Loreful
HomeDiscover
Search series, authors…⌘K
Loreful

Reading orders for SF/F series and shared universes — with your place kept in every one.

Explore

UniversesSeriesWorksAuthorsAtlas

Help

FAQAboutSite map

Account & legal

Sign inCreate accountPrivacyTerms

Data

Built on ISFDB, Wikipedia, Wikidata and Open Library. Curated reading orders carry their reasoning on the page; the rest follow publication order. Data sources & licenses

© Loreful · data: ISFDB · CC BY

More like Touchstone

anchored on:fantasyart and artistssecondary worldwizardsidentitywhimsical

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 centered on witches and the practice of witchcraft — covens, hedge magic, familiars, and the witch's place in her community.
  • Stories in which gods and deities act as characters — walking the world, meddling in mortal lives, or dying.
  • 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 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 Hobbit
                  The Hobbit

                  series · 2 books · 1937

                  completed

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world+1 more

                  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 The Charwoman's Shadow
                  The Charwoman's Shadow

                  Lord Dunsany · standalone novel · 1926

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary worldwizardsidentity

                  The Charwoman's Shadow is a 1926 fantasy novel by Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. It is among the pioneering works in the field, published before the genre was named "fantasy".

                • Cover of Howl's Castle
                  Howl's Castle

                  series · 3 books · 1986

                  completed

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world+1 more

                  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 Princess Bride
                  The Princess Bride

                  William Goldman · standalone novel · 1973

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  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 Earthsea Cycle
                  Earthsea Cycle

                  series · 18 books · 1964

                  completed

                  part of Earthsea

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwizards+1 more

                  The Earthsea Cycle, also known as Earthsea, is a series of high fantasy books written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972), the series was continued in Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. In 2018, all the novels and short stories were published in a single volume, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with artwork by Charles Vess.

                • Cover of The Search for Delicious
                  The Search for Delicious

                  Natalie Babbitt · standalone novel · 1969

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  NB's first novel 'describes the adventures of a young man in search of a food that might properly represent the term "delicious" in the kingdom's new dictionary (True Name). The Quest in Kneeknock Rise (1970) has a similarly didactic tinge ...' --SFE3: Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), biographical entry by John Clute

                • Cover of The King of Elfland's Daughter
                  The King of Elfland's Daughter

                  Lord Dunsany · standalone novel · 1924

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world+1 more

                  The King of Elfland's Daughter is a 1924 fantasy novel by Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. It is widely recognized as one of the most influential and acclaimed works in all of fantasy literature. Although the novel faded into relative obscurity following its initial release, it found new longevity and wider critical acclaim when a paperback edition was released in 1969 as the second volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series.

                • Cover of The Ordinary Princess
                  The Ordinary Princess

                  M. M. Kaye · standalone novel · 1980

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary worldidentity

                  WorldCat: At her christening, a princess is given the gift of "ordinariness" by a fairy, and the consequences of that eventually take her to a nearby palace where, having run away to become a fourteenth assistant kitchen maid, she meets the prince for her.

                • Cover of Dying Earth
                  Dying Earth

                  series · 27 books · 1950

                  similar byfantasysecondary worldwizards+1 more

                  Dying Earth is a speculative fiction series by the American author Jack Vance, comprising four books originally published from 1950 to 1984. Some have been called picaresque. The series includes short story collections, fix-ups, and novels.

                • Cover of Derkholm
                  Derkholm

                  series · 2 books · 1998

                  completed

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  Diana Wynne Jones's two-book sequence needles the conventions of package-tour fantasy: in The Dark Lord of Derkholm, an ordinary, animal-loving wizard named Derk is conscripted to play the world's compulsory "Dark Lord" role for a businessman running exploitative guided tours of the fantasy world for outside tourists. Year of the Griffin follows one of Derk's griffin children years later, enrolled at a chronically underfunded wizards' university with a band of misfit students. Both books satirize familiar fantasy-quest tropes rather than playing them straight.

                • Cover of The Ickabog
                  The Ickabog

                  J. K. Rowling · standalone novel · 2020

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  The Ickabog is a fairy tale by J. K. Rowling. The story was published in installments by Rowling online, before its official publication in November 2020. The Ickabog is Rowling's first children's book since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in 2007. Upon release the book received generally positive critical reviews and emerged a bestseller.

                • Cover of The Scarecrow and His Servant
                  The Scarecrow and His Servant

                  Philip Pullman · standalone novel · 2004

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  The Scarecrow and his Servant is a 2004 children's novel by Philip Pullman. It tells the story of a scarecrow who comes alive after being struck by lightning and sets out on a quest with Jack, an orphan he hires as his servant. As he goes on his quest he tries to reach Spring Valley to claim it for his own. He has many troubles along the way such as a bird who ate his brain and being on a deserted island.

                • Cover of Od Magic
                  Od Magic

                  Patricia A. McKillip · standalone novel · 2005

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary worldwizards

                  Od Magic is a 2005 fantasy novel by American writer Patricia A. McKillip. It was a 2006 nominee for World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

                • Cover of The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread
                  The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread

                  Kate DiCamillo · standalone novel · 2003

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  The Tale of Despereaux is a 2003 children's fantasy novel by American author Kate DiCamillo. The main plot follows the adventures of a mouse named Despereaux Tilling, as he sets out on his quest to save a captured human princess from the villainous rats. The book won the 2004 Newbery Medal award and has been adapted into a film and a video game loosely based on the book, as well as a stage musical.

                • Cover of The Firework-Maker's Daughter
                  The Firework-Maker's Daughter

                  Philip Pullman · standalone novel · 1995

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  The Firework-Maker's Daughter is a children's novella by Philip Pullman. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Doubleday in 1995. The first UK edition was illustrated by Nick Harris; a subsequent edition published in the United States was illustrated by S. Saelig Gallagher.

                • Cover of Discworld
                  Discworld

                  universe · 84 books · 1983

                  Start hereGuards! Guards! · Start here

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+1 more

                  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 The Last Unicorn
                  The Last Unicorn

                  series · 8 books · 1968

                  similar byfantasysecondary world+1 more

                  The Last Unicorn is Peter S. Beagle's 1968 fantasy novel about a unicorn who, believing herself the last of her kind, sets out to learn what became of the others. Beagle later returned to her world twice more: The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version prints an early draft of the original novel, and The Way Home (2023) collects two novellas continuing the story decades on. Together the books trace one novel's long afterlife rather than a conventional multi-book series.

                • Cover of Balumnia
                  Balumnia

                  series · 4 books · 1982

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world+1 more

                  James P. Blaylock's Balumnia sequence begins with The Elfin Ship (1982), his first published novel, opening a whimsical fantasy world that blends magical elements with mock-scientific notions like 'The Five Standard Shapes' and 'The Three Major Urges,' narrated in a deliberately florid, overly courteous style. It continues across The Disappearing Dwarf, The Stone Giant, and The Man in the Moon.

                • Cover of The Golden Barge: A Fable
                  The Golden Barge: A Fable

                  Michael Moorcock · standalone novel · 1979

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                  From the back cover of the DAW first printing: ""Then the mist eddied. Out of it, purposefully and with dignity, loomed a great golden barge, a barge which glittered with a light of its own. Tallow was astounded. He looked at the towering shape, agape. He was no longer the integrated and impenetrable thing he had been, for he had not taken the golden barge into account before. He became worried that the barge should not escape as it passed. It disappeared into the mist again..." Jephraim Tallow's fantastic quest for the golden barge is the theme that runs through this unique novel. Unique in that it was Michael Moorcock's original novel in whose pages can be found the basic elements that were to emerge in his Eternal Champion novels as well as in his worlds of Jerry Cornellius, Karl Glogauer and Una Persson."

                • Cover of Stardust
                  Stardust

                  Neil Gaiman · standalone novel · 1998

                  similar byfantasywhimsical

                  Stardust is a 1999 fantasy novel by British writer Neil Gaiman, usually published with illustrations by Charles Vess. Stardust has a different tone and style from most of Gaiman's prose fiction, being consciously written in the tradition of pre-Tolkien English fantasy, following in the footsteps of authors such as Lord Dunsany and Hope Mirrlees. It is concerned with the adventures of a young man from the village of Wall, which borders the magical land of Faerie.

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

                  series · 2 books · 1871

                  completed

                  similar byfantasysecondary world

                • Cover of Zamonia
                  Zamonia

                  series · 5 books · 1998

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world

                • Cover of Shadowbridge
                  Shadowbridge

                  series · 2 books · 2008

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary worldart and artists

                • Cover of Uncle
                  Uncle

                  series · 6 books · 1964

                  completed

                  similar byfantasywhimsicalsecondary world