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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 Secular Wizard

anchored on:fantasywizardstransported to another worldsecondary worldportal fantasyhumor+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 about venturing into space to explore — survey missions, astronauts, and the frontier of the unknown beyond Earth.
  • 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 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 Princess Bride
                  The Princess Bride

                  William Goldman · standalone novel · 1973

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                  The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version is a 1973 fantasy romance novel by American writer William Goldman. The book combines elements of comedy, adventure, fantasy, drama, romance, and fairy tale. It is metafictionally presented as an abridgment of a longer work by the fictional S. Morgenstern, and Goldman's commentary asides are constant throughout. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace, then later by Random House, while in the United Kingdom it was later published by Bloomsbury.

                • Cover of The Hobbit
                  The Hobbit

                  series · 2 books · 1937

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

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                  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 Narnia
                  Narnia

                  series · 26 books · 1950

                  part of Narnia Universe

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                  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 Spellsinger
                  Spellsinger

                  series · 9 books · 1983

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                  Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger series follows Jon-Tom, a UCLA law student pulled into a fantasy world by the wizard Clothahump, where he discovers he can cast spells by singing along with his guitar. That world is populated almost entirely by anthropomorphic animals -- otters, rabbits, turtles -- with humans a rare minority, and across eight books published between 1983 and 2004, Jon-Tom and his companions repeatedly clash with the insectoid Plated Folk raiding the western territories.

                • Cover of A Wizard in Rhyme
                  A Wizard in Rhyme

                  series · 8 books · 1986

                  completed

                  similar bysecondary worldadventurousfantasywizardstransported to another worldportal fantasy+3 more

                  A Wizard in Rhyme is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Christopher Stasheff. The series follows the character of Matthew Mantrell, an English literature Ph.D. student, who is transported to a magical world where poetry is used to cast spells. There his knowledge of poetry, gained through his literature studies, establishes him as a powerful wizard and positions him as "lord wizard of the realm". The series consists of eight novels, and is said to have hints of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

                • Cover of Mention My Name in Atlantis
                  Mention My Name in Atlantis

                  John Jakes · standalone novel · 1972

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                  From the back cover of the DAW Books first edition: The continent of Atlantis had troubles enough before Conax the Barbarian washed ashore. For Hoptor the Vintner, who considered himself a citizen of importance, things were going from bad to worse. The king was on his last legs, his generals were plotting, there were those scary lights in the sky, and Hoptor's favorite girl was being put up for auction on the slave block. Then Conax, the self-styled king of Chimeria - a place nobody ever heard of - turned up at the auction with his broadsword, his barbaric manners, and his hair-trigger temper. That wast the last straw. From then on Atlantis was doomed!

                • Cover of Mordant's Need
                  Mordant's Need

                  series · 2 books · 1986

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                  Mordant's Need is a fantasy two-part book series by American writer Stephen R. Donaldson, comprising the novels The Mirror of Her Dreams (1986) and A Man Rides Through (1987).

                • Cover of Quag Keep
                  Quag Keep

                  series · 2 books · 1978

                  completed

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                  Andre Norton's Quag Keep holds a notable place in gaming history as the first novel set in Gary Gygax's World of Greyhawk, written after Norton took part in an actual Dungeons & Dragons session with Gygax himself. The novel and its later sequel, Return to Quag Keep (finished with Jean Rabe), follow a party of adventurers whose fates are bound to enchanted dice, blurring the line between players and the characters they inhabit.

                • Cover of The Wizard Knight
                  The Wizard Knight

                  series · 2 books · 2004

                  completed

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                  The Wizard Knight is a series of epistolary novels written by fantasy and science fiction author Gene Wolfe. It chronicles the journey of Able of the High Heart, an American boy transported to a magical world and supernaturally aged to adulthood. Able becomes a knight, and because of his connection with the magical and spiritual elements of the world around him is soon also dubbed a wizard.

                • Cover of Discworld
                  Discworld

                  universe · 84 books · 1983

                  Start hereGuards! Guards! · Start here

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                  The Disc is flat. It rides on the backs of four elephants, who in turn stand on the shell of Great A'Tuin, a turtle ten thousand miles long, swimming through space toward nowhere in particular. Magic works here, usually badly. Death speaks IN SMALL CAPITALS and rides a horse called Binky. It looks like a fantasy world and behaves like ours with the safety catch off: a mirror held up to bureaucracy, belief, newspapers, money, war, and the ridiculous, stubborn business of being a person. One hand shaped all of it — Terry Pratchett — across forty-one novels and a shelf of companions, maps, and the Science of Discworld books. The world is braided from strands you can pick up on their own. Rincewind, the cowardly wizard, flees across the Disc (The Colour of Magic). The witches of Lancre, led by the formidable Granny Weatherwax, mind everyone's business (Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters). Death takes on an apprentice (Mort). The City Watch polices grimy Ankh-Morpork under Commander Vimes (Guards! Guards!). A reformed swindler is given honest work at swordpoint (Going Postal), and young Tiffany Aching learns witching alongside the tiny, larcenous Nac Mac Feegle (The Wee Free Men). Standalones like Small Gods sit apart. The trick of it is that the farce turns, mid-joke, into something that catches in the throat, with footnotes that argue back at the page. Newcomers are gently steered away from the beginning: the early Rincewind books spoof a genre you needn't have read. Enter instead by whichever strand calls — Guards! Guards! for the Watch, Mort for Death, Wyrd Sisters for the witches, Small Gods entirely alone, or The Wee Free Men for the sharpest single thread. Open any door and the whole Disc opens with it.

                • Cover of Myth Adventures
                  Myth Adventures

                  series · 33 books · 1978

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                  MythAdventures or Myth Adventures is a fantasy series created by Robert Lynn Asprin. After twelve novels by Asprin, published 1978 to 2002, he and Jody Lynn Nye continued the series with seven more books that they wrote together. After his death in May 2008, Nye has continued the series on her own.

                • Cover of The Princess and the Goblin
                  The Princess and the Goblin

                  series · 2 books · 1871

                  completed

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                • Cover of The Barbed Coil
                  The Barbed Coil

                  J. V. Jones · standalone novel · 1997

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                  The Barbed Coil is a fantasy novel by J. V. Jones, published in 1997. It is a portal fantasy. Publishers Weekly described it as a "predictable hybrid of fantasy adventure and romance".

                • Cover of Bored of the Rings
                  Bored of the Rings

                  Henry N. Beard & Douglas C. Kenney · standalone novel · 1969

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                  Bored of the Rings is a 1969 parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. This short novel was written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, who later founded National Lampoon. It was published in 1969 by Signet for The Harvard Lampoon, and, unusually for a parody, has remained in print for over 50 years. It has been translated into at least twelve languages.

                • Cover of Magic Kingdom of Landover
                  Magic Kingdom of Landover

                  series · 8 books · 1986

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                  The Magic Kingdom of Landover is a series of six fantasy novels by Terry Brooks following the adventures of a former trial lawyer named Ben Holiday, who purchases a magical kingdom.

                • Cover of Novaria
                  Novaria

                  series · 6 books · 1968

                  completed

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                  The Novarian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, published between 1968 and 1989. The series contains some of de Camp's most innovative works of fantasy, featuring explorations of various political systems, an inversion of the "rags to royalty" pattern characteristic of much heroic fantasy, a satiric look at the foibles of humanity through the eyes of a demon, and a consistently wry and ironic take on conventions of the genre that plays out by taking them to their logical conclusions. Another singular feature of the series is its frequent use of folk tales integrated into the plot to painlessly convey something of the background and history of the invented world. This device obviates the need for lengthy appendices, as in The Lord of the Rings.

                • Cover of Spearwielder's Tales
                  Spearwielder's Tales

                  series · 3 books · 1993

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                  R. A. Salvatore's trilogy follows Gary Leger, bored with life after college, who wanders into the woods behind his house and stumbles into a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves, witches, and dragons, and finds himself mistaken for the realm's long-lost hero. The Woods Out Back, The Dragon's Dagger, and Dragonslayer's Return follow Gary as he's pulled back into that world again and again, growing into the role thrust on him.

                • Cover of The Traitor Spy Trilogy
                  The Traitor Spy Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2010

                  part of Kyralia series

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                  Trudi Canavan is an Australian writer of fantasy novels, best known for her best-selling fantasy trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five. While establishing her writing career she worked as a graphic designer. She completed her third trilogy, The Traitor Spy trilogy, in August 2012 with The Traitor Queen. Subsequently, Canavan has written a series called Millennium's Rule, with a completely new setting consisting of multiple worlds which characters can cross between. Though originally planned as a trilogy, a fourth and final book in the Millennium's Rule series was published.

                • Cover of The Immortals
                  The Immortals

                  series · 6 books · 1992

                  part of Tortall

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                  Tamora Pierce's Immortals quartet follows Daine, a young woman whose 'wild magic' lets her communicate with and shapeshift among animals, as she's drawn into the kingdom of Tortall's defense against immortal creatures -- griffins, dragons and darker things -- released back into the world after centuries sealed away. Beginning with Wild Magic, the four books pair Daine's personal coming-of-age with an escalating magical threat, and connect to Pierce's earlier Song of the Lioness quartet through several shared characters.

                • Cover of Almuric
                  Almuric

                  series · 1 book · 1964

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                  Published posthumously in 1964, Robert E. Howard's Almuric is a single planetary-romance novel rather than an ongoing series: Earthman Esau Cairn is transported to the savage world of Almuric, where he fights beast-men and wins the love of Altha, in a story indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books.

                • Cover of Wizard World
                  Wizard World

                  series · 3 books · 1980

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                  Roger Zelazny's Wizard World duology, Changeling and Madwand, follows Pol Detson, a man raised on Earth who discovers he's heir to a world where magic and technology sit at opposite poles of the same underlying force, and where the balance between the two shapes who can wield power. Torn between the two, Pol has to master an art he was never trained for in order to survive his own inheritance. The two novels form a self-contained sword-and-sorcery adventure distinct from Zelazny's better-known Amber series.

                • Cover of Dark Lord Davi
                  Dark Lord Davi

                  series · 3 books · 2024

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                • Cover of Howl's Castle
                  Howl's Castle

                  series · 3 books · 1986

                  completed

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                  Howl's Moving Castle (1986) follows Sophie Hatter, cursed by the Witch of the Waste into an old woman's body, who takes refuge in the wandering castle of the wizard Howl and strikes an uneasy bargain with his fire demon Calcifer while trying to break the spell. Diana Wynne Jones returned to the same magical kingdom in Castle in the Air (1990), following a new lead character, Abdullah, with Sophie and Howl appearing in supporting roles, and again in House of Many Ways (2008).

                • Cover of The Lord of the Rings
                  The Lord of the Rings

                  series · 13 books · 1954

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

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                  The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.