10 best horror fantasy books, ranked
This list is fantastically horrible. Bad vibes all around.
While fantasy might seem like a place of light and airy escape, a refuge from the brutal realities of mundane modernity, these authors didn’t get the memo. What’s written in the pages of these stories is so horrible that you can be thankful that it doesn’t exist in our world.
Buckle up, because these are the 10 best horror fantasy books, ranked by horribleness.
10. Anathema (The Eating Woods) by Keri Lake
With a name like The Eating Woods, you know it’s going to be freaky. It’s giving Evil Dead already. Keri Lake’s dark fantasy duology centers around the absolute worst place to go camping; a dark and deadly forest known by a very hungry name and an attitude to match. After Maevyth Bronwick’s younger sister is banished into these calorie-consuming trees, she has to brave the woods to mount a rescue. What waits for her? Freaky arboreal anomalies, bloodthirsty dragon babies, and one very weird (and weirdly charming?) spider-man. Spooky vibes and slow-burn romance combine for a real spine-tingler of a read.
9. Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff
Empire of the Vampire is my Roman Empire. Set in a godforsaken world that hasn’t seen a sunrise in almost three decades, Jay Kristoff’s trilogy concerns the war waged between humanity and the bloodsucking forces of the night. The plot centers around Gabriel de León, a member of a holy order dedicated to doing battle against anything with an insidious penchant for sipping O-, but after a massacre leaves him the last of his kind, he can do nothing but attempt to survive the Wars of the Blood. And yet, hope remains in the form of that vessel of classic salvation: the Holy Grail. If Gabe can find the Grail, perhaps the night scourge can finally be put to bed (coffin?). So long as he doesn’t get killed by (or fall for) a vampire first.
8. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Dark academia stans, this one is for you. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo is the tale of Galaxy “Alex” Stern (so-called because obviously, someone didn’t love her enough to give her a normal name). Despite her name, poor Galaxy has been nothing but star-crossed. She’s bounced around between dead-end jobs and even deader-end boyfriends, culminating in a rock bottom where she was nearly killed in an unexplained multiple homicide. After waking up in the hospital, she’s invented to attend Yale on a full-ride scholarship by a mysterious benefactor, Great Expectations style. But why? That’s what the poor girl has to figure out, along with what the deal is with all the freaky occult BS going on in Yale’s many secret societies. She’ll get to the bottom of the spectral mystery, whether she wants to or not.
7. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker
The Darkness That Comes Before is the spookily titled first book of the equally somber-named The Prince of Nothing series. And it only gets darker from here. R. Scott Bakker’s novel takes place in the sprawling world of Eärwa, whose history was marred by a cataclysm known as The First Apocalypse, which occurred 2,000 years ago but its effects are still felt in the present. The story follows multiple POV characters as they attempt to survive and thrive in this grimdark world. It’s a complex series with a lot of lore, and the first novel examines a Holy War waged to reclaim the realm from darkness. If you’re looking for a Dark Souls-esque high fantasy setting of ambiguous morality, heavy atmosphere, and mysterious history, you’ve come to the right place.
6. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is a slow-burn magical realism horror tale about three 20 to 30-somethings who answer a request from a paranormal researcher to stay at the mysterious Hill House, a secluded and dilapidated manor in New England. The timid Eleanor Vance answers the call to find some purpose in her life, and after an extended stay at the House, the cursed architecture begins to play upon her fears and insecurities. While this novel starts relatively tame, it slowly but surely ratchets up the horror, featuring some unforgettable jump scares that work on paper. The hand-holding scene? Full body chills. You’ll know what I mean.
5. Eisenhorn by Dan Abnett
Honestly, every single book written about the Warharmmer 40k universe belongs on this list, but since only 10 entries can fit, we’ll all have to settle for one. Set 40,000 years in the future in a dying galaxy where a psychic corpse-emperor is the only thing keeping the forces of darkness from devouring the souls of billions, the Eisenhorn series centers around Gregor Eisenhorn, a daemon hunter in service to the star-spanning Imperium of Man. His job is to sniff out heresy, whether it be phantasmal horrors from beyond the stars attempting to worm their way into human minds or insidious cults arising from within that conjure malevolent gods. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Naturally, he does it with help from the darkness itself—you have to become a monster to fight monsters, after all.
4. The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Set in a parallel version of 1600s New England, Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching is the story of Immanuelle Moore, born to a mother who conceived her with a man from outside the Puritanical community in which they live. That’s a big no-no. Shunned and ostracized, Immanuelle is called by the mysterious Darkwoods beyond the town, which whisper of magic and dark fulfillment, Black Philip-style. If you want to live deliciously, if you want to taste the butter that the sexy goat man in Robert Eggers’ The Witch was talking about, then The Year of the Witching is the novel you need. It’s one woman’s development from a good Puritan girl to a full-blown pagan rebel. Yes, please!
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison
Toni Morssion’s Beloved is a historical fantasy novel inspired by the real-life horrors of chattel slavery and the true story of a woman’s attempt to escape her bondage and the lingering trauma she endured as a result. Beloved was inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who killed her daughter to save the child from the miserable life she was forced to live. After escaping from slavery and beginning her life anew in Denver, a woman named Sethe is haunted by the ghost of an 18-year-old girl who calls herself “Beloved.” Sethe soon realizes that Beloved is the ghost of her daughter, whom she killed out of mercy and buried under a tombstone marked “BELOVED.” Brought face to face with a past she had hoped to forget, Sethe has to ease the soul of the restless ghost and attempt to find peace of her own.
2. It by Stephen King
Hailed as Stephen King’s masterpiece, It lives up to the hype. Taking place in small-town Maine (as nearly all of King’s novels do), the story centers around a group of children who discover that their community has fallen prey to a child-killing shapeshifter. After Bill Denbrough’s younger brother Georgie is dragged into a sewer drain and devoured by an evil clown (yeah, this novel is DARK) he vows to destroy the evil being that feeds on the young every 27 years. Despite the horrific subject matter, the book is a tender meditation on youth and the seemingly impossible but strong desire to recapture the fleeting magic of childhood. In this case, that childhood magic is used to destroy an eldritch horror from beyond the stars that feeds on fear. That’s not the sort of nostalgia that It’s characters want to experience, but it’s what they must do to break the cycle of death.
1. Berserk by Kentaro Miura
Perhaps the most seminal work of dark fantasy ever made, Kentaro Miura’s Berserk is the stuff of manga legend. Written over decades (and sadly left unfinished after the author’s death), Berserk has inspired countless other works of dark fantasy media including the Dark Souls video game series. Set in a grim world inspired by medieval England, Berserk tells the tale of wandering warrior Guts, who joins a mercenary band led by the charismatic Griffith who promises his soldiers riches and glory. After Griffith sells out his comrades in one of the most sickening betrayals ever printed on paper, the fate-cursed Guts embarks on a revenge quest against his former bestie and the pantheon of dark gods that Griffith now serves. It’s a bleak and brutal tale of survival, of one man’s struggle against the fundamental forces of evil that govern the dark universe, and his refusal to give in to despair despite the odds. When you’ve got a body like a linebacker and a sword the size of a Honda Civic, anything is possible.
(featured image: Flatiron Books/Viking/HarperCollins)
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