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

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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 Hidden Clause

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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 centered on wizards, mages, and other learned practitioners of magic as protagonists or masters.
  • 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.

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 Tales of the Flat Earth
                  Tales of the Flat Earth

                  series · 14 books · 1978

                  completed

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy

                  Tales from the Flat Earth is a fantasy series by British writer Tanith Lee. The novels take inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights and are similarly structured as interconnected stories. The series has been well received, and Death's Master, the second book in the series, won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1980.

                • Cover of This Woven Kingdom
                  This Woven Kingdom

                  series · 4 books · 2022

                  similar bysecondary world+1 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 Kingdom of the Wicked (Kerri Maniscalco)
                  Kingdom of the Wicked (Kerri Maniscalco)

                  series · 6 books · 2020

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                  Kerri Maniscalco's trilogy follows Emilia, a Sicilian witch whose twin sister is murdered by a serial killer targeting witches, forcing her into an uneasy bargain with Wrath, one of the seven princes of Hell, to hunt the culprit. Kingdom of the Wicked and its sequels, Kingdom of the Cursed and Kingdom of the Feared, escalate from that investigation into a wider entanglement with the political rivalries of Hell itself. The series pairs a murder-mystery hook with a slow-burn romance between Emilia and Wrath.

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

                  series · 4 books · 2021

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+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 Ravenspire
                  Ravenspire

                  series · 4 books · 2016

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more

                  Ravenspire retells classic fairy tales as loosely connected stories set in a shared fantasy world, beginning with a Snow White-inspired tale in which a princess must reclaim her father's throne from a queen who seized it through dark magic. C.J. Redwine's four-book series moves between different Ravenspire kingdoms, each entry drawing on another fairy tale - from Aladdin to Sleeping Beauty - while sharing overlapping characters and a common world.

                • Cover of Caraval
                  Caraval

                  series · 4 books · 2017

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy

                  Caraval is Stephanie Garber's YA fantasy trilogy, Caraval (2017), Legendary and Finale, with Spectacular later extending the story. It follows Scarlett Dragna into a legendary, once-a-year magical performance where the line between spectacle and real danger blurs, as she searches for her missing sister inside it. The books form one continuing story rather than standalone volumes.

                • Cover of The Immortal Brothers
                  The Immortal Brothers

                  series · 4 books · 2015

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy

                  Jacquelyn Frank's The Immortal Brothers is a paranormal romance quartet -- Cursed by Fire, Cursed by Ice, Bound by Sin, and Bound in Darkness -- all published by Ballantine Books in 2015, following different brothers across linked romantic storylines.

                • Cover of Crave (Tracy Wolff)
                  Crave (Tracy Wolff)

                  series · 7 books · 2020

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                • Cover of City of Nightmares
                  City of Nightmares

                  series · 2 books · 2023

                  similar by+3 more

                • Cover of Parallel Universe
                  Parallel Universe

                  series · 5 books · 1991

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy

                • Cover of Julian
                  Julian

                  series · 19 books · 1976

                  similar bydeal with the devilsecondary worldfantasy

                • Cover of Wicked Games (Kaylie Smith)
                  Wicked Games (Kaylie Smith)

                  series · 2 books · 2024

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                • Cover of Deliciously Dark Fairytales
                  Deliciously Dark Fairytales

                  series · 6 books · 2021

                  similar bysecondary world+1 more

                • Cover of Strange Grace
                  Strange Grace

                  Tessa Gratton · standalone novel · 2018

                  similar bydeal with the devilsecondary worldfantasy

                  Long ago, a village made a bargain with the devil: to ensure their prosperity, when the Slaughter Moon rises, the village must sacrifice a young man to the depths of the Devil's Forest. Only this year, the Slaughter Moon has risen early. Bound by duty, secrets, and the love they share for one another, Mariwen, a spirited witch; Rhun, the expected saint; and Arthur, a restless outcast, will each have a role to play as the devil demands a body to fill the bargain. But the devil these friends find is not the one they expect, and the lies they uncover will turn their town--and their hearts--inside out. Something's gone wrong with the bargain.... This description comes from the publisher.

                • Cover of The Forbidden Wish
                  The Forbidden Wish

                  Jessica Khoury · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more

                  When Aladdin discovers Zahra's jinni lamp, Zahra is thrust back into a world she hasn't seen in hundreds of years—a world where magic is forbidden and Zahra's very existence is illegal. She must disguise herself to stay alive, using ancient shape-shifting magic, until her new master has selected his three wishes. But when the King of the Jinn offers Zahra a chance to be free of her lamp forever, she seizes the opportunity—only to discover she is falling in love with Aladdin. When saving herself means betraying him, Zahra must decide once and for all: is winning her freedom worth losing her heart? As time unravels and her enemies close in, Zahra finds herself suspended between danger and desire

                • Cover of Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming
                  Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming

                  series · 3 books · 1991

                  completed

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                • Cover of The Bargainer
                  The Bargainer

                  series · 4 books · 2016

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                • Cover of Fairy Queens
                  Fairy Queens

                  series · 7 books · 2013

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                • Cover of The Dark Caravan Cycle
                  The Dark Caravan Cycle

                  series · 3 books · 2014

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                • Cover of The Devil's West
                  The Devil's West

                  series · 7 books · 2014

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                • Cover of Roses Red
                  Roses Red

                  series · 2 books · 2019

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                • Cover of Oath of Fire
                  Oath of Fire

                  series · 2 books · 2024

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                • Cover of Stealing Death
                  Stealing Death

                  Janet Lee Carey · standalone novel · 2009

                  similar bydeal with the devilsecondary worldfantasy

                  After losing his family, except for his younger sister Jilly, and their home in a tragic fire, seventeen-year-old Kipp Corwin, a poor farmer, must wrestle with death itself in order to save Jilly and the woman he loves.

                • KC
                  King of Chivial's Blades

                  series · 11 books · 1998

                  completed

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