Recommend some fantasy novels

Wyrmrest Accord
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I wish I liked Gideon the Ninth. Lesbian necromancers in space is definitely my thing but it reads too much like a fan fiction for me.

I remembered I have read a few other fantasy/scifi novels this year. They’re mostly uh. Scifi/magical realism because that’s where my tastes lean, but they have fantastic elements.

The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher. I do not recommend if it what’s going on Gaza is upsetting to you, as it does deal with anti-Arab racism. It’s a magical realism novel that was nominated for the Ursula K Le Guin Award. A young Palestinian-American girl is contemplating moving to a new country with her girlfriend, but is torn between that and her mentally ill mother and her own doubts. The magical elements are not super important, so if you’re not someone that likes literary fiction focusing more on family, it’s not really for you-- it’s more Magical Realism. Queer elements that are not focused on romance. Does have a very graphic scene involving Irsaeli border police that might be upsetting.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. A diplomat from Earth arrives on a planet of human-adjacent experiments (in this setting, all humans are experiments by a greater power that we don’t really see). These humans do not have a fixed biological sex. The main character must grapple with his misogyny while also navigating a dangerous political situation, one that he underestimates due to his misogynistic beliefs, while dealing with what’s essentially transphobia. Published in the 60s, so it’s got some beliefs that are out of date, but still an interesting read. Everything I’ve read by Le Guin is super grounded and yet also very imaginative. I’ve also read a part of A Wizard of Earthsea so I highly recommend that.

Dawn by Octavia Butler. Earth is destroyed by a nuclear hellfire. A group of benevolent aliens have rescued the last vestiges of humanity, but their salvation comes with a price. Lilith has been chosen to be humanity’s new leader. The book deals with the alien society and what “being saved” really means. Also an older book, but it’s fascinating.

…right yes The Gunslinger by Stephen King is considered fantasy. I don’t recommend it unless you really like fantasy that’s super out there, Westerns, multiverse stories, or Stephen King. I also don’t recommend it often because most of the time, people who would be into The Tower have already found it. The Dark Tower is my favorite fantasy series ever (despite all these high brow literary recs, I have a deep attachment to Stephen King), and it’s essentially Stephen King Multiverse Cowboy Fanfic written by Stephen King himself, ya kennit? The series starts with The Gunslinger. Some people skip right to The Drawing of the Three, but I feel like The Gunslinger is still relevant, especially after his rewrites. It’s just also the worst book in the series, but thankfully also the shortest.

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The hardest part for me is finding sapphic stories is that so many are young adult and I’m no longer interested in young adult coming of age lesbian stories.

I am an older woman now, and I thrive off of media that includes older sapphic women.

This is not to knock on it, the YA stuff is valuable and needs to continue being made so that young and queer people have that representation and know that their experiences growing up are normal, it’s just my own personal search for books has out grown the genre.

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for real lmao. I like romance stories but the amount of work you need to do to dig threw YA and Adult :peach::eggplant: books is a lot of effort I’m not willing to spend. Also I’m tired.

Also forgot to mention I started shadow & claw by gene wolfe. I also need to finish gormenghast.

I have this problem of getting like 50-75% threw a book and then starting a new one.

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When I ran Curse of Strahd, I did some research by way of reading P.N. Elrod’s I, Strahd books. They’re great and I still go back to them sometimes.

The first is kind of an origin story, and the other is an expansion upon Barovia and the Shadowfell, and Strahd’s interactions with new inhabitants. I’ve yet to branch out to other Ravenloft books because I just really enjoyed the way these were written and assume that others will seem bad in comparison, but I’ll probably get there some day. If you liked stories about Drizzt or other Faerunian characters, I’d recommend checking out Strahd. He’s a great lawful evil character and having context for who he is helped me make him a better villain for my campaign.

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I’ve read a lot of P.N. Elrod’s Vampire Files. I’ll have to go look for the Strahd books.

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No, I absolutely agree with this. Try The Skin and Its Girl. The main character is a 20 year old who is a child for most of it, but the character that she’s speaking to is an elderly lesbian with a complicated history. It focuses on familial relationships between queer characters and the legacy of queerness. It’s surprisingly refreshing to see a story about lesbian main characters who are not dating-- in this case, a girl and her aunt.

She Who Became The Sun is also non-YA sapphic content. I also headcanon the main antagonist as sapphic and transfeminine, but the fandom disagrees and prefers cis gay male content.

Most of the rest of the books I recommended (except for Dawn and The Gunslinger) have queer rep, though not necessarily sapphic ones. I also believe Todd McCaffery has written scifi entries in The Dragonriders of Pern that feature adult lesbians. That being said, it’s also The Dragonriders of Pern as a series, so even though Todd is much more forward-thinking than his mother, there’s still some weird gender elements.

If you don’t mind horror, Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a story about chronic illness told through cosmic horror. It’s heartwrenching and also terrifying. Very powerful book tbh. The main characters are lesbians in their 30s.

When it comes to finding gay novels, the main questions are always 1) is it well-written and 2) is it YA or about teenagers because it really feels like finding “yes” and “no” as the answers to both questions is exhausting. I don’t even specifically look for lesbians anymore. I’m just happy to see any queer character in a novel that doesn’t read like the author’s main source of inspiration is tumblr posts.

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Loved the Dresden files. Same concept but a little darker would be the Sandman Slim novels, many of which take place in Hell.

Also good was anything by China Mieville. The Bas-Lag series was great in particular, but Embassytown and The City and The City were also really good. This communist chair of the British parliament has a unique perspective on how things might go in a fantasy setting and a wild take on steampunk.

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Loved the Ravenloft series of novels.

Since we’re going old school niche, I don’t think anyone mentioned the Anne Rice vampire chronicles or the Mayfair novels, both of which have been adapted for television. Rice also had a pseudonym she wrote under called A.N. Roquelaure where she adapted the old Grimm fairy tales into some seriously good smut.

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I read the vampire novels back in the day. The new series (show) is absolutely killing it.

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I was gifted some books recently. “Here, you said you like fantasy books!” Well, they were all fantasy romance… and well, I think I’ve been scarred. Yes, even after being on this server Rping for 15+years… I’ve been scarred. I honestly didn’t think it was possible at this point, but I was so so wrong. But I think I might have discovered a new career though.

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Oh, did you find the dinosaur romances?

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32

No, thank the gods. I did know about those. My husband used to work at a library and actually found one in the stacks. He was horrified, yet amused.

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Inevitably when we’re in target, my girlfriend will always gravitate towards the book section to find a beach read or something casual, so I amuse myself by looking at the romance novels. I found out someone wrote books about banging the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which I’m sure readers find both really weird but also strangely hot. Very conflicting.

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My recommend for cozy fantasy reads are Legends & Lattes and its sequel-prequel Bookshops & Bonedust. The books follow the life story of an Orc mercenary named Viv as she learns to slow down and build things up instead of tear them down.

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okay this has me interested

and thus my curse of reading 50-75% of a book and never finishing it shall continue

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36

read a terrible romance novel for laughs and discovered that demons killed hitler and put his body double in the bunker

it was a single throw-away line in Her Stepbrothers Are Demons and I think that’s about as up there as the sequel novel having dragons destroying Miami gangs.

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Not a book but it still nothing compared to Kung Fury.

A Miami cop and his partner a bipedal triceratops named Triceracop go back in time to recruit Thor, prehistoric sci Fi women and a T Rex to then go into 1940s Germany and kill Hitler.

Fun movie. 80s style action flick on YouTube.

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Trust me on this one, Legends & Lattes is a book you want to give a full read-through. I don’t want to spoil anything, but damn would you be extremely unsatisfied if you ended this book two or three chapters too early.

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Kung Fury is 100% worth the watch

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Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman is an excellent horror-fantasy about the black plague, the struggles of faith, and a second war on Heaven. Very grimy and low fantasy.

The Dark Elf Trilogy by R. A. Salvatore is the starting point to a huge number of fantasy novels written by the same author. It’s set in the D&D universe so it’s very flashy and exciting. Homeland is the first book in the trilogy.

Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara is the first book in a great trilogy of fantasy novels that I first read as a kid and still really like today. The second book is my favorite in the series.

Sea of Thieves: Athena’s Fortune by Chris Allcock is a surprisingly good and very fun pirate’s tale set in the titular Sea of Thieves. The audiobook version has music and sound effects that back up the action.

You’re a WoW player so I assume you’ve read at least a few of the Warcraft books, but in case you haven’t those are pretty solid too. Christie Golden’s Warcrimes is a book I’ve read several times, and I also really like Scott Brick’s Vol’jin: Shadows of the Horde.

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