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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 Reign Fall

anchored on:fantasydemonsour worldcontemporaryyoung adultparanormal+5 more

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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 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 about mourning — living through the death of a loved one and what loss does to the survivors.
  • 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 James and the Giant Peach
                  James and the Giant Peach

                  Roald Dahl · standalone novel · 1961

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                  James and the Giant Peach is a children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, drawn by Michael Simeon, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010.

                • Cover of Thief Eyes
                  Thief Eyes

                  Janni Lee Simner · standalone novel · 2010

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryfantasyadventurousemotionalyoung adultcoming of age

                  The latest YA fantasy book from Bones of Faerie author Janni Lee Simner!After her mother mysteriously disappears, sixteen-year-old Haley convinces her father to take her to Iceland, where her mother was last seen. There, amidst the ancient fissures and crevices of that volcanic island, Haley meets gorgeous Ari, a boy with a dangerous side who appoints himself her protector.When Haley picks up a silver coin that entangles her in a spell cast by her ancestor Hallgerd, she discovers that Hallgerd's spell and her mother's disappearance are connected to a chain of events that could unleash terrifying powers and consume the world. Haley must find a way to contain the growing fires of the spell--and her growing attraction to Ari.Janni Lee Simner brings the fierce romance and violent passions of Iceland's medieval sagas into this twenty-first-century novel, with spellbinding results.From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of Alfred Kropp
                  Alfred Kropp

                  series · 3 books · 2005

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                  Rick Yancey's Alfred Kropp trilogy follows the teenage title character through three young-adult fantasy-adventure novels. The debut, The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp, was a Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book and a Carnegie Medal finalist, and the story continues in The Seal of Solomon and The Thirteenth Skull.

                • Cover of Meridian (Amber Kizer)
                  Meridian (Amber Kizer)

                  series · 3 books · 2009

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryemotionalfantasyparanormalyoung adultcoming of age

                • Cover of Every Day
                  Every Day

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  similar byour worldcontemporaryfantasyemotionalyoung adultcoming of age

                  David Levithan's Every Day follows A, a consciousness with no fixed body who wakes each morning inside a different person's life, and who falls for a girl named Rhiannon despite the impossibility of ever staying in one body to be with her. The story continues from other perspectives in Another Day and, years later, Someday.

                • Cover of The Guardians of Time
                  The Guardians of Time

                  series · 4 books · 2002

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                  Guardians of Time is a trilogy of novels written by Marianne Curley. The plot of the trilogy consists of the Guardians of Time, trying to protect the past, present, and future by traveling into the past to thwart their enemies, and the Order of Chaos, who are trying to change past events to give themselves more power.

                • Cover of Paranormalcy
                  Paranormalcy

                  series · 3 books · 2010

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                  Paranormalcy is a series of young adult urban fantasy novels by American author Kiersten White, beginning with the entry of the same name. The story focuses on a girl named Evie, a member of a special international police force assigned to paranormal cases. As the tale progresses, Evie's professional duties begin to conflict with her growing desire for a normal life.

                • Cover of The Radleys
                  The Radleys

                  Matt Haig · standalone novel · 2010

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                  The Radleys is a paranormal fantasy novel for young adults by Matt Haig, published 1 July 2010 by Canongate Books.

                • Cover of Artemis Fowl
                  Artemis Fowl

                  series · 15 books · 2001

                  similar bycontemporaryfantasyour worldadventurousfae

                  Artemis Fowl is a series of eleven fantasy novels by Irish author Eoin Colfer, revolving around various members of the Fowl family. The first cycle, the Artemis Fowl series, consists of eight books, and the second cycle, The Fowl Twins series, is a trilogy. Both releases have received commercial success and positive critical reception in the children's literature genre, and also originated graphic novel adaptations. As of 2013, the novels have sold more than 21 million copies in 44 languages, and are one of the best-selling series of all time. In 2010, Artemis Fowl was voted by readers as their favorite Puffin Books title of all time.

                • Cover of The Dark Elements
                  The Dark Elements

                  series · 4 books · 2013

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldfantasyemotionaldemonsyoung adult+2 more

                • Cover of Young Wizards
                  Young Wizards

                  series · 24 books · 1983

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                  Diane Duane's Young Wizards series begins with thirteen-year-old Nita, bullied and friendless, who borrows a library book on wizardry and discovers it's the real thing: an apprenticeship into a covert order that fights entropy, alongside a classmate named Kit. Across fifteen books published between 1983 and 2019, the two age forward in something close to real time as their missions escalate from New York streets to alien worlds and beyond. The series centers on the wizard's Oath and the idea that magic is a responsibility taken on to slow the universe's decay, not a power to be enjoyed for its own sake.

                • Cover of Out of Time
                  Out of Time

                  John Marsden · standalone novel · 1990

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                  James, a strange, silent boy, makes the acquaintance of old Mr. Woodford, a physicist who constructs a mysterious black box, but when the box comes into the boy's possession, it draws him into a magical and dangerous world, in and out of time.

                • Cover of Wings (Aprilynne Pike)
                  Wings (Aprilynne Pike)

                  series · 6 books · 2009

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                • Cover of Teardrop Trilogy
                  Teardrop Trilogy

                  series · 2 books · 2013

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                • Cover of Watership Down
                  Watership Down

                  series · 21 books · 1972

                  completed

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                  Watership Down is Richard Adams's 1972 novel following a group of rabbits who flee the destruction of their warren and cross the English countryside of Hampshire in search of a new home, developing over the journey a full rabbit culture of language, proverbs, and mythology. Adams returned to the same world in 1996 with Tales from Watership Down, a collection of nineteen short stories mixing rabbit folklore with further adventures of characters from the novel.

                • Cover of Old Magic
                  Old Magic

                  Marianne Curley · standalone novel · 2000

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                  Kate is at a loss. She meets a boy with curious powers and a bizarre history - but he thinks he is very ordinary. How can she convince him that he has a gift, a gift that he must use to unravel mysteries that have hung over his family for generations? And even if she does persuade him, will his talents prove powerful enough to overcome what lies ahead?

                • Cover of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
                  The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel

                  series · 15 books · 2007

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                  The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel is a series of six fantasy novels written by Irish author Michael Scott, completed in 2012. The first book in the series, The Alchemyst, was released in 2007, and the sequels were released at the rate of one per year, concluding with The Enchantress in 2012. The cover artist for the series is Michael Wagner.

                • Cover of The Vampire Diaries
                  The Vampire Diaries

                  series · 13 books · 1991

                  part of The Vampire Diaries Universe

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                  The Vampire Diaries is a young adult vampire fiction series of novels created by American author L. J. Smith. The story centers on Elena Gilbert, a young human, and her life.

                • Cover of Watersong
                  Watersong

                  series · 5 books · 2012

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                  The Watersong series by the bestselling young adult fantasy paranormal author Amanda Hocking consists of four books: Wake, Lullaby, Tidal and Elegy. Hocking, who previously had success as a self-published author, signed a book deal with St. Martin’s Press worth $2 million.

                • Cover of Miss Meteor
                  Miss Meteor

                  Anna-Marie McLemore & Tehlor Kay Mejia · standalone novel · 2020

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                  Miss Meteor is a 2020 young adult fantasy novel by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore.

                • Cover of Into the Grey
                  Into the Grey

                  Celine Kiernan · standalone novel · 2013

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                  Fifteen-year-old Patrick Finnerty races to save his twin brother, Dom, who is being possessed by a ghost.

                • Cover of Jinx
                  Jinx

                  Meg Cabot · standalone novel · 2007

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                  Jinx is a 2007 young adult novel.

                • Cover of The Dragon Diaries
                  The Dragon Diaries

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  part of Dragonfire

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                • Cover of Samuel Johnson
                  Samuel Johnson

                  series · 3 books · 2009

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                  John Connolly's Samuel Johnson trilogy follows an ordinary boy and his dachshund, Boswell, who accidentally open a portal to Hell in his English hometown and end up as the unlikely last line of defense against the demons who pour through, beginning with The Gates. The comic horror trilogy continues through Hell's Bells and The Creeps.