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Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Bad Magic

anchored on:fantasyour worldcontemporarymiddle grademagic schoolscoming of age+2 more

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Mood

The mood the book leaves you in.

  • The reading experience is propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical risk; excitement and forward momentum dominate over dread or introspection.
  • Joy and loss are deliberately mixed; the resolution grants characters something real while taking something else away, leaving warmth and sorrow together.
  • The book demands work from the reader — dense prose, difficult structure, unfamiliar ideas, or morally uncomfortable material — as part of its intended effect.
  • Grim events, cruelty, or despair dominate the atmosphere, and the book does not soften them with comfort or comic relief.
  • The atmosphere is quietly unsettling — wrongness, unease, and the uncanny pervade the book without necessarily escalating into overt horror.
  • The book is built to move the reader; character feeling is foregrounded and major scenes aim at a strong emotional response.
  • Humor is a primary aim and the prose plays for laughs — comic situations, wit, or dialogue produce sustained comedy, not occasional levity.
  • The book insists that things can improve; effort and decency are shown to matter, and the arc bends toward better outcomes even through hardship.
  • The book teaches as it goes — real facts, history, science, or craft are conveyed in enough depth that learning is part of the reading experience.
  • The book is designed to uplift and motivate, presenting perseverance or achievement in a way that invites the reader to aspire or act.
  • The overall register is cheerful and easygoing; stakes are kept gentle and the book avoids dwelling on pain or dread.
  • Withheld information drives the experience; the book sustains enigmas and secrets the reader wants resolved, whatever its genre.
  • The book is contemplative and inward-looking, giving more weight to thought, memory, and meaning than to external events.
  • The book works as comfort reading — low tension, a soothing pace, and an atmosphere the reader can unwind in.
  • Grief, loss, or melancholy set the dominant register, and the book lets sorrow stand rather than resolving it into comfort.
  • Sustained suspense is the point; the book keeps the reader braced for what happens next through danger, pressure, or impending revelation.
  • Playful invention and charm define the register — fanciful conceits, light absurdity, and a narration that delights in its own oddity.

About

What the story runs on.

  • Stories in which extraterrestrial beings are central — as characters, cultures, or the object of the plot.
  • Stories structured as a quest — a journey undertaken to find, deliver, or destroy something of great import.
  • Stories in which staying alive against nature, catastrophe, or scarcity is the central problem.
  • Stories of lovers kept apart by law, family, faith, or station, where the obstacle to love is the plot.
  • Stories in which a friendship — its making, testing, or loss — is the emotional center.
  • Stories of growing up — a young protagonist crossing from childhood into adult knowledge and responsibility.
  • Stories about who a character truly is — self-discovery, doubled lives, and the search for a self.
  • Stories about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • Stories in which a buried family truth — hidden parentage, crimes, or shames — surfaces and reorders the present.
  • Stories driven by maneuvering for power — factions, conspiracies, and statecraft conducted in shadow.
  • Stories in which war itself is the subject — combat, occupation, and what warfare does to soldiers and civilians.
  • Stories organized around investigating a killing — the case, the clues, and the pursuit of the killer, in any genre's clothing.

Shelf

Where it sits in the library.

    • Fiction built on magic or other supernatural elements that have no scientific explanation.
    • Secondary-world fantasy at large scale, where the fate of nations or the world turns on the protagonists' struggle.
    • Fantasy set in a recognizably modern city or contemporary world where the supernatural intrudes on everyday life.
    • Fantasy that blends in horror's atmosphere and imagery, keeping a fantastical frame around grim or frightening material.
    • Action-driven fantasy following warriors or rogues with personal stakes against sorcerous threats, rather than world-spanning conflicts.
    • Fantasy set in a real historical period or a close analogue of one, with magic woven into the era.
    • Fantasy in which protagonists cross from the ordinary world into another world through a portal or similar passage.
    • Fiction that retells or reworks a traditional fairy tale in a new form or setting.
    • Fantasy drawing directly on myths, legends, and folklore, retelling them or building on their figures and logic.
    • Fantasy of ghosts, vampires, shapeshifters, psychics, and similar phenomena, usually set in an otherwise ordinary world.
    • Fiction mixing science-fictional trappings with overtly magical or impossible elements in one setting.
    • Low-stakes fantasy emphasizing comfort, community, and everyday pleasures over conflict and peril.
    • Speculative fiction of pervasive moral ambiguity, violence, and cynicism that rejects heroic conventions — fantasy and SF alike.
      • Fiction that extrapolates from science and technology — future societies, space travel, or speculative inventions — within at least nominally natural laws.
      • Science fiction of interstellar scope — starships, galactic polities, and adventure across star systems.
      • Science fiction committed to scientific rigor, where technical plausibility constrains the story.
      • Science fiction centered on armed forces and warfare, told largely from a military point of view.
      • Science fiction of networked, corporate-dominated near futures, pairing high technology with social decay.
      • Science fiction styled on nineteenth-century steam-powered technology, often in a Victorian or pseudo-Victorian setting.
      • Fiction depicting an oppressive or catastrophic society, presented as a warning.
      • Fiction set after civilization's collapse, following survivors in the ruins of the old world.
      • Fiction in which characters move between past and future, and the mechanics or consequences of that travel drive the plot.
      • Fiction exploring a world where a historical event went differently and history diverged from ours.
      • Science fiction about humanity's first encounter and communication with an alien intelligence.
      • Science fiction in which extraterrestrial forces attack or occupy Earth and humanity resists.
      • Fiction whose primary aim is to frighten or unsettle the reader through dread, menace, or the monstrous.
      • Horror of vast, indifferent, incomprehensible entities before which humanity is insignificant, in the Lovecraft tradition.
      • Horror of decaying houses, buried family secrets, and oppressive atmosphere in the Gothic literary tradition.
      • Horror centered on hauntings and the returning dead.
      • Horror located in the mind — paranoia, obsession, and unreliable perception rather than external monsters.
      • Horror built around the reanimated dead and survival amid their outbreaks.
      • Horror defined by explicit, transgressive gore that refuses to cut away from violence.
      • Speculative fiction of the strange and uncanny that resists both natural explanation and standard genre categories.
      • Fiction organized around solving a crime or puzzle, typically following an investigator toward the identification of a culprit.
      • A puzzle-first mystery that lays out clues so the culprit's identity can be deduced before the reveal.
      • Crime fiction of moral ambiguity, fatalism, and hard-edged style, set among the corrupt and the doomed.
      • A mystery following the realistic routines of police work — forensics, interviews, and case-building.
      • A gentle mystery with an amateur sleuth, a small community, and violence kept off the page.
      • A mystery set in a past era, where the investigation works within that period's methods and society.
      • Fast-paced fiction driven by imminent danger, pursuit, or high-stakes conspiracy, built to sustain tension.
      • A thriller of espionage — agents, tradecraft, and intelligence services in conflict.
      • A thriller centered on lawyers and the courtroom, where litigation carries the suspense.
      • A thriller driven by detailed contemporary or near-future technology, often military or scientific.
      • A thriller whose tension comes from mental states and manipulation between characters rather than external action.
      • Fiction whose central plot is a romantic relationship and its development toward an emotionally satisfying resolution.
      • Romance in which one or both partners are supernatural beings, blending fantasy elements into the love story.
      • A fantasy-romance hybrid in which the romantic arc and the fantasy plot carry equal weight.
      • Romance set in a past era, with courtship shaped by the period's society and manners.
      • Romance set in the present day, without supernatural or historical elements.
      • Fiction set in a real past period, where the historical setting materially shapes characters and events.
        • General and literary fiction emphasizing prose style, character interiority, or formal ambition over genre plot conventions.
        • Fiction in a realistic world where magical events occur and are treated as ordinary, in the tradition of Latin American literature.
        • Fiction that ridicules people, institutions, or society in order to criticize them.
        • Fiction of dreamlike, irrational imagery and logic that breaks from realistic representation.
        • Fiction that plays with narrative convention through metafiction, fragmentation, and self-reference.
        • Fiction propelled by journeys, exploration, and physical peril, where action and survival carry the plot.
        • Adventure fiction of ships and seafaring — naval engagements, voyages, and life at sea.
        • Fiction of the American frontier West — gunmen, ranchers, and lawmen, typically in the late nineteenth century.
        • Fiction centered on soldiers, campaigns, and the experience of warfare, historical or imagined.
          • Fiction written primarily to amuse, using comedic situations, wit, or parody as its organizing principle.
            • Multi-generational fiction following a family or dynasty across decades, with inheritance and kinship as the through-line.
              • Fiction whose world runs on explicit game mechanics — levels, stats, and skills that characters can see and exploit.
                • Fiction about costumed or superpowered heroes and their conflicts with comparable villains.

                Practical

                How long a commitment, whether it stands alone, and whether it has finished.

                Tap a chip to ask for it · tap again to rule it out · once more to clear. Numbers show what would be left.

                • Cover of The Unseen
                  The Unseen

                  Zilpha Keatley Snyder · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle gradefriendship+1 more

                  Xandra Hobson has always been fascinated by magic. So when she rescues a beautiful wounded bird, she is convinced that the glowing white feather it leaves behind must be magical. When she brings the feather to school, she is surprised to find that Belinda is interested in it, too. Belinda is a weird girl whom everybody makes fun of. Xandra doesn't want to be seen with her, but Belinda seems to know something about the feather--so Xandra decides to befriend her. Belinda calls the feather a key.But a key to what? And how does it work? When Xandra tries to use the key, she becomes aware of an unseen world, full of phantoms. Some are soft and cuddly, like the young animals she has rescued. But others are terrifying monsters. Could the key's magic be evil? Xandra needs Belinda to help her explore the unseen, but she also needs to learn to help herself if the key is to become a gift and not a nightmare.From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of The Best-Kept Secret
                  The Best-Kept Secret

                  Emily Rodda · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle grade+1 more

                  Eleven-year-old Jo takes a magical carousel ride seven years into the future, where she and her fellow travelers face a decision involving a possible change in the nature of reality.

                • Cover of Black Dragon
                  Black Dragon

                  series · 2 books · 1983

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporaryour worldnorth americafriendship

                  R. A. MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon pairs Martha Macnamara, a folk musician searching for her missing daughter, with Mayland Long, a courtly stranger who reveals himself to be a dragon living in human form, as they investigate a computer-fraud scheme in 1980s San Francisco. Its low-key blend of contemporary mystery and gentle fantasy proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, Twisting the Rope, following the same pair into a new case years later.

                • Cover of The Magic Nation Thing
                  The Magic Nation Thing

                  Zilpha Keatley Snyder · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of agemiddle gradenorth america+1 more

                  Abby O'Malley is a girl who likes things to make sense. School makes sense, and her best friend Paige makes sense (most of the time), but Abby's flighty mother never makes sense. Abby's mom seems to think that she and Abby are descended from a line of witches, and that they have special powers--psychic powers that don't make sense at all. The problem is, Abby knows that she can do certain things that other people can't. Sometimes, when she holds an object in her hand, she's overpowered by sounds and pictures that show where the owner is and what he or she is doing. Abby thinks of this as her "magic nation," because that is what her kindergarten teacher told her it was called. Now 11, Abby has an inkling that her teacher may have been saying it was her "imagination," which unfortunately, she knows it is not. Now some things are happening in her mother's detective agency--cases where Abby's magic nation thing might come in handy. But does Abby want to admit that such a sensible girl could have such an unsensible power?From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of Fire and Hemlock
                  Fire and Hemlock

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageidentity

                  At nineteen, Polly has two sets of sometimes overlapping, sometimes conflicting memories, the real-life ones of school days and her parents' divorce, and the heroic adventure ones that began the day she accidentally gate-crashed a funeral and met the cellist Thomas Lynn.

                • Cover of Old Magic
                  Old Magic

                  Marianne Curley · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour world

                  Kate is at a loss. She meets a boy with curious powers and a bizarre history - but he thinks he is very ordinary. How can she convince him that he has a gift, a gift that he must use to unravel mysteries that have hung over his family for generations? And even if she does persuade him, will his talents prove powerful enough to overcome what lies ahead?

                • Cover of The Books of Elsewhere
                  The Books of Elsewhere

                  series · 5 books · 2010

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of agemiddle gradeour world+2 more

                  The Books of Elsewhere is a series of fantasy novels for kids and young teens by Jacqueline West that centers on the McMartins' house on Linden Street, which has many magical paintings.

                • Cover of Out of Time
                  Out of Time

                  John Marsden · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour world+1 more

                  James, a strange, silent boy, makes the acquaintance of old Mr. Woodford, a physicist who constructs a mysterious black box, but when the box comes into the boy's possession, it draws him into a magical and dangerous world, in and out of time.

                • Cover of The Halloween Tree
                  The Halloween Tree

                  Ray Bradbury · standalone novel · 1972

                  similar byfantasycontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle gradefriendship

                  Eight boys gather on Halloween night to trick-or-treat with their ninth friend, Pipkin, only Pipkin never shows, having vanished on some errand that may cost him his life. A strange, black-robed guide named Moundshroud appears to lead the boys after him, and the chase turns into a journey through the history of the holiday itself: ancient Egypt, druidic Britain, Rome, medieval Paris, and the Mexican Day of the Dead, each stop peeling back another layer of how humanity has faced death and the dark. Ray Bradbury's Halloween novel doubles as a compressed history of the holiday's origins.

                • Cover of The Haunting of Cassie Palmer
                  The Haunting of Cassie Palmer

                  Vivien Alcock · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour world

                  WorldCat: Thirteen-year-old Cassie, the seventh child of a seventh child, begins to exhibit the gift of second sight which enables her to communicate with the Other World.

                • AR
                  A Really Weird Summer

                  Eloise Jarvis McGraw · standalone novel · 1977

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle gradenorth america+1 more

                  While staying with relatives who live in an old inn, twelve-year-old Nels finds a secret passageway to a part of the building that no longer exists and meets a strange boy whose family is trapped in a leftover pocket of time.

                • Cover of The Indian in the Cupboard
                  The Indian in the Cupboard

                  series · 5 books · 1980

                  completed

                  similar byfantasycontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle grade+2 more

                  Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series begins with the 1980 children's novel in which a boy discovers that an old cupboard can bring his plastic toy figures to life. The low-fantasy series, which inspired a 1995 film adaptation, continues across Return of the Indian, The Secret of the Indian, The Mystery of the Cupboard, and The Key to the Indian.

                • Cover of Alchemy
                  Alchemy

                  Margaret Mahy · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour world+1 more

                  Seventeen-year-old Roland discovers that an unpopular girl in school is studying alchemy and finds that their destiny is linked with that of a power-hungry magician.

                • Cover of The Secret Keepers
                  The Secret Keepers

                  Trenton Lee Stewart · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporaryour worldmiddle grade+1 more

                  "When twelve-year-old Reuben finds a peculiar, magical watch that has the power to turn its wearer invisible, he's propelled on the adventure of a lifetime"-- When Reuben discovers an antique watch that was mortared into the wall, he soon learns it has a secret power. As one secret leads to another, Reuben finds himself torn between his innately honest nature and the lure to be a hero. Now he is on a dangerous adventure, and with fearless Penny, mighty Jack, and the wise Mrs. Genevieve on his side, Reuben must outwit and outmaneuver the sly villain called The Smoke and his devious defenders the Directions, in order to save the city from a terrible fate.

                • Cover of The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls
                  The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

                  Claire Legrand · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporaryour worldmiddle gradefriendship+1 more

                  Practically-perfect twelve-year-old Victoria Wright must lie, sneak, and break the rules when her investigation of the disappearance of her best--and only--friend, Lawrence, reveals dark secrets about her town and the orphanage run by the reclusive Mrs. Cavendish.

                • Cover of Atlas (Olivie Blake)
                  Atlas (Olivie Blake)

                  series · 3 books · 2020

                  similar byfantasycontemporarymagic schoolsour world+1 more

                  Olivie Blake's Atlas trilogy follows six magical scholars recruited into a secretive society that grants near-limitless magical resources in exchange for a mortal cost only revealed after they've already committed. The Atlas Paradox and The Atlas Complex escalate the group's rivalries and the price of the power they've been given. The series began as a self-published web serial before its traditional re-release.

                • Cover of American Gods
                  American Gods

                  series · 10 books · 1999

                  similar byfantasycontemporaryour world+3 more

                  Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) follows Shadow Moon, an ex-convict who takes a job as bodyguard to a mysterious drifter who is secretly the Norse god Odin, and is drawn into a brewing conflict between the old immigrant gods of myth and the new gods of media, technology, and modern American life. Gaiman's 2005 novel Anansi Boys is set in the same mythological world and shares the trickster god Mr. Nancy, but follows a different protagonist and story, making it a loose companion rather than a direct sequel.

                • Cover of Bod Owens
                  Bod Owens

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar byfantasycontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle grade

                  The Graveyard Book follows Nobody "Bod" Owens, a toddler who escapes the murder of his family and is raised among the ghosts of an old English graveyard, absorbing their otherworldly customs while a threat from his past waits beyond the gates. Neil Gaiman's 2008 novel won both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and illustrator P. Craig Russell later adapted it into a two-volume graphic novel. Bod's story spans the original novel and that graphic-novel retelling rather than continuing in a prose sequel.

                • Cover of Endymion Spring
                  Endymion Spring

                  Matthew Skelton · standalone novel · 2006

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of age+1 more

                  Endymion Spring is a children's fantasy novel by English Canadian author Matthew Skelton. It was first published in 2006.

                • Cover of Worldweavers
                  Worldweavers

                  series · 4 books · 2007

                  similar byfantasycontemporarymagic schoolsour world+2 more

                • Cover of Darkhenge
                  Darkhenge

                  Catherine Fisher · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of ageour world

                  Worried about his sister Chloe's comatose state after a riding accident, teenage Rob, in an effort to distract himself, gets a job on a secretive local archeological dig.

                • Cover of Bad Books
                  Bad Books

                  series · 3 books · 2014

                  similar byfantasycontemporarymagic schoolsmiddle gradeour world+4 more

                • Cover of The Haunting
                  The Haunting

                  Margaret Mahy · standalone novel · 1982

                  similar byfantasymysteriouscontemporarycoming of agemiddle grade

                  After a shy and rather withdrawn eight-year-old begins receiving frightening supernatural images and messages, he learns about a family legacy which could be considered a curse or a rare gift.

                • Cover of Magic Shop
                  Magic Shop

                  series · 7 books · 1982

                  similar byfantasycontemporarycoming of ageour worldmiddle grade+2 more

                  Bruce Coville's Magic Shop books each send a different kid into Mr. Elives's strange antique shop, where an ordinary-looking item turns out to carry real magic and consequences. The Monster's Ring opens the series with a boy who buys a ring to scare a bully on Halloween, only to find he can genuinely transform into a monster. Later entries repeat the pattern with new objects and new children, tied together by the shop and its owner rather than a continuing plot.