Tired of the many “A Noun of Noun and Noun” fantasy series that focus heavily on romance? We’ve got you covered.
Would you rather read fantasy books where characters ponder a mysterious orb instead of each other’s eyes? Would you rather that the cutting words of a lovers’ spat be replaced by cutting swords in a battlefield spat between good and evil? If so, you need this list of the 10 best fantasy books without romance, ranked.
10. The Horus Heresy (various authors)
In the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40k, the citizens of the Galaxy lust after one thing: battle. Warhammer 40k is an almost entirely sexless universe—it’s hard to find time to date when you’re busy dealing with a never-ending onslaught of alien horrors that seek to scour the stars for human life.
While the Warhammer 4ok universe is massive in scope, a good place to get your foot in the door is by reading a chronicle of an event that irrevocably changed the course of human history: The Horus Heresy. Written by multiple authors, The Horus Heresy series is the account of humanity’s greatest betrayal, when the God Emperor of Mankind was nearly overthrown by his surrogate son: the Warmaster Horus.
9. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice is the story of FitzChivalry Farseer, who doesn’t do much dating with a silly name like that. Young Fitz is the illegitimate son of a prince, a dangerous thing to be in a politically complex fantasy world.
Rather than hang about at court where he’s less than wanted, Fitz decides to devote himself to the wondrous world of murder for hire—becoming an assassin for the realm. With an ever-expanding list of people to whack, Fitz doesn’t have the time to look for love. To assert his place in a court that would rather he didn’t exist, he’ll have to prove himself useful by getting his hands dirty—in a fully non-sexual and unromantic way, that is.
8. Tuyo by Rachel Neumeier
Rachel Neumeier’s Tuyo is the story of Ryo inGara, a young warrior raised in a brutal winter land. It’s literally too cold outside for love, everyone’s covered up all the time, and it’s hard to feel sexy with the threat of freezing to death. Harder still when your tribe is at war with another, and you have to fight in those battles. Hardest of all when your war party’s leader leaves you as a ritual sacrifice—a tuyo—for your enemies to capture. But that’s the hand that poor Ryo was dealt, and he’ll play it the best he can.
After he is claimed by an enemy leader named Aras, the pair form a complex relationship that causes Ryo to question his relationship with his tribe. Not THAT kind of relationship. Ryo and Aras are less enemies to lovers and more enemies to tenuous political allies who slowly begin to see eye to eye.
7. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
Goblins aren’t exactly known for their sense of romance—or even kindness whatsoever—but after the exiled half-goblin prince Maia discovers that his goblin dad and his brothers have perished in an airship crash, he decides to change things as he ascends the throne of the Goblin Emperor.
With his newfound busy schedule, Maia doesn’t exactly have time to date, but he does have time for encouraging diplomacy over warfare in his political dealings with neighboring kingdoms. Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor centers around a young ruler with a hopeful heart who believes that, through benevolence and fairness, he can rule justly. It’s a romantic idea, sure. One that his many political rivals will attempt to rid him of with an assassin’s dagger through the brain.
6. The Thousand Names by Django Wexler
The Thousand Names by Django Wexler is a military fantasy epic centered around the life of Captain Marcus d’Ivoire, a commander in the Vordanai Empire whose spends his days overseeing a quiet base at the edge of a remote desert. At least, he spent his days that way until his outpost was nearly overthrown by a sudden political rebellion in the region. Meanwhile, a woman named Winter Ihernglass attempts to ascend the ranks of the Vordanai army while disguised as a male soldier.
The pair soon find themselves under the command of the enigmatic Janus bet Vhalnich, whose knowledge of forbidden dark magic could turn the tide of the war … but maybe not for the better. Winter and Marcus soon find themselves questioning if the ends justify the means, particularly when those means involve manipulating the souls of the dead to raise necrotic armies of ghoulish abominations.
5. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
How could Piranesi figure out the complexities of the human heart when he can’t even figure out how to get around his own house? Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi centers around a man who spends his days attempting to navigate a labyrinthine house filled with endless corridors, weird statues, and even oceans held within its walls.
While Piranesi has no memories of his existence outside the world-spanning house, his life suddenly changes with the arrival of a mysterious man known as The Other, who claims to be conducting scientific research within its walls. As Piranesi’s relationship with The Other deepens (in a non-romantic but equally mysterious way), he begins to recall fragments of a forgotten past lived outside his house’s walls. The only romance story here is Piranesi’s attempts to woo his memories back into his skull.
4. Babel by R.F. Kuang
Also known as Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, this is a historical fantasy story sure to give dark academia inspo to Pinterest users the world over. The novel centers around a Chinese orphan named Robin, who was taken to England at a young age by the enigmatic Professor Lovell. Robin spent his young days studying classical languages in preparation to attend the Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University.
The Institute, known as “Babel,” uses an archaic form of magic to imbue bars of silver with power generated from the lost meanings of ancient words. This magic allows Britain to expand and colonize the world, and Robin soon must decide whether or not he’ll use his talents to help build an empire or demolish it. The central theme of the story is one young man’s desire to live in a world free from colonial rule.
3. Vicious by V.E. Schwab
V.E. Schwab’s Vicious is a story about best friends who become bitter enemies. And no, they don’t suddenly flip back around into romantic lovers. It’s the story of college chums Victor and Eli, whose academic studies lead them to the joint hypothesis that near-death experiences can cause humans to manifest supernatural abilities.
In lieu of suicidal guinea pigs, the pair decide to use themselves as test subjects and prove their hypothesis right. While one would think that getting magic powers with your bestie would bring you closer than ever, this novel doesn’t work out that way. Eli ends up with a god complex that causes him to believe he’s divinely ordained to kill anyone else with supernatural abilities, and Victor takes that personally.
2. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
While the shipping/headcanon community could argue that Bilbo Baggins, his wizard bestie Gandalf, and his thirteen dwarven comrades were actually a 14-person polycule, The Hobbit author J.R.R. Tolkien sadly left the matter up for debate. The Hobbit is the story of Frodo Baggins’s then-middle-aged uncle and his quest to divorce some dwarves’ ancestral mountain homeland from a fearsome dragon named Smaug.
Aside from a love of gold, the devious dragon hath not one ounce of affection in his jealous heart—so Dwarf King Thorin Oakenshield and his adventuring party decide to try and stab it to death. While lacking in the gay Hobbit subtext for which the sequel series The Lord of the Rings is famous, The Hobbit is a whimsical but unromantic tale about a bunch of hairy guys getting together in a cave to stick it in a reptile. That came out wrong.
1. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Written by the literary genius Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children blends history with magical realism to tell the story of Saleem Sinai, a young boy born at midnight on the day of India’s independence. Saleem discovers that the auspicious hour of his birth has caused him to develop telekinetic abilities, and he is supernaturally linked with the rest of “midnight’s children” who were born during the same time and possess similar magical abilities.
While the novel is a Bildungsroman, its few instances of adolescent romance take a backseat to its sweeping tale of a young boy’s coming-of-age in a significant and tumultuous period in Indian history. With rhapsodic and hilarious prose that reads with the same breathless, fast-talking joy as a Robin Williams performance, Midnight’s Children is a singular tale written by one of the most singular minds in literary history.
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