Best parallel universe / multiverse books

A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a multiverse. The fantasy genre has long employed parallel universes and alternate realities with Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series being quality examples. Below you will find book reviews on the three aforementioned series and more.

1. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 1
Score: 199
Our rating: 9.6 | 7 positive reader reviews
In The Gunslinger, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own. In his first step towards the powe [...]

2. The 10,000 Doors of January by Alix E Harrow
Score: 199
Our rating: 10.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the weal [...]

3. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
Score: 195
Our rating: 9.7 | 3 positive reader reviews
When Colin and Susan are pursued by eerie creatures across Alderley Edge, they are saved by the Wizard. He takes them into the caves of Fundindelve, where he watches over the enchanted sleep of one hundred and forty knights. But the heart of the magic that binds them – Firefrost, also known [...]

4. The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
Score: 191
Our rating: 9.6 | 1 positive reader reviews
On holiday in Cornwall, the three Drew children discover an ancient map in the attic of the house that they are staying in. They know immediately that it is special. It is even more than that -- the key to finding a grail, a source of power to fight the forces of evil known as the Dark. And in se [...]

5. A Man Rides Through by Stephen Donaldson
Mordant's Need: Book 2
Score: 188
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Aided by the powerful magic of Vagel, the evil Arch-Imager, the merciless armies are marching against the kingdom of Mordant. In its hour of greatest need, two unlikely champions emerge. One is Geraden, whose inability to master the simplest skills of Imagery has made him a laughingstock. The oth [...]

6. The City and the City by China Mieville
Score: 184
Our rating: 9.2 | 2 positive reader reviews
When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and m [...]

7. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Divine Cities: Book 1
Score: 182
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
You've got to be careful when you're chasing a murderer through Bulikov, for the world is not as it should be in that city. When the gods were destroyed and all worship of them banned by the Polis, reality folded; now stairs lead to nowhere, alleyways have become portals to the past, and [...]

8. 11.22.63 by Stephen King
Score: 180
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11/22/63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless... King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, o [...]

9. Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Score: 180
Our rating: 8.8 | 6 positive reader reviews
Weaveworld is an epic adventure of the imagination. It begins with a carpet in which a world of rapture and enchantment is hiding; a world which comes to life, alerting the dark forces and beginning a desperate battle to preserve the last vestiges of magic which Humankind still has access to. It [...]

10. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Score: 178
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks. Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is [...]

11. Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson
Score: 178
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
He calls himself Alif - few people know his real name - a young man born in a Middle Eastern city that straddles the ancient and modern worlds. When Alif meets the aristocratic Intisar, he believes he has found love. But their relationship has no future - Intisar is promised to another man and he [...]

12. Mister Monday by Garth Nix
The Keys to the Kingdom: Book 1
Score: 175
Our rating: 8.5 | 4 positive reader reviews
The first day of term at Arthur Penhaligon's new school was supposed to be his last day on earth, but instead of dying of an asthma attack, he is given a key and drawn into another realm, controlled by human-like creatures called the Morrow Days. Strange dog-like creatures are sent, by one of [...]

13. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine LEngle
Score: 164
Our rating: 8.3 | 0 positive reader reviews
When Charles Wallace Murry goes searching through a 'wrinkle in time' for his lost father, he finds himself on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as 'It'. How Charles, his sister Meg and friend Calvin find and free his father makes this a ver [...]

14. A Spindle Splintered by Alix Harrow
Fractured Fables #1
Score: 158
Our rating: 8.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. [...]

15. A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab
A Darker Shade of Magic #1
Score: 120
Our rating: 6.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Most people only know one London; but what if there were several? Kell is one of the last Travelers - magicians with a rare ability to travel between parallel Londons. There’s Grey London, dirty and crowded and without magic, home to the mad king George III. There’s Red London, where [...]

16. Boneland by Alan Garner
Score: 105
Our rating: 8.9 | 16 positive reader reviews
If the sleeper wakes, the dream dies… Professor Colin Whisterfield spends his days at Jodrell Bank, using the radio telescope to look for his lost sister in the Pleiades. At the same time, and in another time, the Watcher cuts the rock and dances, to keep the sky above the earth and the st [...]

17. Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 4
Score: 100
Our rating: 10.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The resourceful literary detective Thursday Next returns to Swindon from the BookWorld accompanied by her son Friday and none other than the dithering Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap - as outlaw fictioner Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon’s patron sai [...]

18. The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 2
Score: 99
Our rating: 9.9 | 1 positive reader reviews
Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger, encounters three doors which open to 1980s America, where he joins forces with the defiant Eddie Dean and courageous, volatile Odetta Holmes. And confronts deadly serial killer Jack Mort. As the titanic forces gather, a savage struggle between underworld evi [...]

19. The Unspoken Name by A K Larkwood
The Serpent Gates: Book 1
Score: 99
Our rating: 10.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
What if you knew how and when you will die?Csorwe does - she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from he [...]

20. The Wounded Land by Stephen Donaldson
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Book 4
Score: 98
Our rating: 9.6 | 2 positive reader reviews
Four thousand years have passed since Covenant first freed the Land from the devastating grip of Lord Foul and his minions. But he is back, and Covenant, armed with his stunning white gold magic, must battle the evil forces and his own despair... [...]

21. Crow's Revenge by Marcus Alexander
Keeper of the Realms: Book 1
Score: 98
Our rating: 9.2 | 6 positive reader reviews
Charlie Keeper has been forced from her home by a bloodthirsty and terrifying stranger. But in escaping she discovers her house holds the gateway to the Realm of Bellania - a place of myth, magic... and an evil Lord with a very bad attitude. Now its fate rests squarely upon Charlie's shoulder [...]

22. The Waste Lands by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 3
Score: 97
Our rating: 9.7 | 0 positive reader reviews
Roland has altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers in New York. Now they exist in different worlds, paradoxically sharing memories. Roland, Susannah and Eddie must try to draw Jake into Mid-World then follow the Path of the Beam through an urban waste land to the Dark Tower. [...]

23. The Power That Preserves by Stephen Donaldson
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Book 3
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.2 | 1 positive reader reviews
Twice before Thomas Covenant had been summoned to the strange other-world where magic worked. Twice before he had been forced to join with the Lords of Revelstone in their war against Lord Foul, the ancient enemy of the Land. Now he was back. This time the Lords of Revelstone were desperate. With [...]

24. Abhorsen by Garth Nix
The Abhorsen Chronicles: Book 3
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.5 | 2 positive reader reviews
Lirael and Sameth have reached the safety of the Abhorsens House after fleeing from Necromancer Hedge and his dead minions. Now trapped by his agent Chlorr and many Dead Hands, Lirael and Sam must find a way to warn the King and Abhorsen of the mounting danger their subjects face in the Old Kingd [...]

25. Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 4
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
In a terrifying journey where hidden dangers lurk at every junction, the pilgrims find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, that has been ravaged by a superflu virus.While following the deserted highway toward a distant glass palace, Roland recounts his tragic sto [...]

26. Nightfall by Will Elliott
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Aden awakens naked in a bath tub, knowing only that he is dead. His new world is Nightfall, a place filled with characters bizarre, grotesque and magical: Julius the duke, the monstrous Gorr family, the goddess Muse, Slythe the deadly assassin. On the night Aden awakens, the Forgetting closes in, [...]

27. The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 7
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
The BookWorld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following an assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation. If only life were that simple. Thursday is faced with an array of f [...]

28. The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 4.5
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
Visit Mid-World's last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. Roland tells a tale from his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother's death. Sent by his father to investigate eviden [...]

29. First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 5
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Thursday Next is back. And this time it's personal… Officially, Literary Detective Thursday Next is off the case. Once a key figure in the BookWorld police force, she is concentrating on her duties as a wife and mother. Or so her husband thinks… Unofficially, Thursday is working [...]

30. The Oversight by Charlie Fletcher
Oversight Trilogy #1
Score: 96
Our rating: 9.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
Only five still guard the borders between the worlds. Only five hold back what waits on the other side. Once the Oversight, the secret society that polices the lines between the mundane and the magic, counted hundreds of brave souls among its members. Now their number can be tallied on a single h [...]

31. One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 6
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister?All is not y [...]

32. Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
Fantasy Masterworks: Book 40
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The gathering forces of the Dark Powers threaten the world of man. The legions of Faery, aided by trolls, demons and the Wild Hunt itself, are poised to overthrow the Realms of Light. Holger Carlsen, a bemused and puzzled twentieth-century man mysteriously snatched out of time, finds himself the [...]

33. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 1
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
There is another 1985, where London’s criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of a new crime wave’s Mr Big. Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing. T [...]

34. Seaward by Susan Cooper
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
His name is West. Her name is Cally. They speak different languages and come from different countries thousands of miles apart, but they do not know that. What they do know are the tragedies that took their parents, then wrenched the two of them out of reality, into a strange and perilous world t [...]

35. A Conjuring of Light by VE Schwab
A Darker Shade of Magic #3
Score: 95
Our rating: 9.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The precarious equilibrium among the four Londons has reached its breaking point. Once brimming with the red vivacity of magic, darkness casts a shadow over the Maresh Empire, leaving a space for another London to rise. Kell - once assumed to be the last surviving Antari -begins to waver under th [...]

36. The Illearth War by Stephen Donaldson
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Book 2
Score: 94
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Thomas Covenant finds himself once again summoned to the Land. The Council of Lords needed him to move against Foul the Despiser who holds the Illearth Stone, ancient source of evil power. But although Thomas Covenant has the legendary ring, he doesn't know how to use its strength, and risks [...]

37. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Score: 94
Our rating: 9.4 | 0 positive reader reviews
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his el [...]

38. Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 5
Score: 93
Our rating: 9.3 | 0 positive reader reviews
In the fertile lands of the East, the farming community has been warned the wolves are coming back. Four gunslingers, led by Roland of Gilead, are also coming their way. And the farmers of the Calla want to enlist some hard calibers.Torn between protecting the innocent community and his ur [...]

39. Once Upon A Time In The North by Philip Pullman
His Dark Materials Novella
Score: 92
Our rating: 8.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
When Lyra is studying at Oxford University, she comes across the story of Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrnisson's first meeting, many years ago, along with much evidence of the adventure that brought them together. When a young Texan balloonist, Lee Scoresby, comes down to earth in the harbour of [...]

40. Spirit of Fire by Stephen Zimmer
Fires in Eden: Book 3
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
Battered by a massive invasion force from Gallea, the tribal people of the Five Realms and their Midragardan allies are being driven eastward, towards the sea, while the Saxan lines are wearing down ever thinner on the Plains of Athelney. Time is running out quickly, as an ancient creature of leg [...]

41. Spring by William Horwood
Hyddenworld: Book 1
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
It has lain lost and forgotten for fifteen hundred years in the ancient heartland of England – a scrap of glass and metal melded by fierce fire. It is the lost core of a flawless Sphere made by the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon CraeftLords in memory of the one he loved. Her name was Spring an [...]

42. Awakening by William Horwood
Hyddenworld: Book 2
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
A series of extraordinary events mark the beginning of summer: earth tremors ravage the Hyddenworld; Jack and Katherine have a child, Judith; and a mysterious gem is found near Brum. That same night, after decades of sleep, the Emperor of the Hyddenworld awakens…Jack, born of the Hy [...]

43. Winter by William Horwood
Hyddenworld: Book 4
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
Storms rage as the worst winter in living memory ravages the human and Hydden worlds. The prophesied End of Days is here and the universe is dying, yet only a few are even aware of the forces at work. Jack and Katherine must help their friend Bedwyn Stort halt this chaos by locating the last [...]

44. One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
Impossible Times #1
Score: 92
Our rating: 9.2 | 0 positive reader reviews
In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the [...]

45. Lirael by Garth Nix
The Abhorsen Chronicles: Book 2
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 2 positive reader reviews
Lirael has never felt like a true daughter of the Clayr, a powerful group of clairvoyant oracles responsible for assisting the Abhorsen and the Royal Family in keeping the Old Kingdom safe from the threat of the Dead. Not only does she look completely different to everyone else, she is long past [...]

46. The Dark Tower by Stephen King
The Dark Tower series: Book 7
Score: 91
Our rating: 8.8 | 1 positive reader reviews
Roland Deschain and his ka-tet have journeyed together and apart, scattered far and wide across multilayered worlds of wheres and whens. The destinies of Roland, Susannah, Jake, Father Callahan, Oy, and Eddie are bound in the Dark Tower itself, which now pulls them ever closer to their own ending [...]

47. Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones
The Chrestomanci Series: Book 1
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Orphans Eric Chant (nicknamed Cat) and his sister Gwendolen, a gifted witch, are whisked away to live in a castle with Chrestromanci, a much-revered man of magic, wealth and mysterious ways. Their new life is full of the surreal and unexpected, and there are several crazy new rules to master--not [...]

48. The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
Every year at an exclusive private boarding school in New York state, the graduating students uphold an old tradition – they must swear an oath of secrecy and leave behind a “treasure” for each incoming senior. When Duncan Meade inherits the room and secrets of Tim Macbeth, he u [...]

49. Shadow Girl by Sally Nicholls
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Clare knows she's at least partly to blame for her problems at school, but she's learned that it hurts to make friends when you're a foster kid and you'll just be moved on again. It's a relief to meet Maddy, who knows exactly what it's like to be in the system. But then Ma [...]

50. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
George Orr is a mild and unremarkable man who finds the world a less than pleasant place to live: seven billion people jostle for living space and food. But George dreams dreams which do in fact change reality - and he has no means of controlling this extraordinary power. Psychiatrist Dr William [...]

51. The Very Best of Charles de Lint‏ by Charles de Lint
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
Charles de Lint, a fantasy author who has left the same mark on the genre of myth and legend much as the likes of Sir Thomas Malory, Christian Anderson, Grimm, who has found them hiding away in Ottawa’s twilight, turned oral tradition into words on a page and allowed us to remember them all [...]

52. The Testament of Tall Eagle by John R Fultz
Score: 91
Our rating: 9.1 | 0 positive reader reviews
A young warrior's vision-quest unveils an alien city full of magic and mystery. As a tribal rift threatens to destroy Tall Eagle's people, night-crawling devils stalk and devour them, so he seeks the wisdom of the high-flying Myktu. These fantastic beings offer him hope, a chance for rebi [...]

53. Nine Princes In Amber by Roger Zelazny
The Chronicles of Amber
Score: 90
Our rating: 8.4 | 6 positive reader reviews
Amber is one real world, casting infinite reflections of itself - shadow worlds, which can be manipulated by those of royal Amberite blood. But the royal family is torn apart by jealousies and suspicion; the disappearance of the patriarch, Oberon has intensified the internal conflict by leaving t [...]

54. The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones
The Chrestomanci Series: Book 4
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Think of a world, almost like our own but a little more genteel and old-fashioned, where magic and witchcraft is as common as mathematics - but just as dangerous in the wrong hands. In The Lives of Christopher Chant - the fourth book in her Worlds of Chrestomanci series - Diana Wynne Jones succee [...]

55. The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones
The Chrestomanci Series: Book 2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Tonino is the only person in the famous Montana household who wasn't born with an instinct for creating spells, but he has other gifts. His ability to communicate with cats just might help defend the city of Caprona against a mysterious enchanter -- but only if Tonino can learn to cooperate w [...]

56. Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones
The Chrestomanci Series: Book 3
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
When the note, written in ordinary ballpoint, turns up in the homework books Mr Crossley is marking, he is very upset. For this is Larwood House, a school for witch-orphans, where witchcraft is utterly forbidden. And yet magic keeps breaking out all over the place - like measles! The last thing t [...]

57. Mixed Magics by Diana Wynne Jones
The Chrestomanci Series: Book 5
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The Stealer of Souls combines the inhabitants of Chrestomanci Castle during Charmed Life and one of the young characters from The Magicians of Caprona to great effect, creating a tale with all the usual suspects - original fantasy, spooky humour, substantial characters and a dastardly plot to rui [...]

58. The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones
The Chrestomanci Series: Book 7
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Spells always have consequences and it's Chrestomanci's job to make sure everything is safely under control. Even so, in the village around Chrestomanci Castle, all sorts of secret magical misuse is going on. And when Cat Chant finds the Pinhoe egg, chaos is just the beginning! A masterpi [...]

59. Crown of Vengeance by Stephen Zimmer
Fires in Eden: Book 1
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Strange mists engulf Janus Roland, Erika Laesig, Mershad Shahab, and several others going about their lives in a quiet midwestern town. When the mist dissipates, they all find themselves looking up into the bright skies of a new, incredible world.Without explanation of why it has happened, [...]

60. Dream of Legends by Stephen Zimmer
Fires in Eden: Book 2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Unfortunately they have arrived at a time of great unrest and conflict. The assault upon the Kingdom of Saxany and the tribes of the Five Realms ignites as the Unifier’s gaze turns southward across the seas to the faraway lands of Midragard. These are desperate and dangerous times for every [...]

61. Out of Oz by Gregory Maguire
The Wicked Years: Book 4
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
The marvellous land of Oz is knotted with social unrest: The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. And look who's knocking at the door. It's none other than Dorothy. Yes, that Dorothy. Amid all [...]

62. The City's Son by Tom Pollock
The Skyscraper Throne #1
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Expelled from school, betrayed by her best friend and virtually ignored by her dad, who's never recovered from the death of her mum, Beth Bradley retreats to the sanctuary of the streets, looking for a new home. What she finds is Filius Viae, the ragged and cocky crown prince of London, who o [...]

63. Endless by Matt Bone
Crescent: Book 1
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
After an inexplicable catastrophe on Earth, John Bridgeman is left to scrap out a solitary existence, surrounded by bodies and haunted by the girlfriend he cannot allow to die. His headaches are increasingly debilitating. Even his senses are turning against him: amongst the desolate streets is a [...]

64. Pantomime by Laura Lam
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
R.H. Ragona's Circus of Magic is the greatest circus of Ellada. Nestled among the glowing blue Penglass - remnants of a mysterious civilisation long gone - are wonders beyond the wildest imagination. It's a place where anything seems possible, where if you close your eyes you can believe [...]

65. Down Station by Simon Morden
Down Station #1
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
A small group of commuters and tube workers witness a fiery apocalypse overtaking London. They make their escape through a service tunnel. Reaching a door they step through... and find themselves on a wild shore backed by cliffs and rolling grassland. The way back is blocked. Making their way inl [...]

66. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Thursday Next, literary detective and newlywed, is back to embark on an adventure that begins, quite literally on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. The siniste [...]

67. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Thursday Next: Book 3
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Leaving Swindon behind her to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots (the place where all fiction is created), Thursday Next, Literary Detective and soon-to-be one parent family, ponders her next move from within an unpublished book of dubious merit entitled 'Caversham Heights'. Landen, her h [...]

68. Vurt by Jeff Noon
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Take a trip in a stranger's head. Travel rain-shot streets with a gang of hip malcontents, hooked on the most powerful drug you can imagine. Yet Vurt feathers are not for the weak. As the mysterious Game Cat says, ‘Be careful, be very careful’. But Scribble isn't listening. He [...]

69. The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Late one night Alice Creighton hears her father having an argument with a fairy – a snarling, bald beast with warts and needle-like teeth. The next day her father disappears, never to return. And Alice is sent to live with Master Geryon, an uncle she never even knew existed. Geryon has a da [...]

70. A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab
A Darker Shade of Magic #2
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
Kell is plagued by his guilt. Restless, and having given up smuggling, he is visited by dreams of ominous magical events, waking only to think of Lila. As Red London prepares for the Element Games - an extravagant international competition of magic - a certain pirate ship draws closer. But anothe [...]

71. Harvest by William Horwood
Hyddenworld: Book 3
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
It is August, time of the first harvest, traditional time of plenty. But at the farthest reaches of the Hyddenworld, in sea-bound Englalond, disaster looms. A blight in the land is growing, marked by quakes and increasingly unnatural blizzards. Judith is tasked with healing the land, but this bur [...]

72. A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones
Score: 90
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
When Vivian is evacuated from London in 1939, she expects to be staying in the countryside. Instead, she is whisked away to Time City – a place that exists outside time and space. It is a strange and remarkable place, where technology rules – yet important events of both past and futu [...]

73. The Emerald Atlas: The Books of Beginning by John Stephens
The Emerald Atlas: Book 1
Score: 89
Our rating: 8.9 | 0 positive reader reviews
Kate is in charge. The oldest. The only one who remembers their parents. Promised to protect her brother and sister until they return. Michael is the bookish brother. Scrawny, bullied at every orphanage (his glasses somehow always end up in the toilet). Loves stories about magic, especially invol [...]

74. Jet Black Heart by Teresa Flavin
Score: 89
Our rating: 8.8 | 1 positive reader reviews
Dory is on holiday on the moors with her family when she stumbles across a Victorian walkers' 'letterbox' and a faded message for a boy called Eli. The message opens a slip in time and soon Dory is battling alongside Eli to help save his sister from her cruel father. But is there more [...]

75. The Talisman by Stephen King
Talisman: Book 2
Score: 89
Our rating: 9.0 | 1 positive reader reviews
Twelve-year-old Jack spends his days alone in a deserted coastal town, his father gone, his mother dying. Then he meets a stranger - and embarks on a terrifying journey. For Jack must find the Talisman, the only thing that can save his mother.His quest takes him into the menacing Territori [...]

76. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Fionavar Tapestry: Book 1
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 2 positive reader reviews
Five men and women find themselves flung into the magical land of Fionavar, First of all Worlds. They have been called there by the mage Loren Silvercloak, and quickly find themselves drawn into the complex tapestry of events. For Kim, Paul, Kevin, Jennifer and Dave all have their own part to pla [...]

77. The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett
Long Earth #1
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
1916: the Western Front. Private Percy Blakeney wakes up. He is lying on fresh spring grass. He can hear birdsong, and the wind in the leaves in the trees. Where have the mud, blood and blasted landscape of No Man's Land gone? 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Cop Monica Jansson is exploring the burn [...]

78. Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold
A Babylon Steel Novel #1
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex-other things, runs the best brothel in Scalentine; city of many portals, two moons, and a wide variety of races, were-creatures, and religions, not to mention the occasional insane warlock. She's not having a good week. The Vessels of Purity are protesting [...]

79. The Four Realms by Adrian Faulkner
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Half-vampire Darwin stumbles across a corpse on the streets of London, and in a pocket discovers a notebook in a mysterious language. Divided between human ethics and vampire bloodlust, Darwin finds himself both condemner and saviour of a race who’ve never considered him one of their own. N [...]

80. The Glass Republic by Tom Pollock
The Skyscraper Throne #2
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Pen's life is all about secrets: the secret of the city's spirits, deities and monsters her best friend Beth discovered, living just beyond the notice of modern Londoners; the secret of how she got the intricate scars that disfigure her so cruelly – and the most closely guarded secr [...]

81. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
The Invisible Library Series #1
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she's posted to an alternative London. Their mission - to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it's already been stolen. London& [...]

82. The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman
The Invisible Library Series #3
Score: 88
Our rating: 9.0 | 0 positive reader reviews
When it's your job to save the day - where do you start? Librarian spy Irene has standards to maintain, especially while on probation. And absconding from a mission via a besieged building doesn't look good. But when her escape route home goes up in flames, what's a spy to do? However [...]

83. Paternus: Wrath of Gods by Dyrk Ashton
The Paternus Trilogy #2
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
On the run from an ancient evil and his army of terrors straight out of myths from around the world, Fi and Zeke aid Peter in his globe-trotting quest to seek out the remaining Firstborn, uncover the enemy’s plans, and gather the Warriors of Old for what may become the final battle in the w [...]

84. Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds
Score: 88
Our rating: 8.8 | 0 positive reader reviews
Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost.2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble human [...]

85. Grim Tuesday by Garth Nix
The Keys to the Kingdom: Book 2
Score: 87
Our rating: 8.5 | 2 positive reader reviews
With Monday defeated Arthur thought he had escaped the house and left it all behind him, however a couple of hours after releasing the Nightsweeper and finally getting some sleep, Arthur is awoken by a phone call from Dame Primus. In the six months of house time that have passed, Grim Tuesday has [...]

86. The Runes of the Earth by Stephen Donaldson
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Book 1
Score: 87
Our rating: 8.7 | 0 positive reader reviews
It's ten years later and Linden Avery thought she would never see the Land, or Covenant, her beloved, again. But Lord Foul has stolen her adopted son, and is unmaking the very laws of nature. And though she believes Covenant dead, he keeps sending Linden messages: 'Find me', 'You& [...]

87. The Hunting of the Gods by Henry Tam
Synetopia Quest #3
Score: 87
Our rating: 8.7 | 0 positive reader reviews
The people on Earth know their place. They’ve all learnt that their planet was just a barren rock until the gods arrived 500 years ago and brought with them life, technology, and prosperity for the blessed few. Under the gods, all racial differences have long merged into homogeneity; gender [...]

88. Sabriel by Garth Nix
The Abhorsen Chronicles: Book 1
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.5 | 2 positive reader reviews
Sabriel is the first book in the Abhorsen Trilogy, and tells the story of Sabriel, daughter to Abhorsen and student of Wyverley College. Sabriel is coming to the end of her studies and is anxious to speak with her father about her choices for life after school. But when your father is the Abhorse [...]

89. Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
The Inkworld Trilogy: Book 1
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.0 | 6 positive reader reviews
Meggie loves books. So does her father, Mo, a bookbinder, although he has never read aloud to her since her mother mysteriously disappeared. They live quietly until the night a stranger knocks at their door. He has come with a warning that forces Mo to reveal an extraordinary secret - a storytell [...]

90. Voices in the Dark by Catherine Banner
Last Descendants: Book 2
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Anselm Andros has always thought he had a normal life - confidante to his mother, Maria, confessor to his stepfather, Leo, a man haunted by the secrets of his past, and support to his sister Jasmine. But when the political landscape of Malonia starts to shift, this unassuming family begin to unra [...]

91. Against All Things Ending by Stephen Donaldson
The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Book 3
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
Desperate for help to find her adopted son, Jeremiah, Linden Avery has resurrected Thomas Covenant in a cataclysmic exertion of Earthpower and wild magic. But the consequences of her efforts are more terrible than she could have imagined.Sorcery on that scale has awakened the Worm of the W [...]

92. The Snowmelt River by Frank P Ryan
The Three Powers: Book 1
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.5 | 1 positive reader reviews
The enemy is a faceless presence, alien to the land of Tir, his forces are savage and vicious for the sake of it. Considering that our protagonists are children; such savagery is surprisingly brutal as some of them experience it first hand or are witness to it. The author on his website mentions [...]

93. The One Tree by Stephen Donaldson
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Book 5
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery begin their search for the One Tree that is to be the salvation of the Land. Only he could find the answer and forge a new Staff of Law - but fate decreed that the journey was to be long, the quest arduous, and quite possibly a failure... [...]

94. Dangerous Gifts by Gaie Sebold
A Babylon Steel Novel #2
Score: 86
Our rating: 8.6 | 0 positive reader reviews
Babylon Steel, former avatar of the goddess of sex and war, currently owner of the Scarlet Lantern, the best brothel on Scalentine, city of portals, has been offered a job; as bodyguard to Enthemmerlee, the latest candidate for the Council of Incandress; and as spy for the Diplomatic Section, the [...]

95. The Wandering Fire by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Fionavar Tapestry: Book 2
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
As the evil of Rakoth Maugrim threatens the very existence of Fionavar, the five from our own world must cross over once again to play out their given roles: Kimberly to summon the dead from their rest and the undead to their doom; Dave to take his place in battle among the Dalrei of the Plain; P [...]

96. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.4 | 1 positive reader reviews
Amber is one real world, casting infinite reflections of itself - shadow worlds, which can be manipulated by those of royal Amberite blood. But the royal family is torn apart by jealousies and suspicion; the disappearance of the patriarch, Oberon has intensified the internal conflict by leaving t [...]

97. The Seventh Throne by Stephen Zimmer
The Rising Dawn Saga: Book 3
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
The epic saga advances, as the shadows deepen ... Friedrich accompanies the powerful Avatar Enki into the depths of the Abyss. They seek to discover the fate of Erishkegal, who crossed the Veil to spare a horde of outcast Nephilim ages ago. The quest will take them to the brink of hell itself, bu [...]

98. The Door to Lost Pages by Claude Lalumiere
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Step through the door to Lost Pages and escape a life you never wanted! On her tenth birthday, Aydee runs away from home and from her neglectful parents. At first, surviving alone on the streets is harsh, but a series of frightening, bewildering encounters with strange primordial creatures leads [...]

99. The Tower of Bones by Frank P Ryan
The Three Powers: Book 2
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Fate has brought together four young people from our world into the enchanted world of Tir. Together Kate, Alan, Mark and Mo present a formidable new force for good in this war-ravaged world: they are Hope for the millions of oppressed peoples that live here. The four have been split up, with one [...]

100. White Gold Wielder by Stephen Donaldson
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Book 6
Score: 85
Our rating: 8.5 | 0 positive reader reviews
Thomas Covenant knew that despite his failure on the Isle of The One Tree, he had to return to the Land and fight. After a long and arduous journey, fighting all the way, he readies himself for the final showdown with Lord Foul, the Despiser, and begins to understand things he had only just wonde [...]