This world kind of defies the traditional fantasy label for me, but the invented world is put to great use to raise the stakes of both an all-out war and the fate of two characters in love, in a way that just can’t be done in books set in our world, where we already know the outcome of history before the end of the story.

There’s a Pantheon of unique Gods which are part of the daily vocabulary of the characters, and the invented strategy game of bite and sting, which pepper the world so effortlessly that it seems impossible they aren’t all real. The Valorian Empire parallels the Roman Empire as much as the Napoleonic attempt at an empire in Europe, and the enslaved country of Heran has echoes of a conquered Greece, but this world is all its own. The Winner’s Curse brings something to the shelf I had never seen before, a wholly invented world without any magic. The whole thing adds up the most complex well-realised future world I can think of. While the first book stays in the oppressive regime of Los Angeles, the rest of the series opens the world up and we get to see other parts of the world which have evolved in clever and realistic ways, but we also get to see the outside world’s views of the oppressive government which seems so mighty from the inside. What sets this world apart from other dystopian worlds for me is that it is a whole world. The world in Marie Lu’s trilogy is our own, in the future.

Read more 2) The Legend Trilogy by Marie Lu And then there’s the history and legends of Lady Aerin, which is so rich that McKinley wrote a whole prequel to really delve into her at her Dragon-Slaying Best. When Harry Crewe is kidnapped by the King of Damar and starts a desert crossing the world we get to discover through her eyes is filled with elements that make it seem real, from horses guided without reins to the rich tradition of the King’s Personal Guard of Riders. Instead of castles and knights there were almost modern-feeling houses, set on the contested desert border between the Homeland and the mysterious kingdom of Damar. I will never forget The Blue Sword it was the first fantasy book I read in which the world didn’t resemble medieval Europe. So these are my top 10 worlds which are so fully realised, I suspect they all hold as many stories as our world does, and all of which have influenced me in some way. Which is to, say we see a small section of the world in that story, but there is always the sense that there is way more of it underneath, bearing up this story and maybe waiting to be discovered in future stories. I think of all the best stories in imagined worlds as being a bit like icebergs.

Rebel of the sands by alwyn hamilton