88 Books Like Phantastes

Sent off to the old Derbyshire farm to convalesce, Penelope Taverner opens a door, steps into the world of the tragic stand-off between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth of England, and hardly notices she's time-travelling.

She's just there, among people who dress a little strangely: accepted as exactly what she is, the daughter of an old family connection, come to stay for a while. Nothing can be done. Mary of Scots can't be saved; nor can the courageous Babingtons. It's intense and a bit voyeurish in a way, because the time-traveller is always going to walk away unharmed from tragedy, if not untouched.

I loved this story when I was a child, but what I notice most as an adult writer is Alison Uttley's method with the time travel: a real innovation. No clunky explanation, no clever rationale. It's all about hints and glimpses, haunting fragments; drifting into each… show more.

The Neverending Story was always one of my favorites growing up. The idea that a kid could get pulled into this amazing world full of adventure really spoke to me as a kid (I’m sure you’re starting to see the theme here). I loved that I could follow along and it felt like I was also going on these grand adventures.

A unicorn believes she’s the last of her kind and undertakes a quest to find where the others have gone. This might be my favorite book!

It plays with the fantasy genre in a way that few books can. It seamlessly mixes the whimsical with the mundane and it gives us memorable characters who are unique twists on old tropes.

What I love most about this book is seeing life through the eyes of the unicorn protagonist. She’s a timeless creature—unaging, unchanging—who finds navigating a mortal world to be puzzling, inconvenient, and, at times, terrifying.

Can you imagine being immortal and suddenly being forced to confront your own impossible mortality? Read this book and you will.

I find H.Rider Haggard's famous tales of adventure (e.g. King Solomon's Mines) pretty disgusting: bunch of white guys in southern Africa, where they can slaughter and loot at will, far from the constraints of “civilised” society.

But “She” is one of a kind. A perilous wilderness, where the people who put pots on the heads of strangers have a very sinister outlook on life (these are cooking pots, and this is a stranded population, desperate for protein). Their immortal goddess (originally Ancient Greek?) lives in a tomb, doesn't seem to eat or drink; talks like a spoilt, entitled Victorian debutante, and fascinates our hero.

I imagine the author, a humble civil servant when not dreaming of glorious gory derring-do, met young ladies of her kind socially, and was snubbed a few times. She pays... and I won't spoil the horror of it for you, but it's pretty bad! A guilty… show more.

One night, during a Blitzkrieg attack on London, the Hapwell siblings are whisked away to the fantastical Woodlands. There they spend the next several years helping the great stag Cervus defend Palace Beautiful. But it’s when the siblings return to their own world that their real troubles begin. Pining for the Woodlands debilitates Evelyn, the youngest Hapwell, and she can no longer navigate life at boarding school or maintain relationships. Can her older sister Philippa stop Evelyn from falling to pieces, all while battling her own demons? This beautiful narrative takes us deep into the complexity of grief and guilt, and explores the heartbreak of trying to rescue a loved one who doesn’t want help.

Clara knows two things about her adopted sister: one, she’s the best friend Clara has ever had and, two, once she turns into a mermaid, she’ll rejoin her birth family in the sea and be gone forever. Nothing Clara does can stop the process, and once Maren is fully transformed, longing for the sea begins to kill her. But it’s a dangerous journey from the hills of Pennsylvania to the Atlantic—especially when there are nefarious characters who would love to get their hands on a real mermaid. Personally, as a mother of two sons, the theme of choosing to help someone you love fulfill their own destiny rather than keeping them back to complete your own happiness is a bittersweet one to ponder. 

R.Murray Gilchrist was a Derbyshire man from a good Derbyshire family, liked or loved by the local people he met and helped, but a loner, a total oddity in the wild English Peak District of a hundred years ago: who wanted to be an artist of all things.

His stories are grotesque, sad, touching, and strange; all at once. He doesn't seem to set out to frighten the reader, not at all, but there's a sense of eerie, rather dreadful, longing that will haunt you. As Ellis Reed says (read the article), this was Lovecraft before Lovecraft, but with no cute tentacled monsters to lighten things up. Don't read them all at once.

A Japanese ghost story, set in an imaginary, contemporary, Japanese town by a Singaporean first novelist.

I picked this out at Brighton Library because I liked the cover, but Clarissa Goenawan's Rainbirds has survived the goodreads treatment, so hopefully she's a writer to watch (I mean, there will be more of these).

Readers have recalled Haruki Murakami, because it's allegedly Japanese, and a bit off-kilter, but to me this dreamlike narrative seemed fresh and floating: ungrounded, not alienated. I thought of another Japanese writer, Kazuo Ishiguro, & The Buried Giant: a misty, off-kilter take on Arthurian Britain, in which everyone seems either asleep, or else making the journey the dead make to wherever they go, while dreaming the novel's action...

No, I give up, I can't explain the charm, you'd have to try it and see, & yes, those are goldfish, not any kind of birds on the cover, and… show more.

Based on the notes of Queen Victoria’s doctor, Sir James Reid, this book, written by his daughter, gives a wonderful insight into the relationships within the extended Royal Family as well as the numerous ailments with which they were afflicted. There are many amusing episodes, including the Queen’s indignation on hearing that doctors intended to remove her son-in-law’s eye, following a shooting accident; and her refusal to alter her diet to cure her frequent indigestion. Of all the books about Queen Victoria, none gives a more comprehensive account of her final hours, death, and the preparations for her funeral. 

This lovely book dispels the myth that, after Albert’s death, Queen Victoria spent forty years in Windsor Castle in perpetual mourning, as it describes her delight in her many holidays on the Cote D’Azur. The book introduces the Queen’s companions, John Brown and the Munshi, alongside many other well-known characters of the era, including the infamous Leopold II of the Belgians. "Oh, if only I were at Nice, I should recover!" she said during her final illness, and it is unsurprising that, at the time of her death, her aides were forced to cancel the plans she had made for her next visit to her beloved Riviera.