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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 Mongol

anchored on:historical fantasyimmortalitycursesour worldwaradventurous

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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 Casca
                  Casca

                  series · 60 books · 1979

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurousour worldimmortalitycurseswar+1 more

                  Casca is a series of historical fantasy novels created by American author Barry Sadler in 1979. The series follows Casca Rufio Longinus, a Roman legionary who pierces the side of Jesus during the Crucifixion and is cursed with immortality, condemned to wander through history as a soldier until the Second Coming. The character draws upon traditions associated with Longinus and the Wandering Jew.

                • Cover of Temeraire
                  Temeraire

                  series · 48 books · 2006

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurouswar+1 more

                  Temeraire is a series of nine alternate history fantasy novels written by American author Naomi Novik. The novels follow the adventures of Captain William Laurence and his dragon, the eponymous Temeraire, and reimagine events of the Napoleonic Wars with "an air force of dragons, manned by crews of aviators". His Majesty's Dragon, the first entry in the series, won the Compton Crook Award in 2007 and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel the same year. Temeraire: In the Service of the King, an omnibus volume collecting the first three novels, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 2007. Temeraire was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2017.

                • Cover of The Roots of the Mountains
                  The Roots of the Mountains

                  William Morris · standalone novel · 1889

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurouswar

                  The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbours, Their Foemen, and Their Fellows in Arms is a fantasy romance novel by William Morris, perhaps the first modern fantasy writer to unite an imaginary world with an element of the supernatural, and thus the precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature. It was first published in hardcover by Reeves and Turner in 1889. Its place in the history of fantasy literature was recognized by its republication by the Newcastle Publishing Company as the nineteenth volume of the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library in April, 1979.

                • Cover of Henry Sturges
                  Henry Sturges

                  series · 2 books · 2010

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurousdark

                • Cover of Roadmarks
                  Roadmarks

                  Roger Zelazny · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byadventurousour world

                  Roadmarks is a science fantasy novel by American author Roger Zelazny, written during the late 1970s and published in 1979.

                • 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

                  similar byhistorical fantasyour worlddark

                  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 A Song for Arbonne
                  A Song for Arbonne

                  Guy Gavriel Kay · standalone novel · 1992

                  similar byhistorical fantasywar

                  A Song for Arbonne is a novel by Canadian writer Guy Gavriel Kay published in 1992. It is set in a fantasy world with two moons and is loosely based on 12th-century Provence and the Albigensian Crusade.

                • Cover of Mirror Mirror
                  Mirror Mirror

                  Gregory Maguire · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byhistorical fantasyour worlddark

                  Mirror, Mirror is a fantasy novel by American writer Gregory Maguire, published in 2003. The novel is a revisionist version of the tale of Snow White set in rural Italy and featuring the historical Borgia family, with Lucrezia Borgia in the role of the Evil Queen.

                • Cover of Narnia
                  Narnia

                  series · 26 books · 1950

                  part of Narnia Universe

                  similar byadventurous+2 more

                  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.

                • Cover of D. O. D. O. (Department of Diachronic Operations)
                  D. O. D. O. (Department of Diachronic Operations)

                  series · 2 books · 2017

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurousour world

                  Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland's D.O.D.O. novels center on the Department of Diachronic Operations, a covert U.S. government agency that discovers magic vanished from the world in the nineteenth century and sets out to use time travel to bring it back. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017) is followed by Master of the Revels, continuing the pair's earlier collaboration on The Mongoliad.

                • Cover of The Drawing of the Dark
                  The Drawing of the Dark

                  Tim Powers · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurouswar

                  Brian Duffy is a weary, aging Irish mercenary hired in Venice, for reasons he isn't given, to work as a bouncer at a Vienna inn that also happens to be Europe's oldest brewery -- one that produces a legendary dark beer only once every seven hundred years. He arrives just as the Ottoman army under Suleiman the Magnificent marches on Vienna, and just as strange visions and stranger company start converging on the inn: an old flame, her father's uncanny unfinished painting, and Duffy's mysterious employer, who has plans for him well beyond keeping the peace at closing time. Tim Powers's historical fantasy set during the 1529 siege of Vienna.

                • Cover of Cleopatra
                  Cleopatra

                  H. Rider Haggard · standalone novel · 1889

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurous+1 more

                  Cleopatra: Being an Account of the Fall and Vengeance of Harmachis is an adventure novel written by English author H. Rider Haggard and first printed in 1889 by Longmans. Cleopatra mixes historical action with supernatural events, and could be described as a historical fantasy novel.

                • Cover of Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
                  Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

                  series · 9 books · 2004

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurous+2 more

                  Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a series of historical fantasy novels by the British author Michelle Paver and her first books for children. The books chronicle the adventures of Torak, an adolescent boy, and his friends Renn and Wolf. The main story arc revolves around Torak and his quest to defeat the Soul Eaters, a group of power hungry mages who seek to destroy all life in the forest. Paver has called it simply "a single story: the tale of Torak's discovery of himself and his world."

                • Cover of Blue Dawn Over Gettysburg
                  Blue Dawn Over Gettysburg

                  Joe DeSantis · standalone novel · 2008

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurouswar+1 more

                  A newly turned vampire escapes from his master and tries to use his abilities to win the battle of Gettysburg and the US Civil War for the North.

                • Cover of Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter
                  Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter

                  A. E. Moorat · standalone novel · 2009

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                  Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter is a 2009 novel by A. E. Moorat. It is a story based on the life of Queen Victoria, but incorporating a fictional account of her dealings with demons.

                • Cover of The Devils
                  The Devils

                  series · 1 book · 2025

                  similar byadventurousdarkfaith and religion+1 more

                  Joe Abercrombie's The Devils (2025) opens a new grimdark fantasy series set in an alternate medieval Europe besieged by plague, famine, and monsters, following Brother Diaz as he's tasked by the Church with managing a squad of imprisoned monstrosities - a vampire, a werewolf, a cursed knight, a pirate, and others - for a mission nobody sane would volunteer for. Their job is to escort a former thief posing as a claimant to the throne of Troy safely to her coronation, through a landscape falling apart around them. It's Abercrombie's first work outside his First Law universe in a decade, pairing his usual morally compromised cast with a monster-squad premise.

                • Cover of The Steel Seraglio
                  The Steel Seraglio

                  Mike Carey, Linda Carey & Louise Carey · standalone novel · 2012

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurousdark

                  Once, in a city known as Bessa, there was a sultan named Bokhari Al-Bokhari, who was thrown down by the zealots of the ascetic Hakkim Mehdad. The sultan, his wives and children were put to the sword, while his 365 concubines were sent to a neighbouring caliph as tribute, Hakkim having no use for the pleasures of the flesh. But a day after the caravan had departed from Bessa, Hakkim discovered the terrible secret that the concubines had hidden from him. His reaction was swift and cruel. Kill the women of the harem forthwith, along with their children and maidservants. Let not one survive. This, then, is the tale - or tales - of how a remarkable group of women fight together to survive both the fury of Hakkim and the rigours of the desert. This is the tale of the forging of a rabble of concubines, children, camel-herds and thieves into an army of silk and steel. It is the tale of the redemption and rise of Bessa, fabled City of Women. And it is the tale of an act of kindness that carries the seed of death, and will return to bring darkness and the end of a dream...

                • Cover of This Immortal
                  This Immortal

                  series · 2 books · 1966

                  similar byadventurousour worldimmortality

                  This Immortal is a single science fiction novel by Roger Zelazny, expanded from his 1965 serial ...And Call Me Conrad. In a depopulated future Earth largely toured by an alien race, its long-lived, secretive protagonist Conrad Nomikos is assigned to guide and protect a visiting alien across the ruins of Greece and Egypt, uncovering old grudges and assassination plots along the way. The novel shared the 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel with Frank Herbert's Dune.

                • Cover of The Drenai Saga
                  The Drenai Saga

                  series · 15 books · 1984

                  completed

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                  David Andrew Gemmell was a British author of heroic fantasy, best known for his debut novel, Legend. A former journalist and newspaper editor, Gemmell had his first work of fiction published in 1984. He went on to write over thirty novels. Gemmell's works display violence, yet also explore themes of honour, loyalty and redemption. There is always a strong heroic theme but nearly always the heroes are flawed in some way. With over one million copies sold, his work continues to sell worldwide.

                • Cover of Tigana
                  Tigana

                  Guy Gavriel Kay · standalone novel · 1990

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                  Tigana is a 1990 fantasy novel by Canadian writer Guy Gavriel Kay. The novel is set in a region called the Peninsula of the Palm, which somewhat resembles Renaissance Italy as well as the Peloponnese in shape.

                • Cover of How to Stop Time
                  How to Stop Time

                  Matt Haig · standalone novel · 2017

                  similar byhistorical fantasyour worldimmortality

                  How to Stop Time is a historical fantasy novel by English writer Matt Haig, published in July 2017.

                • Cover of The Druids of Hibernia
                  The Druids of Hibernia

                  series · 2 books · 1991

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurouswar+1 more

                • Cover of The Lost Art
                  The Lost Art

                  Simon Morden · standalone novel · 2007

                  similar byadventurousour worlddarkfaith and religion+1 more

                  A MILLENNIUM AFTER the formidable war machines of the User cultures devoured entire civilizations and rewrote planetary geography, Earth is in the grip of a perpetual Dark Age. Scientific endeavor is strongly discouraged, while remnant technology is locked away--hidden by a Church determined to prevent a new Armageddon.This is the world to which Benzamir Michael Mahmood must return. A descendant of the tribes who fled the planet during those ages old wars, he comes in pursuit of enemies from the far reaches of space. The technology he brings is wondrous beyond the imaginings of those he will meet, but can its potency match that of the Church's most closely guarded treasure?For centuries it has lain dormant, but it is about to be unearthed, and the powers that will be unleashed may be beyond anyone's capacity to control. Even a man as extraordinary as Benzamir . . .From the Hardcover edition.

                • Cover of The Fellowship of the Talisman
                  The Fellowship of the Talisman

                  Clifford D. Simak · standalone novel · 1978

                  similar byhistorical fantasyadventurous+2 more

                  From the flaps of the Del Rey first edition: "Through a wilderness blighted by horror rode Duncan, son of the noble House of Standish. Astride his mighty war horse, he was pursuing a quest vital to the future of civilization. With him went a strange fellowship: a brawny man-at-arms, a banshee, a hermit, a ghost, a turncoat demon, a goblin and a witch. Opposing them came forces of supernatural malignancy. Aiding them was a girl with the blood of enchanters in her veins who was mounted on an ancient griffin. And all this takes place in England in the 1970s... But in the world of The Fellowship of the Talisman, the Dark Ages never ended. There had been no renaissance, no exploration of the lands across the sea; and men lived much as they did a thousand or more years ago. Some historians believed this situation was the result of the terror and devastation called the Evil, which broke out every five centuries, laying waste first to Macedonia, then to Iberia, and finally to a large part of England. Duncan Standish had been sent on a dangerous mission which could give humanity an instrument against this Evil and rekindle the spirit of mankind. It was through a land where the monstrous servants of the Evil held sway that Duncan and his oddly assorted followers had to pass. The ghost, though erratic, was an excellent spy; and Snoopy, the goblin, knew many of the enemy's weak points. And with the aid of an ancient sorcerer's talisman which seemed to guard Duncan and his band from peril, they were safe... for the moment."