Best Dragon Fantasy Books

One subgenre that hasn't really formally been defined is “dragon fantasy” – those books in which dragons feature as a major part of the book, even being cast as one of the major characters. Typically, these creatures are majestic, rarified, and have some ability to communicate with other individuals, either through speech or telepathy.

Many fantasy books have dragons, but few feature dragons as something other than wild beasts to be ridden or slain. This list gives you some of the best out that contain dragons as major parts of the story or even major characters in the story itself. In this specific list I rank the books here keeping in mind the strength of the story, the characters and setting, and how important dragons are to the story (which is why you may see some fantastic fantasy books feature lower on the list than you might expect as dragons in those books don't play as central a role as in the other books). If a dragon is not a central part of the story, plot, or a character itself in the novel, it WILL NOT BE ON THIS LIST.

Because I'll invariably receive comments asking about this: I've intentionally left off many books from this list which I don't consider 'the best' dragon fantasy. This includes Eragon and the Dragonlance novels.