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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 Shockwave

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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 The Hollows
                  The Hollows

                  series · 39 books · 2004

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasynorth america+3 more

                  The Hollows is a series of urban fantasy novels by Kim Harrison, originally published by HarperCollins Publishers and by Ace Books since 2020. The series includes 18 novels, numerous novellas and short stories, two graphic novels, and one compendium resource; a 19th novel, Absolute Demon, is forthcoming in 2027.

                • Cover of The Dresden Files
                  The Dresden Files

                  series · 56 books · 2000

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasynorth america+4 more

                  The Dresden Files is an urban fantasy series written by American author Jim Butcher. The novels are narrated from the first-person perspective of Harry Dresden, a private detective and wizard, as he investigates supernatural disturbances in contemporary Chicago. The first entry, Storm Front, was published in 2000 by Roc Books.

                • Cover of Meredith Gentry
                  Meredith Gentry

                  series · 10 books · 2000

                  similar byfaecontemporaryurban fantasyour world+3 more

                  The Merry Gentry series is a series of urban fantasy novels by New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton. The series is told through the lens of the titular character Meredith "Merry" Gentry, a faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries exist and are known to the general public. The first book in the series, A Kiss of Shadows, was released by Del Rey on October 3, 2000. There are currently nine books in the series.

                • Cover of Artemis Fowl
                  Artemis Fowl

                  series · 15 books · 2001

                  similar byfaecontemporaryfantasyour worldadventurous+1 more

                  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 Faerie Tale
                  Faerie Tale

                  Raymond E. Feist · standalone novel · 1988

                  similar byfaetensecontemporaryfantasyurban fantasynorth america

                  Faerie Tale is a supernatural thriller, falling within the subgenre of contemporary fantasy, by American writer Raymond E. Feist, first published in 1988.

                • Cover of Blood Destiny (Helen Harper)
                  Blood Destiny (Helen Harper)

                  series · 5 books · 2012

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasyour world+3 more

                • Cover of Spell Weaver (Annette Marie)
                  Spell Weaver (Annette Marie)

                  series · 3 books · 2017

                  similar bycontemporaryour worldurban fantasy+2 more

                • Cover of October Daye
                  October Daye

                  series · 42 books · 2009

                  similar byfaecontemporaryurban fantasynorth america+3 more

                  October Daye is a New York Times Best Selling series of urban fantasy novels by American author Seanan McGuire. They follow October "Toby" Daye, a half-fae changeling and reluctant hero of the realm.

                • OG
                  Otherworld (Yasmine Galenorn)

                  series · 50 books · 2006

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasyour world+1 more

                • Cover of Gale Family
                  Gale Family

                  series · 3 books · 2009

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasyour worldadventurousnorth america+2 more

                  Tanya Huff's urban fantasy trilogy follows Alysha Gale, a member of a Canadian family whose charms can reshape reality, after she inherits her grandmother's junk shop in Calgary and discovers it doubles as a gateway into the fae world. Across The Enchantment Emporium, The Wild Ways, and The Future Falls, different Gale women take the lead as the family is repeatedly called on to contain magical trouble the ordinary world can't handle.

                • Cover of Cainsville
                  Cainsville

                  series · 21 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasynorth america+3 more

                • Cover of Need
                  Need

                  series · 4 books · 2009

                  similar byfaetensecontemporaryurban fantasynorth america+2 more

                  Need is a series of young adult urban fantasy novels by American author Carrie Jones, beginning with the inaugural entry of the same name. The focus of the story is a teenage girl named Zara, who joins a struggle against a society of malicious pixies. As the books progress, Zara encounters a series of personal challenges, and bonds with new friends and romantic interests.

                • Cover of Modern Tale of Faerie
                  Modern Tale of Faerie

                  series · 4 books · 2002

                  similar byfaecontemporaryour worldfantasyurban fantasy+2 more

                  Tithe opens Holly Black's Modern Faerie Tales with Kaye Fierch, a teenage drifter who discovers she's a changeling with real faerie blood after returning to her childhood home on the Jersey Shore, and gets pulled into the political violence of the local faerie courts. The trilogy, continuing through Valiant and Ironside, keeps its "suburban fantasy" grounded in ordinary New Jersey settings rather than a storybook otherworld.

                • Cover of Dark Swan
                  Dark Swan

                  series · 4 books · 2008

                  similar byfaecontemporaryurban fantasyour world+2 more

                  Dark Swan is a novel sequence by Richelle Mead. The novels center on Eugenie Markham, a shaman; the shapeshifting Kiyo, her boyfriend; and Dorian, the king of the fairies.

                • Cover of Echo
                  Echo

                  series · 3 books · 2015

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                • Cover of Bailey Morgan
                  Bailey Morgan

                  series · 2 books · 2007

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                • Cover of The Iron Druid Chronicles
                  The Iron Druid Chronicles

                  series · 70 books · 2011

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasy+4 more

                  The Iron Druid Chronicles is a series of urban fantasy novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories, written by Kevin Hearne and published by Del Rey Books. All the books, including short stories, have recorded audiobooks narrated by Luke Daniels and Christopher Ragland

                • Cover of The Veil
                  The Veil

                  series · 3 books · 2006

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasy+6 more

                • FU
                  Fever Universe

                  series · 11 books · 2006

                  similar byfaetensecontemporaryurban fantasy

                • Cover of Bedlam Bard / Urban Elves
                  Bedlam Bard / Urban Elves

                  series · 22 books · 1990

                  part of Elves on the Road

                  similar bycontemporaryurban fantasy+3 more

                  Bedlam's Bard follows Eric Banyon, a modern folk musician who discovers Underhill, a realm of elves living hidden within contemporary cities, and is drawn into their politics and dangers through his own bardic magic. Originating with Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon's Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, the series grew into a long-running collaboration with several co-authors, set within the same shared urban-elves setting Lackey uses across related series.

                • Cover of Goblin Wars
                  Goblin Wars

                  series · 3 books · 2010

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                • Cover of Shifters Unbound
                  Shifters Unbound

                  series · 29 books · 2010

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                • Cover of Drusilla Jaco / Sentinels of New Orleans
                  Drusilla Jaco / Sentinels of New Orleans

                  series · 8 books · 2012

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                • Cover of The Ironbridge Chronicles / The Iron Witch
                  The Ironbridge Chronicles / The Iron Witch

                  series · 3 books · 2011

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