The Best Historical Fantasy Novels

In the early 20th century, the military dictator known as El Gran Pendejo rules El Salvador with an iron fist. This at-times bleak novel follows estranged sisters Graciela and Consuelo as they flee the genocide that took the lives of all Graciela’s friends. It’s a heart-tugging tale of magical realism, and it deserves a place on your TBR.

The first book in Zen Cho’s Sorcerer Royal series, Sorcerer to the Crown centers on Zacharias Wythe, a formerly enslaved man who has become Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers. As the first Black man to serve in the role, Zacharias has all eyes on him. Now, Regency England is running out of magic. It’s up to the Sorcerer Royal to travel to Fairyland and figure out why.

Set in seventh-century Britain, Hild is a fictionalized account of the life of St. Hilda of Whitby and the first novel in the Hild Sequence. The novel traces the young Hild’s life as she grows up, from the king’s niece to the king’s seer, putting her powers of premonition to work. This is a dense masterpiece of a book, steeped in Anglo-Saxon history and lore. Hild has earned its place on your nightstand.

In the late 1820s, Robin, a Cantonese orphan, finds himself deposited in London. There, he trains as a translator, studying Chinese as well as the ancient languages. He’s spent his whole life preparing for his inevitable entry into the Royal Institute of Translation: London’s magical epicenter and the key to Britain’s dominion over the world. Once Robin gets there, however, he realizes that his adopted homeland’s colonization of his birthplace has come at a price. Where will his loyalties eventually lie?

Freya Marske’s alternative Edwardian England is one of my favorite historical fantasy settings ever. Here, readers meet Robin Blyth, an impoverished baronet, whose new bureaucratic post turns out to be a royal mistake. He’s supposed to be keeping the public in the dark about the existence of magic in the British Isles. There’s just one problem: Robin himself wasn’t aware of magic until he took the post. With his predecessor mysteriously vanished, and his new magical colleague abrasive, Robin has his work cut out for him in A Marvellous Light.