Here are 94 books that Domestication fans have personally recommended if you like
Domestication.
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Absurdity gets a bad rap in fiction and storytelling, I think. “It’s too silly,” they say. But for those who can take a step back and appreciate how absurd our own world is—our everyday life—there’s nothing more real than absurdity. (I’m saying “absurd” an absurd amount of times. Let’s just say it’s purposeful.) It might be played for laughs at times, but if it’s done right, it gives you perspective. Sometimes we all need to look through a funhouse mirror to realize that we’re only human. These five books share that spirit and have made me laugh, think, and occasionally reevaluate my entire life in a spiral of existential dread—with a smile on my face.
This one leans heavier on the laughter, lighter on the thinking—but sometimes a little bit of fun is exactly what I need.
It’s a chaotic mash-up of The Hunger Games and Ready Player One, except with far more laughs and a talking cat. It’s the first in a long series (which I admittedly haven’t finished yet), but even on its own it’s a blast: action-packed, darkly funny, and weirdly endearing.
I fell in love with the two main characters and happily followed them into the madness.
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Alex’s hunger for power cannot be sated. Alex thought a colony ship crashing into a dinosaur-infested jungle was bad enough. Everyone else received a class from the mysterious System ruling this brutal universe, but Alex's Class Selection never arrived.
To top it off, a meteor shower forces down the supply…
Though I write, I will always be a LitRPG reader first. I enjoy these stories for their ability to craft interesting magical worlds, their creativity of plot, and their breadth of scope. Some LitRPGs are two-dimensional, which have their place, but each of the stories I’ve listed here are most definitely not. They act as my inspiration, both in how I wish to write and in how I’d like to be more creative overall. My day job is as a technical writer for a software company, and LitRPG stories got me back into reading, forced me to think more creatively, and allowed me to follow my dream of writing my own.
Whenever I think of a ‘typical’ LitRPG, I think of World Tree Online. And I’ll be honest, I dropped it once before picking it back up! Years after my grave mistake, I still point people towards this story because it exemplifies many of the reasons why I love this genre: A thought-provoking world where human emotions take root in both the good and ‘bad’ characters; a story where there are actualconsequences when things go wrong; and a magic system with endless possibilities, driven by creativity and perseverance.
If I haven’t sold you yet, know that the action escalates with each book and the author only got more creative as time went on. This story is one I draw inspiration from often and I hope you check it out.
In 2056, the world’s most powerful AI System, ARKUS, comes online. Created to extend human lifespans, it quickly makes world-changing discoveries in health science. It also develops an advanced VR headset that uses consumable nanomachines to let users experience time faster in virtual worlds.
Two years later, ARKUS releases World-Tree Online, a game where players scale a giant tree with thousands of unique game worlds hanging from the branches. The game’s time-dilation makes it so that one hour of playtime feels like one month to those in-game, allowing humans to virtually extend their lifespans.
Though I write, I will always be a LitRPG reader first. I enjoy these stories for their ability to craft interesting magical worlds, their creativity of plot, and their breadth of scope. Some LitRPGs are two-dimensional, which have their place, but each of the stories I’ve listed here are most definitely not. They act as my inspiration, both in how I wish to write and in how I’d like to be more creative overall. My day job is as a technical writer for a software company, and LitRPG stories got me back into reading, forced me to think more creatively, and allowed me to follow my dream of writing my own.
One of the behemoths in the LitRPG genre, this story invented a magic system with infinite possibilities that is universally simple to understand as soon as you read how it works. More importantly, the story has some of the best characterizations I’ve ever read, introducing a cast of characters that each have defined motivations and backgrounds, helping to build out the world that the main character has been thrown into.
It starts as a story about a man whisked into another world, and quickly sets itself apart from other portal fantasies. I have yet to find any magic system like it and I thought of it often when I created my own.
Jason wakes up in a mysterious world of magic and monsters.It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil.He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.After cementing itself as one of the best-rated serial novels on Royal Road with an astonishing…
Alex’s hunger for power cannot be sated. Alex thought a colony ship crashing into a dinosaur-infested jungle was bad enough. Everyone else received a class from the mysterious System ruling this brutal universe, but Alex's Class Selection never arrived.
To top it off, a meteor shower forces down the supply…
Though I write, I will always be a LitRPG reader first. I enjoy these stories for their ability to craft interesting magical worlds, their creativity of plot, and their breadth of scope. Some LitRPGs are two-dimensional, which have their place, but each of the stories I’ve listed here are most definitely not. They act as my inspiration, both in how I wish to write and in how I’d like to be more creative overall. My day job is as a technical writer for a software company, and LitRPG stories got me back into reading, forced me to think more creatively, and allowed me to follow my dream of writing my own.
Jake's Magical Market has become one of my standout favourites because of how many different ideas can all (logically and cohesively) fit into one story. The initial premise promised a magic system based on internalized decks of cards, but the unfolding story reveals a much more sinister universe filled with mystery, corruption, and intrigue than I could have ever expected from its humble start. Jake meets each challenge head-on, growing stronger along the way, and each new arc in the story is crafted with creativity and very well thought out. A special shoutout to the author’s second series ‘A portal to nova roma,’ which some argue is even better, but Jake’s is still the more memorable read.
Meddling gods. A magical card system. An apocalypse no one could have predicted.
Jake is working at the neighborhood market under his apartment when the world ends. He expected nuclear war, a computer virus, or even climate change burning everyone to a crisp to bring about the downfall of civilization. But cruel and arbitrary gods from another world? Who would have guessed that?
When these cruel gods shuffled Earth like a deck of cards, nothing was in the same place anymore. Monsters, dungeons, and magical items appear scattered across the globe. And suddenly, everyone has access to a new, strange…
I was able to read before I went to school and have never been without a book since; frequenly having several novels on the go at one time. I started with adventures and classics, moved on to fantasy and later discovered crime fiction. Having been educated at an all-girls school where we assumed we could do everything, it was a shock to enter the world of science and engineering in the 1970s and find that women were not considered as strong and powerful as men, and certainly not as good. Even though times have changed somewhat, I still love finding books (especially series) where crime solving and sisterhood go hand-in-hand.
This book has so much I love about it: it’s set in Dublin, the home of my father and therefore part of my heritage.
It features a group of feisty women, the youngest of whom is in her fifties (way younger than me), while the rest are old enough to know better. It’s packed full of humour—who wouldn’t laugh at the idea of the older generation behaving worse than the teenagers. And there’s a huge dollop of old Irish magic to add to the mix.
Despite the fact that this wonderful group of women seem to attract dead bodies like magnets, this is definitely in the cosy sub-genre. And I loved every word of this book and the rest of the series.
Artist Eve Caulton is 50, divorced and ready for a new life. She can't believe her luck when she manages to buy Kimberly Cottage, one of a perfect little crescent of cottages on Bramble Lane. She can look forward to peace and quiet, in one of Dublin's most exclusive suburbs. But before she has even unpacked, there is a dead body in her living room and she's a chief suspect! To complicate matters, her mother Niamh calls on her gang of feisty older ladies, who bring wisdom, experience, and very special skills to the case. They might be known as…
I’ve always been a fan of swords and sorcery, but Urban Fantasy brings those elements into a more relatable field, turning real-world locations into sandboxes filled with magic and monsters. I might love Aragorn as a character, but I can’t fully relate to him. Now, give me an “average” guy with real-world problems, running around a modern metropolis, slinging spells, and fighting monsters in dark alleys, and I’m right there with him. Urban Fantasy opens up the imagination to anything you want. Dragons in New York? Sure. Giants using the Eiffel Tower as a baseball bat? Why the hell not? Nothing is off-limits. It’s just pure, unadulterated fun.
An immortal druid and a talking dog. What’s not to love?
Think American Gods, but funnier. In the Iron Druid Chronicles, the gods are real, and Atticus O’Sullivan loves to piss them off. The immediate blending of humor and suspense pulled me in right from the start, and I didn’t stop reading until well beyond this book and only took a breath when I ran out of books.
The first novel in the New York Times bestselling Iron Druid Chronicles—the hilarious, action-packed tales of a two-thousand-year-old Druid pursued by ancient gods in the modern world
“A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud-funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic.”—Ari Marmell, author of The Warlord’s Legacy
Atticus O’Sullivan is the last of the ancient druids. He has been on the run for more than two thousand years and he’s tired of it. The Irish gods who want to kill him are after an enchanted sword he stole in a first-century battle, and when they find him managing an…
I'm a long-time role-player/gamemaster and reader of SFF, and I've read, created, and played (and written!) a lot of stories.Good stories come from good characters. We all know that. But part of what makes characters good is that they're believable, and to me their believability is inextricable from the worlds they come from. A world-build—setting, weather, technology, magic, science, cultures, and languages—should BE as much of a character as the protagonist(s). While I admit a fond nostalgia for ye olde semi-Euro-medieval setting, I lovea world-build that challenges or surprises me, and I love the characters and stories that come out of those worlds. I hope you do too.
I am a sucker for an unusual world-build, but I also love a good morally grey hero.
Harmon delivers both. Most of civilization exists underground with a frozen wasteland above, with populations gathered into politically discrete city-states.
The magic is half chemistry, half alchemy, and unique. Our protagonist, Ig, is an elemental bound to the service of one of those city rulers, forced by that binding to kill (or whatever else he's told). He wants to be free. And that's about where you can stop imagining you know how this story will go.
The tale is dark, violent, intricate, and grimly delightful, but there's a bright sliver of hope: just enough, anyway, to show you how dark the shadows are.
Among boiling volcanoes under Mira's frozen lands, people like Ig are forced to undergo life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body. One of Mira's most powerful elementals, Ig serves as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, but is cursed with flesh binding magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience.
When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what has been asked of him so far. If he can't escape the flesh binding in time, he will have to…
I am a fantasy and science-fiction author with a soft spot for books cut with a sharp sense of humour, impaled on the absurd, or littered with the brutal slaughter of conventions and tropes. I love crisp one-liners and surreal worlds, awkward anti-heroes, and kick-ass heroines who bring their own ruthless horde to the fight. If I were to pick out one feature of a book, film, or television show that really catches my attention it would be “Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.”
How could I not love a book that sets its tone with “My name is Bond, Shaman Bond”?
Bond, aka Eddie Drood, has all the latest magical gadgets to help suppress the forces of magical mayhem on behalf of the ancient and powerful Drood family (and yes there’s a pun there on Druid). This is what James Bond would have been if Ian Fleming had gone easy on the Martinis and tried a few magic mushrooms instead.
The book, and in fact the whole series, is inventive, witty, and in places outright insane, with every book title a parody of a Bond book or film.
(Also, Mr Green is a very nice man – we met him once over pizza at EasterCon several decades ago.)
New York Times bestselling author Simon Green introduces a new kind of hero, one who fights the good fight against some very old foes in the first novel in the Secret Histories series.
The name’s Bond. Shaman Bond. Actually, that's just his cover. His real name is Eddie Drood, but when your job includes a license to kick supernatural arse on a regular basis, you find your laughs where you can.
For centuries, his family has been the secret guardian of Humanity, all that stands between all of you and all of the really nasty things that go bump in…
I’ve been fascinated with high fantasy since the moment my grandmother first presented me with Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Then, add in a Nora Roberts book when I turned sixteen, and voila, my love for all things fantasy romance was born. I crave tension, romance, sizzle, and some epic fight-to-love scenes that make my blood run hot. When I started writing, I knew the exact genre I wanted to focus on–romance. All. Things. Romance. Fantasy, paranormal, contemporary–I enjoy writing them all but in every single one of my stories there lies a thread of fight–of sizzle–because what’s a happily ever after if you don’t have to work for it?
I binge-read the first three books in this series in a matter of days. It is seriously incredibly to watch these two characters be thrown together. Both with dark pasts of their own, seeing them fight together toward a common goal is absolutely heartwarming even as it gets frustrating at times.
Heart-pounding romance and thrilling action meet deep world-building in Blade & Rose, a sexy and addictive romantic epic fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass and Danielle L. Jensen’s The Bridge Kingdom.
She’s bound to a monster. He’s bound to his oaths. Their bonds will break. And so will they…
An elemental mage who just wants her freedom, twenty-two-year-old Rielle is driven by one inevitability: she will destroy the impending arranged marriage to her cruel werewolf fiancé. Then she can happily spend her life independently, working as a mage on missions.
When I was very small, bedtime was the high point of the day; for that was when my parents read to me. My father favored adventure tales with knights and heroes, while my mother shared her own beloved Oz books with me. To this day, there is nothing so satisfying as finding a new story in which to be immersed. Although I enjoy reading many types of books, my first love remains fantasy; especially those stories with appealing characters and a defined world built from the author’s imagination. I hope these recommendations provide you with a gateway to discover new and enchanting reading experiences of your own.
As a fan of fantasy books about quests, I was familiar with Terry Brooks’ Shannara series.
Since I enjoyed his writing and his characters, I picked up this one on the assumption that it would be similar. Instead, I encountered a story about Ben Holiday, who purchased a magic kingdom from a fancy gift catalog and traveled to a new world where he became the ruler.
The characters appealed; especially Abernathy, the court scribe turned into a soft-coated, wheaten terrier by the wizard, Questor Thews.
Although a mature man, Ben’s trials upon obtaining the throne and adjusting to the magic of his new home support the theme of a hero’s coming-of-age story. With a few wrinkles and twists of magic, and a humorous overtone, I recommend this book as a nice change of pace from more serious fantasy tales.
Here in his first non-Shannara novel, Terry Brooks has written a gripping story of mystery, magic, and adventure—sure to delight fantasy readers everywhere.
Landover was a genuine magic kingdom, with fairy folk and wizardry, just as the advertisement has promised. But after he purchased it, Ben Holiday learned that there were a few details the ad had failed to mention.
The kingdom was in ruin. The Barons refused to recognize a king, and the peasants were without hope. A dragon was laying waste the countryside, while an evil witch plotted to destroy everything.
