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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 Jhereg

anchored on:fantasysword and sorcerysecondary worldfirst personwizardsassassins+2 more

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 about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • 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 The Hobbit
                  The Hobbit

                  series · 2 books · 1937

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byadventuroussecondary 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.

                • Cover of The Immortals
                  The Immortals

                  series · 6 books · 1992

                  part of Tortall

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasywizards+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.

                • Cover of Song of the Lioness
                  Song of the Lioness

                  series · 5 books · 1983

                  part of Tortall

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasyfirst person+1 more

                  The Song of the Lioness is a young adult series of fantasy novels published in the 1980s by Tamora Pierce. The series consists of four books: Alanna: The First Adventure (1983), In the Hand of the Goddess (1984), The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986) and Lioness Rampant (1988).

                • Cover of Conan Universe
                  Conan Universe

                  series · 205 books · 1932

                  part of Hyborian Age

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldsword and sorceryfantasy

                  The Conan books are sword and sorcery fantasies featuring the character of Conan the Cimmerian originally created by Robert E. Howard. Written by numerous authors and issued by numerous publishers, they include both novels and short stories, the latter assembled in various combinations over the years by the several publishers. The character has proven durably popular, resulting in Conan stories being produced after Howard's death by such later writers as Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Robert Jordan, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner. Some of these writers finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard, or rewrote Howard stories which originally featured different characters. Most post-Howard Conan stories, however, are completely original works. In total, more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories featuring the Conan character have been written by authors other than Howard. This article describes and discusses notable book editions of the Conan stories.

                • Cover of The Princess and the Goblin
                  The Princess and the Goblin

                  series · 2 books · 1871

                  completed

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasy

                • Cover of Pusadian
                  Pusadian

                  series · 9 books · 1951

                  completed

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldsword and sorceryfantasy+1 more

                  The Pusadian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, begun in the early 1950s and written under the influence of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The series, also known as the Poseidonis series, prefigured the numerous sword & sorcery settings of the 1960s and 1970s.

                • Cover of Sun Wolf and Starhawk
                  Sun Wolf and Starhawk

                  series · 7 books · 1984

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasysword and sorcerywizards

                  Barbara Hambly's series begins with the city of Mandrigyn conquered and its men enslaved in the mines of the wizard-king Altiokis, forcing surviving noblewoman Sheera Galernas to kidnap the mercenary captain Sun Wolf and press him into training the city's women as fighters. Sun Wolf's partnership with his lieutenant Starhawk carries across The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, and further volumes as both are drawn deeper into magic neither originally wanted.

                • Cover of Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz
                  Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz

                  series · 11 books · 2007

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasysword and sorcerywizards

                  Garth Nix's Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz stories follow a scarred mercenary swordsman and his constant companion, a sentient puppet animated by the spirit of a formidable sorcerer, sent as agents to put down dangerous rogue gods across a wide fantasy world. Rather than one continuous novel, the series unfolds through linked novellas and short stories gathered into standalone collections, mixing swashbuckling action with dry, understated humor. The two collections compile stories published from 2007 into the early 2020s.

                • Cover of The Crescent Moon Kingdoms
                  The Crescent Moon Kingdoms

                  series · 1 book · 2012

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                  Saladin Ahmed's The Crescent Moon Kingdoms opens with Throne of the Crescent Moon, set in a realm of djenn and ghuls where a power struggle between an iron-fisted Khalif and a mysterious master thief called the Falcon Prince erupts alongside a series of brutal, supernatural murders. A handful of reluctant heroes must uncover the truth behind the killings before the kingdom tears itself apart.

                • Cover of Tiger and Del
                  Tiger and Del

                  series · 10 books · 1985

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldsword and sorceryfantasy

                  Jennifer Roberson's fantasy series pairs Tiger, a desert-born sword-dancer from the south, with Del, a Northern swordswoman trained in her own tradition of blade-magic, as reluctant partners across a hostile borderland. Beginning with Sword-Dancer and continuing across six numbered novels, the series follows their partnership, and eventual romance, through decades of adventures and shifting political stakes.

                • Cover of Narnia
                  Narnia

                  series · 26 books · 1950

                  part of Narnia Universe

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasy

                  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.

                • Cover of Mention My Name in Atlantis
                  Mention My Name in Atlantis

                  John Jakes · standalone novel · 1972

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasysword and sorcerypolitical intrigue

                  From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: The continent of Atlantis had troubles enough before Conax the Barbarian washed ashore. For Hoptor the Vintner, who considered himself a citizen of importance, things were going from bad to worse. The king was on his last legs, his generals were plotting, there were those scary lights in the sky, and Hoptor's favorite girl was being put up for auction on the slave block. Then Conax, the self-styled king of Chimeria - a place nobody ever heard of - turned up at the auction with his broadsword, his barbaric manners, and his hair-trigger temper. That wast the last straw. From then on Atlantis was doomed!

                • Cover of Dragaeran Empire
                  Dragaeran Empire

                  series · 27 books · 1983

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasypolitical intrigue+3 more

                  Brokedown Palace is Steven Brust's standalone novel set outside his main Vlad Taltos series but within the same Dragaera world, following four brothers in the human kingdom of Fenario after one of them, a volatile king, gravely wounds another. Brust weaves in interspersed folklore chapters drawing on Hungarian tradition, using the family's crumbling castle as a recurring symbol for both a body and a disintegrating kingdom. The Baron of Magister Valley is a later, separate standalone entry in the same wider Dragaera setting rather than a direct sequel.

                • Cover of The Princess Bride
                  The Princess Bride

                  William Goldman · standalone novel · 1973

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                  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.

                • Cover of Redwall
                  Redwall

                  series · 22 books · 1986

                  completed

                  part of Redwall Universe

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasy

                  Redwall is Brian Jacques's long-running series of fantasy novels for young readers, set within the redwall-universe of Redwall Abbey and its community of anthropomorphic animals. It opened in 1986 with the mouse Matthias searching for the lost sword of the legendary Martin the Warrior to defend the abbey from the invading rat Cluny the Scourge, and grew across 22 largely stand-alone novels published through 2011, each set in a different generation of the abbey's history and following its mice, otters, badgers, and vermin adversaries.

                • Cover of The Quest of the Riddle-Master
                  The Quest of the Riddle-Master

                  series · 3 books · 1976

                  completed

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                  Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master trilogy follows Morgon, prince of the small island of Hed, whose discovery of three star-shaped birthmarks on his forehead draws him into a search for his own hidden identity and a confrontation with ancient, shape-shifting powers. Drawing on Celtic myth, the three books are prized for their lyrical prose and riddle-based magic, and are often cited among the best high fantasy of the 1970s.

                • Cover of The Traitor Spy Trilogy
                  The Traitor Spy Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  part of Kyralia series

                  similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasywizardspolitical intrigue

                  Trudi Canavan is an Australian writer of fantasy novels, best known for her best-selling fantasy trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five. While establishing her writing career she worked as a graphic designer. She completed her third trilogy, The Traitor Spy trilogy, in August 2012 with The Traitor Queen. Subsequently, Canavan has written a series called Millennium's Rule, with a completely new setting consisting of multiple worlds which characters can cross between. Though originally planned as a trilogy, a fourth and final book in the Millennium's Rule series was published.

                • Cover of The Kingkiller Chronicle
                  The Kingkiller Chronicle

                  series · 8 books · 2002

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                  The Kingkiller Chronicle is a planned fantasy trilogy by the American writer Patrick Rothfuss. The first two books, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, were released in 2007 and 2011. The books released in the series have sold over 10 million copies.

                • Cover of Howl's Castle
                  Howl's Castle

                  series · 3 books · 1986

                  completed

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                  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).

                • Cover of Knight's Wyrd
                  Knight's Wyrd

                  Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald · standalone novel · 1992

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                  Will Odosson sets out on a series of dangerous adventures after a wizard predicts that he will meet death before a year has passed.

                • Cover of Jack of Shadows
                  Jack of Shadows

                  series · 4 books · 1971

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                  Roger Zelazny's Jack of Shadows (1971) is a single novel set on a tidally locked world split between a permanently lit hemisphere ruled by science and a permanently dark one ruled by magic. Its protagonist, Jack of Shadows, draws his power from shadow itself and is nearly helpless in full light or full darkness but formidable wherever shadows fall; the book follows his quest to recover a lost artifact, the Key called Kolwynia, and the power -- and responsibility -- that comes with finding it.

                • Cover of Spellsinger
                  Spellsinger

                  series · 9 books · 1983

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                  Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series follows Jon-Tom, a UCLA law student pulled into a fantasy world by the wizard Clothahump, where he discovers he can cast spells by singing along with his guitar. That world is populated almost entirely by anthropomorphic animals -- otters, rabbits, turtles -- with humans a rare minority, and across eight books published between 1983 and 2004, Jon-Tom and his companions repeatedly clash with the insectoid Plated Folk raiding the western territories.

                • Cover of Sparhawk
                  Sparhawk

                  universe · 6 books · 1989

                  Start hereElenium · Start here

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                  Sir Sparhawk is not a young man, and he has little patience for the pageantry his order pretends to. A Pandion Knight of the militant Elene Church, he rides home from a long exile to find his kingdom rotten with intrigue and his young queen, Ehlana, poisoned — kept alive only inside a shell of living crystal. To wake her he must find Bhelliom, a jewel with the power to remake the world or unmake it. So begins a long ride across the continent of Eosia. This is warm, character-first epic fantasy from David Eddings, told across two trilogies. The Elenium — The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose — pits Sparhawk against a corrupt church and a hungry elder god. The Tamuli — Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City — carries him east into the vast Tamul Empire, where older enemies stir. Around him gathers a quarrelsome company: the Styric sorceress Sephrenia, the thief-boy Talen, the plain-spoken squire Kurik, and a small, imperious goddess who plays a set of pipes and always, somehow, gets her way. The pleasure here is the talk — grizzled knights trading dry insults between miracles and murders, a hero who solves as many problems with patience as with a sword. It never reaches for grimness or grand obscurity; it wants your good company for a long journey. Newcomers begin with The Diamond Throne and read the six in order: the Elenium stands whole on its own before the Tamuli widens the map.

                • Cover of Riftwar Saga
                  Riftwar Saga

                  series · 7 books · 1982

                  part of The Riftwar Universe

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                  The Riftwar Saga is Raymond E. Feist's debut fantasy trilogy, opening with Magician, in which an orphaned apprentice named Pug is swept up when otherworldly invaders emerge through a dimensional rift into the frontier kingdom of Midkemia. Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon carry the resulting war to its close, and the trilogy became the founding entry of Feist's much larger Riftwar Cycle.