5 Fantasies That Give Trolls the Spotlight

Waggoner’s whimsical first novel follows two main threads. The first is tied to Onna, a promising young mage whose studies are stymied by the spellworking patriarchy that sees her gender and class as disqualifying factors. The second involves Tsira, the half-human heir to a rural troll clan. Smart and introspective, Tsira is a fascinating character whose trollishness is played as more awkward than brutish; she is who she is, and sometimes that means she doesn’t know how to be who she thinks she should. When Onna and Tsira’s stories cross paths when investigating a series of murdered trolls, it’s a quiet, lovely meeting of competence.

You can say one thing about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch: it’s diverse. Over the course of several Discworld novels, the Watch grows to include all kinds of creatures, including trolls. Fiercely dedicated and wiser than he looks, Sgt. Detritus is the highest-ranking troll officer, and he has a complex dance to do in Thud!, which finds trolls and dwarfs on edge throughout the city. Old tensions are rising as the anniversary of the Battle of Koom Valley dawns (both sides of the conflict claim they were ambushed). The murder of a prominent dwarf rabble-rouser may act as the kindling for a new violent fire, if the trolls and dwarves of the City Watch can’t find a way to work together.

Okay, yes, the trolls in Sharp’s debut indeed do act monstrously—but so does everyone else. Everyone’s on equal footing, which is certainly a step up for trollkind. At the heart of things is Slud Blood Claw, powerful son of a clan chief father. Slud’s birth brought portents with it, persuading his father it was time to rally the trolls and reclaim their glory (read: murder a bunch of folks). But in their march of destruction, they raise the attention of the elves, who wholesale slaughter them, except for little Slud. Raised in secret by his aunt, he sets out on a well-plotted path of revenge.

Now for something completely Nordic. In this deeply weird and equally fascinating story (translated from the original Finnish), trolls are real, though rare creatures—treated akin to wild animals. When photographer Angel happens upon a troll cub, he decides to try to make a pet of it. Quickly, he becomes obsessed with it, his research littered through the pages of the narrative. As the title suggests, that obsession soon turns into something more primal, and the whole of Angel’s world is flipped upside down. It’s a compelling and unique look at trolls that’s difficult to describe.

In the fourth of Valente’s Fairyland novels (which land at the intersection of middle grade, young adult fiction, and timelessness), the author sets her sights on a changeling. Young troll Hawthorn is stolen from Fairyland and takes the place of a human child in Chicago. While he may not fully remember his former self, Hawthorn never quite fits in as a human boy. When he discovers a path back home, he also learns that his story is one of a much bigger changeling plot. Valente does for this small troll what Seanan McGuire does for misfit children in the Wayward Children series: she makes him endlessly relatable, no matter your age.