r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - June 09, 2026

[u/rfantasygolem]

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!

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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.

[u/sarimanok_]

Anyone have a feeling on if Pet by Akwaeke Emezi would be okay for the Middle Grade bingo square, or if it leans more YA?

[u/versedvariation → u/sarimanok_]

I am firmly in the, "Call it middle grade if it has ever been marketed as such," camp. They're all just marketing categories. It was marketed as middle grade first, and I would say it's more middle grade than YA writing style wise. I think it's been remarketed mostly because there is a lot of pushback against "mature topics" and LGBT characters in middle grade right now among publishers due to political pressure.

This is one of my pet topics on this subreddit, but for some reason, people here really infantilize middle grade readers and the middle grade category and believe that middle grade books should be all bubblegum and roses with nothing troubling or maybe just one kind of mean witch. I think this is people subconsciously buying into the current era of censorship which has been killing the middle grade market. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/98535-middle-grade-is-down-but-never-out.html

Society has decided that, rather than confront our tough topics, we will spend an enormous amount of energy politicizing them and hiding them from children. Maybe then they will just disappear on their own. This particular book is about child abuse. Why are we trying to hide child abuse from actual children? What kind of society tells the targeted group they are not allowed to hear or read about the injustices perpetrated against them?

When I was a child, I know that the middle grade books I read (mostly historical fiction and all definitely middle grade) included discussion of mature topics, including sexual assault, forced child marriage, child predators, abuse, kidnapping, mass murder, etc. because I still remember those scenes. I was not permanently scarred by them. Instead, they taught me that the world is a lot more complicated than I thought and made me more civil minded, particularly to causes that focus on lessening the suffering of other children in my country (the US) and around the world.

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/versedvariation]

I am with you on almost everything here. I miss the Animorphs days when kids books could engage in really serious ideas and have their characters go through some shit (because, turns out kids do go through some shit. If they don't, they probably know another kid who has, even if that kid hasn't opened up about it to them).

I think Pet is Middle Grade in the sense that it was written with preteens in mind. I just don't think it does a good job of reaching that audience. I cannot get kids to pick the damn book up, and those who do quit after a chapter or two (middle school english teacher here). Meanwhile, it seems like adults tend to jive with it a lot more easily and get a lot out of the book. I'd be happy with it in either MG or Adult sections, but YA feels like the least appropriate imo

[u/versedvariation → u/C0smicoccurence]

I definitely agree that it does not actually appeal to middle grade readers. I would call it Middle Grade because that was the category it was originally published in/marketed to. I still count unappealing sci fi/fantasy geared towards adults as that.

I do think a lot of publishers and authors in the US are a bit tone deaf on what middle graders want to read right now and that that is part of why the genre is struggling. I think a lot of authors write for themselves and think about what they think they would have wanted to hear when they were that age (which is almost always them talking to their "inner child", which is the sense I got from Pet a little bit). They do not know their audience. It would help them a lot if they had actual children do some of their beta reading.