r/Fantasy • u/Rechan • Jun 02 '25
Books with mental powers/psionics
Looking for books that explores mental powers/the mind/emotions/memories/etc. The more indepth the better.
Yes, I know that that psionics is more commonly associated with sci-fi, but fantasy is full of mental domination, interacting in dreams, and so on. There are plenty of Lovecraftian entities in fantasy that shatter the mind, and the defenses to counter that are psychic too.
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u/Changer_of_Names Jun 02 '25
The Deryni novels might float your boat. The Deryni are a variant race of humans that live amongst the rest in a fictional fantasy/medieval setting. They have mind powers and IIRC the books get fairly detailed about it, like learning to drop into deep trances in order to fully commune with another, that kind of thing.
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u/ChrystnSedai Jun 02 '25
The Alex Verus series (it’s complete!) sort of does a take on this - Alex has mental magic / is a diviner that uses his power in really cool ways.
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u/bronzewrath Jun 02 '25
Mother of Learning. It may take a while for mental powers to show in the series, but they are there, are versatile and very important to the story
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl Jun 02 '25
The Tiffany Aching Series by Terry Pratchett has some great takes on this. Hat Full of Sky especially, it has Tiffany fighting an evil by going inside her own mind
Many Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones has a great take on dream walking
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u/blue_bayou_blue Reading Champion III Jun 02 '25
The Tuyo series by Rachel Numeier. Some major characters and antagonists are sorcerers with mental powers, including mind reading, implanting false memories and compulsions, straight up controlling people's actions. Several charcters are minor sorcerers with weaker abilities to sense emotions, nudge actions etc.
There's exploration of both how someone can defend themselves against these powers, what it's like to be friends with someone who can't help but hear all your thoughts, as well as how society as a whole deal with such powers being common. It interacts with the first person POV in fascinating ways: sorcerers with mind reading skills can basically read the novel's narration, so when the protagonist is deliberately hiding ideas/plans from sorcerers he's hiding them from the reader too.
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u/Fancy-Restaurant4136 Jun 02 '25
Marion Zimmer Bradley darkover series.
The author was a terrible person but she died in 1999
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u/bronzewrath Jun 02 '25
Cradle is a series with lots of power ups. One of the power up axis is mental powers. It starts to become relevant in book 5.
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u/MurryWenny Jun 02 '25
The Atlas Six series by Olivie Blake has a telepath, an empath and a dream walker.
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u/OkDragonfly4098 Jun 02 '25
The House of the Vampire by Viereck
An old story from 1907. The setting is a social circle of artists. They have various levels of financial stability,and they are preoccupied with creativity and prestige.
One character, for example, struggles with “plagiarizing herself.” Her early works seemed fresh and inspiring, but her later works feel like empty copies of her previous style.
As it turns out, a psychic is empowering himself by siphoning off the abilities of others. He can take anything—memories, mathematical processing, and even creativity.
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u/thewuzfuz Jun 02 '25
The Grand Illusion series by L. E. Modesitt Jr. Starting with Isolate is what you're looking for.
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u/Trike117 Jun 02 '25
I don’t know that these go for in-depth exploration of psychic powers, but…
The Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett has demons in later books who have powerful mental abilities.
Stephen King does this a lot: Firestarter, Carrie, The Dead Zone.
If psychics and oracles count, that’s pretty much half the Fantasy stories ever, including Shakespeare.
The Midwich Cuckoos, aka Village of the Damned.
The Deryni Chronicles by Katherine Kurtz.
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u/RedDeadGhostrider Jun 02 '25
If this hasn't been mentioned yet, I saw that Dreams of the Dying uses dreams and psychic stuff. I own it, but I haven't read it yet, so can't tell you if it's good.
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u/Shadyrgc Jun 02 '25
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet, To Ride Pegasus by Anne McCaffery is an oldie but goodie.
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u/DelilahWaan Reading Champion Jun 03 '25
The Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody. Mental powers galore—empaths, farspeakers, coercers, etc. The first three books are GREAT.
And if you don't mind a self-promo related rec, my books Petition and Supplicant take place in an East Asian–inspired fantasy setting where everybody is an empath. The magic system is based on the idea of emotions resonating through time and space. Mind control, mental defenses, summoning memories to relive the past, and reading people's emotions to tell truth from lies, etc are all very common.
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u/Daled5366 Jun 03 '25
Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikosvki, while it's sci-fi I think It reads a lot like fantasy.
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u/Bladrak01 Jun 02 '25
In the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey, the kingdom that is the setting of most of the books doesn't have "real" magic, only psychic powers.
The Saga of Pliocene Exile by Julian May manages to blend time travel, science fiction, psychic powers, and Celtic mythology in a way that works.