100 Books Like Returning

Three worlds in one book! There’s the not-so-important world of the Ancelstierre, roughly Edwardian or early-20th-Century-ish, and there’s the Old Kingdom, basically medieval, where Charter Magic wars with Free Magic (and how well Nix thinks through the workings of his forms of magic).

But the third world is the one that takes the cake! An underworld of the dead, with its different levels, gates, and sills. Sabriel discovers her own special inheritance and powers—OK, that’s standard fantasy fare, except that Sabriel’s powers are those of an abhorsen. It’s the Abhorsen’s role to make sure that the dead stay dead, and journey on down into the deeper levels of death. Of course, the dead who keep coming back are the ones who drive the narrative!

River of Shadows is a romance-leaning fantasy series starter, but here, the quest story comes first. It’s a fairy tale retelling with a bit of everything: a Beauty & The Beast arc, Hades & Persephone vibes, morbid humor, steamy scenes featuring the hapless Hanna and the God of Death… I could go on!

It’s an adult dark fantasy with horror elements that’s also chock-full of humor, mixing the tragic with the comic in an artful way. What’s not to love?

I will admit, Halle could have made her heroine a little less Mary-Sue, but we can forgive her that because the wondrous worldbuilding, plot, and varied characters more than make up for it. It was fun to read, making me LOL with every turn of the page.

This story starts with Harper getting kicked out of a foster home before being sent off to the spooky Shadowford Home for Girls in the fictional town of Peachville, Georgia. Things go from bad to worse when a local cheerleader is found dead, and Harper gets sucked into a small-town mystery.

The book reads like a paranormal detective story, with a touch of romance. Harper is no P.I., but she is magic, and the twin mysteries of her origins and the town’s history dovetail nicely as the story progresses.

I particularly sympathized with the heroine’s plight as an outsider at a new school, something I’ve experienced many a time myself. The good thing about it is, it makes for some moving storytelling.

This book is right up there with Sabriel as one of the first female-led fantasy books I read and loved. It’s an epic fantasy for adults, but I can see younger readers enjoying it, too. It’s wholesome and optimistic, with vivid descriptions of the natural world.

Daleina is an academy student learning elemental magic. She partners with Ven, a former champion, to save the land of Renthia from spirits bent on cleansing the land of humans. As you might imagine, that’s no simple feat.

This book resonated with me because I’m a nature child at heart. (Some might say a wild child… LOL). There is a sparkling magic in the great outdoors, and this book captures it beautifully.

This book is a masterclass on how to write fantasy. The worldbuilding is immaculate, the characters are complex with big personalities, and I was laughing out loud (not an exaggeration) from the first page.

Rasia and Nico are Black girls who know what they want. They constantly clash with each other, never giving an inch when they can take a mile, and I want every lover of fantasy to read this book.

An amazing play about an amazing man, artist Norval Morrisseau. Surreal and yet very real, the play deals with three very important periods in this groundbreaking artist's life as he created a whole genre of Canadian art. The audience is given a window into the man's highs and lows, and how in the end, he became rose above it all and became a legend.

I love everything this author does because his world-building is simple but perfect. The post-apocalyptic world-building in this story involves not only a description of mass desolation but also how that desolation has changed humanity. Of course, people are going to be affected by their environment – especially under post-apocalyptic circumstances – and too often I feel like characters in post-apocalyptic fiction are just the same as people today. 

Zombie worlds all have the same familiar feel, but I really liked the idea of how “tribes” of survivors had formed in cities and how these people had reverted to more primitive ways – if the world hadn’t functioned in decades, yeah, teens wouldn’t know about electricity. The world-building in this book covers everything from setting to characters to a strange new social structure that was really intriguing.

My appreciation for this book snuck up on me. I thoroughly enjoyed the first third or so, in which we are introduced to Fetter–destined to assassinate his godlike father–and are introduced to the fascinating city in which the story is set. But I wasn’t as enthralled with what I took, at the time, for a bit of a meandering middle section. However, the utterly creative and mind-twisting final fifth of the book won me back over.

With time, I’ve come to appreciate the subtle thematic and character work in those middle chapters. Of all the books on this list, this one pushes the boundaries of fantasy the most, both in worldbuilding and characterization, but it’s a masterclass in both, and I hope it has a massive impact on the genre going forward.

This is one of the very few books that made me yelp out loud in surprise when the twist happened, and I will forever recommend it because of how unique it was. The feel is reflective of The Road with the main part of the story showing a pained journey through a dangerous landscape. It also feels post-apocalyptic as these survivors struggle to cross the abandoned world that’s been overtaken by nature. The author wrote in a unique language that makes Idyll feel otherworldly but familiar too. All this blends together for really great world-building. I don’t want to give anything away, but there is a definite twist where the whole story flips into something different. You go from feeling like this is a Western to suddenly — Oh, yep, there’s the sci-fi!  

I love that the dedication is to the A to Z Challenge bloggers of 2014. (I was one of them!) Here's a well-written and comprehensive reference guide. There's a strong author voice and a great amount of information. It covers the importance of including diverse characters. I recommend The A-Zs of Worldbuilding: Building a Fictional World From Scratch to writers building a fictional world, and to writers using an unfamiliar setting. A necessary reference tool for authors.