Three’s a Charm: 12 Complete SFF Trilogies to Read All the Way Through
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There’s an old saying among writers of fantasy and science fiction—you never forget your first completed trilogy. Well, maybe this isn’t an old saying, but it should be: especially these days, when every book is the first-of-a, how can an author know she’s arrived if she hasn’t wrapped up her own three-book series?
Fran Wilde has certainly arrived. Next week, with the publication of Horizon, she wraps up her own first trilogy, three books in the Nebula Award-nominated, Andre Norton Award-winning Bone Universe series—and like any writer worth her readers, she’s celebrating by suggesting more completed trilogies you need to read—after you finish hers, of course.
Want to read an entire series arc from cover-to-cover (to cover, to cover… er, to cover to cover?), following each plot thread to its final conclusion, without once (much like this sentence) pausing for breath?
A wealth of trilogies have come to completion in the past few years—including those listed below. Pick up an armful of these beauties and settle in for a long, epic read.
The Eternal Sky Trilogy, by Elizabeth Bear
Strife has embroiled the empires of the Celadon Highway in Range of Ghosts, Shattered Pillars, and Steles of the Sky, until fallen armies litter the fields and heirs to thrones go into hiding. When Temur and Samarkar, both searching for their own paths through the turmoil, discover what’s at the heart of the sorcery, guile, and deceit that has ruined their worlds, they must use all their strengths to stand against it.
The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin
This award-winning Broken Earth series begins with a season of endings. For the inhabitants of the Stillness, a massive continent, seasons are world-rending events that change everything. In one sense, The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate, and The Broken Earth chronicles the journeys of a mother and daughter, caught within the workings of a world that is afraid of their power. In another, it is the story of a world already destroyed by another group’s search for control, and how that mother, Essun, and her daughter Nessun, can save or destroy it utterly.
Metamorphoses Trilogy, Sarah McCarry
With layered resonances of mythology, choices, and consequences, McCarry transforms the Pacific Northwest, music, and the stars into a map where friends, sisters, and lovers all engage the monstrous, the gods, and the realities in between. The poetry that binds All Our Pretty Songs, Dirty Wings, and About a Girl is Ovidian at its source, but entirely McCarry’s own music as well. Beautifully crafted.
Remembrance of Earth’s Past, by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu and Joel Martinsen
The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest and Death’s End comprise Chinese author Liu Cixin’s award-winning and very deft mix of China’s Cultural Revolution with alien invasion, physics, and gaming to create a web of regret and nostalgia. The series explores what it means to be human even as the coming of the Trisolarans threatens humanity.
Shades of Magic, by Victoria Schwab
Starting with A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows and concluding with A Conjuring of Light, Schwab casts a bestselling spell on her readers as she tells the story of Kell — one of the last Travellers between multiple Londons — Rhy, Delilah Bard, and more as they work to save all the Londons, and to stay alive.
The Red, by Linda Nagata
In The Red, The Trials, and Going Dark, Nagata follows Lieutenant James Shelley as he leads a linked Army squad through a near-future world filled with intrigue and corruption. But by the time James is ready to drop out of the action entirely, the world—and the Red—is more than ready to drag him back in.
The Heartland Trilogy, by Chuck Wendig
When genetically modified corn goes feral, Cael and his friends must first fight for their economic freedom against the Empyreans, and for their lives against the blight and mechanized humans. In Wendig’s Heartland trilogy—Under the Empyrian Sky, Blightborn, and The Harvest, corn is king, but humanity still has the power. Or do they?
The Court of Fives Trilogy, by Kate Elliot
In a world constrained by class rules and privilege, Jessamy loves The Fives—a multi-level competition that could mean freedom and glory. When first schemes, then violence, and finally revolution threaten to tear her from her friends and family, Jessamy must fight well beyond the game to save what she loves, even as she risks losing it all in Elliot’s Court of Fives, Poisoned Blade, and Buried Heart.
The Radch Trilogy, by Ann Leckie
From Breq’s first struggle to for control amidst a complex self-awareness in Ancillary Justice, to their final moves against a multiplicitous empire in Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, Leckie’s award-winning space opera turns a powerful lens on individuality and society with amazing ships, explosions, battles, power grabs, tea, and etiquette—as well as the fight for justice in a world that favors those who are already strong. Leckie returns to the same universe, but far removed from the Radch, in the forthcoming Provenance.
The Ben Gold Trilogy, by Rajan Khanna
Through Falling Sky, Rising Tide, and Raining Fire, airship pilot Ben Gold works to salvage what he can from a world shattered by a terrible virus, save his friends, and overcome a terrible military plot in order to right the world. In the process, he loses his ship and much more—can he recover?z
The Young Elites, by Marie Lu
With The Young Elites—first in her her latest YA trilogy—Marie Lu captures a society rebuilding itself after a deadly illness sweeps its ranks. Survivors of the blood plague are rumored to have certain abilities, but they are also feared and shunned. In The Rose Society and The Midnight Star, Elites form tenuous bonds, but leaders like Adelina must balance her powers and her anger in order to keep the society, from devolving into all-out war.
Fran Wilde is the author of Updraft, Cloudbound, and Horizon. Her novels and short stories have been nominated for two Nebula awards and a Hugo, and appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, and the 2017 Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror. She writes for publications including The Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, iO9.com, and GeekMom.com. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and at franwilde.net.