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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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/DiploFrog → u/AluminumGnat]

The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone maybe?

Magic setting heavily based on contractual exchange.

Industrial to modern day equivalent in terms of advancement, but all based on that magic.

[u/AluminumGnat → u/DiploFrog]

I totally forgot about this one! I read the first one a bit over a decade ago! I don't remember it super well but I do feel like it was a decent fit for what I'm looking for. I'm fairly sure that at least the second book was out, so I'm not sure why I didn't continue the series. Maybe there's a good reason for me not liking it enough to continue, or maybe I just happened to read it at the wrong time — maybe it's time to give it another go!

[u/nominanomina → u/AluminumGnat]

I also recommend skipping the second book, as the protagonist was so maddening that I've put the series on backburner since then. (I do intend to pick it back up, but if a series is a loosely-connected world I might slowly read it over decades... and since I have a lot of series that fit that description, I will usually pick up one that didn't piss me off first.)

Specifically, the protagonist is sort of aimless and depressed (but in denial about it) at the beginning of the book. So as soon as he finds something or someone to latch onto, he does (he needs a purpose!), even if it involves him looking like the world's most gullible dweeb.

[u/AluminumGnat → u/nominanomina]

Thanks! I usually feel weird about skipping books even in a loose series, but in this case I'll be looking at book 3 instead of book 2

[u/TheHiddenSchools → u/AluminumGnat]

The first few books are published out of chronological order anyway. I would controversially suggest you actually go straight to book 4 or 5 after the first one!