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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 Kingmaking

anchored on:historical fictionbritish islesmedievalwaradventurous

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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 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 about rising against rulers — uprisings, resistance movements, and revolutions and their aftermaths.
  • 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 Lion of Ireland
                  Lion of Ireland

                  series · 2 books · 1980

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish islesmedievalpolitical intrigue+1 more

                  Morgan Llywelyn's Lion of Ireland is a historical novel dramatizing the life of Brian Boru, the Irish hero and High King who unified much of medieval Ireland against Viking incursion. Pride of Lions continues into the generation after Brian's death, following the fractured politics and succession struggles his heirs faced. The pair reads as historical fiction grounded in early medieval Irish history rather than fantasy.

                • Cover of The Warlord Chronicles
                  The Warlord Chronicles

                  series · 3 books · 1995

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish islesmedievalpolitical intriguedark+1 more

                  The Warlord Chronicles or The Warlord Trilogy is a series of three novels about Arthurian Britain written by Bernard Cornwell. The story is written as a mixture of historical fiction and Arthurian legend. The books were originally published between 1995 and 1997 by Penguin and Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom and by St. Martin's Press in the United States. It has been adapted for television as The Winter King.

                • Cover of King Raven
                  King Raven

                  series · 3 books · 2006

                  similar byhistorical fictionadventurousbritish islesmedieval+3 more

                  The King Raven Trilogy is a series of historical novels by American writer Stephen R. Lawhead, based on the Robin Hood legend. Lawhead relocates Robin Hood from Sherwood Forest in Nottingham to Wales, and sets the story in the late eleventh century, after the Battle of Hastings and to coincide with the Norman invasion of Wales and the struggles the Cymry (Welsh) people against the Normans, and the political intrigue of medieval Britain. The trilogy consists of three books named Hood, Scarlet, and Tuck. The King Raven series continued his themes of reimagining popular mythology into more authentic and gritty settings, which began with his Pendragon Cycle.

                • Cover of Brian Boru: Emperor of the Irish
                  Brian Boru: Emperor of the Irish

                  Morgan Llywelyn · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar byhistorical fictionwaradventurousbritish islesmedievalpolitical intrigue

                  This is the story of Brian Boru a real life hero who changed the distiny of Ireland and who revolutionized 10th century Ireland.

                • Cover of Guardians Trilogy (Jack Whyte)
                  Guardians Trilogy (Jack Whyte)

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  completed

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish islesmedieval+1 more

                • Cover of Black Horses for the King
                  Black Horses for the King

                  Anne McCaffrey · standalone novel · 1996

                  similar byhistorical fictionwaradventurousbritish isles

                  Galwyn, son of a Roman Celt, escapes from his tyrannical uncle and joins Lord Artos, later know as King Arthur, using his talent with languages and way with horses to help secure and care for the Libyan horses that Artos hopes to use in battle against the Saxons.

                • Cover of The Brethren
                  The Brethren

                  H. Rider Haggard · standalone novel · 1904

                  similar byhistorical fictionwaradventurousmedieval+1 more

                  "... a tale ... of that pregnant and mysterious epoch, when men by thousands were glad to lay down their lives for visions and spiritual hopes, could find a picture, however faint and broken, of the long war between Cross and Crescent waged among the Syrian plains and deserts. Of Christian knights and ladies also, and their loves and sufferings in England and the East; of the fearful lord of the Assassins whom the Franks called Old Man of the Mountain, and his fortress city, Masyaf. Of the great-hearted, if at times cruel Saladin and his fierce Saracens; of the rout at Hattin itself, on whose rocky height the Holy Rood was set up as a standard and captured, to be seen no more by Christian eyes; and of the last surrender, whereby the Crusaders lost Jerusalem forever." (From the Author's Note)

                • Cover of The Outlaw of Torn
                  The Outlaw of Torn

                  Edgar Rice Burroughs · standalone novel · 1927

                  similar byhistorical fictionadventurousmedievalbritish isles

                  Raised from childhood by a vengeful royal fencing master who wants him turned into a weapon against the English crown, Norman of Torn grows up in 13th-century England knowing only combat and contempt for the nobility. By nineteen he leads the kingdom's largest band of outlaws and carries a king's ransom on his head, yet a priest's influence has left him with a streak of chivalry. Amid rebellion against King Henry III, Norman joins Simon de Montfort's rebels, and finds himself drawn to de Montfort's daughter despite a startling resemblance to the crown prince. An early adventure novel from Edgar Rice Burroughs.

                • Cover of The Camulod Chronicles
                  The Camulod Chronicles

                  series · 9 books · 1992

                  completed

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish isles+3 more

                  Published in North America as the Camulod Chronicles (and elsewhere as A Dream of Eagles), Jack Whyte's series retells the Arthurian legend as grounded historical fiction, stripping away magic in favor of a plausible post-Roman Britain. Uther, the volume tracked here, centers on Uther Pendragon himself, one of the saga's recurring figures on the road to Arthur's own generation.

                • Cover of Excalibur!
                  Excalibur!

                  John Jakes & Gil Kane · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar byhistorical fictionadventurousbritish islesmedieval+2 more

                  Amazon: The Chronicles of Arthur, King of the Britons. Here is the dazzling epic of England's past..the birth of the nation that gave America birth..told with the sweep and vigor of history and romance that only a master storyteller can conjure.

                • Cover of Boudica
                  Boudica

                  series · 4 books · 2003

                  similar bywarhistorical fictionbritish isles+2 more

                  Manda Scott's Boudica novels reimagine the Iceni queen's life and rebellion against Roman occupation, opening with Dreaming the Eagle's account of her childhood and rise among rival British tribes before following her through the war that made her legend across three further novels.

                • Cover of Albion (Patrick McCormack)
                  Albion (Patrick McCormack)

                  series · 3 books · 1997

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish islesmedieval+2 more

                  Albion is a trilogy of historical novels set in Arthurian Britain by British author Patrick McCormack.

                • Cover of Red Eve
                  Red Eve

                  H. Rider Haggard · standalone novel · 1911

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarmedievaldark+1 more

                  Red Eve is a historical novel with fantasy elements, by British writer H. Rider Haggard, set in the reign of Edward III. Red Eve depicts the Battle of Crécy and the Black Death, and also features a supernatural personification of Death called Murgh.

                • Cover of The High Crusade
                  The High Crusade

                  Poul Anderson · standalone novel · 1960

                  similar bywaradventurousbritish islesmedieval

                  The High Crusade is a science fiction novel by American writer Poul Anderson, about the consequences of an extraterrestrial scoutship landing in medieval England. Poul Anderson described the novel as "one of the most popular things I've ever done, going through many book editions in several languages."

                • Cover of The Grail Quest (Bernard Cornwell)
                  The Grail Quest (Bernard Cornwell)

                  series · 3 books · 2000

                  similar byhistorical fictionwaradventurousmedieval

                  The Grail Quest is a historical fiction novel series written by Bernard Cornwell dealing with a 14th-century search for the Holy Grail, set during the opening stage of the Hundred Years' War.

                • Cover of The Angel and the Sword
                  The Angel and the Sword

                  Cecelia Holland · standalone novel · 2000

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarmedievalpolitical intrigue+1 more

                  "It is the waning days of the ninth century. The vast dominion won by the great Emperor Charlemagne has been torn apart by his heirs and successors. In Paris, once the heart of that realm, the Emperor's irresolute grandson, Charles the Bald, battles desperately to preserve his kingdom from the ravages of Viking raiders. If the city falls, its people will perish, and along with them the precious remnants of culture and learning rescued from the ashes of Rome." -- Jacket.

                • Cover of Marcus
                  Marcus

                  series · 4 books · 1954

                  completed

                  similar byhistorical fictionbritish isles+2 more

                  Rosemary Sutcliff's linked Roman Britain novels follow several generations of one family across centuries of the Roman occupation and its aftermath, opening with The Eagle of the Ninth, in which the young centurion Marcus Aquila sets out to recover his lost father's legion standard. Later books, including The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, follow his descendants through Britain's slow slide out of the Empire.

                • Cover of The Shining Company
                  The Shining Company

                  Rosemary Sutcliff · standalone novel · 1990

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish islesmedieval+1 more

                  In 600 A.D. in northern Britain, Prosper becomes a shield bearer with the Companions, an army made up of three hundred younger sons of minor kings and trained to act as one fighting brotherhood against the invading Saxons.

                • Cover of The Dalriada Trilogy
                  The Dalriada Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2004

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish isles+2 more

                • Cover of The Cross and the Sword
                  The Cross and the Sword

                  Evangeline Walton · standalone novel · 1956

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarbritish islesmedieval+1 more

                  Mostly historical with "minimal fantasy elements" [Clute/Grant]

                • Cover of Knights Templar
                  Knights Templar

                  series · 3 books · 2006

                  completed

                  similar byhistorical fictionwarmedievalpolitical intrigue+2 more

                • Cover of Twilight of the Celts
                  Twilight of the Celts

                  series · 3 books · 2014

                  similar bywarmedievalbritish islesdark+3 more

                • Cover of Styrbiorn the Strong
                  Styrbiorn the Strong

                  E. R. Eddison · standalone novel · 1926

                  similar byhistorical fictionwaradventurousmedieval

                  "Styrbiorn the Strong tells the grand tale of Styrbiorn Olafsson, heir to the Swedish throne and known for his impressive size and strength, as well as his unruly, quarrelsome nature. Denied his birthright and exiled from Sweden, Styrbiorn becomes the leader of the Jomsvikings and sets out to reclaim the Swedish throne in the epic Battle of Fýrisvellir."--Page 4 of cover.

                • Cover of The Conquest
                  The Conquest

                  series · 3 books · 2011

                  similar byhistorical fictionmedievalbritish isles+3 more