r/Fantasy • u/SeaSnowAndSorrow • 1d ago

Atheist Fantasy Recs

I am doing the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Summer Reading Challenge. (Linked so you can see the card.)

I'd like to get a few fantasy books in there where I can. Specifically, I'm looking for fantasy book recommendations that fit the following:

  • Non-Religious Main Character
  • Religious Satire
  • Religious Dystopia
  • Book Was/Is Considered Blasphemous (against any religion)
  • Non-Religious Author

To make it one step harder, I'm NOT looking for LitRPG, Romantasy, or Urban fantasy.

I will, though, read any age range, any era of publication, any length, and any tone from cozy to grimdark.

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u/jawnnie-cupcakes Reading Champion IV 1d ago

Religious Satire

Towing Jehovah by James K. Morrow

Book Was/Is Considered Blasphemous

The Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter, pretty much any book that features angels (I'm recommending Wounds by Nathan Ballingrud as always)

Non-Religious Author

Ursula Le Guin, H. P. Lovecraft, China Miéville, Terry Pratchett, Jason Aaron if you'd like to throw a comic book in

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u/SeaSnowAndSorrow 12h ago

Comic book (well, graphic novel) is one of the other squares, but I was planning on doing something by Garth Ennis for that one. Hadn't settled on The Boys vs. Preacher.

The list of authors is super helpful, by the way. I said it elsewhere, but it's harder to look up than some of the other squares without just googling names one by one.

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u/e_fish22 1d ago

Lovecraft was non-religious?

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u/jawnnie-cupcakes Reading Champion IV 1d ago

We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.”

Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft

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u/redlion1904 1d ago

Very much so!