10 Fantasy Books Where Math is Magic

Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate has been dismissed from the Kel Command in disgrace but is given a chance to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles. Kel aligns herself with skilled, but unconventional tactician Jedao in a gamble to preserve both her own reputation and the hexarchate. The technologies and magic of the hexarchate are based on complex mathematics and the author uses them well in building the world of Kel and Jedao.

This historical reimagining takes place in Poland, where mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot is a pioneer in fractal geometry. Mandelbrot uses his understanding of the topic to develop his wizarding powers, which then allows him to fight against the Nazis in World War II.

After an invasion of Earth by the Ilori that killed one-third of the human population, the Ilori now rule Earth, and art and books are illegal. However, high school student Ellie maintains a secret library in the Ilori-controlled New York City where she is living, as a means of keeping human knowledge alive. By teaming up with rebels and using math and codes to communicate, Ellie is able to harness her powers against the Ilori in an attempt to save humanity.

Set in 1940s San Francisco, six women find their lives intersecting on the magical edges of the city. The book incorporates mathematical concepts like tesseracts, Klein bottles, and fourth-dimensional travel into its storyline. The story plays with the power of math and art to sustain us, and tells stories of forbidden love in the gay and lesbian communities of the 1940s.

Several of the short stories in this collection play around with the magic and philosophy of mathematics. In the title story, a magical library is filled with books containing every possible combination of words and letters, including some that are completely nonsensical. The magic in this library explores the notion of infinity and randomness to generate the library’s magic.

High school math genius Quentin Coldwater is fascinated with a series of fantasy novels set in a land called Fillory and finds his real life dull by comparison. When Quentin is unexpectedly admitted to a magical school and realizes that his fantasies are real, he has to face up to the fact that magic is both darker and more complex than he had imagined. Far from casting spells with simple words or phrases, the magicians at the school must use complex, mathematical formulas to achieve their magical aims.

Sixteen-year-old Noam Álvaro is the sole survivor of the viral magic that killed his family and turned him into a technopath, AKA a person with the ability to control technology. Noam has spent his life since then fighting for his fellow refugees and undocumented immigrants who have been targeted by the government’s magical control. In the society Noam lives in, magic is both highly feared and tightly controlled by the government, which uses it to keep the population in line. When Noam is offered the chance to learn how magic works, in exchange for helping advance defense technologies, he sees it as both a means of creating change and of getting a better life for himself. But, as Noam agrees to use his mathematical abilities to help the government manipulate technology, he begins to question where his loyalties lie.

In a world of cloistered scholars living in monastic kingdoms called “maths,” Erasmus, one young scholar, has uncovered a conspiracy that threatens to destroy the world. This will call him and his fellow scholars into the world beyond their cloister, to try and halt the coming global disaster. Throughout the book, Stephenson uses the laws of math and physics to build the fantasy world in which Erasmus and his fellow scholars live and the story includes many explanations of the complex logic that underlies the mathic communities.

A book that plays around with the concept of infinity, this is part fantasy, part science fiction, and part evil empire story. In the kingdom of Ashdod, the ruling Magi are a math-obsessed group of leaders who have spent decades building a pyramid they believe will allow them to connect with the infinite, at the cost of the lives of the enslaved laborers working on it. When Tirzah, an enslaved glassblower, comes to the attention of the Master of the Magi, he becomes determined to manipulate her and use her for his own power. But what the Magi don’t understand is that Tirzah has a gift for communicating with glass and that her magical powers allow her to see the threat from infinity that might end them all.

In this interdimensional journey through the boroughs of New York City, six characters represent the city’s souls and its history. Each character is an avatar that must team up with the others and save the city from destruction. Though the math in this book is more subtle, it does a great job of pairing interdimensional concepts, a fascinating premise, and a rich, fantasy world.