The best sci-fi and fantasy books with unusual found families

I first read this book when I was a teenager, and it became my gold standard on how to write engaging, imaginative worlds and the unique histories, languages, and cultures that populate them.

More than the intricate space politics and incredibly innovative anthropology present in this massive series, however, I was most drawn to how the main character, Bren (a human diplomat trying to navigate his way through the court intrigue of an alien government) eventually finds a family unlike any other in his atevi bodyguards, Banichi and Jago. 

Bren also gathers a wide collection of allies and companions on the strange world his space-faring ancestors crash-landed on 150 years ago…all while trying to avoid being assassinated or starting an interplanetary war. 

If we want to talk about weird found families, this wildly original nautical fantasy knocks it out of the park.

Pazel signs up to serve as a tarboy on the Chathrand, a centuries-year-old ship bound to deliver a “treaty bride” to the prince of a foreign nation. The ship shortly falls off the known map, and Pazel is left to survive turbulent seas, strange new lands, and truly bizarre curses and mutinies along with the other passengers of the Chathrand: among these are an intelligent rat, a wizard from another world hiding in the body of a weasel, the treaty bride herself, and her secretive warrior bodyguard.

Along with this motley crew, the book features some of the most captivating, satisfying prose and dazzling twists of the imagination I’ve ever read. 

I absolutely love Sharon Shinn’s writing, both her luscious, sophisticated prose and the way she writes relationships between characters. She hits the perfect balance between well-planned, interesting plots, rich fantasy worlds, and the exact right amount of romantic subplot and character development.

This book—which follows a group of magic-wielding mystics and the reluctant, militaristic King’s Riders assigned to protect them as they travel the land, investigating a rise in anti-magic sentiment—is my favorite of her books, not least because it has some of the coziest found family dynamics and campfire friendships to be found outside of classics like The Lord of the Rings!

I love zombie apocalypse stories, and I especially love zombie apocalypse stories that feature unlikely groups of survivors being forced to learn to work together to ensure their new family’s survival.

No one does this better than Lilith Saintcrow in her book, which follows Ginny, a failed medical student turned small-town librarian, and Lee, a close-mouthed, socially awkward, but scarily competent ex-soldier, as they learn to trust one another and lead a group of strangers out of their backwoods town during the onset of an undead pandemic.

Not only are the road-tripping found family dynamics here sublime, but Saintcrow has a special talent for describing each character’s viewpoint and unique voice in ways that elevate the chest-aching romantic tension and human psychology at play. 

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, starting with this book, remains one of my strongest literary influences to date.

The series plays with genres and themes as deftly and easily as the many worlds described in the books blend and bleed together. Magic and quantum mechanics, witchcraft and “atomcraft,” religious allegory, and coming-of-age narrative all merge together here, casting this book into a unique space entirely its own.

Lyra and Will are protagonists for the ages, and the way they form bonds with the allies who help them along their journey—from an armored bear to a cowboy aeronaut to a witch queen to a servant boy—demonstrates the truly unbreakable connections that love gives us…even when those connections have to stretch across entire dimensions and worlds.