatedly, and readers who love one often love the other. This trilogy shares Earthsea’s interest in names, riddles, and the slow discovery of one’s true self.
The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
A thousand years after the Great Wars destroyed the old world, the Druid Allanon emerges from hiding to tell young Shea Ohmsford that he alone can wield the Sword of Shannara against the Warlock Lord. Shea is a half-elf raised among humans, uncertain of his heritage and reluctant to believe in his destiny.
Brooks launched modern epic fantasy with this book, opening the way for the genre’s current flourishing. While more action-oriented than Le Guin’s contemplative tales, it shares her interest in young people thrust into situations that demand they grow beyond their own expectations.
These fifteen books await, dear reader, each offering its own passage into enchantment. Some are quiet and contemplative, some grand and sweeping, but all of them suggest—each in its own unique way, of course—that the truest magic lies in becoming fully and completely oneself.
