Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

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 Endless Skye

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 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 A Court of Thorns and Roses
                  A Court of Thorns and Roses

                  series · 6 books · 2015

                  similar byfantasyemotionalsecondary world+1 more

                  A Court of Thorns and Roses is a fantasy romance series by American author Sarah J. Maas, which follows the journey of 19-year-old Feyre Archeron after she is brought into the faerie lands of Prythian. The first book of the series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, was published in May 2015. The series centers on Feyre's adventures across Prythian and the faerie courts, following the epic love story and fierce struggle that ensues after she enters the fae lands. The series has sold over 13 million copies. There are currently five novels in the series, with the sixth scheduled to release on October 27, 2026, and the seventh on January 12, 2027. An eighth installment is set to conclude the continuous story told across books six, seven and eight.

                • Cover of Folktales
                  Folktales

                  series · 3 books · 1978

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                • KL
                  Kushiel's Legacy Universe

                  series · 13 books · 2001

                  similar byfantasyemotionalsecondary world+1 more

                • Cover of Karou
                  Karou

                  series · 4 books · 2011

                  similar byfantasyemotionalsecondary world+1 more

                  Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a young-adult fantasy book series written by Laini Taylor and published by Hachette Book Group, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. It is a complete trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone being published on 27 September 2011 in the United States; Days of Blood and Starlight on 6 November 2012 in the United States; and the third book Dreams of Gods and Monsters on April 1, 2014. The books have been published in a variety of different languages.

                • Cover of This Woven Kingdom
                  This Woven Kingdom

                  series · 4 books · 2022

                  similar byemotionalsecondary world+2 more

                  Tahereh Mafi's This Woven Kingdom follows Alizeh, a servant girl who is secretly the long-lost heir to an ancient Jinn kingdom, and Kamran, the human crown prince drawn to her despite prophecies foretelling his own king's downfall. The series continues across These Infinite Threads, All This Twisted Glory, and Every Spiral of Fate.

                • Cover of His Dark Materials Universe
                  His Dark Materials Universe

                  universe · 13 books · 1995

                  Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here

                  similar byfantasy+1 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.

                • Cover of His Dark Materials
                  His Dark Materials

                  series · 8 books · 1995

                  part of His Dark Materials Universe

                  similar byfantasy+2 more

                  His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.

                • Cover of Fairy Tale stories
                  Fairy Tale stories

                  series · 2 books · 1996

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                • Cover of Once Upon a Broken Heart
                  Once Upon a Broken Heart

                  series · 4 books · 2021

                  similar byfantasyforbidden lovesecondary world+1 more

                  Stephanie Garber's romantasy series opens with Evangeline Fox striking a desperate bargain with the immortal Prince of Hearts, three kisses in exchange for his help stopping her true love's wedding to another woman, only to learn that bargaining with an immortal always costs more than expected. Once Upon a Broken Heart and its sequels follow the fallout of that bargain across a fairy-tale-inflected world of curses and dangerous magic.

                • Cover of The Malediction Trilogy
                  The Malediction Trilogy

                  series · 5 books · 2014

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Stolen Songbird opens Danielle L. Jensen's Malediction trilogy with Cecile, a human girl abducted and forced to marry the cursed troll prince of an underground city, in a bargain meant to break the curse trapping his people below the earth. The series follows the uneasy, then complicated, relationship between Cecile and Tristan as political plots inside and outside the troll court threaten both their people. A fourth book, a companion novel, extends the story beyond the original trilogy.

                • Cover of Saga of the Unfated
                  Saga of the Unfated

                  series · 2 books · 2024

                  similar byfantasyemotionalsecondary world+1 more

                  Danielle L. Jensen's Saga of the Unfated opens with A Fate Inked in Blood, in which a woman from a Nordic-flavored fishing village discovers she carries the blood and magic of a legendary shieldmaiden and is drawn into a war between rival warlords who both want her power. The story continues in A Curse Carved in Bone.

                • Cover of Castle Auburn
                  Castle Auburn

                  series · 2 books · 2001

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                  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 The Sharing Knife
                  The Sharing Knife

                  series · 5 books · 2006

                  similar byfantasyemotionalsecondary world+1 more

                  The Sharing Knife is a romance/fantasy series by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, published in 2006–2019. The original story grew so long in the telling that it was split into two volumes: Beguilement (2006) and Legacy (2007). Bujold then wrote a sequel, which was also divided, into Passage (2008) and Horizon (2009). The original title of the sequel was The Wide Green World, but Bujold and her publisher decided to make "Sharing Knife" the overall title, with the individual books given one-word subtitles and numbered 1–4. The fifth story in the series, a "short novel" titled Knife Children, was released as an electronic book on January 25, 2019.

                • Cover of Tairen Soul
                  Tairen Soul

                  series · 6 books · 2007

                  similar byemotionalforbidden lovesecondary world+1 more

                  C. L. Wilson's Tairen Soul opens with Lord of the Fading Lands, a fairy-tale-inflected romantic fantasy in which a woodcarver's daughter is claimed as the truemate of a powerful fey lord and discovers that passion and magic can be dangerous together. The series continues across five novels, including King of Sword and Sky and Queen of Song and Souls.

                • K
                  Kairos

                  series · 11 books · 1962

                  completed

                  similar by+2 more

                  The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).

                • Cover of Alchemised
                  Alchemised

                  SenLinYu · standalone novel · 2025

                  similar byfantasyemotionalsecondary world+1 more

                  Alchemised is the debut fantasy novel of American author SenLinYu. The book was published in September 2025 by Del Rey Books in the United States and Penguin imprint Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia. Described as both dark fantasy, horror and gothic romance, and sometimes erroneously classified as dark romance, the standalone novel follows the life of a former alchemist, Helena Marino, as she recovers her memories of a civil war. It reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list in the week after its release.

                • Cover of The Beautiful Ones
                  The Beautiful Ones

                  Silvia Moreno-Garcia · standalone novel · 2017

                  similar byfantasyemotionalforbidden lovesecondary world

                  323 pages ; 24 cm

                • Cover of The Powerless Trilogy
                  The Powerless Trilogy

                  series · 5 books · 2023

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                  The Powerless Trilogy is set in a kingdom where people without magical abilities are treated as outcasts, following Paedyn Gray, a powerless girl disguising herself as a magic-wielder, who is drawn into the royal court and a survival competition after crossing paths with the crown prince. Lauren Roberts' trilogy, beginning with Powerless, was later expanded with a further Fearless duology set in the same world.

                • Cover of Forgotten Gods
                  Forgotten Gods

                  series · 2 books · 2020

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Marie Rutkoski's The Midnight Lie is set in the world of her Winner's Trilogy: Nirrim lives in the Ward, a district of the city ruled by a harsh tribunal that reserves every pleasure and privilege for the High Kith, until a rakish traveler named Sid arrives with rumors that magic could be hers if she's willing to give up the life she knows. The Hollow Heart continues Nirrim and Sid's story.

                • LU
                  Lords of the Underworld Universe

                  series · 28 books · 2008

                  similar by+3 more

                • Cover of Serpent & Dove
                  Serpent & Dove

                  series · 5 books · 2019

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+3 more

                  Shelby Mahurin's Serpent & Dove trilogy is set in the city of Cesarine, where witches live in hiding from a Church that hunts and burns them. It follows Louise Le Blanc, a witch concealing her identity, and Reid Diggory, a Church huntsman sworn to destroy witches, after the two are forced into marriage and must navigate duty against their growing feelings for each other. The story continues across Blood & Honey and Gods & Monsters.

                • Cover of The Shape-Changer's Wife
                  The Shape-Changer's Wife

                  Sharon Shinn · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byfantasyemotionalforbidden lovesecondary world

                  In a world where magic is passed down as a trace, young Aubrey sets out to fine the greatest master of all. As he enters into the world of his new master, he meets his wife, Lilith. Set behind one of the most powerful men of them are, Aubrey is willing to risk everything to set her free.

                • Cover of Once Upon a Time
                  Once Upon a Time

                  series · 18 books · 2002

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more

                • Cover of Girls of Paper and Fire
                  Girls of Paper and Fire

                  series · 3 books · 2018

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more