Fantasy Novels

What counts as a fantasy novel?

In simple terms, a fantasy novel treats the impossible as ordinary within its world. Magic, mythical beings, alternate histories, or other realities aren’t window dressing—they’re baked into how the story works. The focus can be sweeping or intimate, but the contract with the reader stays the same: the unreal is real here.

Subgenres without the jargon

Subgenres are just helpful labels for tone and scope—useful for browsing, not boxes to write inside. A few you’ll see often:

• Epic / High Fantasy — secondary worlds, big stakes, layered traditions, and slow-burn payoffs.
• Swords & Sorcery — taut, character-driven adventures where decisions cut as sharply as blades.
• Dark Fantasy — moral fog, folklore’s sharp teeth, horror’s shadow at the edge of the firelight.
• Urban & Contemporary Fantasy — the modern world, plus whatever refuses to stay explained.
• Historical & Portal Fantasy — either the past with a seam of wonder, or a door that shouldn’t exist.

Most novels mix ingredients. The point is mood and promise: what the reader can expect on page one.

The craft pillars readers feel (even if they don’t name them)

Worldbuilding that serves the scene

Worldbuilding isn’t an encyclopedia—it’s a set of choices that make each scene inevitable. Customs, maps, currencies, dialects, and weather all matter when they shape a decision or raise a cost.

Magic systems, soft to hard

Some stories draw clear lines—sources, limits, prices. Others keep mystery in the margins. Either way, magic works best when it clarifies stakes rather than erasing them.

Characters under pressure

Fantasy raises the ceiling on what’s possible, but readers still come for people: competence and consequence, humor and hurt, a choice that says who someone is.

Finding your way into the genre

Not sure where to begin? There is no better place that Robert Howard's "Conan". L. Sprague de Camp" rewrote the series from the original magazine articles in the late 60's, which resulted in a revival of the genre that lasted for decades.

This is an example of the 'old school' fantasy novels - the epic fantasy where the hero is a hero: bold, no regrets, ever-victorious. This gave way in the late 90's to the more contemporary 'regretful hero,' who overcomes his flaws and failures in order to actually triumph, or to triumph as much as he/she can. This is more reminiscent of target="_blank" or, of more of a beginner reader, Terry Brooks' "Landover Series."

My own 'Intermission Series' is a great place to start for beginner readers, or for those of you who don't know if they want to commit to an eight novel series.

Daddy's Girl is a novel of an emperor's daughter, whose mother is a premeir sorceress on Fovea, cast into a foreign land with one her father's "Wolf Soldier" guard, trying to make it back home.

Not Your Father’s Eldadorian Empire is the story of Eldador's former king's son, Tartan Stowe, trying to hold the new Empire together while the new emperor (who replaced his father) wages war across Fovea.

Prodigal Son is the story of the Emperor's eldest son, a bastard by a brewer's daughter, finding out who his real father is. The love of the Emperor drove his mother insane - will he have his vengeance, or this father's empire?

Glossary (quick and useful)

Fantasy novels

Stories where impossible elements are treated as real within consistent story rules.

Worldbuilding

The design of cultures, places, and history that make a scene feel inevitable.

Magic system

How the supernatural functions—its sources, costs, and boundaries.

Trope

A recurring pattern readers recognize: found family, chosen one, the last job, the dangerous bargain.

Frequently asked (and actually helpful)