The best fantasy books with polyamory

I couldn’t possibly write a list of fantasy with polyamorous relationships and not include all-time classic Kushiel’s Dart, the beginning of Carey’s first trilogy set in a fantasy version of Europe where the dominant religion lives by the dictate “Love as thou wilt.” Phèdre, an elite courtesan and spy, gets caught up in a plot to conquer her homeland while she’s caught between her love for cunning Melisande and loyal Joscelin. She does ultimately choose between them, but her happy ending involves other partners as well. These books are all lush, sexy intrigue, and epic adventure, and they changed my young life by showing me so many bisexual characters and inspiring me to write books of my own.

This novel is the start of a mesmerizing series about being in love with two of your very dear childhood friends, or possibly five of your childhood friends, and feeling inexplicably compelled to return to the eerie ancient manor home where the six of you first spent the summer together. Rare books, dreams, pagan rituals, and a whole lot of sex—what’s not to love? This book really captures the dark, wintery, haunted, strangely out-of-time atmosphere of the house, and it’s extremely (t)horny, putting all of Sierra Simone’s incredible skill on display. This is the kind of complex, emotional writing I aspire to.

Set in an imagined, futuristic version of ancient China full of aliens and magic giant mecha with a protagonist based on China’s first and only female emperor, this book takes its bonkers premise and blasts off. Wu Zetian will stop at nothing to raze the system that sold and killed her sister. This story is furious about misogyny, capitalism, and exploitation, but it’s tender, too. Zetian slowly letting her guard down with her best friend from back home and her assigned co-pilot—and then all three of them letting their guard down with each other—is the best part.

This beautiful and immersive novella is a winter-solstice-themed story about a woman and a genderqueer character who have nothing in common except for their mysterious, chaotic, magical, missing boyfriend. His magical experiment goes wrong and finding him requires them to cooperate. They make their way through a strange and wonderful set of clues that bring them closer together. Layla and Nat were both so richly drawn, and the contrast between their ordinary lives and the eerie, ineffable nature of the magic made the book so memorable for me. The whole cast is marvelously queer, and I laughed out loud a couple of times. A gem.

This story about a broke, aimless young man who inherits a haunted house in Louisiana from his great-aunt and falls in love with the house’s ghost instantly captivated me. Noel, the young man, is a witty point-of-view character, and Ruby, the indomitable ghost, is sexy and endearing and has every reason to be enraged. The house and its history—a plantation house where Ruby’s formerly enslaved grandfather carved all the beautiful woodwork and was never credited for his artistic labor—are characters in their own right, and I was thrilled when Noel and Ruby’s happily ever after included an occasional threesome from local historian Nina. The writing is wonderful and makes every character come alive—especially the ghost.