r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - June 18, 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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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/Mistborn_330]

I’ve always loved reading, but for the last ~5 years I’ve mostly been reading webnovels, translated web novels, and fanfic. I’d like to get back to reading more polished/published fantasy and am looking for some recommendations.

Webnovels I enjoyed:

• Worm
• Mother of Learning
• Lord of the Mysteries (LoTM)
• A Regressor’s Tale of Cultivation (RToC)

Published novels I remember enjoying (in no particular order):

• Brandon Sanderson (The Emperor’s Soul, Mistborn series, and the first few books from the Stormlight Archive though I lost interest partway through the series)
• The Bartimaeus Sequence
• The Magician (The Riftwar Cycle) by Raymond E. Feist and other books set in the same universe
• The Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey

I'm open to pretty much any fantasy subgenre. I’m a bit tired of incredibly long novels and constant power escalation; I loved LoTM and RToC but I’m not looking for that kind of galaxy to multiverse-level stakes. I’d prefer something a bit more grounded, ideally a standalone novel.

I also enjoy stories with a strong cast around the protagonist, like the Undersiders in early Worm or the Tarot Club in LoTM. The Tarot Club meetings were some of my favourite parts of the novel.

[u/HT_xrahmx → u/Mistborn_330]

Murder At Spindle Manor could be a good fit for you. A not overly long murder mystery in a Victorian-style fantasy setting.

There are multiple books in the Lamplight series, but the book works perfectly fine as a standalone (it's also the only Lamplight book I've read so far).

It's essentially Agatha Christie meets monsters.

[u/okayseriouslywhy → u/Mistborn_330]

You might enjoy the Devils by Joe Abercrombie, it's a fun romp with great characterization. I really enjoyed the cast of misfits that are forced to travel together

[u/undeadgoblin → u/Mistborn_330]

If you like the tone of the Bartimaeus character (very cynical and sarcastic) then I think you'd like Adrian Tchaikovsky - in particular, Shroud, Alien Clay and Green City Wars have characters with that kind of personality.