7 Best 90s Fantasy Books You've Never Heard Of

The 90s was an epic decade for fantasy readers. 1990 got The Wheel of Time rolling with Robert Jordan’s first novel of the series, The Eye of the World. George R. R. Martin, meanwhile, gave readers their first insights into the intrigues of Westeros with A Game of Thrones in 1996, long before it became the behemoth franchise replete with TV spin-offs that it is today. And of course, prospective wizards around the world saw through Harry Potter’s eyes for the first time with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997.

But with so many giants of fantasy literature filling virtually every niche of the genre in the ’90s, some exquisite books were bound to go underappreciated, including some of the most underrated fantasy series of all time. It’s an unfortunate fact, but one that can still be rectified today by shining a light on some fantasy books that deserve the spotlight for once. And with some luck, more than a few TBR piles will welcome these relative outcasts over the coming days and weeks.

The Coldfire Trilogy

By C.S. Friedman (1991, 1993, 1995)

Published between 1991 with Black Sun Rising and culminating in 1995 with Crown of Shadows, the Coldfire trilogy gives you three underrated fantasy novels for the price of one list entry.

Set in a world where emotions (notably, fear) resonate and become physical manifestations, here is a setting where inner and outer struggles not only coexist — they can be viewed as one and the same. The medieval-ish setting of Erna seems standard enough until the layers of the narrative begin to unfold, revealing layers of sci-fi that blend with the fantasy world with a finesse that deserves far more credit than it currently receives.

The reader finds Erna at a time when the fae (the name given to the force making emotions manifest) pose an existential threat to the humans that have learned to survive in spite of their nightmares becoming reality. The series is lauded for its originality, fantastic lore, and a particular character that Coldfire readers just love to hate.

The Iron Dragon’s Daughter

By Michael Swanwick (1993)

The word “challenging” often gets thrown around to describe a work of art that seems only to get either a five-star or a one-star rating. The Iron Dragon’s Daughter is a challenging work of art.

The novel itself was well-regarded at the time of its release. Yet, like so many others, hardly anyone remembers it these days, and that’s a shame, since Swanwick crafts a fantasy tale that defies virtually all generic expectations. Written as a response to what he viewed as a tired genre full of Tolkien clones, Swanwick creates a chaotic, pointedly postmodern fantasy story whose nihilistic tones serve as an older cousin to those of A Song of Ice and Fire.

A quick look online will confirm that reviews of this book are mixed, with some praising Swanwick’s refusal to hold the reader’s hand and others lamenting it. However, the quality of Swanwick’s prose is undeniable, so for fantasy readers who are seeking a well-written challenge, keep an eye out for this one.

I Who Have Never Known Men

By Jacqueline Harpman (1995)

When a book gets compared to the likes of Ursula Le Guin and Margaret Atwood, it must be pretty good. But in spite of this, I Who Have Never Known Men had lain relatively dormant for the better part of 30 years.

Harpman’s dystopian novel was originally published in French and received an English translation only two years later. However, it wasn’t until a new English version released in 2019 (and subsequently in 2022) that the book really gained widespread traction.

Following a captive — a girl alongside 39 women — the novel explores camaraderie, community, and gender power dynamics against the backdrop of a stark and desolate world. Drawing comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale and McCarthy’s The Road, it’s not surprising that I Who Have Never Known Men would eventually find some popular acclaim, with it becoming briefly viral on TikTok. Still, though, for a book that threads personal and societal topics as well as this one, it deserves far more praise than a 15-second clip could ever give.

Muddle Earth

By John Brunner (1993)

Not all fantasy needs to be gravely serious — at least, that’s clearly what Brunner was thinking when he concocted this comedic sci-fi number. In the distant future, Earth has become a cultural amusement park to be enjoyed by extraterrestrial visitors; such is the elevator pitch for this novel.

We follow Rinpoche Gibbs, an original inhabitant of Earth, as he awakens from a cryogenic stasis to find his planet has essentially become a caricature of itself. What follows is a fun take on the fish-out-of-water trope as Gibbs (and the reader) learns about the bizarre twist his planet’s fate has taken.

With obvious comparisons to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy hanging on the lowest of branches, Muddle Earth gets overshadowed by this sprawling (and far more successful) series. As well, the pun-filled humor packing the pages of the book is not everyone’s idea of a rollicking read. But for those who enjoy the linguistic choices as well as the tongue-in-cheek jabs made toward our hyper-capitalist, commodified society, then it won’t be hard to get muddled into the depths of Muddle Earth.

The Song of Albion Trilogy

By Stephen Lawhead (1991, 1992, 1993)

Like Coldfire, here is yet another overshadowed fantasy trilogy contained entirely in the final decade of the twentieth century. Inspired by Celtic mythology, Lawhead plunges a couple of Oxford grad students headfirst into the ancient world of fairy — in particular the Tuatha de Danann, foundational figures of Irish myth.

While the three novels saw some success upon their respective releases, and even saw release as an omnibus trilogy in 2014, Song of Albion remains woefully underappreciated in the sphere of great portal fantasy literature. At its heart, Lawhead doesn’t stray too far from the likes of Tolkien. There is an eminent focus on worldbuilding, and Lawhead’s flowery prose is either marked for its vividness or else criticized as too purple by those who don’t seek that style.

Putting style aside, though, the focus on a branch of mythology that often flies under the radar compared to the Norse, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman pantheons, alongside Lawhead’s clear love for the subject matter at hand, make these novels worthy of placement alongside the most revered of Tolkien’s literary descendents.

Brittle Innings

By Michael Bishop

Invariably the least fantasy-esque entry on the list, Brittle Innings is, on the surface, an interesting snapshot of the World War II-era American South, revolving around America’s favorite sport itself, baseball. But peering just beyond that main conceit, one finds a story tackling racial, cultural, and social tensions of an American South that has still not recovered from its defining war before being thrown into another one. The past always finds a way to creep back into the main picture, and nowhere is that clearer than the fact that this novel is actually a successor of sorts to one of the greatest sci-fi works of all: Frankenstein.

Yes, the seven-foot-tall Henry “Jumbo” Clerval is not simply the well-read, incredibly strong first baseman that he appears to be. But not to simply shoehorn this legacy character into his fiction, Bishop uses the canon-defining monster to highlight the struggles of understanding, representation, and implicit bias crucial to the novel.

Perhaps this novel failed to gain much traction because it sits in a strange grey area of being too sci-fi for non-genre fiction but too straight-shooting to get a hold of many sci-fi diehards. Ironically, that makes this book something of a misunderstood entity itself, so one really ought to take its lessons to heart and give it a chance.

The Soprano Sorceress

By L.E. Modesitt Jr. (1997)

The first novel in Modesitt’s Spellsong Cycle, The Soprano Sorceress follows a middle-aged woman into a world where music is literally magical. Here’s the kicker: the woman in question, Anna Marshall, is an opera singer; and while her gifts on Earth were certainly lovely, her voice in the fantastical Erde is a source of extreme power. But with that power comes the need to learn how to wield it. It also marks her as public enemy number one to anyone who may be threatened by such a powerful sorceress suddenly emerging on the scene.

That Marshall is a nondescript, non-male, not-particularly-young protagonist is a fun and refreshing twist on the chosen one archetype seen in so many works of the genre. As well, placing the unmarried Marshall into the overtly-patriarchal realm of Erde provides a seamless route to analyzing the gender and societal dynamics at play in the novel and, by extension, our own world.

Pockets of fans already sing praises for this novel and the others in the Spellsong Cycle, but like many on this list, only time and more deserved visibility will tell if that’s a tune that rings true to a wider audience.