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Fantasy publishing has undergone a revolution since 2000. Where the genre once defaulted to European medievalism, chosen heroes, and the reassuring certainty that good would triumph, the 21st century has produced trilogies that challenge all of those assumptions.
These stories are rooted in non-Western mythologies, built around morally complex protagonists, and are willing to end in ways that aren't easy or comfortable. These five are the best of that wave: trilogies that didn't just produce great individual novels but sustained genuine excellence across all three installments, and in doing so redefined what the genre was capable of.
Mistborn Era 1 by Brandon Sanderson Starts From The End
The Final Empire (2006), The Well of Ascension (2007), and The Hero of Ages (2008) arrived with a premise that sounds almost absurdly ambitious in retrospect. It reimagined a fantasy story where the Dark Lord had already won. Sanderson set his trilogy in a world where the prophesied hero failed a thousand years ago, the tyrant known as the Lord Ruler has ruled ever since, and ash falls from the sky while plants wither brown beneath a red sun.
Into this landscape, he drops Vin, a half-skaa street thief with latent Allomantic abilities, which is the magic of burning metals. Along with her, there is Kelsier, who is a revolutionary with a plan to bring the whole empire down. Sanderson's magic systems are the most rigorously designed in modern fantasy, and the trilogy's plotting rewards close reading, with each book deepening what came before. In January, Apple announced a partnership with Sanderson to adapt the Cosmere -- the shared universe of which Mistborn is the cornerstone -- with Mistborn as the first project in development.
The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty Looks To Other Cultures To Build A New Fantasy World
The City of Brass (2017), The Kingdom of Copper (2019), and The Empire of Gold (2020) announced Chakraborty as one of the most significant new voices in fantasy and proved beyond measure that the genre could draw on Islamic mythology and medieval Middle Eastern history with the same richness that it had found in European sources.
Nahri is an orphaned con artist in 18th century Cairo who accidentally summons a djinn warrior named Dara during a street hustle, triggering a journey to Daevabad, a hidden magical city. Here, djinn society is fractured along tribal lines, simmering with centuries of resentment and political violence. The City of Brass was nominated for the Crawford Award, Locus Award, British Fantasy Award, and World Fantasy Award. The Empire of Gold was optioned for Netflix, too.
The Poppy War Trilogy By R.F. Kuang Is A Fearless Fantasy Saga
The Poppy War trilogy, comprising The Poppy War (2018), The Dragon Republic (2019), and The Burning God (2020), is based on the bloodiest chapters of twentieth-century Chinese history, namely the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War. None of these novels flinch in their depiction, either. Kuang wrote the first novel during a gap year teaching debate in Beijing, completing a draft in three months at 2000 words per day, and sold it at an auction to Harper Voyager on her twentieth birthday.
It was nominated for the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Time, The Guardian, and others. Her protagonist, Rin, is a war orphan who earns a place at Nikan's elite military academy through sheer obsessive study, only to discover she can channel the power of a god. She is psychologically devastating, and Kuang traces her descent with equal rigor, making the trilogy impossible to put down.
The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie Is Subversive Fantasy At Its Best
Joe Abercrombie did with his trilogy what no other fantasy series of the era had attempted with conviction -- he took every convention of epic fantasy and systematically dismantled them from within. The wise old wizard may be the villain, the ancient prophecy may be a political fabrication, and the war may end in meaninglessness in The Blade Itself (2006), Before They Are Hanged (2007), and Last Argument of Kings (2008).
Abercrombie's six viewpoint characters, including the crippled torturer Sand dan Glokta, the legendary barbarian Logen Ninfingers, and the spoiled nobleman Jezal dan Luthar, are drawn with a psychological precision that makes their minimal growth across the three books feel more honest than most fantasy characters' triumphant arcs. The original remains one of the most acclaimed fantasy trilogies, despite the expansions into standalone novels and new series.
The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee Is An Unforgettable Universe
Set on the fictional island of Kekon, where jade is the only source of magical ability, Jade City (2017), Jade War (2019), and Jade Legacy (2021) form the finest fantasy trilogy of this century, with no contest. Jade also forms the basis of the entire economy in this universe, along with a criminal empire and a system of clan honor that governs every aspect of society. The trilogy follows the Kaul family across decades of war, political change, and personal catastrophe.
Jade City won the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the 2018 Aurora Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Along with being a Hugo Award finalist and mentioned in Time Magazine's 100 Best Fantasy Books list, The Green Bone Saga had character arcs of Shakespearean scope, a world that felt real and historical, and devastating emotional arcs.
