The 10 Best Historical Fantasy Books to Read This Summer
These novels blend the substantiated with the surreal, offering new ways to understand the past through magic, monsters and myth.
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We love good historical fiction—a novel that takes the sweep of history and brings it into sharp focus through individual characters and their tangled motivations, cloaking fact in richly structured, deeply readable fiction. But what about the authors who take things one step further?
Lately, historical fantasy has been having a moment. Writers are penning vivid stories of magic and battlefields, of ghosts, djinn and monsters against backdrops drawn from real historical events, from the Abbasid Caliphate to the early days of the Ming dynasty. You can immerse yourself in the Cuban Revolution or explore the Dust Bowl; follow a fierce band of fighters as they take down parasitic KKK monsters or watch a golem and a Jewish girl slip past Nazi forces. These ten must-read historical fantasy books use fiction to enhance fact, layering the surreal atop the real in ways that feel both thrilling and true.
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
- Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
- The Antidote by Karen Russell
- The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
- The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
- She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore
- The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
- The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel José Older
- Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay
- The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
A young girl is told her fate amounts to nothing, so she steals her dead brother’s identity and steps into his prophesied greatness. This sweeping historical fantasy reimagines the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang, the peasant who would go on to found the Ming dynasty, with bold invention and a keen sense of scale. What follows is a tale of war, ambition and transformation, rendered with high fantasy flair and anchored by a fiercely compelling queer anti-hero. The sequel is just as sharp, but it all starts here.
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark
What if the KKK weren’t just hateful—they were literally infested with parasitic eldritch monsters that feed on racism? And what if there were fearless, axe-wielding fighters trained to wipe them out? That’s the pulse of this razor-sharp novella, where the heroes race to shut down screenings of Birth of a Nation before dark magic floods the world. Packed with visceral action and steeped in rich, resonant Black folklore, it blends the supernatural with the all-too-real, never flinching from the horrors it confronts.
The Antidote by Karen Russell
Set against the dry, desperate backdrop of the Dust Bowl, this novel threads fantasy through hardship to ask what we’re willing to forget in the pursuit of prosperity. In Uz, Nebraska, a local witch makes a living by extracting people’s worst memories until a violent storm scatters them back into the world. As chaos unfurls, a young orphan sets out to save her struggling basketball team by apprenticing with the witch, while her uncle watches his suddenly thriving farm with uneasy wonder. It’s a tale of loss, memory and uneasy bargains, wrapped in dust and a hint of magic.
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
It’s 1491, and Muslim rule in Andalusia is on the brink as Isabella and Ferdinand close in on Granada. Inside the palace walls, a teenage concubine named Fatima and her friend Hassan—a mapmaker with magical gifts—flee the sultan’s court, pursued by the Inquisition. What follows is a richly imagined tale of eerie djinn, talking birds and dangerous curses, all set against the very real backdrop of cultural clashes and the terror of the Catholic takeover of Spain.
The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
A German Jewish mother, desperate to keep her daughter alive under Nazi rule, turns to ancient magic for salvation—persuading a rabbi’s daughter to create a golem to guide the girl to safety. What unfolds is both a harrowing journey through occupied Europe and a quiet meditation on love, loyalty and survival told through the lived realities of many different women during WWII in a book very much focused on what it means to be human.
She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore
In the early 19th century, a new nation was founded for freed Black people: Liberia. Despite its deep ties to the U.S., it remains a blank spot in most American histories. Moore, who left Liberia as a child during its civil war, reimagines the country’s founding through a fantastical lens, following three protagonists who each arrive with magical powers in a tale that’s part myth, part memory and wholly original.
The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
From the start, Chakraborty set out to explore medieval Islamic history—the Abbasid Caliphate, its tangled intrigues and its place between ancient and emerging worlds. The Daevabad trilogy delivers on that ambition. At its center is Nahri, a Cairo con woman who accidentally summons a djinn and finds herself swept into the opulent, dangerous city of brass, where court politics are as cutthroat as any battlefield. It’s a richly plotted fantasy with history humming underneath.
The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel José Older
Marisol is a restless spirit, gone missing during the Cuban Revolution and unable to remember why. She parcels fragments of her past to her nephew Ramón, nudging him to unravel the mystery. The novel’s strain of magical realism pulses with Cuban history and the long shadow of Fulgencio Batista, digging into trauma, memory and the bonds that refuse to die.
Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay
In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans; decades later, Christian forces make a bid to reclaim it. This historical fantasy, set across fictionalized versions of Croatia and Italy, spins a layered, multi-character tale filled with battles, betrayal and political intrigue. Kay once said he writes “history with a quarter turn to the fantastic”—and this is exactly that, executed with elegance and scale.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
This vivid fantasy trilogy draws directly from the brutal history of the Second Sino-Japanese War, capturing the violence with unflinching intensity. Rin, a determined young woman from humble beginnings, earns her place at the elite Sinegard military academy—but she doesn’t expect to channel a vengeful god or to be thrust into war before she’s ready. What follows is both epic and harrowing.
