Here are 13 books that A Natural History of Dragons fans have personally recommended once you finish the A Natural History of Dragons series.
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Iāve been reading and writing stories for as long as I can rememberāand the weird ones have always been my favorite. I discovered many of my favorite books by wandering into my local library, telling the librarian about my strange reading interests, and allowing them to set me up with literary masterpieces of the most unusual kind. Once I knew how to bend the rules of genre and form to create something original, I took to creating my own weird stories, and have been doing so ever since in my novels, short stories, D&D characters, and bedtime stories for my bird.
Bats of the Republic is by far one of the most engaging, unique reading experiences I have ever had the delight to enjoy. The breathtaking art decorating every page (and I do mean every page, from the copyright page to the back of the dust jacket) enhances a deep and intriguing story.
One of my favorite parts of this book is that every piece of writing you encounter comes from one of the characters in the story. This makes for a completely immersive experience as you flip through maps, examine drawings of new animal species, and even uncover a few secret messages. Dodsonās incredible art and one-of-a-kind narrative style create a complex, deep world that I couldnāt help but fall in love with.
"Archetypes of the cowboy story, tropes drawn from sci-fi, love letters, diaries, confessions all abound in this relentlessly engaging tale. Dodson has quite brilliantly exposed the gears and cogs whirring in the novelistās imagination. It is a mad and beautiful thing.ā --Keith Donohue,Ā TheĀ Washington Post
Winner of Best of Region for the Southwest in PRINTās 2016 Regional Design Awards
Bats of the RepublicĀ is anĀ illuminatedĀ novel of adventure, featuringĀ hand-drawn maps and natural history illustrations,Ā subversive pamphlets and science-fictional diagrams, and even a nineteenth-century novel-within-a-novelāan intrigue wrapped in innovative design.
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā In 1843,Ā fragile naturalistĀ Zadock Thomas must leaveā¦
Iāve been a science fiction fan for as long as I can remember. As someone who never quite felt like I fit in, these stories became a kind of refuge and revelation for me. They taught me that being on the outside looking in can be its own kind of superpowerāthe ability to see the world differently, to question it, and to imagine something better. Iām drawn to characters who are flawed, searching, and human, because they remind me that courage and belonging are choices we make, not gifts weāre given. Thatās the heart of every story I love and the kind I try to write.
From the first page, this story felt intimate and infinite all at once.
Itās written like a love letter and a battlefield, all at once. What I loved most was how it turned connection into an act of defiance, how two people trapped by duty and ideology choose to reach across time anyway.
Every line feels deliberate, like poetry disguised as science fiction. I was completely undone by how much humanity could fit into such a small space.
It reminded me that love, friendship, and understanding donāt need to make sense to be real; they just need to be chosen, again and again.
WINNER OF The Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, the Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella AND The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella
SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The Ray Bradbury Prize Kitschies Red Tentacle Award Kitschies Inky Tentacle Brave New Words Award
'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. Itā¦
As a fantasy writer, I love to play with possibilities and invent new words for our experiences. I find that humorous fantasy is especially powerful in this regard because it pairs possibilities with absurdity, coming at reality sideways or backwards, putting everyday life into a new and more interesting light. Humor has the unique ability to transcend genres, from thrillers to cozy mysteries. It helps you process difficult emotions, or lift your spirits when the world feels a little too dark. These are some of my favorites within this category, and they all happen to be the first books in a series (youāre welcome). I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
This is possibly the best known book on my list, yet it took me a long time to discover it.
This is a thriller-style adventure that follows Nathaniel, a young magicianās apprentice on a quest for revenge, who summons Bartimaeus, an all-powerful djinni. Nathaniel (unwittingly) and Bartimaeus (unwillingly) get caught up in a tangled plot of magic-fueled mayhem in which they have to work together to survive.
Bartimaeusā sarcastic observations and side tangents add an element of humor that keep it from staying dark and somber, while also highlighting the underlying threads of slavery and social injustice in this fantasy world.
The first volume in the brilliant, bestselling Bartimaeus sequence.
When the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus is summoned by Nathaniel, a young magician's apprentice, he expects to have to do nothing more taxing than a little levitation or a few simple illusions. But Nathaniel is a precocious talent and has something rather more dangerous in mind: revenge. Against his will, Bartimaeus is packed off to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace, a master magician of unrivalled ruthlessness and ambition. Before long, both djinni and apprentice are caught up in a terrifying flood of magical intrigue, murder and rebellion.
"Write what you know" is worn-out advice you'll find on many a website, but I prefer to write what I want to know. Researching for background information is a far cry from studying the history of dates, places, and politics. For instance, you won't read in a history book that forks weren't used at the table in the Renaissance. That people didn't have zippers or right/left shoes, but they did have buttons. Noblemen wore high-heeled shoes. Women poisoned themselves with makeup of white lead (ceruse). Even with diaries, autobiographies, and social history books, trivial information of daily life is hard to find.
When I discovered Kristin Lavransdatter was 1000 pages, I never expected to fininsh it (I'm a slow reader). However, about 50 pages into it, I was hooked and was at a loss when I read the final chapter. Religion is pervasive but delivered indirectly. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages was an absolute authority with an iron grip on the main character Kristin. Undset was not judgmental in the book, but I was in reading it.Ā
'[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante' -Slate
The Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece by Norway's literary master
Kristin Lavransdatter is the epic story of one woman's life in fourteenth-century Norway, from childhood to death. Sensitive and rebellious Kristin is sent to a convent as a girl, where she meets the charming but irresponsible Erlend. Defying her parents' wishes to pursue her own desires, she marries and raises seven sons. However, her husband's political ambitions threaten catastrophe for the family, and the couple become increasingly estranged as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty.
With its captivating heroine and emotional potency,ā¦
As a child, I was a maladaptive daydreamer. I could often be found crafting elaborate fantasies in my head featuring fully-fledged worlds and characters that I would actively interact with and speak to as if they were real. I was a strange child, and I kept that strangeness with me when I went into fiction. Since then, Iāve always wanted to encapsulate the feeling of giving a movie-like experience in book form. I want the people who read my work to feel like theyāre experiencing something real.
Reading this book felt like drinking a pitch-black winter night. Thatās the best way I can describe it. Somehow, Valente managed to masterfully bottle the frigid sensation of a bleak midwinter and transport it to the page.
Iāve always loved this book for how mythic and grandiose it feels even in the short amount of pages it has. This is something that I feel would come alive in an animated adaptation where you can really capture the eerie and surrealist imagery used.
A handsome young man arrives in St Petersburg at the house of Marya Morevna. He is Koschei, the Tsar of Life, and he is Marya's fate. For years she follows him in love and in war, and bears the scars. But eventually Marya returns to her birthplace - only to discover a starveling city, haunted by death. Deathless is a fierce story of life and death, love and power, old memories, deep myth and dark magic, set against the history of Russia in the twentieth century. It is, quite simply, unforgettable.
I am a strong, independent woman (*snaps fingers through the air*), yet I adore a soul-sucking romance. Many might think this is a contradiction, but itās not! A woman can be both loving and stubbornā¦both enamored by her partner yet still strong enough to speak up for herself. Sadly, I think historical fiction often defaults to portraying dependent and subjugated women, and this isnāt necessarily wrongāin fact, itās probably more accurate. However, when Iām getting lost in the magic of a novel, I want to experience the all-consuming love without sacrificing the resiliency and independence of the women involved, and these books spin stories where both outcomes are possible!
I seriously enjoy a good ābetween-a-rock-and-a-hard-placeā romance, especially when the female heroine is able to navigate it while staying true to herself. In this one, King John weds his illegitimate but beloved daughter Joanna to his bitter enemy, Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, in an effort to take Wales under his control. But Joanna loves both of themāfather and husbandāand is forced time and again to prove her loyalty to one side or the other, until neither faction supports her in return. While this definitely portrays the helplessness that many medieval women faced, often experiencing a forced marriage for some political purpose or other, Joannaās courage, bravery, and sense of self in the face of so much conflict were inspiring and so addicting to read about.
An absorbing historical novel of power and betrayal, loyalty and political intrigue in thirteenth-century England, Wales and France, centring on King John of England, younger brother to the brilliant Richard Lionheart, Joanna, his illegitimate but recognised daughter and Llewellyn Ab Iowerth, Prince of Gwynedd, a bitter opponent of English ways, laws and encroachment into Wales who becomes Joanna's husband.
Iāve always been an avid reader and loved different genres from the beginning. I started out reading historical fiction as a child, including the Little House books, Anne of Green Gables, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I soon discovered that science fiction and fantasy did the same thing, transporting me to different worlds and places instead of times. Many of my favorite books have elements of these as well as action, tension, thrills, and romance. These things transcend genre, and by reading books that combine genres, I find some of the most interesting and original stories.
Tigana might be my favorite book of all time, any genre, which says a lot.
Every time I read it, I am blown away by the perfection of the story and characters and the intricate story of love, hate, rebellion, magic, and politics. I have read it at least a dozen times since I first discovered it, and every time, I find something new or rediscover something Iād forgotten that makes this book wonderful.
It has the structure of a fantasy story and quest for redemption but is also a story of family, friendship, trust, loyalty, and love. It could be any empire and conquest in history. Imagine how devastating it would be to have the name of your country erased from time and memory.Ā
With this rich, masterfully written extravaganza of myth and magic, the internationally acclaimed author of THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY trilogy has created an epic that will forever change the boundaries of fantasy fiction.
Set in a beleaguered land caught in a web of tyranny, Tigana is the deeply moving story of a people struggling to be free. A people so cursed by the dark sorceries of the tyrant King Brandin that even the very name of their once beautiful land cannot be spoken or remembered.
But not everyone has forgotten. A handful of men and women, driven by love, hope andā¦
Iāve been reading and writing stories for as long as I can rememberāand the weird ones have always been my favorite. I discovered many of my favorite books by wandering into my local library, telling the librarian about my strange reading interests, and allowing them to set me up with literary masterpieces of the most unusual kind. Once I knew how to bend the rules of genre and form to create something original, I took to creating my own weird stories, and have been doing so ever since in my novels, short stories, D&D characters, and bedtime stories for my bird.
A Prayer for the Dying is the only full-length novel Iāve ever read entirely in second-person perspectiveāwhich makes for a white-knuckle-grip adventure as the narrator drags the reader along a dark, haunted path, which is also a little bit on fire.
This ghost story full of living people (at first) follows a hard-working and dedicated protagonist who tries to protect his little town of Friendship as it faces disaster after horrible disaster. The narrative of the story unfurls like a tidal waveāterrifying, yet impossible to look away from as it sweeps away everything in its path. This scary story is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Set in a leafy Wisconsin town just after the American Civil War, this story opens one languid summer's day. Only slowly do events reveal themselves as sinister as one neighbour after another succumbs to a creeping, fatal disease.
From my early days of reading Fire and Hemlock and various books of mythology, Iāve loved traditional tales from all around the world. In college I didnāt aim to major in things that would be useful to me as a fantasy writer, but anthropology and folklore made a great background for that job. Nowadays, I actively seek out books based on traditional stories, especially those that go beyond the most well-known European fairy tales and myths. Sometimes, they inspire me, in turn, to write my own stories!
This is an absolutely gorgeous, lyrical read that does my favorite thing: blending folkloreāin this case, Eastern European Jewish traditionsāwith historical individuals and events. Itās melancholy without being unrelentingly grim, hopeful without ignoring the hard edges of history, and it does a beautiful job of weaving its various strands together.
I donāt tend to read a lot of books that captivate me from the first page with their prose, but this was one of them.
A SPELLBINDING TALE OF LOVE AND LOSS, SISTERHOOD AND THE TANGLED THREADS OF FATE.
'Blending folktale with history, hope with tragedy, its touch will linger on your heart long after you put it down' Marie Brennan, author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent series
This is how a fairy tale begins . . .
Deep in the Hungarian woods, the sacred magic of King Solomon lives on in his descendants. Gathering under the midnight stars, they perform small miracles and none are more gifted than the great Rabbi Isaac and his three daughters.
From my early days of reading Fire and Hemlock and various books of mythology, Iāve loved traditional tales from all around the world. In college I didnāt aim to major in things that would be useful to me as a fantasy writer, but anthropology and folklore made a great background for that job. Nowadays, I actively seek out books based on traditional stories, especially those that go beyond the most well-known European fairy tales and myths. Sometimes, they inspire me, in turn, to write my own stories!
Iām used to contemporary fantasies where magic is either hidden or open and acknowledged, and this book blew my mind by blowing that dichotomy out of the water.
It retells the Russian folktale of āVassilisa the Beautifulā but adds a lot of complicated family dynamics that made me like the source narrative even more than I already did. I also loved the utter weirdness of how Baba Yaga and her hut on fowlās legs neither fits into the ordinary world nor stands apart from it.
In Vassa's neighbourhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa's stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission. But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach,ā¦
