I found myself, the other day, mulling over some of my favorite battle scenes (and sequences) in fantasy, and realized something: a lot of them seem to be sieges. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy a good battlefield chapter, or that fast-paced wars don’t excite me (they do; there’s one in All Flames Cast). There are some great ones out there, from Dumai’s Wells and the Seanchan campaigns in Altara in The Wheel of Time, to the Nírnaeth Arnoediad in The Silmarillion, to the Department of Mysteries in Order of the Phoenix, and on and on.

But today, I want to talk about my five favorite siege battles (and a couple of honorable mentions).

5) The Shattered Plains in Way of Kings and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

Am I cheating right off the bat? Maybe a little bit, but the warcamps and fighting over gemhearts and all that is definitely a type of siege. In fact, it’s precisely because this isn’t a conventional siege that it made this list. Continue reading