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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 The Erstwhile

anchored on:fantasyafricajungle19th centurydarkdark fantasy+4 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 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 mental unraveling — descent into madness, delusion, and minds at war with themselves.
  • 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 Babel, or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
                  Babel, or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

                  R. F. Kuang · standalone novel · 2022

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                  Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution is a 2022 novel of speculative fiction by R. F. Kuang set in a fantastical version of Oxford in 1830s England. Thematically similar to The Poppy War (2018–20), Kuang's first book series, the book criticizes British imperialism, racism and capitalism, and the complicity of academia, knowledge, and language in perpetuating and enabling them.

                • Cover of The Vorrh
                  The Vorrh

                  series · 3 books · 2012

                  completed

                  similar by19th centurydarkfantasydark fantasyafricajungle+4 more

                  The Vorrh is B. Catling's dark historical fantasy set around an immense, possibly sentient forest on the edge of a colonial African city, examining colonialism, mythology, and guilt through a cast of characters drawn toward and altered by it. Alan Moore's foreword helped drive attention to the book on its international 2015 re-release. Catling continued the story across two more books, The Erstwhile and The Cloven.

                • Cover of Elephantasm
                  Elephantasm

                  Tanith Lee · standalone novel · 1993

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                  Synopsis - Annie Ember lives in hopeless poverty with her sister Rose and her wicked brother-in-law...until the day that Annie discovers the mysterious exotic shop where she buys, for one penny, a tiny and ancient ivory elephant. Soon afterwards a grisly murder leaves Annie without home or family, but employment is found for her in a country house far away. Sir Hampton Smolte made his fortune out in India, and has brought back not only his wealth but also an obsessive hatred towards that conquered land where he once commanded a mercenary army. His mansion is fanciful and extraordinary, all scarlet and gold, like a fairy tale raja’s palace set down in green English parkland. There Annie is to become a drudge – a scullery maid in this house full of stuffed animals, eccentric servants, and the even more peculiar Smolte family. But soon she catches the eye of the handsome Rupert who, like his father, retains a fascination with India. Entranced, she succumbs to his attentions – till one night she learns in disgust and terror just what his lovemaking entails... Annie’s fear and helpless fury provide the catalyst which will turn this dream house into a place of panic and the impossible – letting in all the power of the jungle, and unlocking the darkest secrets of Hampton Smolte’s beginnings.

                • Cover of The Grey Horse
                  The Grey Horse

                  R. A. MacAvoy · standalone novel · 1987

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                  Publisher's description: "Set against the colorful and magical backdrop of Ireland. It chronicles a time when the Irish people suffered under harsh English overlords who sought to destroy their culture and way of life. Into the Irish town of Carraroe, a magnificent, completely grey stallion appears. The horse brings with him the promise of better times and magical happenings, for he is actually the shaped-shifted form of Ruairi MacEibhir, journeyed to such a time of danger in order to win the hand of the woman he loves."

                • Cover of The Land of Hope and Glory
                  The Land of Hope and Glory

                  series · 3 books · 2011

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                • Cover of The Hidden Force
                  The Hidden Force

                  Louis Couperus · standalone novel · 1900

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                  The Hidden Force is a 1900 novel by the Dutch writer Louis Couperus. The narrative is set on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. The book was adapted into a 1974 Dutch TV serial. In 2010, a feature-film adaptation was announced as under development with Paul Verhoeven as director.

                • Cover of The Wizard
                  The Wizard

                  H. Rider Haggard · standalone novel · 1896

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                  The Wizard is a novel by Henry Rider Haggard, first published by Longmans, Green, and Co., in 1896. The Wizard is one of the many examples of imperialist literature.

                • J
                  Jess

                  H. Rider Haggard · standalone novel · 1887

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                  Jess is a novel by British writer H. Rider Haggard, set in South Africa.

                • Cover of Lord Tyger
                  Lord Tyger

                  Philip José Farmer · standalone novel · 1970

                  similar bycolonialismjungledark+1 more

                  What if Tarzan had been written by William S. Burroughs instead of Edgar Rice Burroughs? A rich, insane, old racist attempts to raise a white Lord of the Jungle, but things don't turn out that way, and the product of this obsession and the jungle he is supposed to become Lord over must live with the consequences.

                • Cover of The Old Drift
                  The Old Drift

                  Namwali Serpell · standalone novel · 2019

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                  The Old Drift is a 2019 historical fiction and science fiction novel by Zambian author Namwali Serpell. Set in Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, it is Serpell's debut novel and follows the lives of three interwoven families in three generations. It won the 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award as well as the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

                • Cover of Soldier Son
                  Soldier Son

                  series · 3 books · 2005

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                  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 Goliath
                  Goliath

                  Tochi Onyebuchi · standalone novel · 2022

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                  Goliath is a 2022 science fiction novel by Nigerian American writer Tochi Onyebuchi. It is his first adult science fiction novel and it was first published in New York on January 25, 2022, by Tor Books.

                • Cover of Song of the Last Kingdom
                  Song of the Last Kingdom

                  series · 2 books · 2023

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                • Cover of My Brother's Keeper
                  My Brother's Keeper

                  Tim Powers · standalone novel · 2023

                  similar by19th centuryfantasyhistorical fantasydarkeerie

                  This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world. When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England. But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat. In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.

                • Cover of A Thousand Perfect Things
                  A Thousand Perfect Things

                  Kay Kenyon · standalone novel · 2013

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                  A novel based on an alternate 19th century consisting of two warring continents on an alternate earth : the scientific Anglica (England) and magical Bharata (India). A young Victorian woman and aspiring botanist journeys to Bharata where she faces a choice between two suitors and two irreconcilable realms.

                • Cover of The Years of Rice and Salt
                  The Years of Rice and Salt

                  Kim Stanley Robinson · standalone novel · 2002

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                  What if the Black Death had killed nearly everyone in Europe instead of a third of it? Kim Stanley Robinson opens on that premise with a Mongol scout named Bold, who finds a Hungarian city emptied by plague and only narrowly escapes execution meant to contain the contagion; sold into slavery, he ends up serving aboard a Chinese treasure fleet alongside a young African companion. From there the novel follows a recurring cast of souls, reincarnated across centuries and identifiable book to book by the first letter of their names, through an alternate history in which Islamic and Chinese civilizations, not a devastated Europe, shape the world's future.

                • Cover of Burton Cole
                  Burton Cole

                  series · 2 books · 2011

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                • Cover of Phoenix Extravagant
                  Phoenix Extravagant

                  Yoon Ha Lee · standalone novel · 2020

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                  Phoenix Extravagant is a 2020 fantasy novel by Yoon Ha Lee. It tells the story of Gyen Jebi, an artist living in an occupied nation. The setting is loosely based on Korea under Japanese rule.

                • Cover of Malazan Book of the Fallen
                  Malazan Book of the Fallen

                  series · 20 books · 1999

                  part of Malazan

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                  The Malazan Book of the Fallen is a series of epic fantasy novels written by the Canadian author Steven Erikson. The series, published by Bantam Books in the U.K. and Tor Books in the U.S., consists of ten volumes, beginning with Gardens of the Moon (1999) and concluding with The Crippled God (2011). Erikson's series presents the narratives of a large cast of characters spanning thousands of years across multiple continents.

                • Cover of The Eternal World
                  The Eternal World

                  Christopher Farnsworth · standalone novel · 2015

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                  Five hundred years ago, a group of Spanish conquistadors land in the New World, searching for gold. What they find is a treasure far more valuable: the Fountain of Youth. The Spaniards slaughter the Native American tribe that guards the precious liquid that will keep the conquistadors young for centuries. But one of them escapes: Shako, the chief's daughter, who swears to avenge her people--a blood oath that spans five centuries. When the source of the fountain is destroyed in our own time, the loss threatens the Spaniards and the powerful, shadowy empire of wealth and influence they have built. For help, they turn to David Robinton, a scientific prodigy who believes he is on the verge of the greatest medical breakthrough of all time. But as the centuries-old war reaches its final stages, David makes a horrifying discovery about his employers and the mysterious and exotic woman he loves. Now the scientist must decide: Is he a pawn in a game of immortals--or will he be its only winner?--Adapted from book jacket.

                • Cover of The Stress of Her Regard Universe
                  The Stress of Her Regard Universe

                  series · 3 books · 1989

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                  Tim Powers's The Stress of Her Regard reimagines the lives of Byron, Shelley, and Keats through a secret history in which they are stalked and inspired by a nephilim, a shape-shifting vampiric being that acts as a deadly muse. Physician Michael Crawford is drawn into their orbit after inadvertently marrying himself to one of the creatures, setting off a pursuit across the Alps to break her hold on him. The 2012 sequel, Hide Me Among the Graves, moves the same secret history forward into Victorian London.

                • Cover of The Masquerade
                  The Masquerade

                  series · 4 books · 2011

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                • Cover of The Butt
                  The Butt

                  Will Self · standalone novel · 2008

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                  The Butt is a 2008 satirical novel by Will Self.

                • Cover of Bilalistan
                  Bilalistan

                  series · 2 books · 2002

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