The Best Fantasy Books About Curses

Curses have long plagued society across time, location, and religions. Classically, being cursed by the gods often destroyed great heroes’ and regular citizens’ lives in equal measure. Curses were something binding, inescapable, and punishing. To be cursed was to be a living embodiment of pain and suffering. While curses are often a punishment for wrongdoing, there are many stories of people cursed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes, in the case of generational curses, that punishment is extended beyond an individual life, creating a chain of perpetual pain across families or nations. Although curses throughout literature can carry different levels of moral weight, the act of telling stories about the kinds of people who end up cursed often acts as a lens for a societal view of fairness. If a curse can be broken, it was an unjust punishment; if a curse cannot, it is deserved. In a continuation of that tradition, fantasy books about characters or civilizations experiencing the negative effects of curses have always been a popular way of unpacking justice. In the following novels, more often than not, characters are looking to break curses that harm the innocen...