These are all series that are very near and dear to my heart for various reasons. Most of these worlds I dived into as a teenager and in college and each offered me a mind-blowing story to read and a fantastic world to explore.
5. Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (Study Series)
Amazon Blurb:
“About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She’ll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace- and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.
And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dusté and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.
As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can’t control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear.”
I love this series and subsequent companion series, the Glass series, because the world is so vivid and magical and real. It’s one of the few series that succeeds in showing the realities and dangers of magic while still leaving the reader enchanted by each new display.
The characters are strong, motivated, and true to themselves. I love Yelena in the Study series and Opal in the Glass series. I am absolutely drawn to the men in their lives, but the series are both about so much more than that. The countries explored, Ixia and Sitia, have different governments and different views on magic, but both come alive and are peopled with engaging characters–ones that become dear to the protagonists and the reader.
The worlds explored in all of Maria V. Synder’s works aren’t black and white. They are filled with shades of gray, magic, and truth. I find them riveting and hope you do too.
4. Birthmarked by Caragh M. O’Brien (Birthmarked Trilogy)
Amazon Blurb:
“In the future, in a world baked dry by the harsh sun, there are those who live inside the wall and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife, Gaia Stone, who live outside. Gaia has always believed it is her duty, with her mother, to hand over a small quota of babies to the Enclave. But when Gaia’s mother and father are arrested by the very people they so dutifully serve, Gaia is forced to question everything she has been taught to believe. Gaia’s choice is now simple: enter the world of the Enclave to rescue her parents, or die trying.”
Not a dystopian world to laugh at, this series shows a post apocalyptic North America dealing with the very real problems of a devastated landscape, few resources, and too small a population.
The trilogy follows Gaia as her little acts of defiance; trying to rescue her family, save her and her sister, fight for gender equality, lead a group of people, and her very genetics make her a target and put her in the position to change her world forever.
The trilogy doesn’t just focus on the Enclave and those villages outside the wall. The second book has her traveling across wasteland to another civilization and the third has her back where she started outside the wall. All the civilizations we experience with Gaia feel like real, living-breathing places with people who have different struggles and we see a range of human experience.
It’s a harsh world that makes you face hard topics; sexism, civil rights, but most importantly what it means to be a woman in any world, the choices you face as one, and the autonomy of a woman’s body in unexpected ways.
It’s dystopian, but also an intimate story. It follows Gaia, the love of her life, the amazing, Leon Grey, and all the small triumphs and horrors they face in their journey not only to change their world, but to carve out a place for themselves in it.
3. Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Graceling Realm Series)
Amazon Blurb:
“Graceling tells the story of the vulnerable-yet-strong Katsa, who is smart and beautiful and lives in the Seven Kingdoms where selected people are born with a Grace, a special talent that can be anything at all. Katsa’s Grace is killing. As the king’s niece, she is forced to use her extreme skills as his brutal enforcer. Until the day she meets Prince Po, who is Graced with combat skills, and Katsa’s life begins to change. She never expects to become Po’s friend. She never expects to learn a new truth about her own Grace—or about a terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.”
The world of the Seven Kingdoms explored in Graceling, and the rest of the world explored in the companion novel Fire, is one of my favorites. The kingdoms, traditions, and the magic of the world (Graces in Graceling, and the “monsters” in Fire) are so well thought out and lend themselves to fantastic plots, strong, vivid characters, and deep romances.
When reading these books, Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue, I am transported. I feel as though I can walk into any kingdom mentioned and experience different traditions and cultures and quirks to the way everyone lives their daily lives. We are given this unique backdrop with characters who embody the magic of their kingdom and then go on a journey with them to save kingdoms and fall in love.
Graceling was one of the first novels I ever looked up from after reading it and felt whiplash from being pulled out of the novel and back into the real world. Fire was much the same, with the bonus that I don’t know that I have ever loved a character more than I love Brigan, the love of Fire (the titular character).
The worldbuilding and magic concepts are original and fleshed out exactly enough to be engrossing but not too much so that I’m left bored or uninterested in learning more. Words I would use to describe this series are original, bold, beautiful, and engrossing.
2. Crown Duel (Crown Duel and Court Duel separately) by Sherwood Smith
Amazon Blurb:
“Young Countess Meliara swears to her dying father that she and her brother will defend their people from the growing greed of the king. That promise leads them into a war for which they are ill-prepared, which threatens the very people they are trying to protect. But war is simple compared to what follows, in peacetime. Meliara is summoned to live at the royal palace, where friends and enemies look alike, and intrigue fills the dance halls and the drawing rooms. If she is to survive, Meliara must learn a whole new way of fighting-with wits and words and secret alliances.
In war, at least, she knew in whom she could trust. Now she can trust no one.”
Counting this as a series because it’s published two books in one.
The worldbuilding and magic in Sherwood Smith’s novels is always stellar. Both subtle and in-depth, similar to other novels on this list, a novel set in any kingdom mentioned in any of her books is one both the reader and the characters in the novel can step into and be immersed in different governments, traditions and ways of life.
Small magic is integrated in the daily lives of the characters and so we pick up a lot from context (think waste spells and cloaks enchanted to repel rain), but the important magic of the novel, that of the hill folk, fire sticks, and the few and far between mages, is dazzling and vivid on the page.
The young Countess Meliara, the main character, and her brother Bran are beloved, well-meaning, but flawed characters, and the heir apparent Vidanric Renselaeus, Marquis of Shevraeth, is equal parts perfect for the job and perplexing to Mel.
Crown Duel is a classic and one of my all time favorite novels. This book (or books if bought separately) is full of action, plotting, courtly schemes, political intrigue, and, much to Mel’s chagrin, courtship.
1.The Named by Marianne Curley (Guardians of Time Trilogy) 
Amazon Blurb:
“Ethan lives a secret life as a Guardian of the Named. Under the guidance of Arkarian, his mentor, and with the help of Isabel, his unlikely but highly capable apprentice, Ethan has become a valued member of this other-worldly corps. As the only defense against the evil Order of Chaos, the Named travel through time to prevent the Order from altering history and thereby gaining power in the present and the future.
As the threat from the Order intensifies, secrets of the past are revealed and villains and heroes are exposed. This gripping fantasy is set in modern times, but is infused with intrigue from the past, super-natural characters and surprising plot twists. Curley has written a winner through to the end.”
Bringing things back to the “real world,” the Guardians of Time trilogy (now a series thanks to a release of a fourth book coming soon) takes place in modern day Australia but as the premise of the series is that the Named travel through time and protect key events from the Order of Chaos, there are whole worlds set on multiple planes of existence.
We visit a plane for the pantheon of this book world’s gods, we visit the underworld, a plane between life and death, the Citadel, and of course different eras of time.
Each place is vividly described and fits perfectly into the universe these novels create.
I still find myself recommending this series to anyone and everyone because, as a fan of time travel, Greek mythology (though the original mythology here is different), and traveling, this Australian based epic is everything my young teenage heart loved and more.
It doesn’t hurt that the main characters (there are several as they are a part of a larger prophecy that drives the novels) are all varied and wonderful and all going through personal struggles a long the way that ground the story and make the impossible expansive universe of the novel feel not only plausible but real.
That’s it folks, those are my top five recommended series with the best world building. Did you agree? Disagree? Have you read any of the series or novels mentioned? Tell me in the comments!
Crow Queen Review 