If your kids are just gobbling books, and have already worked their way through all 7 books of Lewis’s Narnia, then what’s next? Or if you’ve read through Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings a couple times now, where can you go now?
What follows is a Top 1o list of Christian fantasy novels – some more obviously Christian than others – that are a fantastic follow-up. These aren’t all suitable for the very young, so be sure to click on the article titles for longer reviews.
And before we begin, I’m going to list a few honorable mentions. I’d recommend these too, but not everyone can make the top 10!
Neil Dykstra’s The Seraph’s Path tells us the tale of Dyrk, a horse trainer who finds himself delivering the king’s mail on a flying tarn that may want to kill him. I can usually predict the general direction a story is heading, but not this time, which made for an especially intriguing journey – this isn’t like anything I’ve read before. However, at almost 1,200 pages, this series isn’t for the casual reader.
Wings of Dawn is by my favorite Arminian, theistic evolutionist author, Sigmund Brouwer, though, thankfully neither of those elements comes out in this story. Thomas is a young boy seeking to win back his castle by using technologies – like gunpowder, and kites – that seem like magic in his feudal England but which were in use at that time elsewhere in the world. I would have ranked this a bit higher up on the list, but it is getting harder to find.
I just discovered an Australian best known for his poetry, but who also crafted a solid other-world fantasy series. Andrew Lansdown’s The Chronicles of Klarin is a 3-book series that only seems available in North America in this collected volume. A boy, Colin, finds a knife that allows him to cut through the curtain separating one world from the next. And there world next door is one filled with wicked dragons, and people who need his help, and who seem to have some connection to his family. Each novel is around 100 pages, making this a quick fast-paced read.
10. In the Hall of the Dragon King
by Stephen Lawhead
This is a well-written sword-and-knights story set in another world. Lawhead had some clear Christian undertones to his earlier stories that get lost in his later books, so stick with early Lawhead series like this one.
9. The Winter King
by Christine Cohen
15-year-old Cora is resourceful, but boy are the odds stacked against her! Her dad is dead, her neighbors all avoid her, thinking she’s cursed, and the village god, the tyrannical Winter King seems to hate her. This beautifully written book is best suited for 15 and up because it has echoes of the Reformation – the “official” church is foe, not friend – that might confuse a younger reader.
8. Urchin of the Riding Stars 
by M.I. McAllister
Squirrels with swords. Need I say more?
7. The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic
by Jennifer Trafton
A fun romp, with all sorts of inventive ingredients including:
- Piles of poison-tongued jumping turtles
- A castle built on top of a mountain that rises and falls once each day
- A tyrant twelve-year-old pepper-hoarding king
6. Brave Ollie Possum
by Ethan Nicolle
The author was one of the guys behind Babylon Bee. A kid who is scared of everything can’t get his parents to believe him that there is something on the roof outside his window. But he’s right. Kind of a terrifying premise, but the comic hijinks soon take over, with the scared boy getting turned into a possum, a creature that faints whenever it is scared.
5. Dawn of Wonder 
by Jonathan Renshaw
A nephew made me and most of our church read it and no one has regretted doing so. The only downside is that book 2 has been more than 8 years in the waiting. But book 1 is really, really good.
4. The Dark Harvest Trilogy
by Jeremiah W. Montgomery
I gave the first book in this series to my oldest daughter to test out. The cover looked a bit dark and ominous, but I figured “It’s by a Reformed pastor, so how freaky can it be?” I hadn’t gotten to it yet because, well, I’d also figured “It’s an epic fantasy novel by a Reformed pastor, so how good could it really be?” I was wrong on both counts. This was really good, and quite freaky.
3. The Green Ember
by S.D. Smith
Rabbits with swords! ’Nuff said.
2. Bark of the Bog Owl
by Jonathon Rogers
Loosely and hilariously riffing off the story of David and Saul. But in the American South, if it had castles. It’s been described as a Mark Twain crossed with C.S. Lewis.
1. On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
by Andrew Peterson
This sat on my bookshelf for more than a year because the author is a well-known and talented musician, so I figured, how can a person so good at music be any good at writing too? I mean, what are the odds? But this is fantastic, rating right up there with Lewis and Tolkien. Three children contend with the Fangs of Dang, lizard creatures that have conquered the land of Skree, and their ruler Gnag the nameless.
