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- The Hobbit
series2 books1937
completed
part of Tolkien's legendarium
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 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.
- Legends & Lattes
series9 books2022
similar byfound familylightheartedsecondary worldfantasy
Travis Baldree's cozy fantasy series follows Viv, a battle-worn orc mercenary who trades her sword for an apron to open the first coffeehouse in the city of Thune, winning over skeptical customers and a rival guild alike. Bookshops & Bonedust returns to her mercenary days as a prequel, and the series has become a byword for low-stakes fantasy built on found family rather than warfare.
- Cerulean Chronicles
series2 books2020
similar byfound familyfantasy+2 more
TJ Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea follows Linus Baker, a caseworker for a bureaucratic agency overseeing magical children, sent to investigate an orphanage whose six unusual residents, including the literal antichrist, complicate his usual detachment. Somewhere Beyond the Sea shifts to a new protagonist connected to the same island and its found family. Both books use a gentle, whimsical tone to work through themes of institutional prejudice and belonging.
- Watership Down
series21 books1972
completed
similar byfound familyfantasy+1 more
Watership Down is Richard Adams's 1972 novel following a group of rabbits who flee the destruction of their warren and cross the English countryside of Hampshire in search of a new home, developing over the journey a full rabbit culture of language, proverbs, and mythology. Adams returned to the same world in 1996 with Tales from Watership Down, a collection of nineteen short stories mixing rabbit folklore with further adventures of characters from the novel.
- So This Is Ever After
F. T. Lukensstandalone novel2022
similar byfound familylightheartedsecondary worldfantasy
Arek hadn’t thought much about what would happen after he completed the prophecy that said he was destined to save the Kingdom of Ere from its evil ruler. So now that he’s finally managed to (somewhat clumsily) behead the evil king (turns out magical swords yanked from bogs don’t come pre-sharpened), he and his rag-tag group of quest companions are at a bit of a loss for what to do next. As a temporary safeguard, Arek’s best friend and mage, Matt, convinces him to assume the throne until the true heir can be rescued from her tower. Except that she’s dead. Now Arek is stuck as king, a role that comes with a magical catch: choose a spouse by your eighteenth birthday, or wither away into nothing. With his eighteenth birthday only three months away, and only Matt in on the secret, Arek embarks on a desperate bid to find a spouse to save his life—starting with his quest companions. But his attempts at wooing his friends go painfully and hilariously wrong…until he discovers that love might have been in front of him all along.
- The Circle Opens
series4 books2000
part of Circle of Magic
similar bysecondary worldfantasy
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.
- Six of Crows
series3 books2015
part of Grishaverse
similar byfound familysecondary worldfantasy
Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows duology (2015-2016) follows a crew of six criminal teenagers in Ketterdam, a city modeled on the Dutch Republic, as they pull off a near-impossible heist and then deal with its fallout. Told from multiple points of view, the books lean on the found-family bond between the crew members as much as the caper plotting, and sit within Bardugo's wider Grishaverse alongside her Shadow and Bone books.
- Myth Adventures
series33 books1978
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 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.
- Enchanted Pilgrimage
Clifford D. Simakstandalone novel1975
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more
A scholar at a remote university stumbles onto a manuscript that hints at forgotten secrets buried in the Wasteland, a blighted region where magic and monsters still linger at the edge of an otherwise rational world. Setting out to track the manuscript's truth to its source, he gathers a company of odd fellow travelers along the way -- the kind of companions a quest like this tends to attract -- each with their own stake in what they might find. Clifford D. Simak folds his familiar pastoral, faintly melancholy tone into a full-blown fantasy quest, blending scholarly curiosity with old magic. A standalone fantasy novel by Clifford D. Simak.
- Peter Pan Universe
universe112 books1902
Start herePeter Pan · Start here
similar byfantasy
Second star to the right, and straight on till morning — and there it is, the island that every child dreams once and then, growing up, contrives to forget. Neverland: mermaids in the lagoon, a ticking crocodile with a clock in its belly, a pirate nursing his severed hand, and above it all the boy who will not grow up, forever flying, forever heartless in the lovely careless way that only children are. It begins with J. M. Barrie — the 1904 stage play, the chapters of Kensington Gardens, and the novel Peter and Wendy that fixed Peter, Wendy, Tinker Bell, Hook and the Lost Boys in place. From that small window a wide world has flown. Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson supply the how-it-all-began in their Starcatchers books, chasing falling starstuff aboard a doomed ship to explain why one orphan came to fly and never age. A whole bright shelf tends Tinker Bell's Pixie Hollow — the Disney Fairies and Fairy Haven tales, Kiki Thorpe's Never Girls — while Heidi Schulz hands the wheel to Hook's own daughter, and stranger, dimmer corners carry the island into far darker weather. Many hands, one archipelago; no single map governs them all. What sets it apart is the sweetness with a blade in it — wonder shadowed always by the ache of leaving, of mothers who keep the window open and children who fly home too late. Newcomers should begin where it began, with Barrie's Peter and Wendy, then, for the origin, take the Starcatchers books in their own order. The rest of Neverland waits, as it always does, for whoever still remembers how to reach it.
- Circle of Magic (Tamora Pierce)
series4 books1997
part of Circle of Magic
similar byfound familysecondary worldfantasy
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.
- Minecraft
universe207 books2014
Start hereThe Island · Start here
similar by+2 more
The sun is going down, and you have no walls. Somewhere in the dark a green thing is walking toward you on four stubby legs, and it does not stop and it does not speak, and when it reaches you it will hiss. So you dig. You punch wood from a tree, shape it into planks, stack the planks into a box just big enough to outlast the night — and in the morning the world is yours again, cubic and endless and waiting to be reshaped one block at a time. This is the Overworld: squared-off oceans, blocky hills, deep glittering mines, and beyond them the burning Nether and the floating void of the End, where everything can be broken down and built back into something else. The books that grow from it come in two very different sizes. On one shelf sits Mojang's own line — standalone novels like Max Brooks' tale of a castaway learning the island's rules the hard way, the monster-hunting Mob Squad, the illustrated Woodsword Chronicles, and rack on rack of official handbooks. Against it surges a whole cottage industry of unofficial "Minecrafter" fiction for young readers: the diary-comic misadventures of Diary of a Minecraft Zombie and The Creeper Diaries, Winter Morgan's brisk quest tales, and Mark Cheverton's Gameknight999 saga of a boy trapped inside the game. No single timeline binds them; each series keeps its own. What holds it together is not a plot but a place, and a feeling — the small triumph of surviving one more night, the itch to see past the next ridge, the freedom to build the thing you pictured. Newcomers wanting a story with a spine should start with Max Brooks' The Island, self-contained and quietly clever; younger readers chasing laughs can drop into Diary of a Minecraft Zombie or Woodsword Chronicles at book one. Beyond that, pick a mine and start digging.
