# The 30 Best World Fantasy Award-Winning Novels

> Half a century of prize-winning fantasy, with quiet literary oddities set against doorstop epics, gothic horror and the odd crime story.

*By YPB Team · Published October 31, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-30-best-world-fantasy-award-winning-novels*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell** — score 1000/1000
   Susanna Clarke's alternate history of two rival magicians reviving English magic during the Napoleonic Wars.
2. **Alif the Unseen** — score 897/1000
   G. Willow Wilson's techno-thriller about a Gulf hacker who finds a book written by the jinn.
3. **The City & the City** — score 787/1000
   China Miéville's crime novel set in two cities that share the same space and must 'unsee' each other.
4. **The Chimes** — score 787/1000
   Anna Smaill's dystopia set in a London where music has replaced written language and memory.
5. **The Forgotten Beasts of Eld** — score 718/1000
   Patricia A. McKillip's 1974 tale of a sorceress and her menagerie of legendary beasts, the award's first winner.
6. **A Stranger in Olondria** — score 718/1000
   Sofia Samatar's lyrical debut about a pepper merchant's son haunted by a ghost in the land of Olondria.
7. **Boy's Life** — score 636/1000
   Robert R. McCammon's coming-of-age novel about a boy in 1964 Alabama, mixing small-town life with the uncanny.
8. **Tender Morsels** — score 636/1000
   Margo Lanagan's dark fairy-tale novel about a young woman given a private heaven to escape her abuse.
9. **Thomas the Rhymer** — score 636/1000
   Ellen Kushner's retelling of the Scottish ballad of a harper carried off to the land of the fairy queen.
10. **The Dragon Waiting** — score 636/1000
   John M. Ford's alternate-history Wars of the Roses fantasy with vampires, wizards and Byzantine intrigue.
11. **Mythago Wood** — score 636/1000
   Robert Holdstock's tale of an English wood that conjures living versions of myths and legends.
12. **The Jasmine Throne** — score 538/1000
   Tasha Suri's epic fantasy about an imprisoned princess and a maidservant with a hidden power.
13. **Osama** — score 538/1000
   Lavie Tidhar's noir novel about a detective hired to find the author of pulp thrillers about Osama bin Laden.
14. **Gloriana** — score 418/1000
   Michael Moorcock's baroque reimagining of an Elizabethan court ruled by a troubled queen.
15. **Declare** — score 418/1000
   Tim Powers' Cold War spy novel in which the secret services are fighting over supernatural beings.
16. **Ombria in Shadow** — score 418/1000
   Patricia A. McKillip's court-intrigue fantasy set in the shadowed city of Ombria.
17. **Tooth and Claw** — score 418/1000
   Jo Walton's Victorian novel of manners with a twist: every character is a dragon.
18. **Who Fears Death** — score 418/1000
   Nnedi Okorafor's post-apocalyptic African fantasy about a young sorceress born of violence.
19. **The Sudden Appearance of Hope** — score 418/1000
   Claire North's thriller about a woman whom everyone forgets the moment she leaves their sight.
20. **The Changeling** — score 418/1000
   Victor LaValle's modern fairy tale about a New York father whose wife commits an unthinkable act.
21. **Saint Death's Daughter** — score 418/1000
   C. S. E. Cooney's comic gothic fantasy about a young necromancer left to save her family's estate.
22. **The Reformatory** — score 418/1000
   Tananarive Due's historical horror novel about a boy sent to a haunted segregated reform school in 1950 Florida.
23. **The Other Wind** — score 0/1000
   Ursula K. Le Guin's final Earthsea novel, in which the dead begin calling out to the living.
24. **Song of Kali** — score 0/1000
   Dan Simmons' debut, a horror novel set in Calcutta around a cult of the goddess Kali.
25. **Perfume** — score 0/1000
   Patrick Süskind's story of an 18th-century perfumer with no scent of his own and a murderous obsession.
26. **The Prestige** — score 0/1000
   Christopher Priest's novel of two rival Victorian stage magicians, later adapted by Christopher Nolan.
27. **Kafka on the Shore** — score 0/1000
   Haruki Murakami's dreamlike novel weaving a runaway teenager's story with that of an old man who talks to cats.
28. **The Bone Clocks** — score 0/1000
   David Mitchell's decades-spanning novel about a woman caught up in a secret war between immortals.
29. **Witchmark** — score 0/1000
   C. L. Polk's Edwardian-flavoured fantasy about a doctor hiding his magic after a brutal war.
30. **The Tainted Cup** — score 0/1000
   Robert Jackson Bennett's fantasy mystery introducing the eccentric detective Ana Dolabra and her assistant Din.

Tags: fantasy, books, awards, fiction