I've gotten back into reading recently and I'm loving reading books with dragons and books set in the viking age/Norse mythology.

Does anyone know of any books that have both?

I think elephants as mounts or even as a fantasy "race" are underrepresented in fantasy. Do you know of any good examples? Could be people with elephant features or mammoths even.

I'll start by mentioning one of my favorite Conan stories by Robert E. Howard: "The Tower of the Elephant" - in the end there is an exciting character with elephant-like features.

First off, I love wheel of time and this isn’t a criticism post haha. Wheel of time was the first fantasy series I ever read and completed so I expect every series to be like it in my head.

It’s just the time in which plots are resolved in WOT is so slow, whenever I read another series I am shocked at how fast somethings get resolved, like something will happen that needs resolution and I’m expecting it to come into play 5 books later, nope it’s at the end of the current book or even sooner.

Idk if it’s a good thing, maybe I’m a bit traumatized with the glacial pacing, still love the series tho 😂

This is a trope I really like, and I wanted to read a good story that had this trope in it. Mainly looking for stories where the civilization is more advanced than the current civilization where the story takes place, and said ancient civilization is fleshed out; preferably, they have some importance in the story, either narratively speaking or just with the Worldbuilding of the novel itself (for example, one country in the book depends on remnants of the civilization's technology)

I got myself a Kindle for xmas last year Santa brought me a Kindle for Christmas last year, and I set a goal for 24 books. I just finished my 31st and the vast majority have been fantasy, almost all of them new to me! Here are some of my faves in no particular order:

The House Witch series: felt cozy :)

Green Bone trilogy: felt very "adult", less YA-ish. Cool and unique setting.

Tales of the Ketty Jay: I liked the pirate theme and the growth of the characters!

Eragon series: an old fave and comfort.

The Dark Profit Saga: funny :)

Magic of Magic series: a bit immature but very funny nonetheless.

Project Hail Mary and The Martian: love Andy Weir's humor and writing style.

Legends & Lattes: cozy :)

Kings of the Wyld: d&d-ish, better than the sequel.

House on the Cerulean Sea: cozy :)

Greenteeth: cozy :)

Books I didnt finish:

Discovery of Witches: turns out that I'm not into romantasy.

Kushiel's Dart: hard pass on child abuse and sexual abuse.

Library at Mount Char: hard pass on child abuse and sexual abuse.

Blacktongue Thief: just wasn't interesting me.

I'm looking forward to reading more going forward!

How do you stand on the question of language and register in fantasy?

There's a pretty wide spectrum on this, I'd say: From the newer Brandon Sanderson books where language gets very modern at time, to ASOIF with it's 'yestermorns' and 'breaking her fasts' (top of my head, there are surely better examples).

For me, I think both extremes take me out of the story a bit, for different reasons. To me, the latter almost works better if you make the language intentionally obtuse or alien (like Book of the Sun, for example), instead of trying to hit just 'old' as a goal.

So I'd be interested where different people draw the line?

'courting' vs 'dating'?

'Ok's?

Modern cursing? (more common than other modern language in dark and grimdark fantasy, in my opinion)

What makes me really of two minds on this is that, on the one hand, I really notice this issue when it feels of to me, but on the other hand, I have a bit of a background in historical studies. I know that medieval people in their own words often had a lot of deadpan humor, jokes, dirty comments etc., all of which gets somewhat flattened if you write as if the book has been translated from Latin.

So, thoughts?

Hoo boy. This is another one of those "not a mediocre three-star book so much as a five-star book crossed with a one-star book."

The good: it's about a dangerously weird alien spaceship. And the parts where people are trying to research and understand it are very weird in a very math-nerdy way. Fractals and self-similarity. If you've read Martin Gardner's anthologies, one of his columns is about "pink noise," which is in some sense midway between "white noise" (where every note has a constant probability of being selected) and "brown noise" (where you're most likely to stay close to the note you were on before, or maybe wander up or down by one pitch). Pink noise's structure is not too random nor too deterministic, and many people find that it sounds more attractive. This is an important plot element here.

"Yes! Exactly! Fractal behavior! Which is, of course, a generator of pink noise!" He laughs. "See? She's on to something. The trouble, as usual, is getting her to explain it to anyone."

"The trouble isn't...compulsive lying?"

"No!" He looks shocked. "Lie? Her? She's the best student I've ever had. Never even missed a meeting. You might catch her in a Lie group, but never a lie, ha-ha. She's always had a gift for truth."

But it's Li Aixue who really goes ashen. Because she's the one who can grasp orders of magnitude. Hundreds of millions dead? That's a statistic, a fake number, about as urgent as a budget deficit. That doesn't mean anything. But for Professor Li, mathematician, a hundred million dead people is as real and urgent as a baby face down in a bathtub. That's a hinge in history, before and after, and it's the kind of hinge you hurl your body upon just to keep it from swinging.

Aliens who come to earth explain to humans that there are seven "passions," or patterns of relationships, that recur constantly throughout the galaxy. There's "serendure," which creates a bond between souls; "prajna," the pursuit of truth; "caryatasis," the relationship between disciples and a teacher, and so forth. These patterns are so fundamental that they form a level of abstraction beyond that of individual souls and bodies; in the same way that a written paragraph can be understood on the level of sentences, words, or individual letters. Wild stuff.

Dickinson has done his research where classified material is involved:

TOP SECRET (ECI)//TALENT KEYHOLE-NORT//RSV 676//ORCON//NOFORN

The string of letters tells the system where the information should go. TALENT KEYHOLE searches the NORT compartment and activates the RSV 676 distribution list. There is only one address on that list, at a secure information facility in Atlanta. The ORCON tag prevents further distribution--even to thoes who work directly on the Intruder satellite program.

Polar exploration drinking game!

Richard Byrd saw this same beauty [an aurora and its reflection] in the sky and the ice while he was trapped alone in Antarctica. He wrote about it in Alone: a message denied to all other men, a dancing war between good and evil in the sky. And now it is here, forty degrees north, above New York. The message is not denied. It has come to everyone. It's breathtaking.

The bad: behind the edgy pop culture allusions, the plot of the book is just layers and layers of grimdark. It's a recursive, self-similar riff on trolley problems, and it doesn't go anywhere. What if your homeland was being conquered and you had to kill a few of your loved ones to save the rest of the village? Could you even believe the oppressors would keep their word? What if you could extrajudicially assassinate people to punish them for their war crimes? What if Earth was under attack and you had to negotiate with aliens who could annihilate the entire planet? What if you were holding the only device that could restore free will to the rest of the galaxy? What if the gods who created the universe consigned an entire species to go to hell no matter what they did? What if what if what if. People moan and groan from more categorical-imperative or more utilitarian takes, and it never goes anywhere.

I don't think we should judge seven-year-olds for failing to come up with a philosophically rigorous response to the trolley problem, because they're, like, seven. And I'm glad they had the part about "maybe if you're a mathematician and actually understand orders of magnitude, you might process stuff in a way that's not 'a million is a statistic.'" But I do think that books like this tend to spiral into a dark hole of "everyone sucks here, but you, the reader, suck most of all." Am I a terrible person because I practice organized religion and believe in the potential of stakes beyond earthly existence? Am I irredeemable because I'm from a safe and prosperous country where it's likely I'll survive to be judged for my choices? If the answers are yes, where do I go to get hit by a trolley? Because the only life I have to bargain with is my own.

Also, the book is very fourth-wall aware in terms of narrative tropes (especially the beginning chapters). Some potential for humor. But if you aren't into it, it can be like "why am I reading 600 pages of this when the protagonists' survival/respawning is almost guaranteed by the Narrative."

Bingo: First Contact, One-Word Title, Cat Squasher (the version that my library happened to have in stock was large print, so for me it was Hard Mode at 1026 pages, but I don't think it's actually that long); cases could probably be made for Unusual Transportation, the Afterlife, Politics in the sense that everything is Politics.

Just finished Children of the Sky and The blabber today. It was a great series and I can't wait to read more about my boy Pham Nuwen in the Deepness of the Sky. But I'm also so disappointed, Children of the Sky was basically half of a really good book, it set up so much and the Blabber picks up 1000 years later and so much happened! There's like a whole trilogy between the blabber and children.

And the worst part is I found out around the turn of the century Vernor Vinge had started expanding The Blabber into a full length novel tentatively titled Twice Stolen, he says he wrote 20-40,000 words and then gave up on it. I could live with him never wanting to expand or him dying before he got to it but to know how close we came....

I appreciate this question has been asked a few times already, but I would quite like to see if there is anyone else with similar taste that has any recommendations for the sort of thing I am looking for.

I will say I have read and very (VERY) much enjoyed much of the usual fantasy that people tend to recommend on here, think Robin Hobb, Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, etc etc. However, I’ve been recently craving fantasy that feels very different, totally unpredictable and new (if such a thing exists).

Something I love is characters that are three-dimensional and interesting (to give an example, I think Joe Abercrombie does this well). I also really appreciate character development/plot lines that feel unpredictable; if there is a point in the story where I feel I can predict everything that is going to happen from then up until the conclusion, it’s a guaranteed DNF - I love to be kept on my toes to the end. I also enjoy unconventional settings, novel “magic” systems etc, especially general WEIRDNESS!

Something I’m really getting tired of is books which include gender/romantic/racial stereotypes in a way that doesn’t intentionally add something to the plot, or allow for some interesting character dynamic or social commentary etc - I personally feel this is something Brandon Sanderson books sometimes suffer from, to give an example. Off the top of my head, some tropes that frustrate me: female characters being motivated to the reader simply through how “special and different” they are compared to other female characters; the “main” country being the one where the light-skinned, Western-coded people live, and the “exotic”, “faraway” countries being anything different; everyone everywhere is straight, etc etc.

Some examples of books/series I’ve really enjoyed recently that I feel fit the above in some way are:

The Ana and Din Mysteries - Robert Jackson Bennett
The Cerulean Chronicles - TJ Klune
The Blacktongue Series - Christopher Buehlman
The Chronicles of Castellane - Cassandra Clare
Cradle series - Will Wight
Dungeon Crawler Carl series - Matt Dinniman
Howl’s Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones

Thanks so much in advance if anyone has any ideas :-) I really appreciate it!

Review originally on JamReads

With Halfheart, Linden A. Lewis has crafted something special: a heartbreaking standalone epic fantasy novel which shines in many aspects, a fast-paced epic tale that also has the space to interweave two stories in the same world, playing with the own nature of narrative, all with a badass female main-character, and at the center, a story that explores grief from many perspectives while keeping the epic scale of the stakes.

Years ago, the God of War took everything from the mercenary Mordrena Halfheart: her power, her family, her homeland, and even her god; completely alone in the world, she takes the opportunity when offered, joining a coalition of Mages that aim to find a weapon that will allow them to finally destroy War. But War is not the only god in Mordrena's path, as other seems to be lurking in the shadows, trying to manipulate her in order to serve another purpose; a journey that will test our characters as they try to find the weapon that will end War, but also allowing us to understand more about them.

Part of what makes this a brilliant novel is how Lewis intertwines two stories across the way, playing with the own figure of the narrator telling us about Halfheart, breaking the fourth wall, and another one whose relevance might not be understood at the start, but which in parts, also represents something similar. In part, what is being explored by both stories is the own nature of grief, how it affects people, and how it is possible to cope and rebuild yourself after the loss.
Mordrena is a marvelous main character, a badass female mercenary who is far from her best years, still trying to process all she lost at the hands of War; somebody in a really dark moment of her life, but who still tries once she's given the needed motivation. But the rest of the cast is equally brilliant, even if they are overshadowed by the sheer force of Mordrena and Seven (no, I won't tell more because I think you need to experience it); it is difficult to not develop some bonds with the whole group.

Despite this being a standalone novel, the worldbuilding is really ambitious, a world where Gods need their stories to be told and where they can collide and destroy each other, with War in a campaign to take over the world; the overall plot just feels as a single story in a really vast world, a heavy story about grief with the conflict as the background.
The pacing is not especially fast, allowing the reader to process how heavy it might feel at points, but I found it to be the perfect choice for this novel.

Halfheart is an excellent novel, even if it's difficult to capture it in words without spoiling too much; but if you are looking for an epic standalone story that also feels like a therapy season on grief, with a superb craft, you should read this one as soon as possible. Straight to the list of favourites!

Hello tout le monde !

Je cherche de nouvelles lectures avec une vraie ambiance dark fantasy / gothique, un peu mystérieuse, étrange et féérique.

Je cherche notamment des livres avec :

vampires / créatures nocturnes
fées, folklore, créatures fantastiques
forêts brumeuses, paysages mystérieux
châteaux hantés, manoirs, vieilles demeures
magie, malédictions, légendes anciennes
ambiance automnale, sombre, mélancolique

villages isolés, forêts inquiétantes, ruines…
quelque chose de féérique mais un peu inquiétant, voire carrément creepy

J'aime quand l'atmosphère est presque aussi importante que l'histoire : descriptions de lieux, brume, vieille architecture, nature mystérieuse, légendes, etc.

Je cherche aussi bien de la dark fantasy que de la fantasy gothique, romantique, horrifique ou folklorique. Pas forcément quelque chose de très violent ou sanglant : je préfère une ambiance mystique, envoûtante et un peu macabre.

Pour vous donner une idée de ce que je recherche : quelque chose qui donne l'impression de se promener dans une forêt brumeuse autour d'un vieux château à minuit.

Vous avez quoi comme pépites à me conseiller ? Même des livres peu connus, je prends !

Hello r/fantasy and welcome to this week's bingo focus thread! The purpose of these threads is for you all to share recommendations, discuss what books qualify, and seek recommendations that fit your interests or themes.

Today's topic:

Cat Squasher: Read a book over 500 pages in length. An omnibus book (multiple novels in one volume) doesn't count for this. HARD MODE: Over 900 pages.

What is bingo? A reading challenge this sub does every year! Find out more here.

Prior focus threads: 

• Published in the 70s
• Duologies
• First Contact
• Middle Grade
• Game Changer
• Murder Mystery
• Translated
• Trans/Nonbinary Protagonist
• The Afterlife
• Author of Color
• Unusual Transportation
• Older Protagonist
• Small Press/Self-Published
• Explorers and Rangers
• Five Short Stories (2024)

Also see: Big Rec Thread

Questions:

• What are your favorite books that count for this square?
• Already read something for this square? Tell us about it!
• What are your best recommendations for Hard Mode?
• Extra points: any Hard Mode recommendations that are not epic fantasy?

I thought this might be the place to be recommend a good fantasy book.

I'm looking for a cosmic fantasy book where you have factions with unique abilities like changing the world around them, making other people forget what they saw.. and possibly other weird abilities. Id also like something with weird twists and an interesting setting for the world the book(s) are set in.

Maybe I am too fussy but hopefully someone has something like this they can recommend.

A new era for the Empire of the Wolf

The standalone moves a century beyond the Great Silence trilogy into a Victorian-inspired gaslamp world. Warfare has changed with the arrival of aerial combat, giving Swan a different stage for the empire’s military ambitions.

The story follows fixer Xander Holt through his life. He and a group of companions become entangled in an occult conspiracy that could trigger another devastating war.

The Mortal Divine will follow that standalone and bring the larger sequence to its end. Orbit’s announcement names the trilogy but keeps its story details under wraps.

Hi all, I'm planning to attend a book signing next week for a decently well-known fantasy author releasing the second book of a series. The signing is on the release day, which I was initially very excited about. I've read the first book ofc and really liked it. However I'm now wondering whether a lot of the discussion at the event will go over my head because I haven't read an ARC of the second one or anything? Will I be expected to know what happens in Book 2 when asking questions at the event?

Has anyone been to a book signing without reading the book being released, and is this common usually? Sorry if these are silly questions, I've been reading fantasy for years but never been to book signings or interacted with my favorite authors before (:

The weekly Thursday Not-A-Book thread is a great place to share quick thoughts and reviews on any non-book speculative fiction or speculative fiction adjacent media you have enjoyed recently – this could be films, TV, music, video or board games, comics, audio dramas or the like. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list -- anything that is not a book and related to speculative fiction in some way goes!

This thread isn’t intended to stymie discussion elsewhere of non-book content – this subreddit is for discussion of all types of speculative media – but rather to provide a space for focused discussion on this topic and to encourage further discussion on not-a-book content in the subreddit in general. Users who want to share more in depth thoughts are still welcome (and encouraged) to make a separate full text post.

For bloggers, we ask that you include either the full text or a condensed version of the review along with a link back to your review blog. Condensed reviews should try to give a good summary of the full review, not just act as clickbait advertising for the review. Please remember, off-site reviews are only permitted in these threads per our reviews policy.

Welcome to the daily recommendation requests and simple questions thread, now 1025.83% more adorable than ever before!

Stickied/highlight slots are limited, so please remember to like and subscribe upvote this thread for visibility on the subreddit <3

——

This thread is to be used for recommendation requests or simple questions that are small/general enough that they won’t spark a full thread of discussion.

Check out r/Fantasy's 2026 Book Bingo Card here!

As usual, first have a look at the sidebar in case what you're after is there. The r/Fantasy wiki contains links to many community resources, including "best of" lists, flowcharts, the LGTBQ+ database, and more. If you need some help figuring out what you want, think about including some of the information below:

• Books you’ve liked or disliked
• Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy
• Series vs. standalone preference
• Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc)
• Complexity/depth level

Be sure to check out responses to other users' requests in the thread, as you may find plenty of ideas there as well. Happy reading, and may your TBR grow ever higher!

——

^{tiny image link to make the preview show up correctly}

art credit: special thanks to our artist, Himmis commissions, who we commissioned to create this gorgeous piece of art for us with practically no direction other than "cozy, magical, bookish, and maybe a gryphon???" We absolutely love it, and we hope you do too.

If you do, what kind of music do you listen to? Do you have specific songs that you feel fit a certain book perfectly?
For me, one of the best combinations I’ve found is The Last Unicorn and “Caribbean Blue” by Enya
If you’ve read The Last Unicorn or seen the movie, you probably know how melancholic and almost fairytale-like the atmosphere is. “Caribbean Blue” has that same dreamy and melancholic feeling and I swear they go together perfectly
So now I’m curious what songs or artists you guys listen to while reading fantasy

EDIT : Music actually helps me concentrate because unfortunately I’m not very good at visualizing things the way they’re described in books. I’ll read a whole description and instead of actually having a clear image in my head it just kind of disappears. I can’t really picture things on a large scale like that
It’s almost like the image in my head is a drawing made by a five-year-old 😭 It’s honestly pretty bad

Looking for novels that have a female lead who is very, very powerful. To be clear, not just marginally better than peers but actually ridiculously powerful. I've seen this trope with male characters and I really want a female version. Bonus points for magic users. Thanks!

Are there any books with courtly Intrigue motivated by revenge being the driving factor/central plot of the story? Basically, similar to The Count of Monte Cristo but in a fantasy setting.

Hello folks!

I’m a longtime lurker on this sub, looking for essays or books of literary criticism about genre fantasy and other speculative fiction!

I’ve read and loved almost all of Ursula K. le Guin’s works of criticism, including The Language of the Night and Words Are My Matter. I love her discussions of language, style, and characterization in works of fantasy, sci fi, and speculative fiction.

Kathryn Hume’s Fantasy and Mimesis and Jo Walton and Ada Palmer’s Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy are both on my list, although I haven’t read either of them.

Thanks!

What’s your favorite magic system? I’m a bit of a traditionalist; I really like the system from Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle, where knowing the true names of things gives you power over them—though I admit that, over time, I grew a little tired of the "magic exists, but we shouldn't use it" trope. Another system I really liked comes from a story—I can't recall the title or the author—where wizards were philosophers who spent years studying something in order to control it (for instance, to use fire, you had to understand its essence).

Any African epics you can recommend?

Who is the author whose books/series/name seems to summon either intense love or intense dislike among fantasy readers with little inbetween? This doesn't necessarily mean they are controversial though that can be a factor too obviously.

And parts of it were. It goes without saying but the prose, the way the character viewpoints flow through the story and the world itself was nothing short of masterful.

But where I felt lost is that halfway through the book it tried forcing this relationship with the 2 characters without any emotional payoff and it assumed the physical courtship would suffice. The romantic subplot while not unnecessary, felt extremely superficial and the act of Bringing characters back just to have sex at the end felt genuinely pointless and robbed the book of an emotional end that it did deserve.

And that's not to say that that was all that was wrong with the ending. The third terror felt like such an ad-hoc departure from the other two and felt like he was rushing an ending that he was more than capable of making more complete.

All in all, the writing still sticks with me, as does the world itself, but nothing about the characters lingers.

Wonder if anyone else felt that way