Hello!
When I was a child, I was very into fantasy books because of the creative world-building and how they prompted me to imagine other worlds (or books set in ‘our world’/alternate histories with the incorporation of magic).
I was particularly into Eva Ibbotson, Garth Nix (keys to the kingdom and the old kingdom series), Susan Cooper (the dark is rising sequence), Eoin Colfer (early Artemis Fowl), and of course C.S. Lewis and JK Rowling.
I have recently read and loved Susanna Clarke’s novels. I am looking for recommendations of fantasy novels that are not romance focused/romantasy, and not YA/new adult fiction. My current fiction tastes span to literary fiction, dystopian speculative fiction, alternate histories, and historical fiction.
I would be extremely grateful for recommendations as I’d love to start reading fantasy again 🙂
Thank you very much.
by remoteblips
5 Comments
The Goblin Emperor by Kate Addison and the two books in the same World Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones
Male author by Robert Jackson Bennet’s Divine Cities Trilogy starting with The City of Stairs has strong female protagonists
The Broken Earth starting with The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison
SciFi but Try Grass by Shari Tepper, like wise try A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
The Dragon Riders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey is a great fantasy series. I recommend you start it by written order rather than chronological order. A book she wrote later on is a prequel that is a great twist on the series
The Greenbone Saga by Fonda Lee
The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb
The Scholomance by Namoi Novik
The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo
The Deep by Rivers Solomon (a nonbinary author, but not sure if you’re looking for female authored books or non-male authors)
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Ardern
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura
Spear by Nicola Griffth
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
Lavinia by Ursula K Le Guin
Theres lots of great female/nb authored fantasy books out there, and if you want more recs, r/fantasy has some great lists of the most popular female authored books from various years
The World of the Five Gods series by Lois Macmaster Bujold.
If you’re open to very long books, I love [The Hands of the Emperor](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/af2bba9c-8f41-4a3e-b87a-8532a44ccb67) by Victoria Goddard. It’s a beautifully written slice-of-life book about the personal secretary to the emperor of the world, with a heavy focus on platonic relationships.