r/Fantasy

I read Piers Anthony as a teen and into my 20s (80s and very early 90s) Firefly and first book of Tyrant series turned me off.

So last week I got a Kindle so came across Piers Anthony and it had free Xanth books. I downloaded Question Quest. I am halfway through and his creepiness is so apparent.

A) A female demon D Metria is always truthful but she can lie about her age since a woman lying about her age is not considered a lie.

B) Looks and intelligence of women are linked. Plainer you are smarter you are with some exceptions.

C) Again obsession with teenage girls panties. It comes across as a fetish Anthony has that he puts on paper.

D) Innocence is tied to sex. This disturbs me a lot. Maybe it’s the era we live in but we have seen this idea weaponized against women especially children. I know he is from the Silent Generation but even then it’s a problematic concept and more so now. I know in 40s cartoons with Betty Boop she wouldn’t have sex since she would lose her Boop which I interpret as innocence.

I wish he held back on writing about sexual topics. He wrote them in a rather creepy way then and today it’s even more transparent. I should have relied more on my memory then to give him a second chance. Sadly he can be quite clever with his writing, I enjoyed his various tics for a clock and how they mutated to frantic, antics and critics. If he stuck to creating this clever lighthearted world it would have been better instead of sidetracking about women, their intelligence, lying and worse concept of innocence.

At least John Norman with Gor deliberately went down the exceedingly creepy and misogynist path.

Any other good fantasy series like Xanth minus the creepy baggage. I notice his last Xanth book was in 2025 has he lost his creepiness and outdated concepts towards women? Or was the last Xanth book written by his frequent cowriter JR Rain?

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

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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!

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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.

In english that is.

I ask because I absolutely love dragons but feel like I don’t actually know enough specific examples of dragon characters/monsters to point to as to why. Just want to check out some stories with dragons.

This seems to be much more common in science fiction, maybe for solid reasons. But does anyone got recommendations for really competent characters in fantasy, that gets to show off their competency?

Posting my review because imo not enough people are talking about these books, and I just finished the last one and needed to talk about it! If you’re a fan of Arthurian stories and/or dark fantasy move this to the top of your TBR. What an incredible series of page turners.

Morgan is a fantastic lead, a powerful woman from the start whose relationship with Arthur grounds the entire series. She's handled with so much nuance and care; she is fallible, she's angry, she's sharp, she makes huge mistakes, but at the same time is tragically misunderstood. The magic feels ancient, earthy, dangerous -- and requiring every bit of the protagonist's fierce intellect. In this story, Merlin is the closest thing to a villain there is, simultaneously the cause of much of Morgan's early misery and the foundation of her story.

The prose is just lovely, beautiful to read but not too dense, and the twists and turns in each novel of this trilogy had me reading way up into the night.

The final novel, Storm Over Camelot, released just last week and was a beautiful way to end this narrative. I just wish there were a few more chapters to flesh out the ending. But that might just be me wishing to live in this world just a little longer.

Anyone else here a huge fan of these books?

For me one of them was definitely the realisation that I do actually enjoy short stories as well as novella's. I love a big book so I thought that I wouldn't for some reason.

I also discovered a love for horror through this and found T kingfisher as well which is now one of my fav authors which in turn also had me find Darcy Coates.

Aside from that I also realised that I definitely like books set on/in the ocean or on boats which also came as a surprise to me (thank you whalefall and the bone ships)

I also just read a lot of good books that I might not have otherwise and enjoy the challenge these prompts bring. I also have my own small bookclub with some friends where we do love to read lgbtqia+ stories as well as from POC authors which bingo has definitely helped find recs for.

As for books that stuck with me: this year it was definitely walking practice by Dolki Min, mainly because I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. Last year it was the bone harp by Victoria Goddard for that same reason with cage of souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky right there with it. Loved the world and the narrative. My first bingo was 2023 where I cemented that I don't like superhero stories but also finally started reading from the first law world which was a win.

What were your wins or surprises? Any books that stuck with you that you read for bingo?

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I've been a huge fan of Marina and Sergey Dyachenko's writing ever since I randomly picked up Vita Nostra. Someone - I think here, or possibly on r/printsf - recently linked to this short story by them. I haven't been able to locate that comment again, but if that was you: thank you.

It's an early work - from 2001 according to ISFDB - and it shows in not quite having the same impact as their later writing, but it already has that same atmosphere; sparsely but intensely described.

My favorite line:

>At half past three in the morning, the city resembled an aquarium without water; it was just as empty and semi-transparent.

Anyway, I just wanted to share the existence of this short story with a wider audience. If you're a fan of their writing, you'll probably love something else by theirs to read. And if you haven't read anything by them yet, give this a try. If it sparks a sense of wonder, some small delight in the way they turn a phrase, then treat that as a sign that it should be worth your while to seek out their books as well. :)

I've read Mistborn, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Six of Crows, and Foundryside, but none of them are really what I'm looking for. Foundryside started off really close with it's scriving magic system but then turned into more of a larger scale conflict.

I'm not as much interested in a crew socially manipulating people as much as I am them finding an interesting way to steal something by breaking into where it's kept without ever getting seen in the first place. Something like the movies The Score or Logan Lucky where there is strategic multi-day planning and they need to solve stuff.z

If you have and sci-fi recs that's fine.

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I have been interested/participating in Bingo for ten years now and have completed a card for the past five, so I felt it was a reasonable time to finally write some sort of wrap up post (you know, because of the 5/10 year anniversaries, not because I am a terrible procrastinator who never got around to writing anything previous years....).

As I was thinking about how to do this wrap up, I put together some of my own personal Bingo stats from the prior 10 years - for example, the first three years I participated I did not even get a single Bingo. (10, 12, 8 books read for those three years.) At the time I was reviewing for a fantasy themed blog and only filled in squares with books I reviewed that fit them, which obviously did not work as a system. I stopped reviewing for that blog in 2019 and now review for a different, romance-centric blog, so my reviewed books make it on my card much less frequently now (the first three years an average of 7 books were read for review, and now it's about 1.5 per card). 

This year was the first time I completed two cards. The first, intentional card is a LGBTQ+ main(ish) character card and the second card is...leftover books I read. I also had probably about 50 other SFF books (not including re-reads) that I read in the time period that did not make it on either card. My recycled squares were “Retelling” for the LGBTQ+ card and “Name in Title” for the other card. 

I have a terrible memory so I won't be going through all 50 books but here are some standouts: 

Absolute Favorite of Both Cards: Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland: This was the first book I read in the 2025 Bingo year and unintentionally fit the Gods square. I loved it so much I actually re-read it a week and a half later. Tam, the main character is a grumpy goblin (not literally a goblin), there were multiple meddling gods, there's a monologue at the end in an orchard that is just *chef's kiss* of monologues. I literally cannot put into words how much I loved this book. I made my best friend read it and she said I liked it because I am Tam so make of that what you will.

Only Author Appearing on Both Cards: Julie Leong: I had received The Teller of Small Fortunes as a Fairyloot subscription book, and originally read it for the Immigrant square, but it ended up on the Cozy square. It was a delight! Tao, the main character, travels around and tells small fortunes, and over the course of the book gets involved with a thief and a mercenary looking for a missing child. Overall, this book has big found family and road trip vibes, and even with the missing child subplot, ends up feeling like a hug. The Keeper of Magical Things, set in the same world but standalone, didn’t have the same feel (it was more stressful at the end for me), but it did have a really lovely community building aspect and I loved the two main characters. 

Easiest AND Hardest Square: Pirates: The second book I read for Bingo ended up being Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard. This was an intentional choice, since I originally only planned on one card. I have read (most of) de Bodard's Dominion of the Fallen series and loved it, and enjoyed The Red Scholar's Wake also - I have had a hard time getting into her other more sci-fi works, but The Red Scholar's Wake worked for me - it felt accessible in a way some of the other works in this universe have not. The very LAST book I read for Bingo was The League of Gentlewoman Witches by India Holton which, I will be honest, I had to slog through. I have tried the first in the trilogy (The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels) and just could not get into it, even though it has everything I like (pirates! Regency society! magic!) except it has a very specific sense of humor that I sometimes felt drifted a little too much into the *wink wink aren't we so funny* variety.

“Easiest” Square: Parents: I finished Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees on April 27 and had already devoured the entire Her Majesty’s Royal Coven trilogy by Juno Dawson earlier in the month, so the Parents square was the first to both be filled. I really cannot recommend Her Majesty’s Royal Coven trilogy enough - it is so propulsive and fun. I'm very bad at finishing trilogies but this is one I actually completed!

“Hardest” Square: Generic Title: I read A Dark Lord’s Daughter by Patricia Wrede for my Other card (a book I owned but did specifically pick up for Bingo) and it was enjoyable but did not live up to what I expected from a Wrede book. I finished that one on February 23. I had known I was going to read A Song of Silver and Gold by Mellissa Karibian for my LGBTQ+ card’s Generic Title square, but it took me a while to be interested in it. A YA sapphic retelling of the Little Mermaid fairytale, it was totally fine but nothing amazing. I finished it on March 15. 

Book Club Books That Do Not Reflect My Taste: I am in a book club where we read SFF and we rotate who picsk. So, I would not necessarily have read: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, Psion by Joan D. Vinge, Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones, and technically Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner was a book club book but it was my pick, and I did pick it specifically to fill the 80s square on my LGBTQ+ card. 

Weirdest Books (For Varying Definitions of Weird): Shroom for Improvement by Jemma Croft: this book is about a mushroom fae who inherits his father’s magical house after his father dies before telling him about the magical mushroom fae ritual that he needs to do each year to keep up the house’s magic >!- the ritual ends up being ejaculating on a rock.!< The mushroom fae and the love interest take a whole book to figure this out. Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Sothers: starts out as amazing fantasy (the prologue is spectacular, the evil sorcerer telling the ruling class he plans on destroying the god, so they need to figure out some infrastructure before he does so is just great) but morphs into sci-fi, with a strange plot twist >!about how the world is actually Earth but it’s been transformed by aliens who learned about a TV show!< and I’m not sure I loved how it ended up. But, this would be a good option for “Judge a Book By Its Title” square for 2026! 

Least Favorite Square: Biopunk: Just not my vibe. I read Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White for my LGBTQ+ card, and I did have to dig a bit to find something that fit that I wanted to read. I did not love the book but I think it was good - just not for me. A lot of religious trauma and gross body stuff. (This book fits the not hard mode "Trans or Nonbinary Main Character" square for 2026.) For my other card, Issac Steele and the Forever Man by Daniel Rigby was an unexpected biopunk. I was looking for something with Caves of Steel vibes, and this came up as I was searching. (I might have been influenced by the "Steele" in the title.) It was a bit goofy, and I believe it is only available in audio, but if you like a silly detective novel that does not take itself too seriously, with a man who has a throat that can speak any language and an eye that gets big, it’s good! 

Book Where I Most Related to the Main Character: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh really killed it for me. I loved the fact that the main character is pretty much the same age as I am and good at her job but also not infallible. She was far more relatable than many fantasy heroines who are SO powerful and SO pretty and SO competent. This is a perfect millennial book, in my opinion. 

Best Kindle Unlimited Book: The Compact by Miriam Benisse: This was an unexpected delight - I was looking for books with similar vibes to one of my recent favorites (A Suitable Consort by R. Cooper) and this popped up in my search. It had a great romance, amazing characters and some fun white walker-esque bad guys. When I read it, the second book was up for pre-order on Amazon, but since then the author has said it is taking longer than anticipated to finish it, and I am very sad about this. I will definitely be rereading this one. 

Not a Book(s): For my LGBTQ+ card, I played a video game called “Heaven Will Be Mine.” Since I will in no way do it justice, here is the summary from Steam: “Heaven Will Be Mine is a visual novel about making terrible life decisions in the midst of a hot-blooded battle between giant robots. Select one of three terribly behaved girls to fight and/or make out with each other in their struggle for the fate of space.” It was fun though I definitely was very lost until I read this Reddit post which explained some of the main concepts in a much clearer way than the game did. For my Other card, I watched the Murderbot TV show. As a HUGE Murderbot fan, I really enjoyed the show, though I had my complaints (as most readers do). I am thrilled it’s getting another season. 

Well. Thank goodness I didn’t review all 50 books, can you imagine how long this post would have been? Also if you’ve gotten this far and feel like we have similar taste in books please message me so we can be friends on Goodreads. 

Hoping to find a good series I can sink my teeth into.

Here's how I'd rate my recent reads in order:

Tier	Tier Description	Book	Author
S	Peak fantasy, Unstoppable page turner	The Will of the Many	James Islington
		The Strength of the Few	James Islington
		Aching God	Mike Shel
		Bastion	Phil Tucker
		Solo Leveling (Complete)
A	Exceptional	He Who Fights with Monsters (Book 1)	Shirtaloon
		The Rascor Plains	Phil Tucker
		The Lastrock	Phil Tucker
		The Lost Cube	Phil Tucker
		The Perfect Run	Maxime J. Durand
		The Perfect Run II	Maxime J. Durand
B	Fun read	The Perfect Run III	Maxime J. Durand
		Throne Hunters (Book 1)	Phil Tucker
		Dungeon Diving 101	Bruce Sentar
C	Islands of peak fantasy in between half garbage chapters	He Who Fights with Monsters (Book 2 to 12)	Shirtaloon
		Dungeon Diving (Book 102 to 203)	Bruce Sentar
D	Junk food, shallow, one dimensional	Shadow Slave	Guilty Three
		Defiance of the Fall (Book 1)	JF Brink
		Throne Hunters (Book 2)	Phil Tucker
F	Well written but not my thing	The Blade Itself	Joe Abercrombie
		Mistborn: The Final Empire	Brandon Sanderson
		Imajica	Clive Barker
		The Ember Blade	Chris Wooding
		Red Rising	Pierce Brown
FF	Not engaging, poor prose, weak tropes	Into the Labyrinth	John Bierce
		The Path of Ascension	C. Mantis
		Unsouled (Cradle)	Will Wight

Juxtaposing family dynamics with a zombie apocalypse, The Hanyman's Guide to End Times is equally hilarious and heartbreaking. I happened across the book by chance at AWP in 2025. Got to talk with the writer for a few minutes before getting it signed. He's an absolute gem.

I've been reading Malazan for a while now, but before that I've read Dune and probably other books that had poetry, or other recollections, or far in the past/future events described at the start of chapters. I really like the books and my non understanding of these doesn't seem to hinder my experience, but am I missing something?

If you're someone that finds their experience amplified in some way by these poems, can you explain why?

I am looking for a book - preferably high fantasy - where 1 or even 2 main leads were switched at births and this kinda drive the narrative. It can be a solo novel or trilogy etc.

Kinda like Good Omens but more High Fantasy.

Absolutely loved the faithful and the fallen series. Book 1 was a bit of a slow start but could not put book 2 and 3 down. This is my first fantasy series that I have read and completed. Apart from LOTR and the usual George Martin stories. But I am struggling to find a new series to read. I don’t know whether to go for another John gwynne series or try something new altogether. Please throw any suggestions my way!

Hello!

I just finished reading the first two books of the series (book three is due on the 16th.) . The book is about a demon overlord that keep being reincarnated after fighting the groups of heroes that each time hunt him down and after 443 times, he is tired and wants to retire. He takes over the body of the porter that was hired to follow the heroes. He then tries to retire as a turnip farmer and live simple life, but his goat, the neighbours kids and the other villagers won’t let him.

These were my first book by MH Foster and I really enjoyed his writing style. There is a lot of wit, humor and originality in how the story develops, especially since we’re living the perspective of a former demon overlord. I highly recommend, especially for the kindle unlimited subscribers if you want to try something lighthearted.

Not sure if this fits here, but I recently just got an email with fairyloot for the adult fantasy book only subscription with the access code. I will not be using it, and I was wondering if anyone here would like it!

Jessica can almost adult in this novel - COMPLETELY OOC!

https://beforewegoblog.com/review-breaking-the-dark-a-jessica-jones-marvel-crime-novel-by-lisa-jewel/

BREAKING THE DARK by Lisa Jewel is the first of the Marvel crime novels that has been released by the House of Mouse for adult readers. I've already read both it as well as the sequel, ENEMY OF MY ENEMY, by Alex Segura (which stars Daredevil). How adult is it? Honestly, not really very much and it's a lot lighter than either the Netflix show or the original Alias comics. That's not necessarily a bad thing and if you want to read a decent novel about crime fighting with a dash of vampire makeup influencers.

Jessica Jones, for those unfamiliar with the character, is the creation of Brian Michael Bendis when he couldn't use Jessica Drew AKA Spider-Woman (I). His idea was to do a gritty private detective series with a female protagonist in the Marvel Universe and more or less succeeded. So much so that a successful Netflix TV show was created around the character. In all likelihood, if you want to buy this book, you probably already know the character from one or the other.

This isn't quite either the comic version or the TV show one but a hybrid as little is made of Jessica Jones' ties to other Marvel superheroes and no mention of her past as Jewel but Malcolm is obviously the character from the comics rather than the Netflix version. This is less confusing as it sounds but the alternate continuity becomes clear as Jessica's pregnancy with Luke Cage's baby plays a role in the story but none of the messiness related to her dating Scott Lang by the time they find out. This isn't a spoiler as her discovering her pregnancy is a chapter or two in. No Trish or Carol Danvers serves as her major female friend.

Indeed, if I were to summarize this book's take on Jessica Jones, it would be she's considerably less messy than either of her incarnations and her inner world streamlined. Jessica has strong feelings for Luke Cage already and would want to marry him even before the baby becomes an issue. She's traumatized by the Purple Man but the exact details are never gone into like they were in both the comic as well as show. I'd go so far as to say this Jessica is far more functional, likable, and effective as an adult in a profession. Which isn't to say that the more mainstream versions aren't entertaining but they're both heavily reliant on their interpretations of Jessica being a human train wreck.

With all of that out of the way, is the book any good? Yeah, I think so. The premise is Jessica is hired by a woman who thinks her children have had something strange happen to them while they were visiting their father in England. Whether trauma, changeling substitution, or brainwashing is something she can't tell even if her primary clue is they no longer care about their cell phones. Jessica, needing money, takes the job and finds that they are actually Stepford Children that are related to a story taking place a hundred years earlier. Along the way, Jessica Jones discovers an evil makeup influencer (aren't they all) and a woman who wants to kidnap women to force them to watch John Hughes movies in their jammies. I'm not kidding.

The weakest part of the book is probably the flashbacks to the villains' past that take up way too much of the book and don't have any characters as interesting as Jessica Jones. The bad guys' motivation isn't particularly intriguing and I would have appreciated it being more about our central character. On the plus side, I like that they went with an original villain that isn't precisely explained in an easy category like mutant or vampire.

In conclusion, Breaking the Dark is a solid and entertaining novel that feels like it takes place in the present with the culture of beauty, teenagers, and the generational divide. Jessica Jones is a bit nicer and more put together than usual but that actually fits well with her preparing to be a mother. I like the story and while it's not really the "dark and gritty adult crime novel" I expected, I had a lot of fun from it.