7 Book Recs if you Play a Wizard in D&D

An orcish wizard in flowing red robes. In one hand he holds a staff covered in magical runes, and in the other he holds a shimmering ball of purple magical energy.

Find your newest take on the Wizard class with 13 subclasses and 27 innovative spells in the Expanded Wizard!

If you’re struggling to break, or at least bend, the Wizard archetype into something that excites you, here are seven books with interesting takes on what it means to be a Wizard. I’ve looked for genre favorites and some deep cuts, then reviewed what you might pull from each book and onto your character sheet.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Irritable old magicians in towers get even more irritable when they’re plucked to live the wandering life of an adventurer. Play your Wizard like Novik’s Dragon if you want to be an expert forced to make do with sub-standard equipment, or like Agnieszka if you want to be a plucky hero making the best of a bad trip.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

This boat anchor of a book is a lush character study of different magical practitioners in an alternate 19th-century England. While Gilbert Norrell is the bookish type you might expect from Merlin and Gandalf, Clarke presents a garrulous and charismatic wizard in Jonathan Strange. You can find a lot of personality in your D&D Wizard if you think about their reputation and how much they care about it.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin

Where Gandalf carries a staff, Sparrowhawk carries a bag. LeGuin’s take on wizardry is a direct response to Tolkien, and shows a wizard who doesn’t so much wield magic as shepherd it. The Nine Masters will give you plenty of inspiration for the Schools of Illusion, Transmutation, Divination, and Enchantment. You’ll also find a lot of this book baked into Book of Extinction, as LeGuin was one of the guiding voices in building a fantasy world with a less exploitative relationship to nature than the pulp fiction that broadly inspired the Player’s Handbook.

How many wizards will you make?

Magician: Apprentice by Raymond Feist

A 1982 classic in the high fantasy style of D&D, this one focuses on military tactics and diplomacy with just enough epic quests and violence tacked on. Best to read if your wizard is at all interested in portals or interplanar travel.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

We love a grumpy wizard and their elemental familiar, and Howl is a great model for your wizard character. A classic war caster, deployed by the military in service of the state, Howl’s magic is a heavy responsibility made worse by people above and below him who don’t understand his limitations and abilities. His magic is barely controlled, and the demands it places on him spill over into the rest of his party even if he can’t explain why.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Same author, different flavor of fantasy. The Scholomance trilogy is dark academia at its finest, and if you want to play your wizard pulling raw magic out of the world by tenacity and raw intelligence, you’ll find that voice here. You don’t need the Sorcerer’s privileged parentage or the Warlock’s arcane sugar daddy—you’re a wizard, damn it!

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

You shouldn’t be afraid to make your Wizard a little silly – after all, magic is in everything and your Wizard could hyperfixate on anything. Kingfisher has a gift for making her child protagonists anything but childish, and the stakes are real here. It’s a good reminder that every character has a rich, inner world, and that world could be ending even if there isn’t an apocalypse.

We do bread and cheese in the Expanded Wizard! Find the Gastronomer and the Tyromancer—our cheese Wiz—and 11 other 5.5E subclasses in the Expanded Wizard.