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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 Windtaker

anchored on:epic fantasysecondary world

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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 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 Lord of the Rings
                  The Lord of the Rings

                  series · 13 books · 1954

                  part of Tolkien's legendarium

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+1 more

                  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.

                • Cover of A Song of Ice and Fire
                  A Song of Ice and Fire

                  series · 14 books · 1996

                  part of World of Ice and Fire

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+1 more

                  A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the series as a trilogy, has released five out of seven planned volumes. The most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Since then, Martin has been working on the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.

                • Cover of The Riftwar Universe
                  The Riftwar Universe

                  universe · 44 books · 1982

                  Start hereRiftwar Saga · Start here

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  On the world of Midkemia a tear opens in the air itself, a rift hung between stars, and through it march the armies of an empire from another world entirely. So begins the chronicle Raymond E. Feist has kept for three decades: the tale of Pug, a castle kitchen boy apprenticed to a magician on the very day the invasion lands, and of Tomas, his friend, who inherits the armor and the ancient fury of a dead dragon-lord. Around these two the Riftwar Cycle turns, widening book by book from one besieged frontier keep into the whole history of a world of kingdoms, guilds, thieves' dens and mage-towers. The cycle runs to roughly thirty novels, gathered into arcs a newcomer can enter and finish on their own. The founding Riftwar Saga (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon) sets the board; the Serpentwar Saga, Krondor's Sons and the Conclave of Shadows carry the story down the generations; the Darkwar, Demonwar and Chaoswar sagas bring it toward its close. Crossing the rift to the rival world of Kelewan, Feist and Janny Wurts wrote the Empire trilogy, opening with Daughter of the Empire, a court intrigue told wholly from the invaders' side and for many the finest thing here. Shorter Legends of the Riftwar and the game-born Riftwar Legacy fill the corners; later still, Feist opens an altogether new world in the Firemane books. Feist writes fantasy in its most companionable key: apprentices who grow into archmages, tavern boys who become spies and dukes, a world you return to the way you return to an old inn. The mood is adventure before dread, friendship and rank and hard-won craft, wars that cost something, all of it rendered plainly and at a gallop. Begin where it began, with Magician, then follow the arcs in the order they were written, and the rift will carry you the rest of the way.

                • Cover of Riftwar Saga
                  Riftwar Saga

                  series · 7 books · 1982

                  part of The Riftwar Universe

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventurous

                  The Riftwar Saga is Raymond E. Feist's debut fantasy trilogy, opening with Magician, in which an orphaned apprentice named Pug is swept up when otherworldly invaders emerge through a dimensional rift into the frontier kingdom of Midkemia. Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon carry the resulting war to its close, and the trilogy became the founding entry of Feist's much larger Riftwar Cycle.

                • Cover of Sparhawk
                  Sparhawk

                  universe · 6 books · 1989

                  Start hereElenium · Start here

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventurous+1 more

                  Sir Sparhawk is not a young man, and he has little patience for the pageantry his order pretends to. A Pandion Knight of the militant Elene Church, he rides home from a long exile to find his kingdom rotten with intrigue and his young queen, Ehlana, poisoned — kept alive only inside a shell of living crystal. To wake her he must find Bhelliom, a jewel with the power to remake the world or unmake it. So begins a long ride across the continent of Eosia. This is warm, character-first epic fantasy from David Eddings, told across two trilogies. The Elenium — The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose — pits Sparhawk against a corrupt church and a hungry elder god. The Tamuli — Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City — carries him east into the vast Tamul Empire, where older enemies stir. Around him gathers a quarrelsome company: the Styric sorceress Sephrenia, the thief-boy Talen, the plain-spoken squire Kurik, and a small, imperious goddess who plays a set of pipes and always, somehow, gets her way. The pleasure here is the talk — grizzled knights trading dry insults between miracles and murders, a hero who solves as many problems with patience as with a sword. It never reaches for grimness or grand obscurity; it wants your good company for a long journey. Newcomers begin with The Diamond Throne and read the six in order: the Elenium stands whole on its own before the Tamuli widens the map.

                • Cover of Elenium
                  Elenium

                  series · 3 books · 1989

                  completed

                  part of Sparhawk

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventurous+1 more

                  The Elenium is a series of fantasy novels by American writer David Eddings. The series consists of three volumes: The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, and The Sapphire Rose. The series is followed by The Tamuli. The Elenium is Eddings' third fantasy series.

                • TC
                  Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

                  series · 11 books · 1977

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world

                  The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a series of ten high fantasy novels written by American author Stephen R. Donaldson. The series began as a trilogy, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. This was followed by another trilogy, The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and finally a tetralogy, The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

                • Cover of Shannara
                  Shannara

                  universe · 50 books · 1977

                  Start hereWord and the Void · The very beginning of the timeline

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Long after the world we know has burned itself to slag in the Great Wars, the Four Lands rise green over the bones of the old age. Science is a forbidden memory; magic has come back into the world, and with it the old divisions — Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes, each Race a splinter of what humanity became. This is the far-future Earth of Shannara, where the ruins buried beneath the soil are ours, and the only keepers of the vanished knowledge are the Druids of Paranor, who wake once a generation to meet the darkness rising again. Terry Brooks opened the Four Lands in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara and has charted its history for four decades since — a legendarium ordered not by throne but by a single bloodline, the Ohmsfords, each generation inheriting an Elfstone, a blade, or a wishsong when the age demands a hero. The original trilogy gives way to the Heritage of Shannara, the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, the High Druid, Dark Legacy, Defenders, and the concluding Fall of Shannara; the Genesis of Shannara books reach back to the apocalypse itself, and the Word and the Void trilogy back further still, into a demon-haunted version of our own present that is the root of everything after. In 2025 Brooks passed the histories to Delilah S. Dawson to carry forward. What sets these books apart is their long memory: a world where every triumph is provisional, where the same evil returns wearing a fresh shape each age, and magic always exacts its price. The reading is warm and headlong — questing companies, old talismans, journeys across a mapped and named wilderness — shadowed by the knowledge that all of it stands on the wreckage of a former world. Enter as readers first did: with The Sword of Shannara, then onward in publication order. The chronological path, beginning with Word and the Void, rewards a second journey, once the Four Lands already feel like home.

                • Cover of The Deed of Paksenarrion
                  The Deed of Paksenarrion

                  series · 4 books · 1988

                  part of Paksenarrion

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+1 more

                  Elizabeth Moon's The Deed of Paksenarrion follows Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter, a sheepfarmer's daughter who leaves home to become a mercenary soldier and, over the course of three novels, a paladin. Grounded in the practical, unglamorous realities of military life before turning toward divine calling, the trilogy was originally published in 1988-89 and later collected as one omnibus. It's known for its grounded approach to fantasy soldiering, informed by Moon's own military background.

                • Cover of The Stormlight Archive
                  The Stormlight Archive

                  series · 15 books · 2010

                  part of Cosmere

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventurous+1 more

                  The Stormlight Archive is a high fantasy novel series written by American author Brandon Sanderson, planned to consist of ten novels. As of 2024, the series comprises five published novels and two novellas, set within Sanderson's broader Cosmere universe. The first novel, The Way of Kings, was published on August 31, 2010. The second novel, Words of Radiance, was published on March 4, 2014 and debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller List. This was repeated by Oathbringer and Rhythm of War. The fifth novel, Wind and Truth, was released December 6, 2024. Sanderson has indicated that he will start drafting the latter half of the series after he finishes writing the upcoming Era Three Mistborn trilogy and the two Elantris sequels. The series has been adapted as a VR Experience and a tabletop roleplaying game.

                • Cover of Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt
                  Forgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt

                  series · 39 books · 1988

                  part of Forgotten Realms

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventurous+1 more

                  The Legend of Drizzt is a series of fantasy novels by R. A. Salvatore that began in 1988, and consists of 39 books as of August 15, 2023. They are based in the Forgotten Realms setting in the dimension of Abeir-Toril on the continent Faerûn in the Dungeons & Dragons universe currently published and owned by Wizards of the Coast. It combines the series The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Legacy of the Drow, Paths of Darkness, The Hunter's Blades Trilogy, and other sets into an abridged compilation. Drizzt Do'Urden is the main character of most of the books.

                • Cover of Earthsea Cycle
                  Earthsea Cycle

                  series · 18 books · 1964

                  completed

                  part of Earthsea

                  similar bysecondary worldepic fantasy

                  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.

                • DT
                  Dragon Trilogies

                  series · 6 books · 1988

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldtense+1 more

                  The Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies comprise six connected fantasy novels written by Melanie Rawn. The Dragon Prince trilogy focuses on Prince Rohan of the Desert and his Sunrunner wife, Sioned, while the Dragon Star trilogy focuses on their son, Pol. The Dragon Prince trilogy consists of novels Dragon Prince, The Star Scroll, and Sunrunner's Fire. The books in the Dragon Star trilogy are Stronghold, The Dragon Token, and Skybowl.

                • Cover of The Codex Alera
                  The Codex Alera

                  series · 6 books · 2004

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventuroustense

                  Furies of Calderon opens The Codex Alera in a Rome-flavored fantasy world where nearly everyone commands elemental spirits called furies, except Tavi, a teenager with none, whose resourcefulness becomes the series' recurring answer to raw magical power. Jim Butcher's six-book series, continuing through Academ's Fury, Cursor's Fury, Captain's Fury, Princeps' Fury, and First Lord's Fury, builds from small-scale political maneuvering into full-scale war.

                • Cover of The Dandelion Dynasty
                  The Dandelion Dynasty

                  series · 5 books · 2015

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world

                  The Dandelion Dynasty reimagines the rise of a dynasty as epic fantasy Ken Liu calls 'silkpunk,' blending East Asian antiquity's material culture and philosophy with airships, submersibles, and other invented technology. The Grace of Kings opens with two rebels of very different temperaments overthrowing a tyrannical empire, only for the following volumes to examine what their friendship and their new nation cost each other. It's structured more like a national epic than a conventional hero's-journey fantasy.

                • Cover of Malazan
                  Malazan

                  universe · 36 books · 1999

                  Start hereMalazan Book of the Fallen · Start here

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+1 more

                  Pity the historian who tries to map this world; pity more the god who thinks he rules it. The Malazan Empire marches across continents on the boots of its common soldiers, and above them move Ascendants — mortals grown into something like gods, and gods worn thin as old coin. Magic is drawn from Warrens, roads of power threaded through reality; the dead keep their grudges; and every empire, however vast, is a wager against time. This is epic fantasy told from the mud, where a sapper cracking a joke weighs as much as an immortal settling a feud older than the human race. The world began as a tabletop campaign two friends built in the 1980s, and it still moves by two hands. Steven Erikson's ten-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen is the spine — Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, on through The Crippled God — each book a near-standalone campaign that only later reveals how it locks together. Ian C. Esslemont walks the same years from a different vantage in his Novels of the Malazan Empire (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard onward). Around them stand the prequels: Erikson's Kharkanas Trilogy, archaic and elegiac, chronicling a doomed elder people, and Esslemont's brisker Path to Ascendancy, following two adventurers before they became legends. Erikson's Witness sequence carries the tale forward, and novellas of the genial necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach supply the gallows comedy. Nothing is explained to you; comprehension is earned, and that is the pleasure. The themes run deep — compassion set against cruelty, the toll empires charge, civilizations that fall and are mourned. Begin where the saga does, with Erikson's Gardens of the Moon, and read the ten in publication order; the prequels are for the already-initiated. Trust that confusion is the price of entry.

                • Cover of Millennium's Rule
                  Millennium's Rule

                  series · 4 books · 2014

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Millennium's Rule is set across multiple worlds that only certain travelers can cross between, opening with Tyen, an archaeology student who unearths a sentient, centuries-old book named Vella, and Rielle, a dyer's daughter hiding forbidden magical talent in a society ruled by priests who forbid it. Trudi Canavan follows both of them as their discoveries chip away at what their worlds have taught them about magic, history, and who holds power. The series runs Thief's Magic, Angel of Storms, and Successor's Promise.

                • Cover of Lord of the Isles
                  Lord of the Isles

                  series · 10 books · 1997

                  completed

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldadventurous+1 more

                  Lord of the Isles is a series of books by author David Drake. In 1997, Drake began his largest fantasy series, Lord of the Isles, using elements of Sumerian religion and medieval-era technology. The series consists of nine books broken into two distinct parts, the Lord of the Isles consisting of the first six books, and a final trilogy dubbed the Crown of the Isles.

                • Cover of The Powder Mage
                  The Powder Mage

                  universe · 19 books · 2013

                  Start hereThe Powder Mage Trilogy · Start here

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldtense+1 more

                  Load your powder, and pray your sorcery outruns their cannon. Here the age of kings is ending at musket-point: a world where black powder is not merely fired but eaten, and the men and women called powder mages snort a pinch of it to burn a trance across the battlefield — igniting an enemy's cartridges from a mile off, bending a bullet mid-flight, reading a room by the taste of the air. Against them stand the Privileged, glove-fingered sorcerers of the old order who summon fire and frost, and above both, gods who have not finished walking the earth. Brian McClellan builds this flintlock world across two linked trilogies. The Powder Mage Trilogy — Promise of Blood, The Crimson Campaign, The Autumn Republic — opens with a field marshal's coup against a rotten monarchy and the invasion, revolution, and divine reckoning that follow. Gods of Blood and Powder — Sins of Empire, Wrath of Empire, Blood of Empire — crosses the ocean a decade on to the colonial frontier of Fatrasta, where old soldiers, spies, and a heretic goddess collide. A run of novellas and short stories fills the corners between. Expect grapeshot and gunsmoke, siege lines and back-alley intrigue, generals and con men given equal weight. Begin at Promise of Blood and read in publication order — the trilogies run in sequence, and the short work is seasoning, not prerequisite.

                • Cover of Shadowmarch
                  Shadowmarch

                  series · 5 books · 2001

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Twins Barrick and Briony Eddon are next in line to rule Southmarch when their father the king is taken captive in war, leaving them to hold a fracturing kingdom together against scheming nobles and a slowly advancing invasion by the Qar, an ancient and inhuman people from beyond the mysterious Shadowline. Tad Williams's Shadowmarch series follows the twins as they're pulled toward secrets buried beneath their own castle, including gods older than the kingdom itself. The story runs across Shadowmarch, Shadowplay, Shadowrise, and Shadowheart.

                • Cover of The Acacia Trilogy
                  The Acacia Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 2007

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Acacia: The War with the Mein begins with an empire's ruling Akaran children fleeing after assassins from an exiled people kill their father, scattering the heirs into a wider world whose comfortable myths — and the drug trade and slavery underwriting the empire's peace — turn out to be far uglier than they were raised to believe. David Anthony Durham's trilogy, continuing through The Other Lands and The Sacred Band, follows the siblings as each confronts a different piece of the empire's hidden machinery.

                • Cover of The Powder Mage Trilogy
                  The Powder Mage Trilogy

                  series · 15 books · 2013

                  part of The Powder Mage

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary worldtense+1 more

                  The Powder Mage trilogy is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American author Brian McClellan. It consists of the novels Promise of Blood (2013), The Crimson Campaign (2014) and The Autumn Republic (2015). In 2014, Promise of Blood received the Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer. Several short stories and novellas set in the world of The Powder Mage trilogy have been published, as well as an additional trilogy called Gods of Blood and Powder.

                • Cover of Lightbringer
                  Lightbringer

                  series · 5 books · 2010

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  The Black Prism introduces Gavin Guile, the Prism — supreme religious and political authority over the Seven Satrapies, and the only person able to draft every color of magical light into solid, structural "luxin" — as an uprising and a hidden family secret both threaten to unravel the fragile peace he's built. Brent Weeks's five-book Lightbringer series pushes its chromaturgy magic system toward its physical and moral limits: drafters who overuse their color eventually "break the halo" and turn into monsters called wights.

                • Cover of Dragonlance: Legends Trilogy
                  Dragonlance: Legends Trilogy

                  series · 3 books · 1986

                  part of Dragonlance

                  similar byepic fantasysecondary world+2 more

                  Dragonlance Legends is a trilogy of fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which take place in the Dragonlance setting. This series is the sequel to the Dragonlance Chronicles, and focus on Raistlin and Caramon. The three books in the series are Time of the Twins, War of the Twins and Test of the Twins.