12 Divine Fantasy Novels in Which the Gods Walk the Land

Volatile and vibrant, Gareth Hanrahan’s The Gutter Prayer already has established itself as one of the most exciting fantasy debuts of the year—and a large part of its success is thanks to the pesky deities that stalk its pages.

The Inheritance trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin
Through three books (the first of which won the Locus Award), Jemisin unspools a world suffused with bound and chained gods. With a fierce female lead—a mortal and prospective god—and set against the backdrop of a floating city, the novels follow almighty and generational power struggles, with plots that double as meditations on redemption and forgiveness.

The Divine Cities trilogy, by Robert Jackson Bennett
Series opener City of Stairs starts 70 years after the war that caused the death of the gods, with a power dynamic upended from the days when the divine played favorites. But maybe the gods aren’t as dead as everyone believes. Fueling the conflict are conspiracy, corruption, and the tangled web of colonization that still binds all who inhabit the Divine Cities.

The Craft Sequence series, by Max Gladstone
What praise haven’t we heaped upon the Craft Sequence? And with good reason. Intricate and expansive, this post-God Wars world is now ruled largely by human sorcerers, whose mastery of Craft magic places them in office jobs, boardrooms, and law firms rather than wizard sanctums. It’s the tech-meets-magic fusion we’ve always dreamed of.

The Godblind trilogy, by Anna Stephens
This in-progress grimdark series has already left a bloody mark, courtesy of the introduction of the fearsome Red Gods and their exiled worshippers. This is a story of revenge and of fanaticism, as the devotees of the bloodthirsty Red Gods plot to return to Rilpor and overthrow its reigning god and rulers.

Malazan Book of the Fallen series, by Steven Erikson
Epic in every measure, this 10-volume series demonstrates its author’s anthropological background with an enormous cast of characters, a whole host of incomprehensibly powerful gods, and action that spans centuries. The political maneuvering in the Malazan Empire is matched and more by godly scheming, resulting in an ample amount of warfare.

Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
If you know anything about Pratchett’s slightly askew fantasy realm Discworld, you might guess that its deities also get the short end of the silly stick. Here, the Great God Om has been reduced to the form of a tortoise because his followers no longer believe, and must crawl his way back into the heavens. For follow-up reading, consider the other two novels sometimes packaged as Discworld’s unofficial Gods Trilogy: Pyramids, starring teenage Pharoah Teppic, and Hogfather, in which Death himself wrestles with the nature of belief.

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
You probably don’t need us to tell you about Gaiman’s monolith, but we can’t very well omit Shadow Moon’s apocalyptic roadtrip across America from the list. Old gods, brought to American shores by immigrants, struggle against new gods like TV and tech. For maximum trickster god shenanigans, pair with the spinoff Anansi Boys.

Food of the Gods, by Cassandra Khaw
These two paired novellas are just lousy with divine pantheons, as Malaysian, Chinese, and Greek gods and myths combine to terrorize the karmically challenged Rupert Wong. The mayhem caused by divine feuds stretches from the streets of Kuala Lumpur to London to Diyu, the hell of Chinese mythology.

Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Moreno-Garcia’s latest doesn’t release until August, but if it’s anything like her previous works (including coming-of-age magical realism, vampire noir, and fantasy of manners), you’ll want to preorder it. Not convinced? Consider the Jazz Age Mexico setting and a quest story set in motion by the Mayan God of Death.

The Iron Druid Chronicles, by Kevin Hearne
At the start of this series’ nine novels (and various short stories and novellas), titular Druid Atticus O’Sullivan was hiding from angry Celtic gods in Tempe, Arizona. In subsequent misadventures, he’s encountered all sorts of supernatural and occult friends and foes, including run-ins with Norse, Navajo, and Roman deities.

The Bound Gods series, by Rachel Dunne
In Dunne’s trilogy, twins are a sign of evil. Why? Because of the “Twins,” a pair of exiled gods trapped for fear they’d end the world. For its part, humanity is torn between those who favor the Twins and everyone else, who prefer the “Parent” gods that cast them out. As is custom in matters of divine disputes, war looms—and it’s the mortals who will pay.

The Titan’s Forest series, by Thoraiya Dyer
The drama plays out among the treetops in Dyer’s lush, lovely series. Gods and goddesses live among the human elite in the Canopy, the uppermost level of a rainforest realm. Unar serves the goddess Audblayin, though her desire to go up in the ranks may force her to descend to the forest’s lower layers, where danger and desperation dwell.