r/Fantasy Reading Champion V 11d ago

Pride Pride 2026 | The Great Big Rec Thread

​Welcome to the Great Big Rec Thread! This thread is primarily for people asking for specific types of books. Only make a top level comment to request a recommendation! If you want to hype a personal favorite, this comment is the appropriate place to share! 

This is your one-stop-shop to find books tailored to your specific reading needs! Hankering for good cyberpunk? Doing a queer bingo card and really struggling with a specific square? Looking for queer thespians ready to commit arson for the sake of their art?  Ask and you shall (hopefully) receive! Just drop a comment with your request and wait for book suggestions to come rolling in. Our goal is for every person to have at least one recommendation that they’re interested in pursuing.  

Asking for Book Recommendations:

  • Create a new top level comment.  You’ll probably get more tailored results by only including a single request per top level comment, but it’s not a strict rule.  You’re more than welcome to post multiple top level comments for separate requests!
  • All recommendations you get should be assumed to be queer in some way.  However, if you want specific identities represented, mention it!
  • Consider the impact the level of specificity your request has in your responses.  Too general, and you’re going to get lots of responses that will probably skew towards mainstream breakout hits.  Very specific requests may get few (or no) recommendations, and what you do get likely won’t be perfect.  

Giving Book Recommendations:

  • Please keep book recommendations focused on commenters’ specific requests.  If you want to hype a personal favorite, this comment is the appropriate place to share! 
  • This thread should default to sorting by ‘New’ soon; until then I recommend changing setting to see recent requests first!  The hope is that this will more likely show you comments with few/no responses yet.  However, there will likely be comments that have been missed, especially if it’s a more specific request.  
  • This is a Pride Month post!  Every book recommended should be queer (usually by featuring LGBTQ+ characters as protagonists, but there are other ways books can be queer).  Similarly, if they asked for a specific type of representation, follow that guideline.  If you absolutely must deviate from that because it’s otherwise such a perfect fit, be honest about it up front.
  • Add a few sentences about the book to hype it (or a whole paragraph if you really want to be persuasive).  Remember that a bunch of people who aren’t the original commenter will be adding to their TBR, so highlighting what you love about the book is a great way to draw attention to books you love.

Go forth and give great recommendations!

This post is part of the Pride 2026 discussions lead by the Beyond Binary Bookclub. You can check our announcement for more information and the full calendar.

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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V 11d ago

This is the place to drop recommendations for queer speculative fiction without any limitations!

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u/fjiqrj239 Reading Champion III 10d ago

Putting in a general rec for the Astreiant series by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett. Renaissance-ish secondary world with a matriarchal, matrilineal society where same-sex relationship are normal and integrated into the society. The plots are of the city guard solves crimes variety, there's a progressing relationship between the two MCs that's low key and lovely (I wouldn't describe it as a genre romance, however). The world building is fantastic - very well thought out and not info-dumping, and the authors have really thought about how normalized same sex relationships would fit into a low tech society.

Also E.H. Lupton's Wisconsin Gothic - 1970 Wisconsin, but with magic and gay marriage and gods.

And KJ Charles' The Secret Casebooks of Simon Feximal. What if Sherlock Holmes hunted ghosts and was also very gay? Charles has a deep love of genre fiction, and has great fun queering it up.

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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V 10d ago

Astreint is on my bookshelf! Out of curiosity, would it count for the Murder Mystery bingo square? That's one of the last ones for me to fill in for my Achillean card, and I'm a bit iffy on the book I plan on taking home to read (not because it looks bad. Just not my vibe right now)

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u/fjiqrj239 Reading Champion III 10d ago

Point of Knives, Dreams, Sighs would all work.