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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 Overkill

anchored on:fantasysecondary worldsword and sorcery

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 Birthgrave
                  Birthgrave

                  series · 3 books · 1975

                  completed

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy+2 more

                  Tanith Lee's Birthgrave trilogy (The Birthgrave, Vazkor Son of Vazkor, Quest for the White Witch, 1975-1978) opens with an amnesiac woman waking inside a volcano with no memory of who she is, and follows her journey through a brutal, quasi-medieval world in search of her identity, wielding strange powers she doesn't understand along the way. She eventually learns she is one of the last of the Old Ones, an ancient, nearly extinct people, and must reckon with the harm her own vanished civilization once did.

                • Cover of A Song of Ice and Fire
                  A Song of Ice and Fire

                  series · 14 books · 1996

                  part of World of Ice and Fire

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy

                  A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the series as a trilogy, has released five out of seven planned volumes. The most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Since then, Martin has been working on the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.

                • C
                  Corum

                  series · 6 books · 1971

                  part of Moorcock's Multiverse

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasyadventurous+2 more

                • Cover of The Swordbearer
                  The Swordbearer

                  Glen Cook · standalone novel · 1982

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasysword and sorceryadventurous+1 more

                  The Swordbearer is a 1982 novel written by Glen Cook.

                • Cover of The Drenai Saga
                  The Drenai Saga

                  series · 15 books · 1984

                  completed

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasyadventurous+2 more

                  David Andrew Gemmell was a British author of heroic fantasy, best known for his debut novel, Legend. A former journalist and newspaper editor, Gemmell had his first work of fiction published in 1984. He went on to write over thirty novels. Gemmell's works display violence, yet also explore themes of honour, loyalty and redemption. There is always a strong heroic theme but nearly always the heroes are flawed in some way. With over one million copies sold, his work continues to sell worldwide.

                • TO
                  The Old Kingdom / Abhorsen milieu

                  series · 11 books · 1995

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more

                  The Old Kingdom, or Abhorsen in North America and the UK, is a fantasy series written by Australian author Garth Nix. It originated in 1995 with the novel Sabriel and has continued in the novels Lirael (2001), Abhorsen (2003), Goldenhand (2016), and Terciel & Elinor (2021), as well as a prequel novel titled Clariel (2014). The Old Kingdom also consists of the novella The Creature in the Case (2005) and various other short fiction.

                • Cover of The Elric Saga
                  The Elric Saga

                  series · 72 books · 1961

                  part of Moorcock's Multiverse

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+3 more

                  The Elric Saga is Michael Moorcock's sequence of sword-and-sorcery novels about Elric, the frail, sorcery-dependent last emperor of the ancient island empire of Melniboné, who abandons his throne to wander a violent, magic-soaked world carrying a sentient, soul-drinking black sword. Core entries such as Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and Stormbringer trace his path toward a self-destructive destiny, and Elric was later folded into Moorcock's wider Eternal Champion multiverse, of which this saga is one strand.

                • Cover of Kane
                  Kane

                  series · 25 books · 1970

                  completed

                  similar bydarksecondary worldsword and sorceryfantasy+1 more

                  Kane is a fictional character created by American author Karl Edward Wagner, who is the protagonist of three novels and about 20 short stories published between 1970 and 1985. Most Kane tales are sword and sorcery with strong elements of gothic horror and set in a grim, pre-medieval world which is nonetheless ancient and rich in history. In some of Wagner's later stories, Kane appears in the present day—for example, as a drug dealer in "Lacunae" and as a somewhat suspect publishing magnate in "At First Just Ghostly".

                • Cover of Brak the Barbarian
                  Brak the Barbarian

                  series · 16 books · 1963

                  completed

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasysword and sorceryadventurous+1 more

                  John Jakes's Brak the Barbarian follows his own wandering barbarian swordsman, Brak, through sword-and-sorcery adventures modeled on the pulp tradition of the 1930s and '40s but original to Jakes rather than adapted from an earlier author. The character's stories were published across several collections and short novels from the 1960s into 1980.

                • Cover of Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt
                  Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt

                  series · 39 books · 1988

                  part of Forgotten Realms

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasyadventurous+2 more

                  The Legend of Drizzt is a series of fantasy novels by R. A. Salvatore that began in 1988, and consists of 39 books as of August 15, 2023. They are based in the Forgotten Realms setting in the dimension of Abeir-Toril on the continent Faerûn in the Dungeons & Dragons universe currently published and owned by Wizards of the Coast. It combines the series The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Legacy of the Drow, Paths of Darkness, The Hunter's Blades Trilogy, and other sets into an abridged compilation. Drizzt Do'Urden is the main character of most of the books.

                • Cover of The Crescent Moon Kingdoms
                  The Crescent Moon Kingdoms

                  series · 1 book · 2012

                  similar bysecondary worldsword and sorceryfantasyadventurous+1 more

                  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 Gormenghast
                  Gormenghast

                  series · 6 books · 1946

                  completed

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy

                  Gormenghast is a fantasy series by British author Mervyn Peake, about the inhabitants of Castle Gormenghast, a sprawling, decaying, Gothic structure. Originally conceived as a single on-going novel, the series was ended by Peake's death and comprises three novels: Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950) and Titus Alone (1959); and a novella, Boy in Darkness (1956). Peake was writing a fourth novel, Titus Awakes, at the time of his death in 1968. The book was completed by Peake's widow Maeve Gilmore in the 1970s, but was not published until 2011 after it was discovered by their family.

                • Cover of Dilvish
                  Dilvish

                  series · 13 books · 1965

                  completed

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasysword and sorceryadventurous+1 more

                  Centuries ago, the half-elf warrior Dilvish tried to stop a dark sorcerer named Jelerak from completing a terrible ritual, and paid for it by being turned to stone and having his soul cast into Hell. Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned stories bring him back when the people he once protected need him again, reuniting him with his strange metal steed Black for a string of sword-and-sorcery adventures built around his long-delayed vengeance against Jelerak. The tales run as short, episodic quests rather than one continuous plot.

                • Cover of Conan Universe
                  Conan Universe

                  series · 205 books · 1932

                  part of Hyborian Age

                  similar bysecondary worldsword and sorceryfantasyadventurous

                  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 Sun Wolf and Starhawk
                  Sun Wolf and Starhawk

                  series · 7 books · 1984

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasysword and sorceryadventurous+1 more

                  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 Winterlands
                  Winterlands

                  series · 7 books · 1986

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more

                  Winterlands follows John Aversin, a practical, unglamorous dragon-slayer, and Jenny Waynest, the self-taught village witch he loves, as their small corner of a forgotten kingdom keeps getting dragged into magic far bigger than either of them wanted. Barbara Hambly's series opens with Dragonsbane (1985), which deliberately undercuts the 'brave knight slays dragon' story it seems to promise, and continues across Dragonshadow, Knight of the Demon Queen, and Dragonstar as Jenny pursues real magical training. It favors domestic detail and moral complexity over conventional high-fantasy grandeur.

                • TC
                  Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

                  series · 11 books · 1977

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy

                  The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a series of ten high fantasy novels written by American author Stephen R. Donaldson. The series began as a trilogy, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. This was followed by another trilogy, The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and finally a tetralogy, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

                • Cover of Wars of Vis
                  Wars of Vis

                  series · 3 books · 1976

                  completed

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy+2 more

                  Tanith Lee's Wars of Vis trilogy is set on a world of feuding city-states, following the warlord Raldnor Am Anackire's rise as long-buried tensions between the pale-skinned Vis and darker-skinned Lowlanders erupt into open war and the revelation of hidden power. The Storm Lord opens the trilogy, continued by Anackire and The White Serpent.

                • Cover of Darwath
                  Darwath

                  series · 7 books · 1982

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy

                  Darwath begins with two modern-day Californians pulled through a portal into a dying medieval world under siege from the Dark, shape-shifting monsters that hunt by night and are driving civilization underground. The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight make up the original trilogy; Barbara Hambly returned to the same characters decades later in Mother of Winter and Icefalcon's Quest. It's portal fantasy built around practical, unglamorous survival rather than chosen-one heroics.

                • FK
                  Forest Kingdom

                  series · 11 books · 1990

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+2 more

                  Simon R. Green's Forest Kingdom opens with Blue Moon Rising, in which Prince Rupert rides out into the Tanglewood on his unicorn to face down the good-and-evil, dragons-and-princesses trappings of a fairy-tale kingdom that turns out to hide darker complications underneath. The following books widen the cast around Rupert and the kingdom's court while keeping the same fantasy-adventure register. It's traditional-fantasy-with-a-twist rather than grimdark, built on familiar fairy-tale furniture used against type.

                • Cover of Gor
                  Gor

                  series · 41 books · 1966

                  similar bydarksecondary worldsword and sorcery+1 more

                  Gor is the fictional setting for a series of sword and planet novels written by philosophy professor John Lange, writing as John Norman. The setting was first described in the 1966 novel Tarnsman of Gor. The series is inspired by science fantasy pulp fiction works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, such as the Barsoom series. It also includes erotica and philosophical content. The Gor series repeatedly depicts men abducting and physically and sexually brutalizing women, who grow to enjoy their submissive state. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Norman's "sexual philosophy" is "widely detested", but the books have inspired a Gorean subculture.

                • Cover of Beklan Empire
                  Beklan Empire

                  series · 2 books · 1974

                  completed

                  similar bysecondary worldfantasy+2 more

                  Two standalone novels by Richard Adams set in the same invented world, the Beklan Empire, an ancient, quasi-Mediterranean land of god-kings, slave markets, and warring city-states. Shardik (1974) follows a hunter swept into a religious and military frenzy over a giant bear believed to be the vessel of a god; Maia (1984) turns to an earlier generation of the empire and follows a slave girl's rise through its court and conquests. The two novels share only their setting, not characters or plot.

                • Cover of Six of Crows
                  Six of Crows

                  series · 3 books · 2015

                  part of Grishaverse

                  similar bydarksecondary 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.

                • Cover of The Dark Star Trilogy
                  The Dark Star Trilogy

                  series · 2 books · 2019

                  similar bydarksecondary worldfantasy

                  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.