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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 Khaled

anchored on:fantasymiddle eastmythic fantasygodsdesert

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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 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 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 The Ship of Ishtar
                  The Ship of Ishtar

                  A. Merritt · standalone novel · 1926

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  From the back cover of the 1991 Collier paperback: The ship in the stone - When John Kenton first gets the shipment from an ancient Babylonian site, he finds a block of stone nothing more. But when he strikes the stone, it answers with a strange sound that challenges him - summons him - to release whatever secret lies buried within. When he finally manages to crack open the rock, a mist escapes. When the air clears the stone is gone except for its hidden contents: a perfectly sculpted Babylonian ship riding atop the turquoise waves of a turbulent sea. Before he knows what happened, Kenton is swept away from the room in which he stands, to the deck of the ancient ship, alive, with the priestesses of Ishtar and the priests of Nergal agape before him. This is but the start of an adventure that will consume John Kenton and seize his life forever. One look at the radiant beauty of the Goddess's favored servant, Sharane, and he knows that he must possess this woman, no matter what terrible trials lie in his way.

                • Cover of Celestial Kingdom
                  Celestial Kingdom

                  series · 4 books · 2022

                  similar bygodsfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                  Sue Lynn Tan's Celestial Kingdom duology reimagines the Chinese legend of the moon goddess Chang'e, following her daughter Xingyin as she seeks to free her mother from an enchantment binding her to the moon. It opens with Daughter of the Moon Goddess (2022) and concludes with Heart of the Sun Warrior, with the companion collection Tales of the Celestial Kingdom and the further novel Immortal extending the same mythic world.

                • Cover of To Reign in Hell
                  To Reign in Hell

                  Steven Brust · standalone novel · 1984

                  similar bygodsfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                  To Reign in Hell is a 1984 fantasy novel by American writer Steven Brust. It deals with the revolt of angels in Heaven from a point of view that casts Satan as a sympathetic protagonist. The novel appears to be heavily influenced by John Milton's Paradise Lost.

                • Cover of Day of the Giants
                  Day of the Giants

                  Lester del Rey · standalone novel · 1959

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  Day of the Giants is a fantasy novel by American writer Lester del Rey, expanded from his novella "When the World Tottered," first published in Fantastic Adventures, vol. 12, no. 12, December 1950. As a novel, it was first published in hardcover by Avalon Books in February 1959, and in paperback by Airmont Books in March 1964. The Airmont edition was reprinted in December 1972 and January 1976. Wildside Press reissued the novel as an ebook in February 2014, and in trade paperback in May 2022. The trade edition includes a bonus del Rey short story, "The One-Eyed Man," originally published under the pseudonym Philip St. John in Astounding Science Fiction, vol. 35, No. 3, May 1945. The book has also appeared in Italian and Czech translation.

                • Cover of American Gods
                  American Gods

                  series · 10 books · 1999

                  similar bygodsfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                  Neil Gaiman's American Gods (2001) follows Shadow Moon, an ex-convict who takes a job as bodyguard to a mysterious drifter who is secretly the Norse god Odin, and is drawn into a brewing conflict between the old immigrant gods of myth and the new gods of media, technology, and modern American life. Gaiman's 2005 novel Anansi Boys is set in the same mythological world and shares the trickster god Mr. Nancy, but follows a different protagonist and story, making it a loose companion rather than a direct sequel.

                • Cover of The Willing Spirit
                  The Willing Spirit

                  Piers Anthony & Alfred Tella · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  Hari, a remarkably well-set-up young lad, has spent his entire life in a small village with his pious widowed mother, and the purity of his soul is largely uncorrupted by worldly sophistication. But now, poised on the brink of manhood, he feels himself moved by strange new urgings -- urgings that will lead him far from the quiet life he has known. Though these stirrings are unfamiliar to him, virtuous Hari recognizes them for what they are: a hunger for spiritual enlightenment. As so many have before, he sets his feet upon the pilgrim's path, becoming a wanderer in search of true wisdom. But who can know the ways of the Gods, or foretell the twists of fortune? Unbeknownst to Hari, his quest has become the subject of a wager between two immortals: Mohini, a pulchritudinous Apsara; and the vilely demonic Ravana, who lusts after her.

                • Cover of The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps
                  The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

                  Kai Ashante Wilson · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasydesert

                  "Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors' artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight. The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive. The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive"-- Provided by publisher.

                • Cover of Ever
                  Ever

                  Gail Carson Levine · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  Fourteen-year-old Kezi and Olus, Akkan god of the winds, fall in love and together try to change her fate--to be sacrificed to a Hyte god because of a rash promise her father made--through a series of quests that might make her immortal.

                • Cover of The Green Lady and the King of Shadows
                  The Green Lady and the King of Shadows

                  Moyra Caldecott · standalone novel · 1989

                  similar bygodsfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                  Drawing on folklore, myth and legend, Moyra Caldecott tells the story of the struggle between good and evil, St. Collen and the mighty Gwyn ap Nudd, a confrontation involving the Earth Goddess and, ultimately, the highest powers in the universe.

                • Cover of The Spear Cuts Through Water
                  The Spear Cuts Through Water

                  Simon Jimenez · standalone novel · 2022

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  The Spear Cuts Through Water is a 2022 fantasy novel by Filipino-American writer Simon Jimenez. The novel contains a frame story about a grandchild listening to stories of the Old Country; it also tells the story of two men who journey across the Old Country with a dying goddess. It is Jimenez's second novel. The novel received critical acclaim, winning the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel as well as the Crawford Award. It was shortlisted for the 2023 Ignyte Award and Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.

                • Cover of Vessel
                  Vessel

                  Sarah Beth Durst · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasydesert

                  When the goddess Bayla fails to take over Liyana's body, Liyana's people abandon her in the desert to find a more worthy vessel, but she soon meets Korbyn, who says the souls of seven deities have been stolen and he needs Liyana's help to find them.

                • Cover of Dogsbody
                  Dogsbody

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  Sirius the dog star, is reborn on earth as a puppy with a mission to search for the lost Zoi, the murder weapon of the stars.

                • Cover of The Shiva Trilogy
                  The Shiva Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  similar bygodsadventurousmythic fantasy+1 more

                • Cover of Deeplight
                  Deeplight

                  Frances Hardinge · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurous

                  Deeplight is a young adult fantasy novel by Frances Hardinge, published October 31, 2019 by Macmillan Children's Books. It is her 9th novel.

                • Cover of The Chosen Prince
                  The Chosen Prince

                  Diane Stanley · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  "Prince Alexos, the long-awaited champion of the goddess Athene, follows the course of his destiny through war and loss and a deadly confrontation with his enemy to its end: shipwreck on a magical, fog-shrouded island. There he meets the unforgettable Aria and faces the greatest challenge of his life. Based loosely on Shakespeare's The Tempest"-- Prince Alexos, the long-awaited champion of the goddess Athene, follows the course of his destiny through war and loss and a deadly confrontation with his enemy to its end: a shipwreck on a magical, fog-shrouded island.

                • Cover of Saga of the Unfated
                  Saga of the Unfated

                  series · 2 books · 2024

                  similar bygodsfantasy+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 Runemarks
                  Runemarks

                  series · 5 books · 2007

                  similar bygodsfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                • Cover of Mabinogi
                  Mabinogi

                  series · 4 books · 1936

                  completed

                  similar bygodsmythic fantasyfantasy

                  Evangeline Walton's four novels retell the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, the core cycle of medieval Welsh myth compiled from oral tradition in the 12th-13th centuries, following its original figures through their original stories rather than an invented plot. Walton's reinterpretation began in 1936 with what became Prince of Annwn, decades before the rest of the cycle followed; all four were eventually gathered together as one series. Her retellings are considered an early, influential modern engagement with the Mabinogion, alongside later ones by other writers.

                • Cover of The Dreamers
                  The Dreamers

                  series · 5 books · 2003

                  completed

                  similar bygodsadventurousfantasy

                  The Dreamers is the title of a fantasy book series by American writer David Eddings and his wife Leigh Eddings. The story revolves around four beings known as The Elder Gods residing in the land of Dhrall: Dahlaine of the North, Veltan of the South, Zelana of the West and Aracia of the East. They must recruit the help of outlanders to destroy the fiendish Vlagh and prevent its attempt at world conquest. The Elder Gods are not permitted to use their powers to kill, but the young Dreamers can use their dreams to predict and affect the future.

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

                  series · 14 books · 1983

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byfantasymythic fantasy+2 more

                  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 The Dark Star Trilogy
                  The Dark Star Trilogy

                  series · 2 books · 2019

                  similar byfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                  Marlon James's Dark Star Trilogy opens with Black Leopard, Red Wolf, in which a mercenary tracker is hired to find a missing boy and is drawn into a war between kingdoms across a continent built from African history and mythology. The second volume, Moon Witch, Spider King, retells much of the same span of time from the perspective of a rival witness, deliberately contradicting the first narrator's account. The trilogy is conceived as one conflict viewed through incompatible narrators rather than a linear continuation.

                • Cover of Eight Days of Luke
                  Eight Days of Luke

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar bygodsfantasymythic fantasy+1 more

                  Eight Days of Luke is a children's fantasy novel written by Diana Wynne Jones published in 1975. It tells the tale of a neglected English boy who encounters what prove to be figures from Norse mythology.

                • Cover of Promise of Shadows
                  Promise of Shadows

                  Justina Ireland · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar bygodsfantasyadventurousmythic fantasy

                  As a human/god offspring, Zephyr Mourning is destined for a life of servitude but when she uses a forbidden dark power to kill the minor god who murdered her sister she is sent to Tartarus, where she discovers that she may be the Nyx, a dark goddess prophesied to change the balance of power.

                • Cover of Between the Rivers
                  Between the Rivers

                  Harry Turtledove · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar bygodsfantasyreflectivemythic fantasy

                  Between the Rivers is a fantasy novel by Harry Turtledove. The book centers on a fantasy realm, analogous to ancient Mesopotamia, that is based on the myths and legends of Sumer and Babylon.