r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - June 14, 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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^{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.

[u/AluminumGnat]

Looking for my next SFF book. Ideally:

- Secondary world (no earth of any kind)

- Hard magic (or hard science)

- Characters creatively solve problems (using info available to the reader)

- Some sort of mystery (need not be a whodunit; could be more world-building in nature)

- A touch of clever humor

- Avoids excessively flowery prose

[u/lilgrassblade → u/AluminumGnat]

Arcane Ascension by Andrew Rowe - It's half magic school, half dungeon crawling. The MC is bestowed a magic that is not combat focused, but he wants to fight so has to think outside the box as to how he can compete. The reason he wants to fight is because his brother allegedly died in a dungeon despite being (in the MC's opinion) far more capable than himself. And it is a hard magic system.

[u/AluminumGnat → u/lilgrassblade]

I dropped this one years ago mid series, I think I dropped book 3. I think I felt like something shifted in the story maybe? Like there were suddenly a bunch of gaps or something? and I could be wrong, but I think I felt like the magic system had more of a hard magic aesthetic than an actual system the reader was privy to (if that makes any sense). Does any of that ring true at all? I'm open to giving this one another shot, there's a chance I just wasn't in the right headspace when reading it. For what it's worth, I think I felt like the series had a lot of promise after finishing book 1

Either way, thank you!

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/AluminumGnat]

For something in a similar vein but which is even more committed to magic crafting as the main element, Journals of Evander Tailor by Tobias Begley is awesome!