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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 Elfking

anchored on:fantasy

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 centered on witches and the practice of witchcraft — covens, hedge magic, familiars, and the witch's place in her community.
  • Stories in which gods and deities act as characters — walking the world, meddling in mortal lives, or dying.
  • 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 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 The Lord of the Rings
                  The Lord of the Rings

                  series · 13 books · 1954

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar bysecondary world+2 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 Shannara
                  Shannara

                  universe · 50 books · 1977

                  Start hereWord and the Void · The very beginning of the timeline

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy

                  Long after the world we know has burned itself to slag in the Great Wars, the Four Lands rise green over the bones of the old age. Science is a forbidden memory; magic has come back into the world, and with it the old divisions — Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes, each Race a splinter of what humanity became. This is the far-future Earth of Shannara, where the ruins buried beneath the soil are ours, and the only keepers of the vanished knowledge are the Druids of Paranor, who wake once a generation to meet the darkness rising again. Terry Brooks opened the Four Lands in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara and has charted its history for four decades since — a legendarium ordered not by throne but by a single bloodline, the Ohmsfords, each generation inheriting an Elfstone, a blade, or a wishsong when the age demands a hero. The original trilogy gives way to the Heritage of Shannara, the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, the High Druid, Dark Legacy, Defenders, and the concluding Fall of Shannara; the Genesis of Shannara books reach back to the apocalypse itself, and the Word and the Void trilogy back further still, into a demon-haunted version of our own present that is the root of everything after. In 2025 Brooks passed the histories to Delilah S. Dawson to carry forward. What sets these books apart is their long memory: a world where every triumph is provisional, where the same evil returns wearing a fresh shape each age, and magic always exacts its price. The reading is warm and headlong — questing companies, old talismans, journeys across a mapped and named wilderness — shadowed by the knowledge that all of it stands on the wreckage of a former world. Enter as readers first did: with The Sword of Shannara, then onward in publication order. The chronological path, beginning with Word and the Void, rewards a second journey, once the Four Lands already feel like home.

                • Cover of Keeper of the Lost Cities
                  Keeper of the Lost Cities

                  series · 11 books · 2012

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+1 more

                  Keeper of the Lost Cities is an upper-middle-grade fantasy series by Shannon Messenger that has appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list for a total of ten weeks.

                • Cover of Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt
                  Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt

                  series · 39 books · 1988

                  part of Forgotten Realms

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                  The Legend of Drizzt is a series of fantasy novels by R. A. Salvatore that began in 1988, and consists of 39 books as of August 15, 2023. They are based in the Forgotten Realms setting in the dimension of Abeir-Toril on the continent Faerûn in the Dungeons & Dragons universe currently published and owned by Wizards of the Coast. It combines the series The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Legacy of the Drow, Paths of Darkness, The Hunter's Blades Trilogy, and other sets into an abridged compilation. Drizzt Do'Urden is the main character of most of the books.

                • Cover of The History of Middle Earth
                  The History of Middle Earth

                  series · 14 books · 1983

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldmythic fantasy

                  The History of Middle-earth is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and by Houghton Mifflin in the US. They collect and analyse much of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over time of Tolkien's conception of Middle-earth as a fictional place with its own peoples, languages, and history, from his earliest notions of "a mythology for England" through to the development of the stories that make up The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. It is not a "history of Middle-earth" in the sense of being a chronicle of events in Middle-earth written from an in-universe perspective; it is instead an out-of-universe history of Tolkien's creative process. In 2000, the twelve volumes were republished in three limited edition omnibus volumes.

                • Cover of Hollow Kingdom
                  Hollow Kingdom

                  series · 3 books · 2003

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                  The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy is a fantasy trilogy written by Clare B. Dunkle. The series includes The Hollow Kingdom, Close Kin, In the Coils of the Snake and a number of short stories published on Dunkle's official website. The Hollow Kingdom won the 2004 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature.

                • Cover of Halfblood Chronicles
                  Halfblood Chronicles

                  series · 3 books · 1991

                  similar byelvesfantasysecondary world

                  The Halfblood Chronicles is a series of fantasy books originally written by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey. The series is set in a mystical world of elves, wizards and dragons. The series was originally released by Tor Books, and comprised three books: Elvenbane (1991), Elvenblood (1995), Elvenborn (2002). Elvenbred, the fourth book in the series, remained unfinished due to the death of Andre Norton.

                • Cover of Castle Auburn
                  Castle Auburn

                  series · 2 books · 2001

                  similar byfantasysecondary world

                  Sharon Shinn's Summers at Castle Auburn follows Coriel, a girl who spends her summers at her half-sister's royal household and only gradually recognizes the human cost behind the kingdom's practice of enslaving the aliora, a fae-like people, for entertainment and service. Gold continues years later as an adult Coriel confronts the consequences of choices made in the first book. Shinn uses the fantasy trappings as a vehicle for a coming-of-age reckoning with inherited privilege.

                • Cover of Elfgift
                  Elfgift

                  series · 2 books · 1995

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                • Cover of Dragon Age (Bioware RPG tie-in)
                  Dragon Age (Bioware RPG tie-in)

                  series · 21 books · 2009

                  similar byfantasysecondary world

                  These tie-in novels expand BioWare's Dragon Age video game series into prose, mostly written by the games' own lead writers, and are set in the same dark-fantasy world of Thedas. The Stolen Throne and The Calling serve as prequels filling in the backstory of characters central to the first game, while later books such as Asunder and The Masked Empire tie more directly into the plots and politics of the sequels. They are written for players wanting deeper lore rather than as standalone entry points to the setting.

                • Cover of Alosha
                  Alosha

                  series · 3 books · 2004

                  similar byfantasyyoung adult+1 more

                • Cover of Elfquest
                  Elfquest

                  series · 59 books · 1982

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+1 more

                  Elfquest is a comic book property created by Wendy and Richard Pini in 1978, and still owned by them. It is a fantasy story about a community of elves and other fictional species who struggle to survive and coexist on a primitive Earth-like planet with two moons. Several published volumes of prose fiction also share the same setting. Elfquest was one of the first comic book series to have a planned conclusion. Over the years Elfquest has been self-published by the Pinis through their own company Warp Graphics, then Marvel Comics, then the Pinis again, more recently DC Comics, and, since 2013, Dark Horse Comics. All issues of Elfquest published prior to 2014 are available online for free.

                • Cover of Balumnia
                  Balumnia

                  series · 4 books · 1982

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                  James P. Blaylock's Balumnia sequence begins with The Elfin Ship (1982), his first published novel, opening a whimsical fantasy world that blends magical elements with mock-scientific notions like 'The Five Standard Shapes' and 'The Three Major Urges,' narrated in a deliberately florid, overly courteous style. It continues across The Disappearing Dwarf, The Stone Giant, and The Man in the Moon.

                • Cover of The Broken Sword
                  The Broken Sword

                  Poul Anderson · standalone novel · 1954

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                  The Broken Sword is a fantasy novel by American writer Poul Anderson, originally published on 5 November 1954. A revised edition was issued by Ballantine Books in January 1971 as the twenty-fourth volume of their Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. The original text was reissued by Gollancz in 2002. Set during the Viking Age, the novel features numerous references to Norse mythology.

                • Cover of Earthsea Cycle
                  Earthsea Cycle

                  series · 18 books · 1964

                  completed

                  part of Earthsea

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                  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 Ealdwood
                  Ealdwood

                  series · 4 books · 1979

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                  The Ealdwood Stories, also known as the Arafel Stories, are a collection of fantasy works by American writer C. J. Cherryh. The books are works of high fantasy based in part on Celtic mythology. Arafel, a main character, is a Daoine Sidhe, the highest of the Sidhe faery-folk. She dwells in the magical small forest of Ealdwood, from which the tales take their name.

                • Cover of Iskryne
                  Iskryne

                  series · 3 books · 2007

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                • Cover of The Legend of Little Fur
                  The Legend of Little Fur

                  series · 4 books · 2005

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                • Cover of The Wizard Knight
                  The Wizard Knight

                  series · 2 books · 2004

                  completed

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                  The Wizard Knight is a series of epistolary novels written by fantasy and science fiction author Gene Wolfe. It chronicles the journey of Able of the High Heart, an American boy transported to a magical world and supernaturally aged to adulthood. Able becomes a knight, and because of his connection with the magical and spiritual elements of the world around him is soon also dubbed a wizard.

                • Cover of Garrett, P. I.
                  Garrett, P. I.

                  series · 15 books · 1987

                  similar byfantasysecondary world

                  Garrett P.I. is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Glen Cook about Garrett, a freelance private investigator. The novels are written in a hard-boiled detective fiction style, with elements of traditional mystery and dialogue-based humor. Garrett, during his adventures in his home city of TunFaire and across Karenta and the Cantard, has to deal with elves, vampires, centaurs, trolls, and numerous mixed breeds, along with gods, wizards, witches and more. Unlike most fantasy series, the Garrett P.I. novels focus more on the detective aspects of the story and less on the magical.

                • Cover of The Bifrost Guardians
                  The Bifrost Guardians

                  series · 6 books · 1987

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                • Cover of Wizardry
                  Wizardry

                  series · 5 books · 1989

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary world

                  Wizardry is Rick Cook's comic fantasy series that begins with Wizard's Bane (1989), continuing through The Wizardry Compiled, The Wizardry Cursed and The Wizardry Consulted to The Wizardry Quested. It follows a computer programmer pulled into a magical world, who discovers that spells behave like code and starts building programming tools to hack the local system of magic. The 'Wiz Biz' omnibus titles collect these same novels rather than adding new story.

                • Cover of Tales of Fayt
                  Tales of Fayt

                  series · 3 books · 2012

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