The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

Author page

Cassandra Clare

3 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-27

Cassandra Clare, born Judith Rumelt on July 27, 1973, in Tehran, Iran, to American parents, is a novelist known for young adult urban fantasy fiction. Her father is business school professor Richard Rumelt, and her maternal grandfather was film producer Max Rosenberg; she is Jewish and traveled extensively through Switzerland, England, and France as a child before finishing high school in Los Angeles. Before her fiction career, she worked at entertainment publications, including The Hollywood Reporter, dividing her time between California and New York City; as of 2013 she lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her husband Joshua Lewis. Clare is best known for The Mortal Instruments series, which began with City of Bones in 2007 and grew into a major multimedia franchise, along with its prequel trilogy The Infernal Devices and the Los Angeles-set The Dark Artifices trilogy. She also co-wrote The Magisterium series with Holly Black. Her honors include the 2010 Georgia Peach Book Award for Teen Readers, back-to-back ALA Teens Top Ten Award wins in 2008 and 2009, the 2010 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award, and a young adult fantasy honor in 2014. Earlier in her career, Clare faced plagiarism accusations connected to fan fiction and was sued by author Sherrilyn Kenyon over thematic similarities, a case that was ultimately settled out of court.

Universe(s)

The Shadowhunter Chronicles

  • Core Canon books: 6
  • Current rank: #167 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 4.15
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Magisterium

  • Core Canon books: 5
  • Current rank: #347 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 4.03
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

The Chronicles of Castellane

  • Core Canon books: 2
  • Current rank: #704 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.82
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Books

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

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