Hey y'all, I've gotten desperate, so hopefully I can get some good recs here. I just finished reading Patricia Wrede's Lyra novels after finishing her Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and I'm stuck on what to read next to scratch the same itch.
I hate grimdark and dystopian stories, and I want nothing to do with them. Think Tamora Pierce or Anne McCaffrey's Pern books over like, George R. R Martin or Hunger Games. They don't have to be YA, but usually the stories I enjoy end up being YA. I'd prefer no smut, but if the book is great, I can deal with it. I don't want anything recognizably set in our world, if possible. I'm looking for a fantasy universe or a new planet.
I've read the Inheritance books, and I've tried and failed to enjoy Temeraire (just adding this because I see them suggested a lot).
There has to be something out there that's easy to read and fun, right? I can't have read them all…
by juniperandmulberry
9 Comments
There are some bangers on r HFY. I highly recomend the First contact series by RaltsBlodthorne.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Girl Who Drank the Moon
Howl’s Moving Castle
The Thursday Next books or the Nursery Crime series
[Nevermoor](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6a6d5ca1-b2f5-47be-828c-018144d3bbc7) by Jessica Townsend! It’s more intense than the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, but it’s very whimsical.
Also, if you’re open to a very long book, [The Hands of the Emperor](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/af2bba9c-8f41-4a3e-b87a-8532a44ccb67) by Victoria Goddard is fantastic. 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.
Have you checked out the cozy fantasy genre?
Sorcery and Cecilia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot!
Wrede and her friend Caroline Stevermer decided as adults to play the letter game, where you set a time, a rough plot, and then you each take a persona and write letters back-and-forth, creating a story as you go. Anyway, they did it as a Regency-era story between two cousins in a world where magic exists, and when they finished they realize they had a novel. So it’s an epistolary novel by the two of them. If you’d like Wrede, I bet you’ll love it!
Carolina Stevermer’s A College of Magics is also wonderful! Fantastic characters, a little bit of romance, political intrigue, and of course magic college.
Martha Wells also writes wonderful, really readable, easily digestible sci-fi and fantasy. She’s famous for the Murderbot novellas, but her fantasy novel The Element of Fire is also a blast, it’s got dueling, political entry, sorcery, a half-Fae bastard princess… all the fun stuff!
Sherwood Smith,
The Witches of Karres by James Schmitz.
Becky Chambers’ **The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet** has a construction spaceship crewed with a found-family of multiple species travel across the galaxy to a new job. Most of the story consists of interactions between the crew and incidents that happen along the way.
Honor Harrington, David Weber. She’s the Pride of the Manticore Navy! Magic Kingdom for Sale, Terry Brooks. Monsterous Regiment, Sir Terry Pratchett.
New ya scifi that’s good easy to read – Genesis echo by d. Hollis Anderson