I’m a child of the desert. That sounds dramatic, and dare I say alluring, but it really just means that I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is located in the Mojave Desert. As a city known more for gambling than its biome, Las Vegas may not be the sexiest of deserts, especially when it comes to the crashing dunes and silk-clad nomads that populate the deserts of our collective imagination. But growing up there imparts many of the same experiences of those who grew up in other deserts. I know well the sound of wandering winds across untamed sand, and the relentless gaze of the summer sun. I learned young that nights are dark concerts for the howls of coyotes, and that water is akin to a grad student’s bank balance—an ever-decreasing quantity.
So inspired I am by the dust bowl of my youth that I made my SFF debut with The Lies of the Ajungo, a fable about a boy who must wander an endless desert in search of water, lest he and his city continue to suffer at the merciless hands of the oppressive Ajungo Empire. It’s the first book of The Forever Desert trilogy (the second one—The Truth of the Aleke—comes out March 5th), and the series represents my love letter to not just the desert of my own youth, but the deserts I’ve since traveled to and the deserts I grew up hearing and reading stories about.
In that vein, I’m listing below 5 of my favorite fantasy deserts, and I’ll be rating them based on how well they meet a metric I am call Desertudity. Desertudity is the collection of traits that I consider to be essential characteristics of a desert: vastness, mysteriousness, and hotness. Vastness refers to the size—deserts only get better the bigger they are, or the more successfully they can induce the illusion of largeness. Mysteriousness refers to the sense of mystery it evokes—deserts thrive on the unknown and the sense that if you wander its body long enough you can run into things you never imagined possible. Lastly, Hotness refers to heat—no tundras on this list.
Let’s get to it!
Dune by Frank Herbert
Making this list without mentioning the desert planet of Arrakis would immediately eviscerate my credibility in the eyes of many SFF fans, so let’s just get it out of the way early. Frank Herbert’s magnum opus contains perhaps the quintessential SFF desert. Inspired by his local Oregon Dunes and drawing on the imagery and cultures of various desert peoples around the world (though perhaps most notably Bedouin tribes of the Arabian Peninsula), Herbert’s desert fulfills all three of the measures of Desertudity. There’s really not much to say here that hasn’t been said, so go read (or watch, or play) Dune.
Desertudity
Vastness: 5
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Sand worms
Holes by Louis Sachar
As a Millennial, Dune predates my formative years. Instead, it was Louis Sachar’s Holes that first showed me what a desert can look like in book form. Camp Green Lake keeps up the desert tradition of being a place of oppression, home to a band of juvenile inmates who are forced to dig—you guessed it—holes into the hard-packed sand. Though not as large as the other deserts on this list, its memorable history lends it an air of mystery. However, the heat of Camp Green Lake is perhaps the story’s cruelest villain, bearing down on the cast in nearly every scene and being the direct cause of some of the story’s most compelling moments.
Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 3
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 5
Bonus: Onions
The Unbroken by C. L. Clark
When I refer to the “Hotness” of a desert, I’m typically referring to climate—the sun, the dry heat, that sort of stuff. When it comes to C. L. Clark’s vaunted debut The Unbroken, though, most fans like it for a different kind of—ahem—Hotness. The romance between hotheaded soldier Touraine (whose arms alone bump up the hotness score by a point) and calculating Princess Luca forms the heart of Clark’s story of empire and love and the relationship between them, but equally important is the brutal, relentlessly cruel world, an ambiance enhanced by the North African-inspired desert setting. The desert is a raw and open place, one in which all things will eventually be laid bare beneath the sun—even secrets of the heart. Clark’s desert understands and demands that fact.
Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 5
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Well-sculpted arms
The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
In Binti, we don’t spend much time in Binti’s desert home among the Himba people, but luckily we get to see more of the desert in its sequels Binti: Home and Binti: The Night Masquerade. Here, we see a desert full of life and the complications that accompany it. The Himba are both the victims and perpetrators of discrimination, which is just part of the complex tapestry that is the desert’s history. Part of the magic of deserts lies in their mystery—in the sense that shoveling up any bit of it could unearth life-changing secrets, and Nnedi Okorafor’s is a masterclass in that.
Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 4
Mysteriousness: 5
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Rites of passages
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
Way back in the year 2012, when Throne of the Crescent Moon came out, diversity in fantasy fiction wasn’t where it is now. As such, a desert fantasy based on Arab culture and mythology that was written by a writer of Arab ancestry was beyond a breath of fresh air. Not only does Throne of the Crescent Moon present an intimate yet swashbuckling adventure story, it takes you on a journey across a vast desert world, told through the eyes of an aged ghul-hunter who feels every degree of the desert’s heat. Throw in a politically convoluted desert city and a tribeswoman who can take the form of a lioness and you’ve got one of the best fantastical deserts in recent memory.
Desertudity Scores
Vastness: 5
Mysteriousness: 4
Hotness: 4
Bonus: Shapeshifting
Buy the Book
The Truth of the Aleke
I’m amazed to discover from your article that “Dune” was influenced by the Oregon dunes – yes, lots of sand; but also not at all dry! They’re coastal dunes in a very wet area, with quite lush forest, lakes & shrubs spotted around and through them!
Martha Wells’ City of Bones has the Waste, a rocky and treacherous area of desolation formed more than a thousand years ago when a mysterious holocaust drained the sea and destroyed the flourishing civilization of the Ancients. It is vast, mysterious, hot, and bonus weird.
Teot’s War and Bloodstorm by Heather Gladney
Love these books
I don’t think it was a hugely popular series, but The Gandalara Cycle by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Hedron had some pretty good deserts. Also, as every cover had the same blurb, “Fast paced and exciting, full of sword play and giant cats.”
The deserts don’t show up until some way into the series (earlier books are set in northern lands or the borderlands) but in Rachel Neumeier’s TASMAKAT, the characters travel through two deserts. The first is the Peacock Desert, so named for the colors of the eroded stone making fantastic shapes. Also, temples of various kinds and sizes are carved into the stone. Later in the book, their travels lead to the Land of the Two Suns, which is broad desert, very hot, dotted with magically-formed oases.
I came here just to mention TASMAKAT, so glad to see you ahead of me! Gorgeous descriptions of that Peacock desert and its wind-carved monoliths and spires (and Lau-carved temples.)
There’s Bradley Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, which kicks off his epic fantasy series The Song of the Shattered Sands.
Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman’s Dark Sword Trilogy!
Or, Weiss & Hickman’s Rose of the Prophet series!
Leona Wisoker’s Secrets of the Sands has a desert setting; I have not yet read the sequels.
If you want to count manga, there’s Trigun.
Continuing with Japanese media, Combatants Will Be Dispatched features an especially poetic (of a sort) description of the heat of the desert, which Six describes as burning, “With all the tender mercy of a drunk stepdad’s cigarette.”
The desert in Sofia Samatar’s exquisite The Winged Histories isn’t a hot one, but the culture of its people, the Feredhai, and its beautiful landscape are equally well evoked.
Would also recommend Robert V. S. Redick’s _The Fire Sacraments_ series (even if only the first two volumes yet exist). For its desert and also for itself.
The Faded Sun trilogy by C J Cherryh has a couple deserts, inhabited by a warrior race, the Mri. (On paper they are a cliche: fierce warriors made hard by the desert and high gravity, with rigid notions of honor and caste. But she writes so well, alternating between human and mri viewpoints, and how they see each other.
The desert in the last book is on an ancient planet, tired and creaking with legends and ancient machinery. Very atmospheric.
The Desert of the Dead in Pratchett’s, “A Hatful of Sky” was really depressing and with seemingly no way out. It was more a dsert of despair and an apalling lack of hope – a desert of positive emotions, even if that’s what the hiver that had possessed Tiffany realy desired..
No idea how “big” it was, but for those trapped there, it was endless.
The Holy Desert Raraku in the Seven Cities region in Erikson’s Malazan setting.
Vastness 2
Mysteriousness 5 (it is basically a fallen goddess itself and filled with strange inhabitants)
Hotness 4 (it will kill you if you stray from the few waterholes)
Howard Andrew Jones in 2011 published The Desert of Souls, a great throwback adventure in a magical desert with today’s sensibilities.
Feels like the John Carter series deserves a mention for the constant Martian desert presence.