Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

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

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

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 Shadow

anchored on:fairy tale retellingyoung adult

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 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 Heartless
                  Heartless

                  Marissa Meyer · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byfairy tale retellingyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                  Long before she was the terror of Wonderland—the infamous Queen of Hearts—she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love. Long before she was the terror of Wonderland, she was just a girl who wanted to fall in love. Catherine may be one of the most desired girls in Wonderland, and a favorite of the unmarried King of Hearts, but her interests lie elsewhere. A talented baker, all she wants is to open a shop with her best friend. But according to her mother, such a goal is unthinkable for the young woman who could be the next queen. Then Cath meets Jest, the handsome and mysterious court joker. For the first time, she feels the pull of true attraction. At the risk of offending the king and infuriating her parents, she and Jest enter into an intense, secret courtship. Cath is determined to define her own destiny and fall in love on her terms. But in a land thriving with magic, madness, and monsters, fate has other plans. In her first stand-alone teen novel, the New York Times-bestselling author dazzles us with a prequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

                • Cover of Gormenghast
                  Gormenghast

                  series · 6 books · 1946

                  completed

                  similar bydarkfantasy+2 more

                  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 Earthsea Cycle
                  Earthsea Cycle

                  series · 18 books · 1964

                  completed

                  part of Earthsea

                  similar byfantasy+3 more

                  The Earthsea Cycle, also known as Earthsea, is a series of high fantasy books written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972), the series was continued in Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. In 2018, all the novels and short stories were published in a single volume, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with artwork by Charles Vess.

                • Cover of Deerskin
                  Deerskin

                  Robin McKinley · standalone novel · 1993

                  similar bydarkidentityfairy tale retellingfantasy

                  Deerskin is a dark fantasy novel by Robin McKinley, first published in 1993. It is based on an old French fairy tale by Charles Perrault called Peau d'âne. It was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.

                • Cover of White As Snow
                  White As Snow

                  Tanith Lee · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar bydarkidentityfairy tale retellingcoming of agefantasy

                  "Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord's palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed old gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother's hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half-forgotten by her father's court, she grows into womanhood alone until the mirror speaks, and blood is spilled, and the forest claims her."--Jacket.

                • Cover of Fairy Tales Retold (Anthologies)
                  Fairy Tales Retold (Anthologies)

                  series · 3 books · 2000

                  similar byfairy tale retellingfantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Stepsister
                  Stepsister

                  Jennifer Donnelly · standalone novel · 2019

                  similar byidentityfairy tale retellingyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  This is a newer version of the old Cinderella. Isabelle and Octavia, are trying to win the prince's heart. Isabelle cuts of her toes and Octavia cuts her heel off. Either way they were always ugly, and Ella was always beautiful. As the Fate's and the Marquis are changing Isabelle's story, Isabelle tries to break out of her chains. She longs to ride her horse, Nero. She wants to ride along the hills with her best friend Felix. She wants to be beautiful like Ella. There is a war and the grand duke suddenly decides to help the kingdom's enemy. Isabelle sneaks into the camp and finds Ella. She sneaks in, saves Ella and finds the plans of Volkmar, their enemy. Will she find who she truly is inside? Will she get what her heart desires?

                • Cover of Folktales
                  Folktales

                  series · 3 books · 1978

                  similar byfairy tale retellingfantasy+3 more

                • Cover of Mira, Mirror
                  Mira, Mirror

                  Mette Ivie Harrison · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byfairy tale retellingyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                  Long after the disappearance of Snow White's stepmother, the witch trapped in her mirror manipulates a desperate peasant and a merchant's daughter to seek the magic she needs to gain her freedom. But the girls show her a power far greater.

                • Cover of Villains (Serena Valentino)
                  Villains (Serena Valentino)

                  series · 12 books · 2009

                  similar byfairy tale retellingfantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Russian / Jewish Fairy Tales Retold
                  Russian / Jewish Fairy Tales Retold

                  series · 4 books · 2015

                  similar byfairy tale retellingfantasy+2 more

                  Naomi Novik's Uprooted and Spinning Silver are two standalone fantasy novels rather than a continuing series, each reworking a different fairy tale: Uprooted follows village girl Agnieszka after the wizard known as the Dragon discovers her hidden magic, as they battle a malevolent, encroaching forest; Spinning Silver reworks Rumpelstiltskin into the story of a Jewish moneylender's daughter, Miryem, whose boast of turning silver to gold draws the attention of the Staryk, fae beings of eternal winter, in a kingdom besieged by both frost and a demon-possessed tsar. The two books share no characters or setting, only Novik's method of building a novel around one inherited folk tale.

                • Cover of Birthgrave
                  Birthgrave

                  series · 3 books · 1975

                  completed

                  similar bydarkidentityfantasy

                  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.

                • TO
                  The Old Kingdom / Abhorsen milieu

                  series · 11 books · 1995

                  similar byyoung adultfantasy+2 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 Soldier Son
                  Soldier Son

                  series · 3 books · 2005

                  similar byidentitycoming of agefantasy+1 more

                  The Soldier Son trilogy is a fantasy novel series by Robin Hobb. Set in a new world unrelated to her previous trilogies, the Soldier Son trilogy follows the life of Nevare Burvelle, the second son of a newly elevated Lord of the Kingdom of Gernia.

                • Cover of Lunar Chronicles
                  Lunar Chronicles

                  series · 15 books · 2011

                  similar byfairy tale retellingyoung adult

                  The Lunar Chronicles is a series of four young adult science fiction novels, a novella, and a short story collection written by American author Marissa Meyer and published by Feiwel & Friends. Each book entails a science fictional twist on a classic fairy tale, including "Cinderella", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rapunzel", and "Snow White". Set in a futuristic world inhabited by various species and creatures, tensions are rising between Earth and its former colony Luna, while both attempt to manage an ongoing pandemic.

                • Cover of Tigana
                  Tigana

                  Guy Gavriel Kay · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar bydarkidentityfantasy

                  Tigana is a 1990 fantasy novel by Canadian writer Guy Gavriel Kay. The novel is set in a region called the Peninsula of the Palm, which somewhat resembles Renaissance Italy as well as the Peloponnese in shape.

                • Cover of We Set the Dark on Fire
                  We Set the Dark on Fire

                  series · 2 books · 2019

                  similar byyoung adultfantasy+3 more

                • Cover of Fairy Tale Retellings (Jackson Pearce)
                  Fairy Tale Retellings (Jackson Pearce)

                  series · 4 books · 2010

                  similar byfairy tale retellingyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Fairy Tales Retold (Jamie Campbell)
                  Fairy Tales Retold (Jamie Campbell)

                  series · 8 books · 2013

                  similar bydarkfairy tale retellingfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of Forgotten Gods
                  Forgotten Gods

                  series · 2 books · 2020

                  similar byyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                  Marie Rutkoski's The Midnight Lie is set in the world of her Winner's Trilogy: Nirrim lives in the Ward, a district of the city ruled by a harsh tribunal that reserves every pleasure and privilege for the High Kith, until a rakish traveler named Sid arrives with rumors that magic could be hers if she's willing to give up the life she knows. The Hollow Heart continues Nirrim and Sid's story.

                • Cover of Skinjacker Trilogy
                  Skinjacker Trilogy

                  series · 4 books · 2006

                  similar byyoung adultfantasy+2 more

                  Everlost strands two fourteen-year-olds, Nick and Allie, killed together in a car crash, in the afterlife-adjacent realm of Everlost — a shadow world where lost children (Afterlights) linger among perfect, unbroken echoes of buildings and places the living have destroyed or torn down. Neal Shusterman's Skinjacker trilogy takes its name from Allie's rare and dangerous power to "skinjack," or possess, the bodies of the living, which she and Nick explore across Everwild and Everfound as they try to understand what Everlost actually is.

                • Cover of Karou
                  Karou

                  series · 4 books · 2011

                  similar byyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                  Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a young-adult fantasy book series written by Laini Taylor and published by Hachette Book Group, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. It is a complete trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone being published on 27 September 2011 in the United States; Days of Blood and Starlight on 6 November 2012 in the United States; and the third book Dreams of Gods and Monsters on April 1, 2014. The books have been published in a variety of different languages.

                • Cover of Poisoned
                  Poisoned

                  Jennifer Donnelly · standalone novel · 2020

                  similar byfairy tale retellingyoung adultfantasy+1 more

                • Cover of Monster Blood Tattoo milieu
                  Monster Blood Tattoo milieu

                  series · 6 books · 2006

                  similar byfantasy+3 more