I'm a real sucker for this now-unfashionable fantasy trope. Does anyone have some good series recommendations that have the classic "farmboy rises from nothing to become the hero" premise, particularly newer stuff from the last couple of years? (If there are any left!)

I've tried for the last two or so years to finish Janny Wurts' Curse of the Mistwraith. Not because it's particularly difficult, but just a tough pairing of very deep writing and prose coupled with many life struggles that have made it very difficult to follow up with my interests or to stay engaged in anything.

Well, I recently have been trying to get sober (weed, not alcohol, please don't judge I know it is stupid..) and I have been using reading to help replace something I used to do every waking moment.

I just finished Curse of the Mistwraith, and it was absolutely incredible. It has quickly flown into my top 5 books and I am so excited that there is so much more of this beautiful world to read. The prose is incredible, so vivid and descriptive. Every scene felt incredibly meaningful, and I was engrossed in the world in a way very few stories have done for me. I enjoyed the many different layers to scenes, and felt that every character was so well fleshed out.

I thought the story was so interesting, how it is essentially a prequel to a traditional fantasy story, explaining how the Lords of Light and Shadow come to despise each other, and despite knowing that it would happen, it was still so exciting and painful to see unfold.

Anyways, all this to say I have never been so excited to continue a series before and I strongly recommend reading this book if you haven't. One of the greatest fantasy stories I have ever read.

Welcome to the midway discussion of The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean, our winner for the The Haunted Afterlife theme! We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 22 The Temple. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean

When Mercy Chan washes up on the shores of Hong Kong with no family, no money, and no memories, the only refuge she finds is the infamous, ghost-infested slum of Kowloon Walled City. Since then, she has rebuilt her life, working for the local triad as a ghost talker and dealing with the angry and bitter spirits who haunt the district. The filthy gutters and cramped alleyways of Kowloon have become her home.

But the past Mercy can’t remember isn't done with her. An unusually powerful ghost has infested Kowloon’s waterways, drowning innocents and threatening the district. It claims to know Mercy—and secrets from her past that are best left forgotten.

As Mercy is drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with this malignant spirit, she begins to realize that the monster she fights within these walls may well be one of her own making.

Bingo: The Afterlife HM, Older Protagonist HM, Non-human Protagonist HM, Murder Mystery HM, Pub in 2026, Book club (this one!)

I'll add some comments below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday Wed. Oct 28, 2026.

As a reminder, our November read is Spear by Nicola Griffith.

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our Reboot thread here."

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

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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!

——

^{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.

Welcome to the December BB Bookclub voting thread for Queernorm Cozy SFF!

The nomination thread can be found here. I'd recommend checking out all the nominations, although for the purpose of this poll, only the five most upvoted comments were chosen. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Voting

There are five options to choose from:

Awakenings by Claudie Arseneault

Innkeep, hunter, blacksmith, nurse—Horace has apprenticed for every clan in the domed city of Trenaze, and they've all rejected em. Too hare-brained. Too talkative. Too slow. Ever the optimist, e has joined Trenaze's guards to be mentored. Horace has high hopes to earn eir place during eir trial at the Great Market. That is, until the glowing shards haunting the world break through the city's protective dome, fused together in a single, monstrous amalgam of Fragments.

Armed with a sword, a shield, and far too little training, Horace doubts eir ability to defend the market-goers. But eir last stand is interrupted by a mysterious elven figure who can dissipate the Fragments with a single, strange sentence: your story is my story.

From the moment it is uttered, Horace knows the sentences holds true for em, too—and when the elf collapses in the middle of the market, e carries them to safety, to recover away from the panicked crowd and inevitable questions from eir fellow guards. It could cost em eir apprenticeship—eir last chance to find eir place in eir home city—but Horace cannot resist the pull of this mystery elf and the call of a new friend.

Aliyah has but one desire: to leave Trenaze's safe boundaries and find the forest that haunts their dreams. After an afternoon of board games in their quiet, sharp-witted company, Horace is ready to follow, confronting Fragments and other dangers of the road to understand what happened that day, hear Aliyah's laugh again and finally feel like e belongs.

Bingo squares: trans/nonbinary protagonist, self published (HM), unusual transportation (HM), one word title

A Slice of Mars by Guerric Hache

Mars is a strange place these days. Corporate overlords, capitalism, and even aging are things of the past on a planet increasingly brimming with biodiversity - yet pizzerias are in short supply!

Siblings Hett and San set out to change that. But a roboticist and a bureaucrat can't run a restaurant alone, so they bring on some help - a bioengineer, a communications scientist, and an unlikely grad student from Earth. Together, this gang of geeks will brave the fires of small business.

But work is just a small part of life. People are complicated. Different brains, different wounds, different values, and one questionably tame wildcat will all collide as they try to grow and succeed together. What comes out of the oven, in the end, is anyone's guess.

Bingo squares: Trans Protagonist (one pov of several); Small Press or Self Published; Feast Your Eyes On This

Many Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley

A memory-stealing cult.
The ever-watchful City of Eyes.
Making small talk.
Join Droplet as she faces all these horrors and more…

Vigilante shapeshifter Droplet has trained her entire life to take down those with more power than scruples, but she still makes mistakes. When a rescue mission goes wrong, a memory-stealing cult of blood mages escapes with kidnapped captives in tow. To save them, Droplet reluctantly teams up with the outgoing, tenacious Azera. Droplet knows better than to trust a human—she made that mistake once, and that person's betrayal scattered her community across the known world—and she can tell Azera is hiding secrets behind her sunny smile. But if they can’t learn to work together, even Droplet’s own memories could be lost.

Bingo squares: Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist, arguably (protagonist is a shapeshifter who casually takes forms that don't match her gender); Small Press; Non Human Protagonist

The Phoenix Keeper by SA MacLean

Set in a magical zoo teeming with mythical beasts from dragons and unicorns to kelpies and krakens, The Phoenix Keeper is a fierce joy of a cozy fantasy novel with a soul-restoring queer romance at its heart, for fans of The House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends and Lattes**.**

As head phoenix keeper at a world-renowned zoo for magical creatures, Aila's childhood dream of conserving critically endangered firebirds seems closer than ever. There's just one glaring caveat: her zoo's breeding program hasn't functioned for a decade. When a tragic phoenix heist sabotages the flagship initiative at a neighboring zoo, Aila must prove her derelict facilities are fit to take the reins.

But saving an entire species from extinction requires more than stellar animal handling skills. Carnivorous water horses, tempestuous thunderhawks, mischievous dragons... Aila has no problem wrangling beasts. But mustering the courage to ask for help from the hotshot griffin keeper at the zoo's most popular exhibit? Virtually impossible.

Especially when that hotshot griffin keeper happens to be her arch-rival from college: Luciana, an annoyingly brooding and insufferable know-it-all with the face of a goddess who's convinced that Aila's beloved phoenix would serve their cause better as an active performer rather than as a passive conservation exhibit. With the world watching and the threat of poachers looming, Aila's success is no longer merely a matter of keeping her job...

She is the keeper of the phoenix, and the future of a species – and her love life – now rests on her shoulders.

Reported bingo squares: N/A, unless Judge a Book By Its Title

Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland

Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant.

When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven the bastard. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of small disappointments and misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don’t care and won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab.

And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good.

But the journey doesn’t take him far, and Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is—and always has.

Bingo squares: N/A

Click here to vote!

Voting will stay open until Monday, October 19th, at which point I'll post the winner in the sub and announce the discussion dates.

What is the BB Bookclub? You can read about it in our introduction thread here.

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.

Finished my second set of quares with these books:

- Japanse gothic

- Carmilla

- The road

- The spellshop

- Our wives under the sea

These are just some thoughts as I'm by no means a great reviewer. Would love to know yours as well if you've read any of these or what you've read for any of these squares.

- 2026 release: Japanese gothic by Kylie Lee Baker, 5 stars.

Kylie you did it again. This was unexpectedly trippy near the end and I loved it. Lee and Sen are both dealing with so much trauma in such different ways and it's interesting to see how that all plays out and affects everything going on as well as their meeting and connection. I loved the breaking of time barriers as well as the atmosphere. It's a book where everything just comes crashing down and the confusion throughout becomes clarity.

- One word title: Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, 3 stars.

I feel conflicted about the writing. On one side I'm in general just not a fan of writing that's older and it can take me out of the story but on the other side I do appreciate the different flow.

Overall I didn't expect this to go the way it did and there wasn't a whole lot going on plot wise to be honest but I did like the atmosphere, tension and the approach the author went for still so I ended up with a 3.

- Climate fiction (replacement for middle grade): The road by Cormac McCarthy, 5 stars.

This was beautiful in a quiet melancholic way. The prose and dialogue in here really worked for me and while this really is just a story of a father and son trying to survive it was gripping and emotional while at the same time doing a great job at making the story feel cold and distant in a way despite really feeling for them for example in the way they are only refered to as "the boy" and "the man". You can feel the grief throughout this and it makes you appreciate the small moments. It's so well done.

- Bookclub/readalong: The spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst, 4 stars.

Maybe a bit long but overall a good cozy read. I especially liked the creatures, plants ;) and magic going on. Felt very pretty. The side characters and conflicts were a bit more cliché but with this being a cozy I didn't mind it.

- Judge a book by its title: Our wives under the sea by Julia Armfield, 2 stars.

This wasn't for me. I appreciate the theme of grief and the idea of knowing you've lost someone and grieving them despite them still being there physically but I really didn't connect much with the characters and I was expecting more of a horror forward story. Instead it felt more like a story of love and loss with language first/a focus on HOW it is told instead of reading like an actual experience. Too slow and distant for me overall but def something someone else could fall in love with.

I really liked this book!

When Broadbent first said that the mmc for this last duology was going to be septimus i was like ew not that slimeball.

Turns out slimeball is actually a stand up guy.

Kyrene is a bad b but also very caring so love that for her.

I do love a non human side character but did not think that would come in the form of a a sassy ancient sword but i loved Zefiah and Kyrenes banter nonetheless.

One thing to note is this is not an enemies to lovers. It is at best a very reluctant allies to lovers.

The spice in this book is similar to the rest of the book where the writing and pacing is solid but i feel like it didnt have that extra oomph to make me feel the emotions that Broadbent was trying to evoke. FYI I am a very emotional person so this isnt a particularly hard task.

Still a solid book and i would give it a 3.75 stars

ONE LAST THING - in one of the spice scenes Kyrene arrives at her destination by Septimus rubbing her thigh ????? Like what?! Is her slit (Broadbents words not mine) so big that its sitting on her thigh or am i just dumb and didnt understand what was happening there LOL.

ONE LAST LAST THING - this couple is great but Mische & Asar are still my alltime faves xo

I just listened to the Audiobook of The Tower of Beggars by Torsten Weitze. I saw this book mentioned twice in a week on Reddit, so I gave it a shot. It was originally written in German. It's book one of a series, and the second book's translation is due out in January. The narrator (Gildart Jackson) has a great voice for the series.

I had never heard of the series nor the author, so I went in totally blind. The book (no major spoilers, this is all from the summary on the back) is about a teenaged girl named Niri who works with her uncle selling coal. She is half human and half Aeldae, which was an ancient race that once enslaved humans. She is hated or barely tolerated due to this. When her uncle dies, she is left with only a copper coin. This coin grants her admission to the Stormfell Academy, a Hogwarts-esque school for magic and combat. However, it only gives her access to the Tower of Beggars for one year, which means she has to scrape for everything.

This book has a lot of the magic school tropes, but that isn't a bad thing because it is well done. The main character is an outcast but has mysterious abilities, there is a cool board game, and a sort of battle-royale aspect akin to The Hunger Games and/or Ender's Game (not going to get into the specifics to avoid spoilers).

The main character is interesting and likable, though her timidity can get old. On the other hand, she doesn't just abandon it overnight and become a hero, which I appreciate. She also has a funny, smart aleck sidekick that I won't spoil. The humor is well done and did not make me cringe like certain fantasy books do.

The worldbuilding is interesting and well-written. The main characters all feel distinct, though some of the "bad guys" are cartoonishly evil. She is smart and kind, both of which are not necessarily helpful to her survival in this world. The magic is not well-defined, at least in book 1, so it maintains some mystery. I haven't minded it, even though I usually prefer magic with rules and limits like in Sanderson novels.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend it, especially if you want to read something that isn't commonly recommended here (or that none of your friends have read). From what I've read about it now that I've finished, the series gets even better as it progresses.

Read this if you like:

Mistborn (young female protagonist fighting for scraps that the nobles leave her)

The Name of the Wind (poverty is the main antagonist, and the main character is fighting to survive as well as progress; TBD if there is a weird sex scene with a god in book 2)

Harry Potter (orphan in a magic school, isolated by everybody instantly; partially relies on established magical tropes like dragons/trolls but also develops its own interesting world as well)

Lightbringer (hopefully this series doesn't end with the absolute whimper that Lightbringer did, but the beginning of the Lightbringer series and The Tower of Beggars share a lot of the same attributes)

Hadn't been reading for a decade, but about two years ago I picked up The Wandering Inn (TWI) and didn't put it down until I was current on the series. It really was the perfect webnovel to get into reading again, as it re-trained me up to be able to read many, many other things. Recently, I've been antsy to read something, but haven't managed to interest myself in anything other than staying current on TWI. I've regressed into reading Manwha's for about the past month and I want to change that by reading a few more books before the year end.

I'm going to list what I've read over the past year and rank them since I don't think my tastes are the sanest for easy reccomendations:

S (We Ignore Flaws For Our Favourites)

• The Wandering Inn: Vol. 1, 5, 6, 7 & 10 (LitRPG)
• Absolute Regression (Wuxia Inspired Manhwa)
• Shadows of Self (Wax & Wayne Series)

A (Great Reads & Easy to Reccomend)

• The Allow of Law (Wax & Wayne Series)
• Tress of the Emerald Sea
• Yumi & The Nightmare Painter
• Dungeon Crawler Carl (Book 1)
• Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl)

B (Good Reads / Hooked Into Finishing)

• The Wandering Inn: Vol. 2, 4, 9
• The Lost Metal (Wax & Wayne Series)
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl)

C (Struggled To Finish / Great Moments Pushed Me To The End)

• The Wandering Inn: Vol. 3, 8 (LitRPG)
• Bands of Mourning (Wax & Wayne Series)
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive)

D (Did Not Finish / Wouldn't Mind Finishing)

• He Who Fights With Monsters
• The Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive)

F (Definitely Not For Me)

• Beware of Chicken

I dropped He Who Fights With Monsters, because after reading the first 5-10 chapters, I wasn't sure I wanted to buy the book.

I dropped Inevitable Ruin because the message and mood permeating the series started to wear on me.

I dropped Words of Radiance, because I finished the first book of Stormlight Archive for Shallan alone basically.

Thank you for listening, that's my freak. Hopefully there's a few similar type of readers that can parse what I'm putting down and won't mind giving reccomendations.

I'd also like to say please add your preference if you think there's a difference for picking audiobook or paper. DCC & TWI are fantastic audiobooks, but I feel if I go back to Stormlight Archive I'll be reading it via paper and not audiobooks.

Book number thirteen of a twenty-one book science fiction and paranormal fantasy series. There is also an eleven book follow on series and many other books related to the The Kurtherian Gambit Universe, over 200 books in total. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2016 that I bought new on Amazon in 2026. I have the next three books in the series and will read them soon. The related series are listed at:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?46598

The series is a cross between science fiction and paranormal fantasy. A thousand plus years ago, an alien space ship crash landed in the Baltics. A man, Michael, found the space ship, went inside, and was forever changed into the first vampire using alien nanocytes. However, there were werewolves and werebears already existing on Earth and they still exist but they are very rare.

Michael has sired vampires and they have sired vampires. But only one of the vampire "children" is a daywalker like Michael. And Michael enforces strict rules among the vampires and the weres, no blood drinking, no letting humans know of them, etc. Violators of Michael's rules face swift termination.

But it has been thousand years since Michael was changed and he now sleeps for years at a time. Michael's helpers found a young woman named Bethany Anne working for the USA government who is dying of a rare blood disease. Michael took her to the alien space ship to become the second first generation vampire on Earth.

Bethany Anne has created a huge workforce and they are swiftly moving ahead with incredibly advanced AI and space access technology. Bethany's people are building space ships and space stations with gravitic drives in them that all of the governments of Earth want to buy or steal. And the German government are mounting an expedition to Antarctica to see if the old Nazi base there still exists.

This series is real pulp like old science fiction with lots of action and dialogue. I love it !

Warning: this series might be damaging to your savings account since there are so many books.

The author has a website at:
https://lmbpn.com/

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (3,508 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/My-Ride-Bitch-Kurtherian-Gambit/dp/1642020540

Lynn

I'm not the biggest reader, or romantasy person, but after a few popular books like ACOTAR and the fourth wing series, I picked this one for its more gothic details, hoping to get away from the main male character being dark, brooding and having shadow capabilities, this guy at least had silver hair and no shadows 😄.

I did generally like the book. I looked into a few reviews and was already prepared that the book was long, traumatic and doesn't have the happiest ending. I never heard of Manacled until looking into a few reviews, and I am glad I never really knew too much of it, because I was able to read the book for being a stand alone story and I think that helped me appreciate it more. On the other hand, I did get some whiffs of references from star wars, World of Warcraft ( WOW, is a game) and some world war, holocaust vibes. I am actually really surprised no one else has made a world of warcraft reference because where you have the Eternal Flame fighting against the necromancers, in WOW you have the Litch King and the Scarlet Crusade, Luc seems to resemble Anduin well enough. The book also gave some Shining Through vibes in Part Two, which is one of my mom's favorite movies, about a female main character who works as a spy during the war.

I did find Helena to be whiny, but I have to remind myself she is around 20 yrs old through most of the book, give or take a couple years and as someone who also works health care, I appreciated the perspective from the hospital. The view of all the death and misery a person can see no matter how favorable or not the war was going. I can imagine that kind of work would leave anyone with an exhausting lingering sense of dread and despair.

Not into Sanderson Or Hobb. They're not for me.

Not into stories about thieves or heists.

I'm looking for fun loving warriors that aren't after power, or trying to become royalty.

Trying to stick to trilogies(or shorter)

I've tried all that people recommended from the previous topic that are up my alley, still having a hard time finding something that interests me, so I figured that I'd try again.

Legacy of the Drow Series is a 4 book series that is part of Legend of Drizzt. It's about a Dark Elf trying to find a society that won't judge him because of his race. I also used to love The Dark Elf Trilogy as well, but Drizzt isn't really an adventurer yet in these books. Don't have a desire to read past this series, and I wanna stick to titles that are set in trilogies or shorter now, but this was fun!

Oh, and I haven't enjoyed anything else in the Forgotten Realms.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/49177-legacy-of-the-drow

The Demon Wars Saga. By the same author. I still really love the first book, and think that it's super underrated. Haven't enjoyed anything else I've tried by Salvatore.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/529582.The_Demon_Awakens

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is technically not medieval fantasy, but it's one of my faves. About an elderly pirate woman out for just ONE MORE adventure.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61294937-the-adventures-of-amina-al-sirafi

Rogue Angel is about this Indiana Jones-like series where the MC is the reincarnation of Joan Of Arc. It's a way too long series that's still ongoing, and I imagine that they start phoning in the series after a while, but I love the first 3 novels.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/41157-rogue-angel

Edit: Here's the previous topic: No one recommended anything that I haven't already tried, or isn't my thing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasybooks/comments/1x4fymp/are_there_really_no_medieval_fantasy_about/

What's good that's about an adventurer from the last 20 years? Is there anything?