More like Star Summit
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- Fionavar Universe
series5 books1984
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+2 more
Ysabel is a 2007 standalone contemporary fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay, following teenager Ned Marriner as he stumbles into a centuries-old rivalry playing out around the cathedral of Aix-en-Provence. It marked Kay's turn toward urban fantasy and briefly brings back two adult characters from his earlier Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, though it is not itself part of that trilogy and can be read on its own.
- The Lord of the Rings
series13 books1954
part of Tolkien's legendarium
similar bysecondary world+2 more
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
- The Hobbit
series2 books1937
completed
part of Tolkien's legendarium
similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasy
The Hobbit (1937) is J. R. R. Tolkien's children's fantasy novel following the reluctant burglar Bilbo Baggins, who joins a company of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf on a journey to reclaim treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug. It stands as a complete adventure on its own, but shares its setting with the rest of Tolkien's legendarium and leads into the events of The Lord of the Rings.
- The Traitor Spy Trilogy
series3 books2010
part of Kyralia series
similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasy+1 more
Trudi Canavan is an Australian writer of fantasy novels, best known for her best-selling fantasy trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five. While establishing her writing career she worked as a graphic designer. She completed her third trilogy, The Traitor Spy trilogy, in August 2012 with The Traitor Queen. Subsequently, Canavan has written a series called Millennium's Rule, with a completely new setting consisting of multiple worlds which characters can cross between. Though originally planned as a trilogy, a fourth and final book in the Millennium's Rule series was published.
- Narnia
series26 books1950
part of Narnia Universe
similar byadventuroussecondary worldfantasy
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven portal fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, the series is set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals. It narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the Narnian world. Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are sometimes called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician's Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle.
- Karou
series4 books2011
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+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.
- Fillory
series7 books2009
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more
Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy (The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician's Land, 2009-2014) follows Quentin Coldwater from a secretive college of magic in upstate New York into Fillory, a fantasy world he grew up reading about in a series of children's books that turns out to be real. As Quentin, his classmates, and his old friend Julia become entangled in ruling and defending Fillory, the trilogy pushes past the wish-fulfillment of a classic portal fantasy to ask what happens once getting everything you wanted stops being enough.
- Shannara
universe50 books1977
Start hereWord and the Void · The very beginning of the timeline
similar bysecondary worldfantasy+1 more
Long after the world we know has burned itself to slag in the Great Wars, the Four Lands rise green over the bones of the old age. Science is a forbidden memory; magic has come back into the world, and with it the old divisions — Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes, each Race a splinter of what humanity became. This is the far-future Earth of Shannara, where the ruins buried beneath the soil are ours, and the only keepers of the vanished knowledge are the Druids of Paranor, who wake once a generation to meet the darkness rising again. Terry Brooks opened the Four Lands in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara and has charted its history for four decades since — a legendarium ordered not by throne but by a single bloodline, the Ohmsfords, each generation inheriting an Elfstone, a blade, or a wishsong when the age demands a hero. The original trilogy gives way to the Heritage of Shannara, the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, the High Druid, Dark Legacy, Defenders, and the concluding Fall of Shannara; the Genesis of Shannara books reach back to the apocalypse itself, and the Word and the Void trilogy back further still, into a demon-haunted version of our own present that is the root of everything after. In 2025 Brooks passed the histories to Delilah S. Dawson to carry forward. What sets these books apart is their long memory: a world where every triumph is provisional, where the same evil returns wearing a fresh shape each age, and magic always exacts its price. The reading is warm and headlong — questing companies, old talismans, journeys across a mapped and named wilderness — shadowed by the knowledge that all of it stands on the wreckage of a former world. Enter as readers first did: with The Sword of Shannara, then onward in publication order. The chronological path, beginning with Word and the Void, rewards a second journey, once the Four Lands already feel like home.
- Earthsea Cycle
series18 books1964
completed
part of Earthsea
similar bysecondary worldfantasy
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.
- Kairos
series11 books1962
completed
similar by+2 more
The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).
- Simon Snow
series3 books2015
similar byfantasy+3 more
Rainbow Rowell's Carry On follows Simon Snow through his final year at a magical school, where he is the 'Chosen One' expected to defeat a destructive force called the Humdrum threatening the World of Mages. Multiple viewpoints carry the story, including Simon's own, his roommate-turned-ally-or-adversary Baz, his friend Penelope, and his former girlfriend Agatha. Wayward Son and Any Way the Wind Blows continue Simon's story beyond graduation.
- The Tiger's Apprentice
series3 books2003
similar byadventurousurban fantasyfantasy+1 more
Laurence Yep's The Tiger's Apprentice follows a twelve-year-old Chinese American boy in San Francisco who discovers he is heir to a line of guardians protecting a powerful magic talisman, alongside a tiger, a monkey and a dragon capable of taking human form. Together they must keep the talisman from an enemy who would use its power to destroy the world. Tiger's Blood and Tiger Magic continue the fight to protect its secrets.
- Dragonslayer / The Chronicles of Kazam
series4 books2010
similar byfantasy+2 more
Jasper Fforde's Chronicles of Kazam series follows Jennifer Strange, a fifteen-year-old foundling running a magical employment agency in an alternate Britain where magic is fading, who unexpectedly becomes the last Dragonslayer. Across the books she deals with political scheming, magical crises, and a prophecy tied to the ancient Dragonpact, trying to protect both the last dragons and the people around her.
- The Revelations of Oriceran
universe235 books2017
Start hereWaking Magic · Start here
similar byurban fantasy+1 more
Two centuries ago the doors between our world and Oriceran swung shut, and magic drained out of Earth like water from a cracked bowl. Now the doors are opening again. Witches wake to power they never knew they carried; gnomes run pawnshops, trolls collect debts, and Light and Dark magicals ride the same rush-hour streets as everyone else — most people still too busy to notice. This is a present-day Earth where the impossible has started clocking in for work. The Revelations of Oriceran is a shared universe built by Martha Carr and Michael Anderle and staffed by a rotating crew of collaborators — TR Cameron, Sarah Noffke, and others — under the LMBPN banner, the same rapid-serial house behind the Kurtherian Gambit. It sprawls across dozens of interlocking series rather than a single spine. Austin homicide detective Leira Berens anchors The Leira Chronicles; enforcer Barnaby Brownstone works Chicago's magical underworld in The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone, with his daughter taking the reins in Alison Brownstone; teenagers learn to steer the returning power in The School of Necessary Magic and its Academy. Federal Agents of Magic, Soul Stone Mage, Scions of Magic, Dwarf Bounty Hunter and more fan out from the same reopening world. The pleasure here is pace and connection: short, punchy books that trade slow worldbuilding for wisecracks, magic-cop cases, and threads that keep tying back together across series. Start with The Leira Chronicles — Waking Magic is the doorway the whole thing opens from — then follow whichever corner of the returning world hooks you.
- A Song of Ice and Fire
series14 books1996
part of World of Ice and Fire
similar bysecondary 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.
- His Dark Materials Universe
universe13 books1995
Start hereHis Dark Materials · Start here
similar byadventurousfantasy+1 more
In a world like ours and unlike it, every human soul walks outside the body in the shape of an animal — a daemon, who speaks, who cannot be lied to, and who settles into one fixed form only when childhood ends. This is the country of His Dark Materials: a company of parallel worlds across which an invisible dust of consciousness drifts down upon the waking mind; where a Church that calls itself the Magisterium would sooner sever a child's soul than let that Dust be understood; and where a golden instrument, the alethiometer, answers true questions for anyone with the patience to read it. Philip Pullman's design stands in two trilogies and a scatter of shorter tales. His Dark Materials — Northern Lights (published in America as The Golden Compass), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — carries Lyra Belacqua from the rooftops of a shadow Oxford across the borders between worlds. The Book of Dust returns to that same territory: La Belle Sauvage looks back to Lyra as an infant carried through a great flood, while The Secret Commonwealth follows her grown and less certain into adulthood, with a concluding volume closing the arc. Around them sit slim companion books — Lyra's Oxford, Once Upon a Time in the North, Serpentine — and Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation, made with Pullman's blessing. The register is grave and luminous at once, its title lifted from Milton and its quarrel drawn from Blake: a story that takes the side of curiosity, love, and the physical world against any authority that would forbid them. It reads as adventure — armoured bears, aeronauts, knife-cut windows between skies — yet reasons like philosophy. Begin with Northern Lights / The Golden Compass and read the first trilogy through before turning to The Book of Dust, which deepens everything the first has already made you feel.
- Stephen King multiverse
universe46 books1967
Start hereThe Gunslinger · Start here
similar by+2 more
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. So begins the long walk of Roland Deschain, last of an order of knight-errant pistoleers, across a land that has "moved on" — where the compass points drift, dead machines rot toward sentience, and the weave of what's real wears thin. His quest is the Dark Tower itself: a spire standing at the hub of every world that exists, the linchpin that holds all of them back from ruin. Roland's road runs eight volumes, from The Gunslinger through the closing Dark Tower, with the later, interleaved tale The Wind Through the Keyhole folding a story-within-a-story back into his youth. Along the way he draws a ka-tet — a fellowship bound by fate, not choosing — through doorways between worlds: a heroin-shackled New Yorker, a woman of two minds, a boy who dies twice. The Tower is also the secret axle around which the wider shelf of King's work turns; threads from The Stand, 'Salem's Lot and beyond wind quietly toward it. Expect a mongrel of Western, high fantasy, horror and decayed science fiction, told in a dusty, incantatory dialect all its own — ka, thankee-sai, the world that has moved on. This is King at his most mythic and most personal, a decades-spanning circle that rewards a patient reader. Begin at the beginning: The Gunslinger, then walk forward in publication order. There are other worlds than these — but this door opens first.
- Watership Down
series21 books1972
completed
similar byadventurousfantasy+1 more
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.
