Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Series-first reading tracker: what you've read, what's next, and what you're missing.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Every reading order is hand-picked, with a rationale on the page. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Discworld

anchored on:fantasysecondary worldfunny

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 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.

                • The Hobbit

                  series · 2 books · 1937

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwhimsicaladventurousmiddle gradequestsfairy tale retelling+4 more

                  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.

                • Narnia

                  series · 26 books · 1950

                  part of Narnia Universe

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldcoming of ageadventurouschildrenportal fantasy+4 more

                  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.

                • The Princess Bride

                  William Goldman · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar byfantasyfunnysecondary worldwhimsicalhumoradventurousquests

                  The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version is a 1973 fantasy romance novel by American writer William Goldman. The book combines elements of comedy, adventure, fantasy, drama, romance, and fairy tale. It is metafictionally presented as an abridgment of a longer work by the fictional S. Morgenstern, and Goldman's commentary asides are constant throughout. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace, then later by Random House, while in the United Kingdom it was later published by Bloomsbury.

                • His Dark Materials Universe

                  universe · 13 books · 1995

                  Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here

                  similar byfantasycoming of ageyoung adultadventurousparallel universe+6 more

                  In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.

                • Myth Adventures

                  series · 33 books · 1978

                  similar byfantasyfunnysecondary worldhumor+3 more

                  MythAdventures or Myth Adventures is a fantasy series created by Robert Lynn Asprin. After twelve novels by Asprin, published 1978 to 2002, he and Jody Lynn Nye continued the series with seven more books that they wrote together. After his death in May 2008, Nye has continued the series on her own.

                • The Black Magician Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2001

                  part of Kyralia series

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldmagic schools+6 more

                  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.

                • Enchanted Forest

                  series · 7 books · 1985

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldmiddle gradelighthearted+6 more

                  Patricia Collins Wrede is an American author of fantasy literature. She is known for her Enchanted Forest Chronicles series for young adults, which was voted number 84 in NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels list.

                • Howl's Castle

                  series · 3 books · 1986

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwhimsicaladventurous+7 more

                  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).

                • Bored of the Rings

                  Henry N. Beard & Douglas C. Kenney · standalone novel · 1969

                  similar byfantasyfunnysecondary worldhumorsatirequests+1 more

                  Bored of the Rings is a 1969 parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. This short novel was written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, who later founded National Lampoon. It was published in 1969 by Signet for The Harvard Lampoon, and, unusually for a parody, has remained in print for over 50 years. It has been translated into at least twelve languages.

                • The Immortals

                  series · 6 books · 1992

                  part of Tortall

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldcoming of ageyoung adultwizardsadventurous+2 more

                  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.

                • Derkholm

                  series · 2 books · 1998

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwhimsicalmagic schools+3 more

                  Diana Wynne Jones's two-book sequence needles the conventions of package-tour fantasy: in The Dark Lord of Derkholm, an ordinary, animal-loving wizard named Derk is conscripted to play the world's compulsory "Dark Lord" role for a businessman running exploitative guided tours of the fantasy world for outside tourists. Year of the Griffin follows one of Derk's griffin children years later, enrolled at a chronically underfunded wizards' university with a band of misfit students. Both books satirize familiar fantasy-quest tropes rather than playing them straight.

                • Earthsea Cycle

                  series · 18 books · 1964

                  completed

                  part of Earthsea

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwizardsreflective+4 more

                  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.

                • I
                  Illmoor

                  series · 10 books · 2003

                  similar byfantasyfunnysecondary world+1 more

                • The Carpet People

                  series · 4 books · 1971

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldadventurous+2 more

                  The Carpet People imagines an entire civilization of tiny peoples living among the towering fibers of a carpet, where different tribes must set aside old rivalries and unite against a shared threat sweeping through their world. Terry Pratchett wrote the original version at seventeen, then substantially rewrote it in 1992, famously noting that the book 'had two authors, and they were both the same person.' It reads as an early, more straightforward dry run for the comic invention Pratchett would later bring to Discworld.

                • Cosmere

                  universe · 54 books · 2005

                  Start hereThe Final Empire · Start here

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+3 more

                  Before the worlds, there was Adonalsium, and then there was not. A god shattered into sixteen Shards of raw creative power, and those who seized them carried their fragments across the void to seed new planets, new peoples, new ways of working the impossible. The Cosmere is the one universe those Shards made: a scattering of worlds that seem, at first, to share nothing but a sky, until you notice the same law running quietly beneath each of them, and the same silent traveler passing through their margins. Every world keeps its own book and its own magic. On Scadrial, the Mistborn cycle burns metals into power: a self-contained trilogy of thieves and tyranny, followed by a second era that drags the same world into gunslinging early industry. On storm-battered Roshar, The Stormlight Archive raises its vast, ongoing epic around knights, spren, and oaths spoken aloud. Elsewhere stand the shorter keystones: Elantris, a city of fallen gods; Warbreaker, a tale of returned dead and living color; White Sand, told in graphic-novel form under the twin suns of Taldain. Threaded between them run the novellas, from Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter to The Sunlit Man and the pieces gathered in Arcanum Unbounded, where the hidden connections surface most plainly. All of it is the design of one hand, Brandon Sanderson, working a single pattern across two decades. What sets this universe apart is its faith in rules: magic here is a system, lawful and learnable, so discovery feels less like wonder handed down than like physics worked out. The cross-connections reward the patient reader, a symbol here, a name there, one immortal wanderer everywhere, but no book demands you have read another first. Newcomers do best entering through Mistborn: The Final Empire, the most self-contained doorway, or the standalone Elantris or Warbreaker; readers who prefer their epics vast can begin with The Way of Kings. The deeper links, and the novellas that expose them, wait for whenever you are ready to look.

                • Tales of the Frog Princess

                  series · 9 books · 2002

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldmiddle gradelightheartedfairy tale retelling+4 more

                • The Princess and the Goblin

                  series · 2 books · 1871

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldcoming of ageadventurousquests+1 more

                • TO
                  The Old Kingdom / Abhorsen milieu

                  series · 11 books · 1995

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldyoung adult+1 more

                  The Old Kingdom, or Abhorsen in North America and the UK, is a fantasy series written by Australian author Garth Nix. It originated in 1995 with the novel Sabriel and has continued in the novels Lirael (2001), Abhorsen (2003), Goldenhand (2016), and Terciel & Elinor (2021), as well as a prequel novel titled Clariel (2014). The Old Kingdom also consists of the novella The Creature in the Case (2005) and various other short fiction.

                • WS
                  World of Septimus Heap

                  series · 12 books · 2005

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwizardsadventurousmiddle grade+4 more

                • Dragonlance

                  universe · 436 books · 1984

                  Start hereDragons of Autumn Twilight · Start here

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more

                  The gods have kept their silence over Krynn for three hundred years, and the world has learned to make do without them: the dragons are a nursery tale, the old clerics gone, faith worn down to superstition. Then strangers bearing a blue crystal staff cross an autumn road, and shadows with wings blot out the three moons. This is a world where magic answers to those moons—white, red, and black—where a lance is the only weapon a dragon fears, and where the fate of nations turns on a handful of friends who meet again at a tavern table and find the age of legend has come for them. At its heart stand Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's twin trilogies. Chronicles—Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Winter Night, and Spring Dawning—follows the Heroes of the Lance through the War of the Lance; Legends turns inward to the twins, the frail mage Raistlin and his warrior brother Caramon, and the bargain a man will strike for power. Around this core Krynn sprawls across five ages and hundreds of volumes by many hands: The Raistlin Chronicles, The War of Souls, the Preludes and Meetings cycles, the Tales anthologies, with Richard A. Knaak, Douglas Niles, Jean Rabe, and Chris Pierson each adding elf-kingdoms, dragon-overlords, and long-buried history. It is a shared world—vast, uneven, honestly enormous. What sets Dragonlance apart is its warmth. This is heroic fantasy of fellowship and hard choices rather than grimness—the companionship of the road, courage measured against temptation, gods who watch to see whether mortals deserve them back. Begin with Chronicles, then read Legends; that pairing is the doorway every reader and both creators point newcomers through.

                • The Phantom Tollbooth

                  Norton Juster · standalone novel · 1961

                  similar byfantasyfunnywhimsicalcoming of agechildrenquestsportal fantasy+2 more

                  A journey through a land where Milo learns the importance of words and numbers provides a cure for his boredom.

                • A Wizard in Rhyme

                  series · 8 books · 1986

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwizardsadventurousportal fantasy+3 more

                  A Wizard in Rhyme is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Christopher Stasheff. The series follows the character of Matthew Mantrell, an English literature Ph.D. student, who is transported to a magical world where poetry is used to cast spells. There his knowledge of poetry, gained through his literature studies, establishes him as a powerful wizard and positions him as "lord wizard of the realm". The series consists of eight novels, and is said to have hints of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

                • A Song of Ice and Fire

                  series · 14 books · 1996

                  part of World of Ice and Fire

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasypolitical intriguemultiple pov

                  A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the series as a trilogy, has released five out of seven planned volumes. The most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Since then, Martin has been working on the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.

                • The Last Unicorn

                  series · 8 books · 1968

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldquestsbittersweet+1 more

                  The Last Unicorn is Peter S. Beagle's 1968 fantasy novel about a unicorn who, believing herself the last of her kind, sets out to learn what became of the others. Beagle later returned to her world twice more: The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version prints an early draft of the original novel, and The Way Home (2023) collects two novellas continuing the story decades on. Together the books trace one novel's long afterlife rather than a conventional multi-book series.