The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

Author page

Leigh Bardugo

3 universes Last reviewed 2026-10-25

Leigh Bardugo is an American author of fantasy fiction for young adult and adult readers, born April 6, 1975, in Jerusalem, Israel, and raised largely in Los Angeles by her grandparents. She graduated from Yale University in 1997 with a degree in English and was a member of the Wolf's Head secret society. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Bardugo worked in copywriting, journalism, makeup artistry, and film special effects, and briefly performed as a singer with the band Captain Automatic. Her 2012 debut novel, Shadow and Bone, launched the Grishaverse, a fantasy world she describes as "Tsarpunk" for its inspiration from early-nineteenth-century Russia. The Grishaverse expanded through the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, and the King of Scars duology, and she later moved into adult fantasy with Ninth House (2019) and the standalone novel The Familiar (2024). Bardugo has received a widely recognized reader-voted award for Ninth House, the German Fantasy Award for Six of Crows, and the Inkpot Award in 2019, and was ranked among the most popular authors on a major reading platform between 2016 and 2021. Netflix adapted Shadow and Bone as a television series in 2021, with Bardugo serving as executive producer, and Amazon Studios has Ninth House in development.

Universe(s)

The Grishaverse

  • Core Canon books: 7
  • Current rank: #139 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 4.17
  • Award recognitions: 1 won, 4 finalist mention

Ninth House (Alex Stern)

  • Core Canon books: 2
  • Current rank: #339 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 4.03
  • Award recognitions: 1 won

The Familiar

  • Core Canon books: 1
  • Current rank: #782 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.74
  • 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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