Ask anyone who's read A Song of Ice and Fire or watched Game of Thrones, and there's a good chance they have visceral memories of the first time they experienced the Red Wedding. One of George R.R. Martin's most infamous plot twists comes deep into the third book in his fantasy saga, when Robb Stark and his mother Catelyn attend a wedding at the Frey stronghold of the Twins, only for it to turn into a bloodbath when they're betrayed by the Freys and Boltons, who have thrown in with the Lannisters against the noble northern house.
Robb is murdered by Roose Bolton, his own bannerman. Catelyn similarly meets a brutal end, clawing her face to ribbons in anguish after watching her eldest son die, while the knives of the Freys close in on her. Outside the castle, there's a nail-biting death fake out when the Hound knocks Arya Stark unconscious with the blunt side of his axe. In the show, Robb's wife Talisa and unborn child also number among the dead, stabbed to death in one of the series' most horrific acts of violence.
Suffice to say, the Red Wedding goes down in history not just as one of Martin's greatest plot twists of his writing career, but as one of the all-time greats for the fantasy genre.
If you're missing the state of shock and disbelief those crucial moments of A Song of Ice and Fire gave you, then perhaps it's time to dig into some other series and seek out those highs again. For as terrible and stunning as the Red Wedding was, there are plenty of other amazing plot twists out there in the realms of fantasy and sci-fi that are waiting for you to experience them. Some are as brutal as the Red Wedding itself; others completely change the shape of a story, leaving you staring into the middle-distance as you struggle to process what you've just read.
Below are six fantasy and sci-fi novels with mind-blowing plot twists that give the Red Wedding a run for its money. It's a testament to how good they are that I'm not going to spoil a single one, but readers who've already experienced these books will undoubtedly know exactly which moments are being referenced.
1. Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie (The First Law #3)
Our first entry is a trilogy-ender, so if you want to discover the twist, you'll have to first read The Blade Itself and The Wisdom of Crowds first. Don't worry; Joe Abercrombie's brutal fantasy story makes the journey more than worth it, and the payoff at the end of Last Argument of Kings drives home just how bleak and unpredictable his storytelling can get in this series.
The First Law has many surprising moments, but its final chapters feature a stunning betrayal that completely upends the journey you took over the course of the trilogy. What seems to be one type of story becomes something much darker, casting a shadow in reverse over everything that came before. Like Martin, Abercrombie has penned many other stunning turns in the stories he's created after Last Argument of Kings, but for my money, the vicious culmination of the story for thinking man's barbarian Logen Ninfingers still hits the hardest.
2. The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart (The Drowning Empire #1)
The Bone Shard Daughter is the first volume in Andrea Stewart's The Drowning Empire trilogy, and it has a twist I still catch myself thinking about years after reading it.
This epic fantasy series takes place in a world composed of drifting islands, where an aging emperor rules with an iron fist thanks to his constructs — monstrous creatures grafted together from the mismatched parts of humans and animals, animated by macabre arrangements of bone shards harvested from his own subjects.
The story has an ensemble cast, but first among them is Lin, the emperor's daughter, who has strange holes in her memory. While unrest stirs on islands across the Phoenix Empire, Lin uncovers secrets about herself and her father that are jaw-dropping in the extreme. There's no going back once the first of The Bone Shard Daughter's big reveals hits, and the layers just keep unraveling the deeper you get into the series.
3. Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham (The Kithamar Trilogy #1)
Age of Ash is first volume of the most recent series from Daniel Abraham, the seasoned fantasy author behind The Dagger and the Coin and The Long Price Quartet, and The Expanse, which he co-writes with Ty Franck under the psuedonym James S.A. Corey. It is the story of a city rife with crime and harsh social divides reaching its breaking point, told from three different perspectives across its three books, which take place in parallel rather than sequentially. That alone makes it a worthwhile read; The Kithamar Trilogy's format is unlike anything else I've come across in the genre.
Many fantasy sagas encompass continents and nations, but it's rare to see one dial things down into the personal the way Kithamar does, examining how several different people from different walks of life navigate the titular metropolis's intracicies, from the street thieves living in its slums to the aristrocrats in its upper districts. The twist that cements this series as a recent great occurs deep into its first installment, where the darkest secret of the city of Kithamar is unveiled. No matter what you might guess, I feel confident in saying there's no way you'll see Abraham's plot twist coming.
The third and final book of The Kithamar Trilogy, Judge of Worlds, is due to come out in 2027, so now is an ideal time to check this series out if you want to read the finale upon its release.
4. Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Sometimes the ending of a book elevates it from an excellent read to a new classic, and in my opinion, that is absolutely the case with Nnedi Okorafor's genre-bending masterwork Death of the Author. This was my favorite science fiction book of 2025, and more than a year later I still haven't found anything that hit me in quite the same way.
Death of the Author is a combination of sci-fi and literary fiction with a mind-bending meta element that makes it incredibly unique. It's the story of Zelu, a disabled Nigerian American writer who pens a breakout hit sci-fi novel about robots and AI navigating a post-apocalyptic Africa as it's being reclaimed by nature. What makes Death of the Author so captivating is that Okorafor includes chapters from both Zelu's story and the novel she wrote, jumping back and forth in ways that parallel the emotional arc for Zelu and her creations.
The big twist in this book is the sort of storytelling moment you're lucky to experience a few times in your life, where the jaws of the trap slowly close in around you as you realize the story you're reading isn't quite the story you expected to read, only for it to all click into place. This book kept me guessing right down to its very last page, and when Okorafor finally did reveal her ultimate twist, it was so incredibly satisfying. Of all the books on this list, I cannot recommend Death of the Author enough. Read our full spoiler-free review of it here.
5. The Sapphire Altar by David Dalglish (The Vagrant Gods #2)
Sometimes the best twists don't come at the very end of a story, but right in the middle. That's the case for The Sapphire Altar, the second book in David Dalglish's Vagrant Gods trilogy.
This series is an action-packed epic fantasy about a young prince whose island kingdom is captured by an empire that seeks to slaughter all the deities being worshipped around the world, the better to consolidate power for their own god-emperor. Evading their clutches, Prince Cyrus Lathan allies himself with a dangerous group of freedom fighters seeking to overthrow the god-emperor. To see that goal through, he trains to become a deadly assassin — and possibly, something more.
There are a few stellar twists through the Vagrant Gods books, but late in the second book we learn the true backstory of a character who seemed more like a supporting cast member than a major player. This backstory not only adds a ton of weight to the tale heading into its third and final volume, but it also drastically changes so much of what we'd read up until that point. The re-read value of these books is off the charts, and it's largely thanks to The Sapphire Altar utterly shocking plot twist.
6. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (The Gentlemen Bastards #1)
Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora is one of the greatest works of modern fantasy. If you enjoy George R.R. Martin's books and haven't read it, that's something you should change sooner rather than later. There's a common thread of brutal realism between Lynch and Martin's storytelling, which should make A Song of Ice and Fire readers feel right at home.
This novel follows Locke Lamora, conman and thief extraordinaire, as he and his crew of elite criminals run various schemes around the bustling city of Camorr. Lynch's worldbuilding is second to none, which means that when Locke and his gang go about their business in the seedy criminal underworld of the city, the people, places, and problems they encounter are so vividly realized they leap off the page.
Around halfway through this book, a brutal sequence of events unfolds that rivals anything Martin ever put to the page. Before it, The Gentlemen Bastards seems like it's going to be one sort of series, with that roguish sort of optimism you'd expect from charming thieves; after, it becomes clear that Lynch isn't afraid to steer readers into uncharted waters in the most visceral way possible. Nothing is the same for the series from that point on, just like the Red Wedding.
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