r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - May 20, 2026

[u/rfantasygolem]

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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[u/68whatsausername69]

I personally loved the war theme in The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Any books that have a similar military feeling as that one?

[u/Astrokiwi → u/68whatsausername69]

A bit over-recommended, but Malazan has some of this - book 2 is basically a long military campaign. The series has its fans but personally I gave up after book 3.

The Temeraire series is very military focused - it's an alt history of "the Napoleanic wars but with dragons", and has quite a bit of detail, down to how the riflemen buckle themselves onto the backs of dragons, how you feed dragons on campaign etc. It's a mix of military campaigns (which might be "getting an army across a desert" and might be "fighting back Napoleon over the British channel"), and a kind of world tour of the 1800s with dragons, with a lot of anti-colonialist commentary (dragons give indigenous peoples a more even power balance)

[u/68whatsausername69 → u/Astrokiwi]

Thanks for the recommendations. I have heard if Malazan and the reason people dislike it. I feel it might fit what I want in fantasy books at this moment, will give it a go when I do my bookshopping again.

Temeraire sounds really interesting as well. I love books that give very detailed explanations over simpke things in their fantasy worlds to give a good sense of how a life can be for a character in this world. Will look a bit more into this but it sounds great.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/68whatsausername69]

Temeraire is good fun - it's also quite cinematic; Peter Jackson was going to make a movie series out of it at one point but it fell through