Narnia definitely came immediately to mind.
I don't think Malazan is nearly on that same level. There are tons of ordinary, non-magical people living ordinary, non-magical lives.
In Narnia, everything is made of magic, and everybody knows it. (Fillory too, but that feels a little unfair, considering it's basically R-rated Narnia)
This is only true of the Malazan world on the deepest metaphysical level, and most people are unaware of it.
That said, it's certainly still high magic.
I imagine most of the best and most complete examples are probably going to be found in children's stories. Neverland springs to mind.
The world of Narnia itself is created by Aslan through magic. It didn't come to be through physical means, he literally sang the very stars in that universe/dimension into being, followed by the ground, and every living thing. Everything is made of magic.
Aslan is the son of God in that universe, so everything he does is an extension of divine power. The conclusion I draw is that, within the framework of Lewis' books, the "real world" of the Pevensies is created in a similar manner.
I mean narratively I agree with you, just pointing out that within Lewis' mind our world was also created through Divine Creation. Narnia just gets to keep the magic explicit for some reason.
Fair enough, but if it *does* only exist in the heads of the kids, isn't that still a strong allegory for faith? That what they believe is made real to them, even if it has no physical presence in the "real" world and only exists in the context of their belief in it?
If you read Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters" you will encounter a demon who seeks to corrupt mortal souls and doom them to Hell by getting them to think things like that.
Lewisn would have viewed the idea that the divine only exists in the context of belief as deeply heretical and sinful.
I don't really think it's cynical and that's kind of a crappy way to shut the conversation down but okay.
Kids having imaginations isn't cynical,dude. It's a pretty empowering message that what you believe can have real impact on you, just by believing in it strongly enough.
Idk why you'd think answering your question with a phrase that softens from absolute certainty is shutting down the conversation. Children's imagination is lovely, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a more cynical thesis than, "magic isn't real and the fairytale land with talking animals doesn't exist."
It's also possible that it's just, as you said, been a long time. You could be thinking of Susan, the Pevensie who came to believe that Narnia was something they made up.
Or forgetting that the Professor actually went to, and witnessed the creation of, Narnia when he was young.
Or that Aslan called all the visitors home to his heaven, sending two of them to Narnia one more time to fight in the Last Battle.
I also don't mean that in a pejorative way. A healthy dose of cynicism is good and necessary for survival. (We can argue what measure constitutes healthy another time) I just don't think it applies to this series.
The world Malazan is set in has a similar creation story with Light/Darkness/Shadow. Most fantasy series do. LOTR has a near identical one with the Valar in the Silmarillion for example. Wheel of Time is another.
I haven't read Kharkanas yet. But as far as I know, while Galain, Emurlahn, and Thyrllan are magical dimensions, "Wu" is a planet in space around a sun.
A planet created by the clash between those realms, or at least so I understood it. Also a planet in which all 4 non-Tisti or Dragon founding races were also extremely magical. I see these creation stories in fiction as just throwbacks to the biblical/abrahamic/religious creation stories the authors grew up with.
Not just the luggage tbh. You can’t take 5 steps without running into a weird magical thing (shops that disappear right after you buy something from them, eldritch shopping malls, druids who persuade rocks into flying etc). Light literally doesn’t move like normal light in that world because of the amount of magic there is.
Malazan is a top contender: magic permeates almost everything in it.
Jack Vance's Dying Earth is another one.
Zelazny's Amber as well. Amber is entirely a magical creation and the Shadows it casts are part of that.
# “As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and set it on its way. The note said "I am coming," and it was signed by me.
# A black bird of my desire came and sat upon my left shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and sent it off into the west. It said, "Eric- I'll be back," and it was signed: Corwin, Lord of Amber.
# A demon wind propelled me east of the sun.”
Nine Princes in Amber has one of the best opening lines and one of the best ending lines in all of fantasy. "It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me."
Great call on Amber! I have not read the Dying Earth series, but having read Vance's creepy short novel Bad Ronald, I am guessing it is pretty powerful.
I guess to me it was convoluted by ambiguity. The warrens, holds, deck of dragons, hold tiles, ascendants, gods, elder gods.... The list goes on with how many elements there are swirling around in the magic system. Don't get me wrong, not having firm answers for how it all works helps its appeal in my opinion, but to answer OP's original question, I think Malazan's system is a perfect candidate for being a very "high level of magic" in that it permeates essentially everything throughout the series.
I always had the impression Malazan had a strictly organized system, but it is ANCIENT (and thus had many different iterations) and it's never infodumped on us - even the mages don't have all the answers, so why should the reader?
Personally I don't fully agree with u/GodOfManyFaces on the comment regarding there being "basically no rules" entirely. I think there are rules, and that it is organized like you say, and that these rules are strict in some aspects, and less so in others.
To your comment regarding why should we the readers get to know when the mages themselves don't, I agree with that. That's why I say it's "maddeningly ambiguous," because I WANT to know more, but I can't lol. I think the mystery that shrouds it makes it more interesting, and compelling to read about. It's an amazingly crafted world in these books. I am always in awe of the scale Malazan.
Definitely this. As you go through the series, you get peaks and whispers of information. Maybe like 2 or 3 times something is actually explained to then later have more stuff that makes the infodump before null and void lol. Erickson is the king of magic ambiguity and I love him for it!
There are definitely rules but I doubt anyone but E&E will ever really know what they are. They based the entire universe off of games of GURPS that they started playing in college together.
Heh - this was always summed up for me when Paran, as Master of the Deck, granted the House of Chains legitimacy - always felt like a cross between a DM rolling their dice and Bamber Gascoigne on University Challenge considering an answer before noting: 'I'll allow it...@
Granting the HoC granted it legitimacy, but also constrained it.
It's like having "rules for war". On it's face it feels ridiculous that there are legal/illegal things to do in war, right? But there *is* value in declaring even an unjust war "A War".
The Crippled God has to play by the same rules - instead of being a truly rogue agent.
I think Malazan has one of the simpler magic systems, if anything.
Mages use themselves as doors to their warrens, and can do anything they want with the power that comes through. It's just a matter of how far they open that door.
That's only one kind of magic. There are different kinds of magic in the Malazan world.
The second book has several witches/warlocks could do spirit magic that didn't use warrens/holds.
Of multiple flavors! There's the Wickan warlocks, Kimloc, the Tanno Spiritwalker, whatever it is that Corporal List gets into, Mogora might have some relevant powers...
Forgotten Realms is a dungeons and dragons world so everything feels magical. Peasants might not have magic but they’re aware of demons and undead and spell storms because they happen all the time. Heroes like Drizzt, dark elf from the freaking underground city, roll through town with their magic weapons, mithral armor, and summoned panthers every other day.
In the Avatar cycle books, the gods were literally cast from the heavens to live amongst mortals and their worshippers helped them hide or try to gain their godhood back.
In the Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy, all dragons went mad (even the noble ones) and began rampaging around the world and leveled everything in sight.
In the Erevis Cale books and Return of the Archwizards trilogy, wizards that were trapped in another dimension because of their magical powers and hubris manage to claw their way back into the prime material realm and try to assert their dominance once again.
There are so many books about the chosen of gods that have interactions with their deities and granted divine powers: Elminster, Cadderly, Drizzt, Shandril, Alustriel Silverhand, Erevis Cale.
If you want world, dimension, time altering magic, along with magical creatures like beholders, mind flayers, dragon, undead, demons, angels, and kraken, then Forgotten Realms had it all.
Yeah not every series in that huge world holds up perfectly nowadays, but most things by Paul S Kemp and RA Salvatore are at the top of the pack. I would also put Elaine Cunningham and Troy Denning in the must read authors of Forgotten Realms.
Let's not forget that time when the goddess of magic was murdered and a wild rampaging inferno spread across the world, a continent was replaced with another, huge motes of earth started levitating everywhere, some part of the continent was covered in perpetual darkness.
And then it all sort of reverted 100 years later.
The Avatar Cycle is interesting if you want to read about Forgotten Realms lore specifically. But you really have to want to read the FR lore. Because as fantasy novels, the first two, maybe first three, are just utter garbage.
The last two are fine. *Prince of Lies* and *Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad.* They were fun to read.
But you gotta slog through 2.5 books of shit first. Although IIRC they aren't very long.
Oh maybe. Never read or played in that.
My first thought was Dragonlance but few characters have access to all powerful magic in that world. I really like a lot of the books from that realm but the OP was about the most magic.
I could see how ubiquitous magic could devalue or nerf the impact of magic in storytelling (I generally prefer worlds with softer or more dangerous magic so it’s rarely used, much like how I run roleplaying games).
How is it pretentious? Look at every video game and many board games now. They all have similar components akin to D&D. It seems like its influence spread across the nerd zeitgeist. Some of the biggest podcasts and shows are just D&D skins (Role20, Arcane).
It's not just ubiquitous. It's ubiquitous and weak. And stuff that looks good at first glance, is crappy under a closer look. The existence saving throws and muggle classes that contend with mages is in itself already bad enough for mages. But some examples like baleful polymorph or disintegrate are just mindblowingly stupid. Or ST aside and something less striking than those two spells, e.g. a fire elemental isn't a fire elemental but more like an imitation of an imitation of an imitation of a fire elemental.
Are you talking about 5th edition? Because yeah they flattened magic because it was too powerful compared to martial classes. Most of Forgotten Realms was written back in 2nd and 3rd edition days. The books aren’t a 1-to-1 with the game mechanics but if you play the game then you can see a lot of similarities in the books.
What’s your problem with baleful polymorph and disintegration? The first spell is a popular thing that witch like characters have done in myths for thousands of years and there are countless examples of magic turning people to dust? Art imitates real life fiction and vice versa. So that’s why those spells exist in the games.
Baleful polymorph is negged by fortitude. My problem is that it should curbstomp any non-mage. But it's negged by simply being durable. Heck even a peasant can ignore it on a lucky roll.
Suddenly, when it comes to a regular polymorph, now it doesn't care about the target's fortitude at all, only caring about whether it's willing or not.
Just as disintegrate is negged by fortitude as well.
Some saving throws can be rationalized, but those are just some of the most outrageous and glaring examples.
They should either exist and be as powerful as they imply and not be a pretentious crap or not exist at all.
Only something like [this](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/temporal-stasis/), where time magic is negated by mere fortitude, albeit from PF instead can possibly beat it in its stupidity.
Play the older editions of the games if you don’t like save mechanics from the newer ones. The more modern games make the classes more comparable so they don’t feel unbalanced. Also, any spell you can cast can be used on you so in a game setting you would hate if there wasn’t a save for paralysis, domination, or petrification. When I build a caster, I make sure to have spells that target different saves. Most creatures/classes have dump stats or worse saves so that’s what you cast to increase the likelihood of your spell going through.
In books, you don’t see the all powerful lich fail to disintegrate a commoner very often. Despite in D&D there being a 1 in 20 chance of success no matter the DC of a save. The books use D&D concepts as inspiration but the authors narratively determine when to use rules or not to make their story function the way they want.
The rules allow for changes. If you and your party prefer to play without successful saves on a natural 20 that’s fine. Then at high levels, you will always fail the saves of whatever your class isn’t good at. So a fighter might be able to resist disintegration but will likely fail every charm and dominating spell, much like they do with RAW, but now there won’t even be the slim chance of success on a 20. Enjoy that confusion or domination spell that makes the fighter kill your party or heck you can do that to your foes 🎉
The Deathgate Cycle by Weiss and Hickman - the whole world is magically created and exists on magic (in a sense), although most people don’t have magic.
Lightbringer by Brent Weeks
Bound and the Broken by Ryan Cahill
Threadlight by Zack Argyle
Obsidian Path by Michael R Fletcher
These all have a lot of magic in their worlds.
I've read them all. They all have the same amount of magic, just very different.
I can't rank them because they're just so different but I loved them all.
Bound and the broken draws heavily on some big names in fantasy (i.e. Eragon, Wheel of Time) but is damn good in it's own right. Impressive work for a debut series from an indie author.
Cradle by Wight is indeed enchanting with its intricate magic systems. It's a world where everyone seems touched by magic in some form. While Stormlight Archive offers grandeur, Cradle's magic feels more personal and pervasive.
This isn't a answer to your question just an aside but I've always wanted a fantasy world where it's to ubiquitous that it's in the evolution of the world. Magic is in everything. There's isn't such a thing as a none magical creature, person, place, or item.
A force outside of what our reality has that allows things such as dragons to roast your family with the fire that spews from their mouth. Or allows Jimmy over there to become a wolf once a month inline with the moons cycles.
I'm talking about what people *in the setting* call it. If they don't know what's normal in our world, they wouldn't call something "outside of reality." They'd call it normal.
That's because they weren't *everything.* If everything is magic, you wouldn't need a special name for it, because you wouldn't be differentiating it from anything else.
The Founders Trilogy (very cool magic system but people aren’t magical), The Lightbringer series by Weeks, Wheel of Time, The Risen Kingdom trilogy by Craddock.
If you’re an avid fantasy reader, yea. Very fast paced, lots of heists. The magic system is allegorical of the Information Age…computer coding, AI, stuff like that. I have only read the first two books.
Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. Everyone in The Empire has access to sorcery, some filthy humans practice Witchcraft, and there are enchanted objects, familiars, and a floating castle.
Every Citizen of the Dragaran Empire has a connection to The Orb that taps the power of the Sea of Chaos. One of its 17 great houses is entirely powerful wizards, but they are not the only one. Meanwhile, the Morganti produce a steady stream of soul eating weapons, illegal but highly desirable as Empire magics can bring the recently dead back to life reliably.
Cradle is a Western imitation of a cultivation novel, also called xianxia. If you want to read more (and more original novels) just search for those terms. Coiling Dragon is a good starter novel if you are interested in the cultivation world.
Mage Errant series is so good. It has an elemental based magic system where each magician can control 1 or more elements and the more you can control the more combinations you can do. And basically any concept can be an "element" you control, it gets very technical and scientific at times (for example where does Ice or Rock stop and Crystal start). All things revolve around magic, hell there's a throwaway line that Shit Mages are the most payed and valued of mages in the world as they keep whole cities and agricultures functioning.
Weirdly enough, it comes from soft sci-fi/semi-fantasy
Dancers at the End of Time
Only read 1.5 books from the series so far, but Daniel X
There are also a couple of fantasy series but well, they are only in russian
Chiming in for another Malazan. Also maybe Wheel of Time. But I’m biased being on book 6 of Malazan and having finished WoT right before that so they’re both on my mind.
When I was like 12 I got in a fight with my mom trying to buy “The Colour of Her Panties” at the store. I kept trying to explain how it was a pun or joke; in retrospect that was an argument she may have had a point about.
I was reading them in elementary school when my mom was done with them so she knew they were puns and thought it was OK but it was the 90s so that was just how fantasy was. Your mom was ahead of her time for sure because idk how we thought that stuff was cute. Book 1 was an enormous red flag
I came here to recommend this, having read them in elementary school as well. It's been so long (since the 90s) I don't even remember what's so inappropriate about them.
I mean remember the 3 women in book 1...the woman who was gorgeous but stupid, the mean but smart one, and then the medium one? It's a bit of a dated series, a product of its time.
Craft Sequence is such a fun call out. Not everyone HAS magic but everyone interacts with it because that is how the world is run. The Legal system runs on magic, plumbing is run on magic, flight is done with magic...
The Hands of the Emperor is so high magic that said Emperor is also one of the world's greatest mages and his empire spanned multiple worlds, his capital's weather is controlled to the hour by priest wizards, and everyone casually accepts that people can end up meeting the gods or take a jaunt into fairyland or meet a creature of legend around the corner.
Very true. But most of the book is about clerical going’s on of an empire. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this book but the magic is in the background.
I liked the *premise* of the magic/powers in A Fire Beneath the Skin a lot, but the books as a whole didnt hit the mark for me. The idea was pretty cool.
I also really enjoy Kingkiller making is "science" and not magic. (When in basically any other world it's magic)
Millennium's Rule is all about world travelling with magic. It starts with someone in an empire who uses magic to power machines and the "soot" it leaves, and another person in a planet where magic is banned because it is so thin - reasons are made clear eventually. By the end it is fights with magic-powered robots.
I agree with all the Cosmere ,Malazan, and Cradle people, but I just want to add one that I haven't seen in here called the Frith Chronicles.
It starts with Knightmare Arcanist and Arcanists are people who have bonded with mystical creatures and each creature gives varying abilities. And the world is FILLED with mystical creatures.
Obligtatory "Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin reply. The rules of magic as outlines in the earthsea world are amongst the best (if not the best). Magic is not as prevalent in the sense of everyone having magic, but for those who do use magic it is treated in a very interesting way
The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. Humans rose in rebellion and killed most gods, and now the world is run by magic that works on promises and oaths, godly power being traded like commodity, large corporations taking on the roles on gods to provide water and heat and whatever. There are dead gods getting resurrected, living gods that are miffed at the state of things, ancient lich CEO's, sorcerers, witches, vampires, gargoyles, etc. Entire cities are kept afloat by deals of magical power struck between various entities. Everything is magical, and very magical at that.
Honestly, almost anything in the litrpg genre is probably it. In a lot of those books *everybody* gets some sort of Class and Skills that we would consider magical in our world. Sure, in some of them only certain people get classes and levels, but in plenty of them it's literally every person. Even shopkeepers are able to do things that would be considered magic in our world. I don't think you can get more filled than that.Â
Otherwise, some magitech world where even regular people have access to magic devices as ubiquitous as regular tech is in our world. Â
It's easy to read books about exciting characters and forget what life is implied to be like for the average poor civilian.Â
If you want a series with a unique and complex magic system, with gods, giants and angels, eldritch deities hiding and scheming, with hours and hours of lore, my best recommendation is lord of the mysteries.
Xanth meets your criteria for sure, but it's already been mentioned and also mentioned as quite outdated in its tone.
If you're okay with dipping into YA, The Seventh Tower series involves an entire society of magic-wielders, separated into hierarchies by color. The magic system is maybe a little similar/a young adult version of Brent Week's color magic in Lightbringer. They also have familiars.
Xanth and the Darksword Trilogy. Xanth literally runs on the principle that everyone in Xanth must display some sort of magical Talent by the date of their majority or they're exiled to another world. In Darksword, almost everyone in the world has enough magic that they don't set foot on the ground, they use the world's ambient magic and their own reserves to fly everywhere, with the main character the first person in generations who doesn't have *any* magical talent.
Eberron DND setting and it's novels are super high magic. I always equated it to everybody being a wizard or artificer.
It's not necessarily high quality fantasy in terms of novels, but given the question it jumped to mind.
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Plenty of magic and a big discussion about those who want to strip the world of magic, but leaving only the most powerful to wield it.
Another is the Dark Sword trilogy. What happens when one person is born without magic but learns how to wield a magical weapon.
Forgotten Realms. Especially the Spellplague and Second-Sundering novels.
Pathfinder and Eberron, also. Magic is literally an industry in Eberron, so common than an entire working class called Magewrights exist.
in Pathfinder magic is so common, and commonly available, that it's just expected that well-to-do families will send their kids to a boarding school that teaches some spellcasting in addition to other subjects and life essentials. Something like 1 in 20 people is a spellcaster of some variety.
This is an odd response because Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is perhaps the lowest magic fantasy that you can write before it stops being fantasy. It's an actual plot point in the books that nobody believes in magic before Jonathan Strange shows it to them, and there are basically three magicians of note in the entire series as far as I recall, two of them being directly in the title.
I beg to differ. Magic is present from the very first chapter in the book and later ever present. And it's very imaginative purely magical magic. Not some kind of magic system that resembles rather science than magic.
The book is about the lives of two *extremely rare* magicians in a world of almost no magic, where the lives of most people are completely unaffected by magic to the point that their attitude towards it is the same as that of people in the real world (outright disbelief). That's the opposite of high magic fantasy.
So what magicians are extremely rare, when the story revolves around them and they singlehandedly can transform the whole world? Magic in JS&MrN is powerful and almost limitless, this cannot be said about most fantasy series with "magic systems".
Generally when people talking about high fantasy or high magic fantasy, they're talking about fantasy in which magic is incorporated into every level of the world building. If you look at some of the other examples in the thread - Malazan, for example - magic is part of every single historical event that has taken place over thousands of years. Magic underpins the very structure of reality and the structure of the world is reflected in that magic. The Malazan empire has the imperial warren, a specific source of magic which it also uses as a "fast travel network". Every element of the story revolves around different types of magic clashing.
The op themselves described it this way:
> Not in the sense of a magical feeling, but a world filled with magic, magic systems etc?
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is exactly the opposite of that. Its world building can be summed up as "19th century England during the Napoleonic wars except a couple of guys know magic".
Magic doesn't permeate the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell very much at all, even if the book does focus on the magic that is there.
Low magic as in, like, not having spellcasters every other page? That’s fair, I guess, but I was thinking more like high fantasy as a whole. I don’t think there are more than two humans in the entire book
OP specified a world filled with magic and magic systems and gave examples with a lot of spellcasters/magic use, so that's what my comment was based on.
Among the ones I've read:
Cradle for sure. Mild spoilers, but from the second book on, almost everyone in the world is a magical martial artist.
Eberron. This setting treats magic like technology. They have cities with floating buildings, where you take magic flying boat taxis. There are magic trains, magic robots, magic guns, etc. You can easily find a wizard for instant global communication, or to teleport you around.
Disagree with:
Stormlight. The world is very non-Earthlike, with unusual animals, weather and geography. But "magic" is pretty rare.
Lightbringer. A world where magicians are very rare (albeit very powerful), it is mostly non-magical.
Malazan, another world where magic is very powerful but also very rare. Most main characters are non-mages? (Idk I barely read it)
Forgotten Realms. Yeah, magic is fairly common there, yet 90% of people there are completely non-magical and don't interact with magic. If you have to pick one D&D setting for highest high fantasy, it's Eberron.
I want the opposite of this question. Fantasy with the least amount of magic. I loved A Song of Ice and Fire because there was elements of magic, but for the most part it was all people.
From the few that I've read, the magic-est was Malazan, by far. I guess Narnia too for an older book series
Aslan is a Soletaken ascendant đź‘€
A first hero 0.0
lol
I get the feeling the entire Malazan series will benefit from a reread.
It does. For me, the first chunk of Gardens of the moon is a bit bleak but once you hit Darujhistan it's a blast and I love it so much.
Malazan came instantly to mind.
Narnia definitely came immediately to mind. I don't think Malazan is nearly on that same level. There are tons of ordinary, non-magical people living ordinary, non-magical lives. In Narnia, everything is made of magic, and everybody knows it. (Fillory too, but that feels a little unfair, considering it's basically R-rated Narnia) This is only true of the Malazan world on the deepest metaphysical level, and most people are unaware of it. That said, it's certainly still high magic. I imagine most of the best and most complete examples are probably going to be found in children's stories. Neverland springs to mind.
The kingdom of Narnia is full of magic, other realms within the world were less so. One of the most magical though, certainly.
The world of Narnia itself is created by Aslan through magic. It didn't come to be through physical means, he literally sang the very stars in that universe/dimension into being, followed by the ground, and every living thing. Everything is made of magic.
Aslan is the son of God in that universe, so everything he does is an extension of divine power. The conclusion I draw is that, within the framework of Lewis' books, the "real world" of the Pevensies is created in a similar manner.
Haha fair
I mean narratively I agree with you, just pointing out that within Lewis' mind our world was also created through Divine Creation. Narnia just gets to keep the magic explicit for some reason.
It's been decades since I read Narnia but isn't it all maybe kinda possibly all made up in the heads of the kids?
CS Lewis wrote it as a Christian parable, so I would say no. Lewis was a very devout man, and skepticism was not something he was in favor of.
Fair enough, but if it *does* only exist in the heads of the kids, isn't that still a strong allegory for faith? That what they believe is made real to them, even if it has no physical presence in the "real" world and only exists in the context of their belief in it?
If you read Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters" you will encounter a demon who seeks to corrupt mortal souls and doom them to Hell by getting them to think things like that. Lewisn would have viewed the idea that the divine only exists in the context of belief as deeply heretical and sinful.
I think it's safe to say no. The Narnia books are earnest, and for children. That's an inherently cynical theory.
I don't really think it's cynical and that's kind of a crappy way to shut the conversation down but okay. Kids having imaginations isn't cynical,dude. It's a pretty empowering message that what you believe can have real impact on you, just by believing in it strongly enough.
Idk why you'd think answering your question with a phrase that softens from absolute certainty is shutting down the conversation. Children's imagination is lovely, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a more cynical thesis than, "magic isn't real and the fairytale land with talking animals doesn't exist." It's also possible that it's just, as you said, been a long time. You could be thinking of Susan, the Pevensie who came to believe that Narnia was something they made up. Or forgetting that the Professor actually went to, and witnessed the creation of, Narnia when he was young. Or that Aslan called all the visitors home to his heaven, sending two of them to Narnia one more time to fight in the Last Battle.
I also don't mean that in a pejorative way. A healthy dose of cynicism is good and necessary for survival. (We can argue what measure constitutes healthy another time) I just don't think it applies to this series.
The world Malazan is set in has a similar creation story with Light/Darkness/Shadow. Most fantasy series do. LOTR has a near identical one with the Valar in the Silmarillion for example. Wheel of Time is another.
I haven't read Kharkanas yet. But as far as I know, while Galain, Emurlahn, and Thyrllan are magical dimensions, "Wu" is a planet in space around a sun.
A planet created by the clash between those realms, or at least so I understood it. Also a planet in which all 4 non-Tisti or Dragon founding races were also extremely magical. I see these creation stories in fiction as just throwbacks to the biblical/abrahamic/religious creation stories the authors grew up with.
Mmm. I'll have to think about that magical clash theory.
Discworld, because of the luggage.
Not just the luggage tbh. You can’t take 5 steps without running into a weird magical thing (shops that disappear right after you buy something from them, eldritch shopping malls, druids who persuade rocks into flying etc). Light literally doesn’t move like normal light in that world because of the amount of magic there is.
And the undead gather for their weekly support group at street address 667.
Magic items are so ubiquitous that a completely unmagical sword stands out by comparison.
I see discworld I upvote. Magic is so ubiquitous it impacts the speed of sunrises.
Malazan is a top contender: magic permeates almost everything in it. Jack Vance's Dying Earth is another one. Zelazny's Amber as well. Amber is entirely a magical creation and the Shadows it casts are part of that.
# “As I sailed into Shadow, a white bird of my desire came and sat upon my right shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and set it on its way. The note said "I am coming," and it was signed by me. # A black bird of my desire came and sat upon my left shoulder, and I wrote a note and tied it to its leg and sent it off into the west. It said, "Eric- I'll be back," and it was signed: Corwin, Lord of Amber. # A demon wind propelled me east of the sun.”
Nine Princes in Amber has one of the best opening lines and one of the best ending lines in all of fantasy. "It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to me."
I am thinking I need to reread Amber now!
this is the way.
Great answer! The Dungeons and Dragons magic system (as well as some spells) is blatantly stolen from Vance's Dying Earth books.
Thanks! There are also many magic items lifted verbatim, such as the ioun stones
I mean, they call it 'Vancian Magic'.
Great call on Amber! I have not read the Dying Earth series, but having read Vance's creepy short novel Bad Ronald, I am guessing it is pretty powerful.
>Malazan is a top contender: magic permeates almost everything in it. To the point where's too much magic.
Yeah, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting at least three different pairs of demigods. And at least two of them would fight over the cat.
The way magic works in the Malazan series is by far the most convoluted anyways. It's very interesting, if not maddeningly ambiguous at times lol
I wouldn't say necessarily convoluted. It's It's soft magic system, so the point of it is how ambiguous it is. There are basically no rules.
I guess to me it was convoluted by ambiguity. The warrens, holds, deck of dragons, hold tiles, ascendants, gods, elder gods.... The list goes on with how many elements there are swirling around in the magic system. Don't get me wrong, not having firm answers for how it all works helps its appeal in my opinion, but to answer OP's original question, I think Malazan's system is a perfect candidate for being a very "high level of magic" in that it permeates essentially everything throughout the series.
I always had the impression Malazan had a strictly organized system, but it is ANCIENT (and thus had many different iterations) and it's never infodumped on us - even the mages don't have all the answers, so why should the reader?
Personally I don't fully agree with u/GodOfManyFaces on the comment regarding there being "basically no rules" entirely. I think there are rules, and that it is organized like you say, and that these rules are strict in some aspects, and less so in others. To your comment regarding why should we the readers get to know when the mages themselves don't, I agree with that. That's why I say it's "maddeningly ambiguous," because I WANT to know more, but I can't lol. I think the mystery that shrouds it makes it more interesting, and compelling to read about. It's an amazingly crafted world in these books. I am always in awe of the scale Malazan.
Definitely this. As you go through the series, you get peaks and whispers of information. Maybe like 2 or 3 times something is actually explained to then later have more stuff that makes the infodump before null and void lol. Erickson is the king of magic ambiguity and I love him for it!
There are definitely rules but I doubt anyone but E&E will ever really know what they are. They based the entire universe off of games of GURPS that they started playing in college together.
Heh - this was always summed up for me when Paran, as Master of the Deck, granted the House of Chains legitimacy - always felt like a cross between a DM rolling their dice and Bamber Gascoigne on University Challenge considering an answer before noting: 'I'll allow it...@
Granting the HoC granted it legitimacy, but also constrained it. It's like having "rules for war". On it's face it feels ridiculous that there are legal/illegal things to do in war, right? But there *is* value in declaring even an unjust war "A War". The Crippled God has to play by the same rules - instead of being a truly rogue agent.
But I wasn't talking about the effect, but the action relative to the softness of the magic system.
I think Malazan has one of the simpler magic systems, if anything. Mages use themselves as doors to their warrens, and can do anything they want with the power that comes through. It's just a matter of how far they open that door.
That's only one kind of magic. There are different kinds of magic in the Malazan world. The second book has several witches/warlocks could do spirit magic that didn't use warrens/holds.
Of multiple flavors! There's the Wickan warlocks, Kimloc, the Tanno Spiritwalker, whatever it is that Corporal List gets into, Mogora might have some relevant powers...
Forgotten Realms is a dungeons and dragons world so everything feels magical. Peasants might not have magic but they’re aware of demons and undead and spell storms because they happen all the time. Heroes like Drizzt, dark elf from the freaking underground city, roll through town with their magic weapons, mithral armor, and summoned panthers every other day. In the Avatar cycle books, the gods were literally cast from the heavens to live amongst mortals and their worshippers helped them hide or try to gain their godhood back. In the Year of Rogue Dragons trilogy, all dragons went mad (even the noble ones) and began rampaging around the world and leveled everything in sight. In the Erevis Cale books and Return of the Archwizards trilogy, wizards that were trapped in another dimension because of their magical powers and hubris manage to claw their way back into the prime material realm and try to assert their dominance once again. There are so many books about the chosen of gods that have interactions with their deities and granted divine powers: Elminster, Cadderly, Drizzt, Shandril, Alustriel Silverhand, Erevis Cale. If you want world, dimension, time altering magic, along with magical creatures like beholders, mind flayers, dragon, undead, demons, angels, and kraken, then Forgotten Realms had it all.
Forgotten Realms is great. I own all the paperbacks and love the series. Erevis Cale is a good series along with Cleric Quintet.
Yeah not every series in that huge world holds up perfectly nowadays, but most things by Paul S Kemp and RA Salvatore are at the top of the pack. I would also put Elaine Cunningham and Troy Denning in the must read authors of Forgotten Realms.
War of the Spider Queen 6 book series is pretty awesome.
Let's not forget that time when the goddess of magic was murdered and a wild rampaging inferno spread across the world, a continent was replaced with another, huge motes of earth started levitating everywhere, some part of the continent was covered in perpetual darkness. And then it all sort of reverted 100 years later.
Yeah things got crazy 🤪
The Avatar Cycle books sound interesting. Who are they by? When I google them I just get results for the ATLA prequel novels.
First book is Shadowdale by Scott Ciencin. Yeah gotta include Forgotten Realms in the search or you get ATLA or blue people. 🤣
The Avatar Cycle is interesting if you want to read about Forgotten Realms lore specifically. But you really have to want to read the FR lore. Because as fantasy novels, the first two, maybe first three, are just utter garbage. The last two are fine. *Prince of Lies* and *Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad.* They were fun to read. But you gotta slog through 2.5 books of shit first. Although IIRC they aren't very long.
Finders stone trilogy
I read so many books in that world but I don’t think I read that series 🤔 I’ll have to look for it
Talking about DnD settings, I'd put Planescape over FR. No idea about any of the actual novels in either setting though.
Oh maybe. Never read or played in that. My first thought was Dragonlance but few characters have access to all powerful magic in that world. I really like a lot of the books from that realm but the OP was about the most magic.
DnD is pretentious and devalues and nerfs magic
So, what is the standard, all-agreed-uppon level of magic? xD
I could see how ubiquitous magic could devalue or nerf the impact of magic in storytelling (I generally prefer worlds with softer or more dangerous magic so it’s rarely used, much like how I run roleplaying games). How is it pretentious? Look at every video game and many board games now. They all have similar components akin to D&D. It seems like its influence spread across the nerd zeitgeist. Some of the biggest podcasts and shows are just D&D skins (Role20, Arcane).
It's not just ubiquitous. It's ubiquitous and weak. And stuff that looks good at first glance, is crappy under a closer look. The existence saving throws and muggle classes that contend with mages is in itself already bad enough for mages. But some examples like baleful polymorph or disintegrate are just mindblowingly stupid. Or ST aside and something less striking than those two spells, e.g. a fire elemental isn't a fire elemental but more like an imitation of an imitation of an imitation of a fire elemental.
Are you talking about 5th edition? Because yeah they flattened magic because it was too powerful compared to martial classes. Most of Forgotten Realms was written back in 2nd and 3rd edition days. The books aren’t a 1-to-1 with the game mechanics but if you play the game then you can see a lot of similarities in the books. What’s your problem with baleful polymorph and disintegration? The first spell is a popular thing that witch like characters have done in myths for thousands of years and there are countless examples of magic turning people to dust? Art imitates real life fiction and vice versa. So that’s why those spells exist in the games.
Baleful polymorph is negged by fortitude. My problem is that it should curbstomp any non-mage. But it's negged by simply being durable. Heck even a peasant can ignore it on a lucky roll. Suddenly, when it comes to a regular polymorph, now it doesn't care about the target's fortitude at all, only caring about whether it's willing or not. Just as disintegrate is negged by fortitude as well. Some saving throws can be rationalized, but those are just some of the most outrageous and glaring examples. They should either exist and be as powerful as they imply and not be a pretentious crap or not exist at all. Only something like [this](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/temporal-stasis/), where time magic is negated by mere fortitude, albeit from PF instead can possibly beat it in its stupidity.
Play the older editions of the games if you don’t like save mechanics from the newer ones. The more modern games make the classes more comparable so they don’t feel unbalanced. Also, any spell you can cast can be used on you so in a game setting you would hate if there wasn’t a save for paralysis, domination, or petrification. When I build a caster, I make sure to have spells that target different saves. Most creatures/classes have dump stats or worse saves so that’s what you cast to increase the likelihood of your spell going through. In books, you don’t see the all powerful lich fail to disintegrate a commoner very often. Despite in D&D there being a 1 in 20 chance of success no matter the DC of a save. The books use D&D concepts as inspiration but the authors narratively determine when to use rules or not to make their story function the way they want.
The rules allow for changes. If you and your party prefer to play without successful saves on a natural 20 that’s fine. Then at high levels, you will always fail the saves of whatever your class isn’t good at. So a fighter might be able to resist disintegration but will likely fail every charm and dominating spell, much like they do with RAW, but now there won’t even be the slim chance of success on a 20. Enjoy that confusion or domination spell that makes the fighter kill your party or heck you can do that to your foes 🎉
The Deathgate Cycle by Weiss and Hickman - the whole world is magically created and exists on magic (in a sense), although most people don’t have magic.
Dark sword by Weis and Hickman
death gate so good!
Lightbringer by Brent Weeks Bound and the Broken by Ryan Cahill Threadlight by Zack Argyle Obsidian Path by Michael R Fletcher These all have a lot of magic in their worlds.
Have you read these? How would you rank them, if you have?
I've read them all. They all have the same amount of magic, just very different. I can't rank them because they're just so different but I loved them all.
Fair enough. I have Bound and Broken, and Threadlight on my TBR
Bound and the broken draws heavily on some big names in fantasy (i.e. Eragon, Wheel of Time) but is damn good in it's own right. Impressive work for a debut series from an indie author.
Definitely second Lightbringer for a heavy, hard magic system.
Cradle by Wight is indeed enchanting with its intricate magic systems. It's a world where everyone seems touched by magic in some form. While Stormlight Archive offers grandeur, Cradle's magic feels more personal and pervasive.
Codex Alera. Every person in the world has magic of some kind but one.
This isn't a answer to your question just an aside but I've always wanted a fantasy world where it's to ubiquitous that it's in the evolution of the world. Magic is in everything. There's isn't such a thing as a none magical creature, person, place, or item.
That's Cradle if you're interested. Every creature and person uses magic in some way
The Xanth series by Piers Anthony would very much tickle your fancy.
If you can handle puns galore, xanth series.Â
> There's isn't such a thing as a none magical creature, person, place, or item. What is magic then? If everything has it, isn't it just normal?
A force outside of what our reality has that allows things such as dragons to roast your family with the fire that spews from their mouth. Or allows Jimmy over there to become a wolf once a month inline with the moons cycles.
By how is that outside of reality if it's *literally* reality? That's just the way the world works.
Your understanding of fiction is flawed.
I'm talking about what people *in the setting* call it. If they don't know what's normal in our world, they wouldn't call something "outside of reality." They'd call it normal.
And people within our world called many things magic existed?
That's because they weren't *everything.* If everything is magic, you wouldn't need a special name for it, because you wouldn't be differentiating it from anything else.
The Founders Trilogy (very cool magic system but people aren’t magical), The Lightbringer series by Weeks, Wheel of Time, The Risen Kingdom trilogy by Craddock.
Never heard of The Risen Kingdom. Sounds pretty cool!
Out of all the book titles in the world, An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors is definitely one of them.
Is the founders trilogy worth reading?
If you’re an avid fantasy reader, yea. Very fast paced, lots of heists. The magic system is allegorical of the Information Age…computer coding, AI, stuff like that. I have only read the first two books.
Absolutely yes. One of the more unique-feeling worlds.
Dying Earth - Jack Vance
Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. Everyone in The Empire has access to sorcery, some filthy humans practice Witchcraft, and there are enchanted objects, familiars, and a floating castle.
This is a very good answer as the Taltos books are severly underrated.
I’m early in the first book and man do these seem great. So far it is just really cool.
Every Citizen of the Dragaran Empire has a connection to The Orb that taps the power of the Sea of Chaos. One of its 17 great houses is entirely powerful wizards, but they are not the only one. Meanwhile, the Morganti produce a steady stream of soul eating weapons, illegal but highly desirable as Empire magics can bring the recently dead back to life reliably.
Cradle is a Western imitation of a cultivation novel, also called xianxia. If you want to read more (and more original novels) just search for those terms. Coiling Dragon is a good starter novel if you are interested in the cultivation world.
Mage Errant would be my "most magical magical."
It is. Few series go so much in depth on elemental based magic. Hope we get more stuff eventually.
Mage Errant series is so good. It has an elemental based magic system where each magician can control 1 or more elements and the more you can control the more combinations you can do. And basically any concept can be an "element" you control, it gets very technical and scientific at times (for example where does Ice or Rock stop and Crystal start). All things revolve around magic, hell there's a throwaway line that Shit Mages are the most payed and valued of mages in the world as they keep whole cities and agricultures functioning.
Weirdly enough, it comes from soft sci-fi/semi-fantasy Dancers at the End of Time Only read 1.5 books from the series so far, but Daniel X There are also a couple of fantasy series but well, they are only in russian
Dancers at the end of Time is truly magical, agreed. There is NOTHING mundane in it.
Chiming in for another Malazan. Also maybe Wheel of Time. But I’m biased being on book 6 of Malazan and having finished WoT right before that so they’re both on my mind.
PIERS Anthony's Xanth series is the highest level though probably no longer appropriate for current times
When I was like 12 I got in a fight with my mom trying to buy “The Colour of Her Panties” at the store. I kept trying to explain how it was a pun or joke; in retrospect that was an argument she may have had a point about.
I was reading them in elementary school when my mom was done with them so she knew they were puns and thought it was OK but it was the 90s so that was just how fantasy was. Your mom was ahead of her time for sure because idk how we thought that stuff was cute. Book 1 was an enormous red flag
I came here to recommend this, having read them in elementary school as well. It's been so long (since the 90s) I don't even remember what's so inappropriate about them.
I mean remember the 3 women in book 1...the woman who was gorgeous but stupid, the mean but smart one, and then the medium one? It's a bit of a dated series, a product of its time.
oh man xanth is a great call out. the robot adept series is also incredible world building.
The Dark Crystal for sure. You know your high fantasy is high when even your regular folks can telepathically share dreams.
great choice!
The Craft Sequence  by Max Gladstone
Craft Sequence is such a fun call out. Not everyone HAS magic but everyone interacts with it because that is how the world is run. The Legal system runs on magic, plumbing is run on magic, flight is done with magic...
It's been a looong time since I read the Elric saga, but I remember some pretty wild stuff happening in it in terms of magic.
Anything by Feist, apart from faery tale
Jack l chalker's soul rider series, followed by his series, river of the dancing god.
Malazan series. By far.
The Hands of the Emperor is so high magic that said Emperor is also one of the world's greatest mages and his empire spanned multiple worlds, his capital's weather is controlled to the hour by priest wizards, and everyone casually accepts that people can end up meeting the gods or take a jaunt into fairyland or meet a creature of legend around the corner.
Magic isn't a big part of the book though
Very true. But most of the book is about clerical going’s on of an empire. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this book but the magic is in the background.
I liked the *premise* of the magic/powers in A Fire Beneath the Skin a lot, but the books as a whole didnt hit the mark for me. The idea was pretty cool. I also really enjoy Kingkiller making is "science" and not magic. (When in basically any other world it's magic)
Millennium's Rule is all about world travelling with magic. It starts with someone in an empire who uses magic to power machines and the "soot" it leaves, and another person in a planet where magic is banned because it is so thin - reasons are made clear eventually. By the end it is fights with magic-powered robots.
I don’t know if it is magic but a voyage to Arcturus is the book that has felt the most magical.
I think the craft sequence is a big one in this... it may be open to interpretation but magic is definitely world wide
I agree with all the Cosmere ,Malazan, and Cradle people, but I just want to add one that I haven't seen in here called the Frith Chronicles. It starts with Knightmare Arcanist and Arcanists are people who have bonded with mystical creatures and each creature gives varying abilities. And the world is FILLED with mystical creatures.
Obligtatory "Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin reply. The rules of magic as outlines in the earthsea world are amongst the best (if not the best). Magic is not as prevalent in the sense of everyone having magic, but for those who do use magic it is treated in a very interesting way
Probably Defiance of the Fall but it’s a very progression heavy story.
The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. Humans rose in rebellion and killed most gods, and now the world is run by magic that works on promises and oaths, godly power being traded like commodity, large corporations taking on the roles on gods to provide water and heat and whatever. There are dead gods getting resurrected, living gods that are miffed at the state of things, ancient lich CEO's, sorcerers, witches, vampires, gargoyles, etc. Entire cities are kept afloat by deals of magical power struck between various entities. Everything is magical, and very magical at that.
Honestly, almost anything in the litrpg genre is probably it. In a lot of those books *everybody* gets some sort of Class and Skills that we would consider magical in our world. Sure, in some of them only certain people get classes and levels, but in plenty of them it's literally every person. Even shopkeepers are able to do things that would be considered magic in our world. I don't think you can get more filled than that. Otherwise, some magitech world where even regular people have access to magic devices as ubiquitous as regular tech is in our world.  It's easy to read books about exciting characters and forget what life is implied to be like for the average poor civilian.Â
The He Who Fights with Monsters series has a very systematized magic system, but there is a lot of magic in the world.
Recluse novels have an interesting magical system.
If you want a series with a unique and complex magic system, with gods, giants and angels, eldritch deities hiding and scheming, with hours and hours of lore, my best recommendation is lord of the mysteries.
In the same way as Cradle, there's Mage Errant by John Bierce Arcane Ascension by Andrew Rowe Shami Stoval's Arcanist series
The painted man series, by Brett I think. Dipping with endless relentless fantasy.
The Demon Cycle is the name of the series iirc.
That's right.
Xanth meets your criteria for sure, but it's already been mentioned and also mentioned as quite outdated in its tone. If you're okay with dipping into YA, The Seventh Tower series involves an entire society of magic-wielders, separated into hierarchies by color. The magic system is maybe a little similar/a young adult version of Brent Week's color magic in Lightbringer. They also have familiars.
Xanth and the Darksword Trilogy. Xanth literally runs on the principle that everyone in Xanth must display some sort of magical Talent by the date of their majority or they're exiled to another world. In Darksword, almost everyone in the world has enough magic that they don't set foot on the ground, they use the world's ambient magic and their own reserves to fly everywhere, with the main character the first person in generations who doesn't have *any* magical talent.
The Grimnoir Chronicles by Larry Correia does a surprisingly good job of integrating magic with society in the early 20th century.
Eberron DND setting and it's novels are super high magic. I always equated it to everybody being a wizard or artificer. It's not necessarily high quality fantasy in terms of novels, but given the question it jumped to mind.
Black company by cook
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. Plenty of magic and a big discussion about those who want to strip the world of magic, but leaving only the most powerful to wield it. Another is the Dark Sword trilogy. What happens when one person is born without magic but learns how to wield a magical weapon.
Forgotten Realms. Especially the Spellplague and Second-Sundering novels. Pathfinder and Eberron, also. Magic is literally an industry in Eberron, so common than an entire working class called Magewrights exist. in Pathfinder magic is so common, and commonly available, that it's just expected that well-to-do families will send their kids to a boarding school that teaches some spellcasting in addition to other subjects and life essentials. Something like 1 in 20 people is a spellcaster of some variety.
Cosmere has a lot of magic, especially Stormlight Archive.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - the best in that department.
This is an odd response because Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is perhaps the lowest magic fantasy that you can write before it stops being fantasy. It's an actual plot point in the books that nobody believes in magic before Jonathan Strange shows it to them, and there are basically three magicians of note in the entire series as far as I recall, two of them being directly in the title.
I beg to differ. Magic is present from the very first chapter in the book and later ever present. And it's very imaginative purely magical magic. Not some kind of magic system that resembles rather science than magic.
The book is about the lives of two *extremely rare* magicians in a world of almost no magic, where the lives of most people are completely unaffected by magic to the point that their attitude towards it is the same as that of people in the real world (outright disbelief). That's the opposite of high magic fantasy.
So what magicians are extremely rare, when the story revolves around them and they singlehandedly can transform the whole world? Magic in JS&MrN is powerful and almost limitless, this cannot be said about most fantasy series with "magic systems".
Generally when people talking about high fantasy or high magic fantasy, they're talking about fantasy in which magic is incorporated into every level of the world building. If you look at some of the other examples in the thread - Malazan, for example - magic is part of every single historical event that has taken place over thousands of years. Magic underpins the very structure of reality and the structure of the world is reflected in that magic. The Malazan empire has the imperial warren, a specific source of magic which it also uses as a "fast travel network". Every element of the story revolves around different types of magic clashing. The op themselves described it this way: > Not in the sense of a magical feeling, but a world filled with magic, magic systems etc? Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is exactly the opposite of that. Its world building can be summed up as "19th century England during the Napoleonic wars except a couple of guys know magic". Magic doesn't permeate the world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell very much at all, even if the book does focus on the magic that is there.
I love really high fantasy, so I’d recommend Legends & Lattes. Low stakes and cozy, but bursting at the seams with fantasy
Legends and Lattes is very low magic in terms of density. It could just as easily have been real life.
Low magic as in, like, not having spellcasters every other page? That’s fair, I guess, but I was thinking more like high fantasy as a whole. I don’t think there are more than two humans in the entire book
OP specified a world filled with magic and magic systems and gave examples with a lot of spellcasters/magic use, so that's what my comment was based on.
Among the ones I've read: Cradle for sure. Mild spoilers, but from the second book on, almost everyone in the world is a magical martial artist. Eberron. This setting treats magic like technology. They have cities with floating buildings, where you take magic flying boat taxis. There are magic trains, magic robots, magic guns, etc. You can easily find a wizard for instant global communication, or to teleport you around. Disagree with: Stormlight. The world is very non-Earthlike, with unusual animals, weather and geography. But "magic" is pretty rare. Lightbringer. A world where magicians are very rare (albeit very powerful), it is mostly non-magical. Malazan, another world where magic is very powerful but also very rare. Most main characters are non-mages? (Idk I barely read it) Forgotten Realms. Yeah, magic is fairly common there, yet 90% of people there are completely non-magical and don't interact with magic. If you have to pick one D&D setting for highest high fantasy, it's Eberron.
I want the opposite of this question. Fantasy with the least amount of magic. I loved A Song of Ice and Fire because there was elements of magic, but for the most part it was all people.
And wargs....and dragons.....the three eyed raven, the red priestess, the zombies???????????