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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 Behemoth

anchored on:steampunkalternate historywareuropeearly 20th centuryadventurous+6 more

but

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 about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • 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 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 Leviathan Trilogy
                  The Leviathan Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2009

                  similar byearly 20th centuryadventurouswargenetic engineeringsteampunkyoung adultalternate historyeurope+5 more

                  Set in an alternate First World War, Leviathan splits the belligerents into Clankers, who fight with mechanical walkers, and Darwinists, who fight with fabricated living creatures built from spliced DNA. Scott Westerfeld follows a British girl disguised as a boy to serve on a living airship and the exiled heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne as their paths collide, continuing across Behemoth and Goliath. Keith Thompson's illustrations are integral to all three books, alternating text chapters with illustrated sequences.

                • Cover of The War That Came Early
                  The War That Came Early

                  series · 6 books · 2009

                  similar byearly 20th centurywarpolitical intriguealternate historytensemultiple poveurope

                  The War That Came Early is a six-novel series by Harry Turtledove depicting an alternate history of World War II. As is typical of Turtledove's alternate histories, the narrative follows a large cast of both fictional and historical characters.

                • Cover of The War in the Air
                  The War in the Air

                  H. G. Wells · standalone novel · 1908

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensepolitical intriguescience fictioneurope

                  The War in the Air: And Particularly How Mr. Bert Smallways Fared While It Lasted is a military science fiction novel written by H. G. Wells and published in 1908.

                • Cover of Red Inferno: 1945
                  Red Inferno: 1945

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensepolitical intriguealternate historyeurope+1 more

                  Red Inferno: 1945 is a 2010 novel written by Robert Conroy, the author of other alternate history novels.

                • Cover of 1920: America's Great War
                  1920: America's Great War

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2013

                  similar byearly 20th centurywaradventuroustensepolitical intriguealternate historyscience fiction

                  1920: America's Great War is an alternate history novel by the Michigan economics professor Robert Conroy. It was first published as an ebook by Baen Books in November 2013. A hardcover edition followed in December of the same year and then a paperback edition in March 2015. The novel depicts a fictional world in which Imperial Germany had emerged victorious early in World War I and launches a surprise invasion of the United States in 1920 from Mexico. The book's premise is based on an actual plan that Germany had proposed to Mexico during the war.

                • Cover of Oswald Bastable
                  Oswald Bastable

                  series · 5 books · 1971

                  part of Moorcock's Multiverse

                  similar byearly 20th centuryadventurousalternate historysteampunkwarscience fiction

                  Oswald Bastable follows an Edwardian-era British soldier flung into a series of alternate futures where the First World War never happened, opening with The Warlord of the Air (1971). Across the trilogy he drifts between rival empires and airship wars, an early and influential example of what would later be called steampunk. Michael Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy sits within his wider multiverse of linked worlds and recurring avatars of the Eternal Champion.

                • Cover of Barney Custer
                  Barney Custer

                  series · 3 books · 1914

                  completed

                  similar byearly 20th centuryadventuroustensepolitical intrigueeurope+1 more

                  Barney Custer is an American farmer from Nebraska who travels to the small European kingdom of Lutha only to discover he's the spitting image of its unstable ruler, King Leopold. Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Mad King drops him into court intrigue on the eve of World War I, as a scheming uncle's plot for the throne and a budding romance with a princess force Barney to impersonate the king he resembles. It's a standalone Ruritanian adventure rather than an ongoing series.

                • Cover of Germanica
                  Germanica

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensepolitical intriguealternate historyeuropescience fiction

                  Germanica is an alternate history novel written by Robert Conroy. It was published by Baen Books online as an ebook on August 16, 2015 before being published as a physical book on September 1, 2015. As Conroy had died eight months before the book was published, it was released posthumously.

                • Cover of Gravity's Rainbow
                  Gravity's Rainbow

                  Thomas Pynchon · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar byearly 20th centurypolitical intriguewareuropemultiple pov+1 more

                  Gravity's Rainbow is a 1973 postmodern novel by Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device, the Schwarzgerät, which is slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000".

                • Cover of SS-GB
                  SS-GB

                  Len Deighton · standalone novel · 1978

                  similar byearly 20th centurytensepolitical intriguealternate historyscience fiction+1 more

                  It's November 1941 in a Britain that lost the war: Operation Sea Lion succeeded, Churchill was executed, and the King is a prisoner in his own Tower of London. Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer, still working homicide for the Metropolitan Police under German occupation, catches what looks like a routine case, a well-dressed man murdered above an antiques shop, until the body's oddities point toward something far more dangerous than burglary gone wrong. Archer's investigation collides with occupation politics, the British resistance, and rival factions of the SS and the German Army, each wanting the case to go a different way. Len Deighton's alternate-history spy thriller.

                • Cover of How Few Remain Universe
                  How Few Remain Universe

                  series · 11 books · 1997

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensealternate historypolitical intrigue

                  How Few Remain opens Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory timeline, imagining a North America where the Confederacy won the Civil War. Set mostly in 1881-1882, it follows political and military figures on both sides of a divided continent as old grievances resurface into a new war. It's a single novel here, but the starting point for a much longer alternate-history sequence Turtledove extended across both twentieth-century world wars.

                • Cover of 1945
                  1945

                  William R. Forstchen & Newt Gingrich · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensepolitical intriguealternate historyscience fictioneurope

                  1945 is an alternate history novel written by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen in 1995 that described the period immediately after World War II in which the United States had fought only against Japan, which allowed Nazi Germany to force a truce with the Soviet Union, and the two victors confront each other in a Cold War, which swiftly turns hot.

                • Cover of Rising Sun
                  Rising Sun

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byearly 20th centurywaradventuroustensealternate history+1 more

                  "1942: what should have been a decisive victory for the Allies in the Battle of Midway has become a horrendous disaster instead. America's handful of carriers in the Pacific have blundered into a Japanese submarine picket line and most have been sunk. The United States has only one carrier remaining, while the ragtag remnants of U.S. battleships - an armada still reeling from the defeat at Pearl Harbor - are in even worse shape. The Pacific belongs to the Japanese. Yet, despite disaster, the U.S. is determined to strike back. And now a grand plan is put forth to lure the Japanese into an ambush that could restore the balance in the Pacific and give the forces of freedom a fighting chance once more." Goodreads Oct 20, 2022

                • Cover of Janissaries
                  Janissaries

                  series · 4 books · 1979

                  similar bywaradventuroustensepolitical intriguescience fiction

                  Janissaries are an American series of military and political-based science fiction novels are set in an interstellar confederation of races, in which humans are a slave race entrusted with military affairs and law enforcement. They were written by Jerry Pournelle, with Roland J. Green co-authoring the second two books.

                • Cover of Fox (Dobson & Niles)
                  Fox (Dobson & Niles)

                  series · 2 books · 2000

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensealternate historyeurope

                • Cover of 1945
                  1945

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensepolitical intriguealternate history

                  1945 is an alternate history novel by Michigan economics professor Robert Conroy, an author of alternate history novels, such as 1901 and 1862. It was first published in trade paperback and ebook form by Ballantine Books in May 2007. In the novel's point of divergence, the Kyūjō coup successfully suppresses Japanese Emperor Hirohito's order to surrender and so World War II in the Pacific continues into 1946.

                • Cover of Axis of Time
                  Axis of Time

                  series · 7 books · 2004

                  similar bywartensealternate historyscience fiction+3 more

                  The Axis of Time trilogy is an alternative history series of novels written by Australian journalist and author John Birmingham, from Macmillan Publishing.

                • Cover of The Man with the Iron Heart
                  The Man with the Iron Heart

                  Harry Turtledove · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bywartensepolitical intriguealternate historyeurope+1 more

                  The Man with the Iron Heart is an alternate history novel by Harry Turtledove. Published in 2008, it takes as its premise the survival by Reinhard Heydrich of his 1942 assassination in Czechoslovakia and his subsequent leadership of the postwar Werwolf insurgency in occupied Germany, which Turtledove depicts as growing into a far more formidable force than was the case historically.

                • Cover of 1942
                  1942

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar byearly 20th centurytensewaralternate historyscience fiction+1 more

                  1942 is an alternate history novel written by Robert Conroy. It was first published, as an e- book, by Ballantine Books on February 24, 2009, with a hardcover edition following from the same publisher in March 2009. The novel won the 2009 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.

                • DU
                  Destroyermen Universe

                  series · 20 books · 2008

                  similar byearly 20th centurywaradventuroustensealternate historyscience fiction

                • WU
                  Worldwar Universe

                  series · 8 books · 1994

                  similar bytensewaralternate historyscience fiction+2 more

                • Cover of Himmler's War
                  Himmler's War

                  Robert Conroy · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byearly 20th centurywartensealternate historyeurope+1 more

                  Himmler's War is an alternate history novel written by Robert Conroy. It was published by Baen Books online as an ebook on December 1, 2011, before being published in print five days later.

                • Cover of The Plot Against America
                  The Plot Against America

                  Philip Roth · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byearly 20th centurytensepolitical intriguealternate historyscience fiction

                  Roosevelt is defeated in 1940 by Charles Lindbergh, who guides the US towards fascism and anti-Semitism.

                • Cover of A Century of Progress
                  A Century of Progress

                  Fred Saberhagen · standalone novel · 1983

                  similar byearly 20th centurytensewarscience fictionalternate history+2 more

                  For centuries two meg-powers from the future have been waging war for control of timelines of history. Alan Norlund, a WWII airman vet, is promised a life saving cure for his granddaughter, if he will undertake a mission fifty years back in time to the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Hitler with his 'angels' from the opposing power would like to take over our timeline and 1933 Chicago may be just the place to start.