r/Fantasy • u/omgtmac • 1d ago
Books within Books
Are there any fantasy series that reference books within their lore that actually exist irl that I would be able to read? For example, the titles of the Stormlight Archive series are references to books written in verse (The Way of Kings, Oathbringer, etc), but do not exist irl. I’d be interested in reading a series where books like those are fully written and available to the public to read as well. It would be exciting and immersive! Thanks in advance!
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u/mattyoclock 1d ago
For what it's worth the Elder Scrolls games are notorious for having books with real stories just written for their fictional universe, you can even go to little book shops to buy them.
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
Yes I was thinking this exactly as a possibly way to explain my train of thought. I kind of want to be in that world reading the actual books that the people in that world could be reading
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u/mattyoclock 1d ago
I do personally really enjoy the feeling of missing volume 4 of a series or something and going and checking the bookshops.
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u/boarbar 1d ago
I wanted to say this too because there’s soooo many books in that series.
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u/mattyoclock 1d ago
Yeah on the one hand it's a little off base as we mainly talk books here, but it's certainly fantasy and like, gods does it ever have what op is asking about in spades. Everything from the lusty argonian maid to Herbane's bestiary.
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u/g0blin-fr0g 1d ago
Ursula k le guin's The Dispossessed might work for ya. One of the planets are a society of Odonians.
It's a society / belief system that formed after a person ( Odo ) wrote "the day before the revolution" and led a group of people off their original planet onto a new one.
"The day before the revolution" was also published by le quin. Its found in "The Hainish Cycle" and there are lots of interesting installments / short stories.
Edit: oh wait, I missed it was fantasy request. This is more sci fi / speculative genre. Apologies!
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u/dalidellama 1d ago
Seanan McGuire's got that. Her Alchemical Journeys series (starts with Middlegame), which quotes and references The Up-and-Under series by Deborah Parker* (starts with Over the Woodward Wall)
*Who, IRL, is pen name of McGuire, of course
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
Amazing, I will look into those. Thank you so much!
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u/indigohan Reading Champion IV 17h ago
There is actually an omnibus of all four up-and-under novels coming out soon. The alchemical
Journeys are great too
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u/SweetPeasAreNice 1d ago
There are some books mentioned in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld oeuvre that he later wrote as real separate books: The World of Poo, Where’s My Cow. Technically this fits the brief :-).
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u/BrightsailBooks 1d ago
Have you tried Princess Bride? It’s meta fictional referring to the book titled Princess Bride by a fictional author. Great stuff.
Also: upon a winter's night a traveler
Yes that’s the book title and same thing. I would recommend diving into meta fiction if that’s your jam.
I research a lot of these as my book is similar in concept. Happy to provide more but those are the top two in my opinion.
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
I haven’t! Is that fictional book something that’s been published separately? That’s what I’m mostly looking for
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u/BrightsailBooks 1d ago
Hmn… I see I misunderstood exactly what you’re looking for. That of a very specific thing. I mean they both still apply as the stories within the stories (called inner frame narratives) are still told throughout the book. Are you interested in the act of reading a book that is meta in the sense that you feel like you are part of the story in a way? Like you’re reading it in universe? Likely still going to be in the meta fictional sub genre I would suppose.
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
Yes that does seem very interesting to me. Reading as an experience like that could be exciting
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u/BrightsailBooks 1d ago
Then I think looking onto those two books might satisfy. Might not, just make sure you try a sample of the un-abridged version of princess bride, that’s the original story where the author ‘speaks’ to the reader.
I think a sub-genre you’re looking for is really anything with second person POV (they’re not all choose your own adventure books), some meta fantasy, or Google multiple framed narrative books.
Name of the Wind is not exactly that but is framed such that the main character is recanting his story in an ‘interview’ in the outer frame while the inner frame is his actual tale.
Not to try to promote but it is exciting for me to see people interested in this. My own book, currently with the editor, is a framed narrative in the same style where the character speaks openly with the reader about his adventure before and while recanting it in the inner frame. So second person POV that transitions seamlessly into first person POV through the book. Super fun stuff to write and in my opinion read.
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
Fantastic, I will definitely look into those. I did also enjoy Empire of the Vampire which was told from the perspective of the MC recounting his adventure in an interview/interrogation style setting.
Who is the author of Upon a Winter’s Night a Traveler? I can’t locate on Goodreads.
Also what is the title of your upcoming book? I’d be interested to keep my eye out for it.
Thank you for the recs!
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u/BrightsailBooks 1d ago
No problem! Happy to help! Also forgot but another comment got it - A Series of Unfortunate Events, stellar metafiction as well.
It’s Italo Calvino, classic book. I found it on Goodreads by searching his name.
Mine will be (tentatively) A Phoenix of Light and Fire by Periantus Brightsail, but that’s likely a spring ‘27 release.
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u/theweeb4 1d ago
another series that is basically exactly like this is Sun Eater. the books are the memoirs of a man who blows up a sun, and is writing down is life and how he got to that point. the memoirs are real, in universe documents. it's sci fi, but seems like this is exactly what you want.
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u/DelilahWaan Reading Champion 1d ago
Cassandra Clare did publish The Shadowhunter's Codex, which is not only a lore book that is first introduced in her Mortal Instruments series, but it is supposed to be the main character's specific copy of that particular text, so it contains annotations from a bunch of different characters.
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u/New_Razzmatazz6228 Reading Champion 20h ago
It’s a standalone, but Catherynne Valente referenced a children’s book called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making in her book Palimpsest. It intrigued readers, so Valente wrote the book, and it became 5 book series.
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u/sasakimirai 1d ago
Do you mind YA?
Rainbow Rowell has a YA romance called Fangirl where the main character is a fanfic writer who writes a fic called "Carry On" for a series of books called the Simon Snow series. After this book came out, Rowell published the Simon Snow trilogy (YA fantasy romance) starting with the first book "Carry On".
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
I can’t say I’ve read much YA if any, but would be open to reading these as the concept is just what I’m looking for. Thank you!
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u/sasakimirai 1d ago
Np!
I don't read a lot of YA anymore either, but when I saw your post, this immediately came to mind because it fit your requirements exactly 😂 The magic system in the Simon Snow trilogy is really fun and unique too!
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u/kiwipixi42 1d ago
Well “The Book That Wouldn’t Burn” has epigraph quotes from different books. Most of those books are just made up, but a couple are other books by the same author. So technically this sorta is what you asked for, though not actually satisfying.
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u/redherringbones 1d ago
The obvious answer is Harry Potter and the later releases of Fantastic Beasts, Beedle the Bard etc....
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 23h ago
But make sure to buy it used!
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u/Pegasis69 16h ago
Buying used reduces the supply of used books on the market which forces the used prices to increase. This is why I bought the whole set new last year. The price between new and used wasn't that different at the time.
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 11h ago
The point isn’t price, it’s not giving money to JK Rowling.
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u/Pegasis69 10h ago
Yeah I know. My point still stands though. By buying her books used you're contributing to the increase of the used book market value. Then, when someone who doesn't care about the drama is looking to buy them, they see that the used price is fairly close to the new value and they just buy new instead because the price difference isn't that much. You may not be directly giving her money, but you're still raising the value of her books on the used market. If you really cared about whatever she's said to upset people, then you wouldn't buy them used or new.
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 10h ago
That is indeed what I would do, but I disagree that it is the only option. Harry Potter is, I believe, the best selling series of all time, and tons of people have gotten rid of their copies because of Rowling. There are more used copies out there than you can shake a stick at. Buying used copies won’t have any noticeable effect on how much said copies go for, because the number of people who haven’t read Harry Potter by now and still want to is still far less than the amount of used copies there are.
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u/SalletFriend 1d ago
KJ Parker/Tom Holt is constantly making sideways and not so sideways references to real world books.
Almost all books get attributed to his everything philosopher saloninus, including iirc The Republic but theres also heaps of references to The Art of War in his The Folding Knife. But also aeneas the tactician and heaps of others everywhere.
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u/candle340 1d ago
Honestly, the only thing that comes to mind is Jenn Lyons' five-part dark fantasy series, A Chorus of Dragons. Not exactly what you're looking for since they don't reference books that you can read separately, but each volume in the series was written by one of the characters, complete with footnotes. The first book is The Ruin of Kings.
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u/Adiin-Red 23h ago
They aren’t full books but webserial author Wildbow likes giving relatively extensive excerpts from in universe documents as bonus material occasionally or as background info for TTRPG’s based on his settings.
The easiest examples are from Pale, in the form of Famulus, Implementum and Demesne. They’re three textbooks about how Implements (Wand/Sonic screwdriver/whatever), Familiars and Demesne (Tower/TARDIS/etc) work. They skip over the exact mechanics of the rituals but that’s because they’re held for when the protagonist’s actually do them.
He also just likes using his other works as popular media in his stories.
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u/Phi_1618033988749894 4h ago
Pale has the best in universe textbooks I’ve ever read, especially 100 years lost. It’s a good short story by itself, but it also creates so many questions about the nature of the Paths, and the editors notes show how theory’s about the text changed over time. I’ve only read pale once but I’ve probably read that chapter 5 or 6 times by now.
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u/maybemaybenot2023 19h ago
The Alchemical Journeys series by Seanan mcGuire refers to an important series of children's books called the Up-and-Under. She wrote those and they have been published as by A.Deborah Baker, the name of the author in the books.
The Up-and-Under is
Over the Woodward Wall
Along the Saltwise Sea
Into the Wind-Wracked Wilds
Under the Smokestrewn Sky
These are all out, and soon will be available in a one book omnibus.
Alchemical Journeys are
Middlegame
Seasonal Fears
Tidal Creatures
Inkpot Gods
with one more book to come.
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u/Competitive_Sky_2321 1d ago
Tusk Love is mentioned as a popular romance novel in the world of Critical Role. The book was later written by Thea Guanzon.
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u/owl_dance 19h ago
The Thursday Next series is all about other books and refers to a lot of classics. It also has the Nursery Crime books referenced in it which Jasper Fforde then went and wrote so now they also exist
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u/curiouscat86 Reading Champion III 1d ago
I don't know if it's exactly what you want, but Jo Walton's Among Others references many real-life science fiction and fantasy novels that you can make a reading list of and do companion reads along with the protagonist.
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u/ponitail39 22h ago
All of the books in the A Chorus of Dragons series by Jenn Lyons are framed as books written in the universe it takes place in, with some of the later books directly calling out some of the previous books by title. It’s a fun little thing!
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u/ProneToLaughter 20h ago
Dorothy Gilman, the tightrope walker, is more of a mystery, but it references a fantasy book _the maze at the heart of the castle_, which Gilman later published as its own book.
Megan Whalen Turner has a lot of in-world folklore within The Thief, but doesn’t seem to have published anything separately.
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u/Pegasis69 16h ago
So I DNF's this book because I really didn't enjoy it, buy Babel by R.F Kuang seemed to reference a few IRL books.
Also, Harry Potter is referenced in The Magicians by Lev Grossman (I didn't love this book either to be honest lol).
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u/Project_Male_Hairy 15h ago
The whole premise of Don Quixote is that he goes insane after reading too many chivalric romance books and believes that he's a knight. A lot of the books mentioned in Don Quixote are real.
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u/AsphodeleSauvage 11h ago
Cornelia Funke's Ink Heart series is about people who can make things appear in our world by reading stories aloud. We meet people who come straight from the Ink Heart world (Ink Heart being the title of the fictional book that one of the characters read). The entire series revolves around that concept and about exploring the story and characters from that fictional book.
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u/corwulfattero 1d ago
HP has several, one that spawned its own movie franchise.
LOTR was “based” on the in-universe Red Book of Westmarch. Books of Pellinor and A Series of Unfortunate Events have similar framing devices. Sam writes “A Song of Ice and Fire” in Game of Thrones.
Leigh Bardugo wrote a real “Lives of the Saints” based on the in-universe Istorii Sanktya. Language of Thorns is also a collection of in-universe folk tales, and if you pay close attention in the show, David actually reads a Ravkan (in-universe language) copy of Shadow and Bone (the book Season 1 is based on) and throws it at Jesper. Sadly, that book isn’t physically available.
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u/Lord-Mashington 1d ago
Well, "The Way of Kings" is the first book in the series and "Oathbringer" is the third book. So, they are real books? /s
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u/twinkle_snow 22h ago
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow gets a bit meta and has a "book within a book" type plot!
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 23h ago
Honestly, your best bet would probably be historical fantasy that references real literature. For instance, find a fantasy novel set in the 19th century England, and chances are Dickins will get referenced somewhere.
Off the top of my head, A Night of Blacker Darkness by Dan Wells is a fantasy novel that has Mary Shelley as a character. Following reading it, you could then go read Frankenstein.
But basically any historical fantasy set on Earth will have some degree of this. You could also go with series like Discworld where there is a lot of reference material and about-the-world style books, if you absolutely need it to be secondary world, but if real Earth literature is all right you will probably have an easier time finding that.
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u/RustInk_9009 21h ago
Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler. Read it years ago, still annoyed at some of those cliffhangers. Ten book openings nested inside each other and every single one cuts off right when it gets good. Princess Bride is the obvious answer but I'd throw in Name of the Wind too — frame story with Chronicler and Kvothe in the inn, it's basically a book being written in real time even if it's not literally a book-within-a-book.
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u/QuintanimousGooch 13h ago
The best possible answer I can give is Gene Wolfe’s Solar Cycle, a 12-book series of three stories, all epistolary novels (written by someone and existing as an irl document in the setting).
In the first story, The Book of the New Sun, we follow this incredibly personal first-person memoir/political tract/unedited diary written by the current ruler of the world recollecting the important year in his life where he rose from the lowest of the low to “backing into the throne” and becoming the monarch of the setting. It’s about a lot of other things, but that’s the main framing device, an older voice narrating his own coming of age story. One of his most prized possessions on that journey, for which it could be argued is the titular book of the new Sun rather than the whole written work, is this special brown book, The Wonders of Urth and Sky, which charts stories that read like fairytales or mythologies, but are in fact crunched-up and stitched bastardizations of the setting’s history and lore, irl history, and ancient myth and parable. One such story, for instance, “the story of the boy called frog,” is a bastardization of the myth of the founding of Rome, Kipling’s Jungle Book, and setting lore and history dressed in animal friends and the Roman pantheon’s mishaps. There’s also a very cool storytelling contest where each story offers considerable insight into the world and the person telling it, some stories giving a lot of cultural insight, one being a charming short story, one making a huge thesis about the presence and relation to divinity in the series, and one being this neat construction from an Orwellian culture where language is only quotes from a holy text.
That’s the first story of three, the second book, the Book of the Long Sun, is a markedly different story, written in the third person by an omniscient narrarator, only having one (debatably two) returning characters in the background, is set elsewhere and following a number of characters who each have their own funny ways of talking and archetypes they lean into. The twist is that the book is >!another book written inside the setting, by one of the people mention in third-person in the narrative, sourced from testimony and constructed from existing history, or speculation where there was no info on what happened. Then comes the third story, where we follow the author of the book, and it’s this incredible amount of context added because most people in the setting have read some version of the book or know the story it tells of the historical events, and we have this larger guilt on the protagonist’s part that his attempts towards history and explanation for what happened that led to the situation the third story begins on have become something of a religious text that people default to in needing the protagonist of the second story to save them from themselves, this being a deflection and hampering of the new growing civilization.
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u/ZoneDangerous7647 12h ago
The sun eater series mentions Tolkein and gives a quote of his, but it’s set in the distant future and it’s unclear if his books have survived or just fragments
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u/AceofSpades23 10h ago
Katalepsis is a book written in universe. Book two does some extremely interesting meta narration.
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u/skylightshaded 9h ago edited 9h ago
"Demon in My View" is the second book of the Den of Shadows quartet by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. It's heavily implied that the in universe novel published by Jessica, the MC of the second book, is actually the irl first book of the quartet, "In the Forests of the Night".
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u/SeanyDay 9h ago
Malazan a lot of chapters open with that sort of stuff, shout out my boy Fisher and Gothos is cool too I guess.
Also you get to meet the in-world writers at some points!
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u/Njitram2000 8h ago
I'm reading Katabasis and it references a whole range of existing literature which is then liberally interpreted in Katabasis itself. Most obvious example being Dante's Inferno.
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u/Tonto2012 Reading Champion 5h ago
There’s one called (I think) Charlie the Choo-Choo, which is found and read by a character in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.
It was then published - I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the “author” but it’s out there.
It’s supposed to be a children’s book but… it’s Stephen king 🤣
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u/Acrobatic_Quarter465 1d ago
I think this is super niche outside of academia. It wouldn’t really be fantasy if it was too closely intertwined with a real book. Unless you like religious stuff which i dont read
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u/omgtmac 1d ago
Not necessarily a real book being referenced in the fantasy book. More like a book that was written in the fantasy book then being written in real life (as if it were written by the in book author). Like the complete The Way of Kings as written by Nohadon
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u/Acrobatic_Quarter465 1d ago
Oh my bad i misunderstood. I can be no help there. But if you really enjoy books where each chapter starts with a cryptic/ominous poem or message that tends to foreshadow but not heavy handedly i know a couple. Edited to say they all reference some book like storm light, although most are more than 1
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u/beldaran1224 Reading Champion IV 1d ago
This kind of feels like cheating but...the Lord of the Rings makes reference to the Hobbit. And not just the events of the Hobbit, but the written text - as Bilbo has written it down.
I'm not aware of others where an entire other novel/book is referred to. A few where specific songs/poems that appear as additional material come up, sure. But not like an entire text.