Best Fantasy Books of 2014

Below you will find a list of the fantasy books published in 2014 that we enjoyed most. Click on a book title to read the full review.

  6. 6. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

    Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel book cover

    Emily St. John Mandel offers a refreshing, hopeful take on the post-apocalypse. Twenty years after a flu pandemic collapses civilisation, a travelling troupe of actors and musicians performs Shakespeare for the small settlements that remain. The novel moves between the "before" and "after," weaving together the lives of characters connected to a single actor. It focuses on the idea that "survival is insufficient" - that humans need art, beauty, and memory to truly live. It is a beautifully written, melancholic, yet ultimately optimistic story about what we choose to preserve when everything else is gone.

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  11. 11. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

    City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett book cover

    Robert Jackson Bennett's "The City of Stairs" is a masterful "Divine Noir" that redefines the genre. Set in Bulikov, a city where the gods were murdered and their reality-bending miracles have become dangerous "stairs" to nowhere, it follows diplomat-spy Shara Thivani. The book is fantastic because it treats magic as a forensic puzzle and a geopolitical scar. By blending a tense murder mystery with deep themes of colonialism and theology, Bennett creates a world that feels ancient yet startlingly original. It is a brilliant, brainy investigation into what happens when the "impossible" becomes a crime scene.

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