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 Stealing Magic

anchored on:fantasyour worldcontemporarymiddle gradeportal fantasytime travel+3 more

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 The Sixty-Eight Rooms
                  The Sixty-Eight Rooms

                  series · 4 books · 2010

                  similar byadventurouscontemporarymiddle gradefantasyour worldnorth america+6 more

                • Cover of The Indian in the Cupboard
                  The Indian in the Cupboard

                  series · 5 books · 1980

                  completed

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryfantasyportal fantasymiddle gradeour world+2 more

                  Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series begins with the 1980 children's novel in which a boy discovers that an old cupboard can bring his plastic toy figures to life. The low-fantasy series, which inspired a 1995 film adaptation, continues across Return of the Indian, The Secret of the Indian, The Mystery of the Cupboard, and The Key to the Indian.

                • Cover of The Dead Gentleman
                  The Dead Gentleman

                  Matthew Cody · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryfantasyfriendshipmiddle gradeour worldportal fantasynorth america+3 more

                  Eleven-year-old orphan Tommy Learner's world in 1900 New York City collides with that of twelve-year-old, modern-day Jezebel Lemon in the basement of her apartment building, where together they must use the portals between worlds to thwart the Dead Gentleman, a legendary villain whose last unconquered world is the planet Earth.

                • Cover of The Wildwood Chronicles
                  The Wildwood Chronicles

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasyfriendshipportal fantasymiddle grade+1 more

                  Colin Meloy's Wildwood Chronicles opens with Wildwood (2011), illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis, in which two Portland seventh-graders are drawn into a hidden, magical forest while trying to rescue a baby kidnapped by crows, and are swept into a larger struggle as they learn of their connection to this parallel world. Praised for its illustrations and old-fashioned book design, the trilogy continues across Under Wildwood and Wildwood Imperium.

                • Cover of Out of Time
                  Out of Time

                  John Marsden · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryfantasymysteriousour worldportal fantasytime travel+1 more

                  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 Summerland
                  Summerland

                  Michael Chabon · standalone novel · 2002

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasyportal fantasy+2 more

                  Summerland is a 2002 fantasy young adult novel by American writer Michael Chabon. It is about young children who save the world from destruction by playing baseball, the central theme and symbol throughout the novel. Summerland weaves elements of a World Series, parallel-universe road trip, and a hero's odyssey. The book received mixed reviews; The New York Times called it "bewilderingly busy" and likened it to "the novelization of an animated action film".

                • Cover of The Secret Keepers
                  The Secret Keepers

                  Trenton Lee Stewart · standalone novel · 2016

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasymysteriousmiddle gradeour worldbig city

                  "When twelve-year-old Reuben finds a peculiar, magical watch that has the power to turn its wearer invisible, he's propelled on the adventure of a lifetime"-- When Reuben discovers an antique watch that was mortared into the wall, he soon learns it has a secret power. As one secret leads to another, Reuben finds himself torn between his innately honest nature and the lure to be a hero. Now he is on a dangerous adventure, and with fearless Penny, mighty Jack, and the wise Mrs. Genevieve on his side, Reuben must outwit and outmaneuver the sly villain called The Smoke and his devious defenders the Directions, in order to save the city from a terrible fate.

                • Cover of Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy
                  Ophelia and the Marvellous Boy

                  Karen Foxlee · standalone novel · 2014

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasyfriendshipmiddle gradeportal fantasy+1 more

                  A modern day version of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen".

                • Cover of Artemis Fowl
                  Artemis Fowl

                  series · 15 books · 2001

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryfantasymiddle gradeour world

                  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 Watership Down
                  Watership Down

                  series · 21 books · 1972

                  completed

                  similar byadventurousquestscontemporaryfantasyour world+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.

                • Cover of House of Secrets
                  House of Secrets

                  series · 3 books · 2013

                  similar byadventurousquestscontemporaryfantasyportal fantasymiddle grade+2 more

                  Chris Columbus and Ned Vizzini's House of Secrets follows the three Walker children after they move into an unusual new home and their parents are taken from them; the children set out to find a secret book that holds the key to getting them back. The series continues across two more books, Battle of the Beasts and Clash of the Worlds, the latter co-written with Chris Rylander.

                • Cover of Dogsbody
                  Dogsbody

                  Diana Wynne Jones · standalone novel · 1975

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasyour world

                  Sirius the dog star, is reborn on earth as a puppy with a mission to search for the lost Zoi, the murder weapon of the stars.

                • F
                  Foo milieu

                  series · 7 books · 2005

                  similar byadventurousquestsfantasycontemporarymiddle gradeportal fantasy+2 more

                • Cover of Seven Wonders
                  Seven Wonders

                  series · 10 books · 2013

                  similar byadventurousquestscontemporaryfantasymiddle grade+2 more

                  Seven Wonders is a pentalogy of children's fantasy, adventure and mythological fiction books written by American author Peter Lerangis. It is based on Greek mythology and set around the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Jack McKinley discovers a secret organization on a hidden island, and becomes the leader of a mission to retrieve seven lost magical orbs. As Jack and his three friends realize their lives are at stake, they have no choice but to accept the quest and embark on the challenge.

                • Cover of Beyond the Cherry Tree
                  Beyond the Cherry Tree

                  Joe O'Brien · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasymiddle gradeportal fantasy+3 more

                  When Josh Bloom and his friends visit Cherry Tree Manor on a school trip what really interests the class is the mystery about the manor's owner, General Edgar Pennington, who disappeared exactly twelve years before. Everyone hopes to find a clue to where the general has gone. Then Josh discovers something in the manor library that sends him on an adventure of a lifetime - to the land beyond the cherry tree .-- pub. website.

                • Cover of The Warm Place
                  The Warm Place

                  Nancy Farmer · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasyfriendshipmiddle gradeour world+1 more

                  When Ruva, a young giraffe, is captured and sent to a zoo in San Francisco, she calls upon two rats, a street-smart chameleon, a runaway boy, and all the magical powers of the animal world to return to "the warm place" that is home.

                • Cover of My Diary from the Edge of the World
                  My Diary from the Edge of the World

                  Jodi Lynn Anderson · standalone novel · 2015

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasymiddle gradeportal fantasynorth america

                  From copyright page; "Spirited, restless Gracie Lockwood, twelve, of Cliffden,Maine, living in a world where sasquatches, dragons, giants and mermaids are common, keeps a diary of her family's journey in a used Winnebago as they seek The Extraordinary World in hopes of keeping her little brother, Sam, safe against all odds."

                • Cover of Floors
                  Floors

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasymiddle grade+3 more

                • Cover of Magicalamity
                  Magicalamity

                  Kate Saunders · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasymiddle gradeportal fantasy

                  Eleven-year-old Tom is shocked to learn that he is a demisprite, half fairy and half mortal, and that he, aided by three fairy godmothers, must save his father, who is hiding in the fairy Realm, while safeguarding his mortal mother.

                • Cover of 100 Cupboards
                  100 Cupboards

                  series · 4 books · 2007

                  similar byadventurousfantasymiddle gradeportal fantasy+2 more

                • Cover of The Hobbit
                  The Hobbit

                  series · 2 books · 1937

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byadventurousquestsfantasymiddle grade

                  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.

                • Cover of Redwall
                  Redwall

                  series · 22 books · 1986

                  completed

                  part of Redwall Universe

                  similar byadventurousquestsfantasymiddle grade+1 more

                  Redwall is Brian Jacques's long-running series of fantasy novels for young readers, set within the redwall-universe of Redwall Abbey and its community of anthropomorphic animals. It opened in 1986 with the mouse Matthias searching for the lost sword of the legendary Martin the Warrior to defend the abbey from the invading rat Cluny the Scourge, and grew across 22 largely stand-alone novels published through 2011, each set in a different generation of the abbey's history and following its mice, otters, badgers, and vermin adversaries.

                • Cover of The Thirteen Hallows
                  The Thirteen Hallows

                  Michael Scott & Colette Freedman · standalone novel · 2011

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryquestsfantasyour world+1 more

                  The Thirteen Hallows is the first novel in a fantasy fiction series that focuses on the thirteen treasures of the Island of Britain. The book was written by authors Michael Scott and Colette Freedman. It was published in December 2011 in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The book shares a similar plot line as one of Scott's earlier novels, The Hallows. Scott has announced that he and Freedman are currently working on a sequel to The Thirteen Hallows, with plans for a third book in the series.

                • Cover of The Heroic Adventures of Kate
                  The Heroic Adventures of Kate

                  series · 3 books · 1990

                  similar byadventurouscontemporaryour worldfantasy+5 more

                  T. A. Barron links three standalone novels around a resourceful girl named Kate confronting environmental threats through fantastical means. In Heartlight, Kate and her inventor grandfather race across space to save a dying sun; in The Ancient One, she travels five centuries into the past to defend an old-growth forest from the destructive creature Gashra. The Merlin Effect completes the loosely connected set, published together as the omnibus The Heartlight Saga.