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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 Cursed Magic

anchored on:fantasysecondary world

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 centered on witches and the practice of witchcraft — covens, hedge magic, familiars, and the witch's place in her community.
  • 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 Hobbit
                  The Hobbit

                  series · 2 books · 1937

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

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                  The Hobbit (1937) is J. R. R. Tolkien's children's fantasy novel following the reluctant burglar Bilbo Baggins, who joins a company of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf on a journey to reclaim treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug. It stands as a complete adventure on its own, but shares its setting with the rest of Tolkien's legendarium and leads into the events of The Lord of the Rings.

                • Cover of Earthsea Cycle
                  Earthsea Cycle

                  series · 18 books · 1964

                  completed

                  part of Earthsea

                  similar bywizardsfantasysecondary world

                  The Earthsea Cycle, also known as Earthsea, is a series of high fantasy books written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972), the series was continued in Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. In 2018, all the novels and short stories were published in a single volume, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with artwork by Charles Vess.

                • Cover of Howl's Castle
                  Howl's Castle

                  series · 3 books · 1986

                  completed

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                  Howl's Moving Castle (1986) follows Sophie Hatter, cursed by the Witch of the Waste into an old woman's body, who takes refuge in the wandering castle of the wizard Howl and strikes an uneasy bargain with his fire demon Calcifer while trying to break the spell. Diana Wynne Jones returned to the same magical kingdom in Castle in the Air (1990), following a new lead character, Abdullah, with Sophie and Howl appearing in supporting roles, and again in House of Many Ways (2008).

                • Cover of The Lord of the Rings
                  The Lord of the Rings

                  series · 13 books · 1954

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar bysecondary world+3 more

                  The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.

                • Cover of Dying Earth
                  Dying Earth

                  series · 27 books · 1950

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                  Dying Earth is a speculative fiction series by the American author Jack Vance, comprising four books originally published from 1950 to 1984. Some have been called picaresque. The series includes short story collections, fix-ups, and novels.

                • Cover of Riftwar Saga
                  Riftwar Saga

                  series · 7 books · 1982

                  part of The Riftwar Universe

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                  The Riftwar Saga is Raymond E. Feist's debut fantasy trilogy, opening with Magician, in which an orphaned apprentice named Pug is swept up when otherworldly invaders emerge through a dimensional rift into the frontier kingdom of Midkemia. Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon carry the resulting war to its close, and the trilogy became the founding entry of Feist's much larger Riftwar Cycle.

                • WS
                  World of Septimus Heap

                  series · 12 books · 2005

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                • Cover of The Traitor Spy Trilogy
                  The Traitor Spy Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  part of Kyralia series

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                  Trudi Canavan is an Australian writer of fantasy novels, best known for her best-selling fantasy trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five. While establishing her writing career she worked as a graphic designer. She completed her third trilogy, The Traitor Spy trilogy, in August 2012 with The Traitor Queen. Subsequently, Canavan has written a series called Millennium's Rule, with a completely new setting consisting of multiple worlds which characters can cross between. Though originally planned as a trilogy, a fourth and final book in the Millennium's Rule series was published.

                • Cover of The Immortals
                  The Immortals

                  series · 6 books · 1992

                  part of Tortall

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                  Tamora Pierce's Immortals quartet follows Daine, a young woman whose 'wild magic' lets her communicate with and shapeshift among animals, as she's drawn into the kingdom of Tortall's defense against immortal creatures -- griffins, dragons and darker things -- released back into the world after centuries sealed away. Beginning with Wild Magic, the four books pair Daine's personal coming-of-age with an escalating magical threat, and connect to Pierce's earlier Song of the Lioness quartet through several shared characters.

                • Cover of The Black Magician Trilogy
                  The Black Magician Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2001

                  part of Kyralia series

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                  Trudi Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy (The Magicians' Guild, The Novice, The High Lord, 2001-2003) opens in the city of Imardin, where the ruling magicians' guild's annual purge of the slums goes wrong when a street girl named Sonea unknowingly shatters their protective shield with raw, untrained power. The guild must hunt her down and decide whether to control her or train her, and the trilogy follows Sonea's forced initiation into magical society and the guild's internal politics. It's Canavan's best-known trilogy and the founding story of her Kyralia setting.

                • Cover of Magic Kingdom of Landover
                  Magic Kingdom of Landover

                  series · 8 books · 1986

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                  The Magic Kingdom of Landover is a series of six fantasy novels by Terry Brooks following the adventures of a former trial lawyer named Ben Holiday, who purchases a magical kingdom.

                • Cover of Spellsinger
                  Spellsinger

                  series · 9 books · 1983

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                  Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series follows Jon-Tom, a UCLA law student pulled into a fantasy world by the wizard Clothahump, where he discovers he can cast spells by singing along with his guitar. That world is populated almost entirely by anthropomorphic animals -- otters, rabbits, turtles -- with humans a rare minority, and across eight books published between 1983 and 2004, Jon-Tom and his companions repeatedly clash with the insectoid Plated Folk raiding the western territories.

                • IS
                  Ixia & Sitia milieu

                  series · 12 books · 2005

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                • Cover of Ile-Rien
                  Ile-Rien

                  series · 12 books · 1993

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                  The Ile-Rien books are a series of fantasy novels by Martha Wells set in the fictional country of Ile-Rien. It is a centralized monarchy governed by the Fontainon dynasty, governing from their ornate capital of Vienne. It is also the home of the university-city of Lodun, a great center of learning, producing world-renowned scholars in medicine, law and sorcery. Its neighbors are the nations of Adera, Umberwald and Parscia, as well as Bisra, its long-standing enemy. Ile-Rien shares a coastline along the Western Ocean with Parscia.

                • Cover of Magic by the Numbers
                  Magic by the Numbers

                  series · 10 books · 1980

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+3 more

                  Master of the Five Magics follows Alodar, a young man from a fallen noble house trying to win the hand of a queen by proving himself in a hard-magic system built from five distinct, strictly rule-bound disciplines — thaumaturgy, alchemy, magic, sorcery, and wizardry — each with its own price and its own limits. Lyndon Hardy's original trilogy, continuing through Secret of the Sixth Magic and Riddle of the Seven Realms, has Alodar master each discipline in turn, before a later book, decades on, adds a fourth-generation story (The Archimage's Fourth Daughter) to the same magic-numbers conceit.

                • Cover of Fairy Tale stories
                  Fairy Tale stories

                  series · 2 books · 1996

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                • Cover of Circle of Magic / The Wizard Apprentice
                  Circle of Magic / The Wizard Apprentice

                  series · 8 books · 1990

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                  This eight-book series by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald follows a young apprentice training in the practice of wizardry alongside knights and nobles in an invented medieval world, moving from a fixed school setting into wider adventures as the books progress. It is a lighter, adventure-driven take on magical apprenticeship aimed at younger readers, distinct from other series sharing the same "Circle of Magic" name. The later volumes carry the apprentice further from the classroom into court intrigue and open conflict.

                • Cover of Pusadian
                  Pusadian

                  series · 9 books · 1951

                  completed

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                  The Pusadian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the early 1950s and written under the influence of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The series, also known as the Poseidonis series, prefigured the numerous sword & sorcery settings of the 1960s and 1970s.

                • Cover of Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz
                  Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz

                  series · 11 books · 2007

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                  Garth Nix's Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz stories follow a scarred mercenary swordsman and his constant companion, a sentient puppet animated by the spirit of a formidable sorcerer, sent as agents to put down dangerous rogue gods across a wide fantasy world. Rather than one continuous novel, the series unfolds through linked novellas and short stories gathered into standalone collections, mixing swashbuckling action with dry, understated humor. The two collections compile stories published from 2007 into the early 2020s.

                • Cover of Winterlands
                  Winterlands

                  series · 7 books · 1986

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                  Winterlands follows John Aversin, a practical, unglamorous dragon-slayer, and Jenny Waynest, the self-taught village witch he loves, as their small corner of a forgotten kingdom keeps getting dragged into magic far bigger than either of them wanted. Barbara Hambly's series opens with Dragonsbane (1985), which deliberately undercuts the 'brave knight slays dragon' story it seems to promise, and continues across Dragonshadow, Knight of the Demon Queen, and Dragonstar as Jenny pursues real magical training. It favors domestic detail and moral complexity over conventional high-fantasy grandeur.

                • Cover of Narnia
                  Narnia

                  series · 26 books · 1950

                  part of Narnia Universe

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                  The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven portal fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, the series is set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals. It narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the Narnian world. Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are sometimes called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician's Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle.

                • Cover of The Circle Opens
                  The Circle Opens

                  series · 4 books · 2000

                  part of Circle of Magic

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                  The Circle Opens is a quartet of novels written by Tamora Pierce and set in a pseudo-medieval/renaissance era. It mainly revolves around four teenage mages, each specializing in a different kind of magic, as they find that they are forced to deal with mages whose powers are similarly unusual to their own. The series consists of the books Magic Steps (2000), Street Magic (2001), Cold Fire (2002), and Shatterglass (2003). The Circle Opens Quartet is the sequel quartet to The Circle Of Magic Quartet, and is followed by "Battle Magic" and The Will of the Empress.

                • Cover of Circle of Magic (Tamora Pierce)
                  Circle of Magic (Tamora Pierce)

                  series · 4 books · 1997

                  part of Circle of Magic

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                  Four children who don't fit in anywhere else -- Sandry, Tris, Daja, and Briar -- are brought together at the Winding Circle temple community, where each discovers a form of magic no one recognized in them: thread, weather, smithcraft, and plants. Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic quartet follows their training under unconventional teachers and their growing bond as chosen family, as they learn to turn overlooked, everyday skills into real power. Set in the world of Emelan, it treats craft-based magic as seriously as any wizard's spellbook.

                • Cover of Pellinor
                  Pellinor

                  series · 5 books · 2002

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                  Maerad has spent most of her life enslaved on a remote farm, until the wandering Bard Cadvan recognizes in her the Gift -- a rare and powerful magical ability -- and takes her from captivity into training. Alison Croggon's Books of Pellinor follow Maerad across the world of Edil-Amarandh as she's drawn into a prophecy naming her the only one who might stop the Nameless One, an ancient and corrupting sorcerer, while she also searches for her lost family. The series runs through The Gift, The Riddle, The Crow, The Singing, and the later prequel The Bone Queen.