How to start reading fantasy

Start with what you already enjoy

Where should you start reading fantasy? Not with a list of the most famous titles, but with your own habits. Fantasy borrows from almost every other genre, so there is a door next to whatever you read now.

• Thrillers and crime: urban fantasy, which often has an investigation at its core.
• Romance: fantasy romance, where the love story leads.
• Historical fiction: historical fantasy, or low fantasy with little magic.
• Action films and adventure: sword and sorcery.
• Big family sagas: epic fantasy.

Choose a doorway subgenre

Some subgenres are easier to enter than others. Portal fantasy lets you discover a new world together with a character from ours. Urban fantasy keeps one foot in the modern world. Sword and sorcery gives you a complete adventure in a few dozen pages. Our map of fantasy subgenres describes each one in a paragraph.

Short fiction and standalones first

The most common reason people give up on fantasy is starting with book one of a very long series. A standalone novel or a story collection lets you test a style, a voice and a subgenre without committing a whole year. Classic sword and sorcery is a good example: much of it was written as short stories. When you find a voice you like, move on to that writer's longer work.

Getting into fantasy romance

If you are wondering how to start reading fantasy romance, first decide whether you want the romance to lead or the world to lead; our guide to romantic fantasy vs fantasy romance explains the difference. Then pick one or two tropes you already love in other stories, such as enemies to lovers or a slow burn, and search for those. Check the heat level and content notes, because the range in this genre is very wide.

Common beginner traps

• Too many names on page one. Many fantasy openings drop you into an unfamiliar world. Give a book fifty pages before judging it, and use the map or glossary if there is one.
• Starting mid-series. Check the reading order. Series are often numbered only on the spine or the publisher's page.
• Reading what you think you should. Easy, fun fantasy is a perfectly good way back into reading. Pleasure builds the habit.
• Ignoring audiobooks. Hearing invented names pronounced can make a dense world much easier to follow.

Libraries and reading communities

Public libraries are the cheapest way to sample widely, and many publish beginner guides and reading lists; the New York Public Library, for example, has a beginner's guide to fantasy on its blog. Ask a librarian or a bookseller with one clear sentence: "I liked this, I did not like that." Online reading communities and forums can be useful too, but their recommendations lean toward long, popular series, so filter them through what you have learned about your own taste.