The best fantasy audiobooks, ranked by the data
Ranked by weighted listener rating, the best fantasy audiobook in our dataset is Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson: 4.69★ across 89 ratings and 32.2 estimated listening hours. We scored every published fantasy audiobook in our dataset: 657 qualify (fantasy-shelved titles with full pages here), carrying 36,858 listener ratings between them. The top 20 are below. No opinions: the formula in the method note decides the order.
The top 20
Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson
About 33 days at an hour a day, 193% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
About 23 days at an hour a day, 105% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
About 30 days at an hour a day, 171% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger
About 16 days at an hour a day, 37% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
About 9 days at an hour a day, 24% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
About 16 days at an hour a day, 37% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
About 15 days at an hour a day, 34% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Martian by Andy Weir
About 12 days at an hour a day, 9% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
About 37 days at an hour a day, 235% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
About 17 days at an hour a day, 49% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan
About 10 days at an hour a day, 14% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
About 13 days at an hour a day, 12% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan
About 18 days at an hour a day, 56% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Into the Wild by Erin Hunter
About 9 days at an hour a day, 21% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
About 12 days at an hour a day, right at the average fantasy length.
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
About 20 days at an hour a day, 80% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
About 21 days at an hour a day, 151% longer than the average romance audiobook.
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
About 9 days at an hour a day, 18% shorter than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
About 15 days at an hour a day, 33% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
About 36 days at an hour a day, 221% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.
How this ranking works
Every published fantasy audiobook in our dataset qualifies: 657 books. Each is scored by its Open Library listener rating weighted by its rating count: score = (v·R + 50·C) ÷ (v + 50), where R is the book's rating, v its number of ratings, and C = 4.03★ the mean across all 2,178 published books we measured. Fewer ratings pull a score toward that mean, so a high rating on a handful of votes can't outrank a slightly lower one backed by hundreds. A book ranks here only when its own Open Library subject data confirms the fantasy shelf; surfacing in a fantasy search alone doesn't qualify it. Children's titles, memoirs and autobiographies are excluded from these rankings; they keep their regular book pages. No editorial picks, no sponsored placement. Dataset build 2026-08-17; rankings recompute with every data refresh. Full methodology · All fantasy audiobooks we measured
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