The best epic fantasy books with immersive world building

I was 14 years old when I first read The Paradise War, and something about this book captured my imagination and never let go. The richness of the story and the backdrop of Celtic Mythology only added to the immersive world-building of Albion. In many ways, themes from this book inspired my series. The story pulls the reader into its pages, immersing them in a Celtic otherworld: similar to our own, yet different. It’s an adventure you never want to end. I loved the series so much that I read it once a year until I knew the story by heart.

I first read The Scions of Shannara when I was 13 years old. At the time, this book was the first in a new series from Terry Brooks. In less than a year, I devoured his first series, The Shannara Chronicles, and wanted more. Terry did not disappoint. This book picked up 300 years after the original series and expanded his initial world-building of the Four Lands. While it contained Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Trolls, like most fantasy books, Terry developed his world based on a post-apocalyptic Earth. The sign of a good series is its ability to connect to the reader’s soul. With The Scions of Shannara, I connected to the story to the point where I became emotional and could not put the book down.

When it comes to epic fantasies, The Fellowship of the Ring sets the bar by which all other epic fantasy novels are judged. I was 12 years old when I first read The Hobbit and immediately plunged into The Fellowship of the Ring. The depth of Tolkien’s world-building is astounding. I read the series every year for nearly 20 years and continued to gain new insights into Middle Earth and the mind of J. R. R. Tolkien. The Fellowship of the Ring is not merely an epic fantasy; it’s a masterpiece of literature. The world-building is second to none, and the depth of the backstories allowed Christopher Tolkien to author another 20 books based on his father’s notes on Middle Earth. 

I was busy writing my own book when Rick Riordan published The Lightning Thief, and I was blown away by the similarity in concepts. While my epic fantasy books dealt with Celtic mythology, Rick Riordan’s books dealt with Greek mythology. As the years passed, he branched off into Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythology, but it all started with The Lightning Thief. I loved how he built his mythological world in parallel with our own. He created a rich, deep world where Greek myths and legends came to life. Although the main character was a young teen, I connected with Percy Jackson and the other characters as an adult. This book proves that you don’t have to be a teenager to enjoy teen fiction.

Eragon slipped into the reading community quietly and, within a year, was 3rd on the NY Times Bestseller’s List. I read this book in my mid-20s, and I loved its character depth, expansive worldview, and strict magical system. Christopher Paolini was only 15 years old when he wrote Eragon. Still, he found a way to write an epic fantasy without relying on standard fantasy tropes. Alagaësia is a world much like Earth but filled with Elves and Dragons. He’s careful to obey the magical laws he created for his world, and each character is flawed, allowing the reader to find a bit of themselves in the characters. Paolini subtly ties in concepts of love, forgiveness, revenge, and redemption without being preachy or forcing his worldview on others.