Books like The Chimes of Alyafaleyn — picked by fans

Lost, confused, and feeling the victim, Ethan visits Thailand. He falls down a sinkhole into an alternate reality. Even more lost among really weird people, feeling even more confused and victimized, he learns the true meaning of life. But can he get back to live his real life?

Who hasn’t tumbled into Ethan’s emotions? We go along thinking we’re doing good and suddenly the worst happens. We didn’t deserve any of it yet we’re stuck alone and destitute in it.

Ethan meets an archaeologist who introduces him to indigenous people and their ghost stories. I love cultural studies, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, and linguistics, all sciences represented in this story. Reality gets smudged and blurred, but love, loyalty, and forgiveness remain true and unshaken in this beautiful story of redemption.

Gripping character introductions, organic magic systems, extraordinary world-building, and superb writing. I felt the fire burn Selah and the yearning in William’s heart to do good despite loyalty to faulty leadership. Fighting galore!

I love weaving on a loom. I almost always write a weaver into my novels and Walker-Henderson’s series has a weaver too!

The Legendaries’ abilities - speed, strength, magnetic attraction, lung capacity, and resistance to fire are measurable and augmented in this story. Through the whole series geography is explored. Each Legendary comes from a different environment and climate. Selah comes from the desert. William comes from the mountains with mixed forest. They travel to the plains and the icy regions in their quest for the ancient relic that gives the possessor power over their destiny.

The power of unrequited love that seeks no alternative. A knight loves his queen. He gives his life to protect her and is banished from her presence, yet he cannot resist the magic that arranges the world to draw them together.

Evil tries to convince us that it gives the greatest benefit. Sometimes that is temporarily true. I love stories where characters resist and suffer so that they receive the higher benefit of good. I am a musician and the magic of our knight rings true in my soul.

Highly philosophical, spiritual, fantastical, and deeply scientific, this book satisfies on every level.

“Thermodynamics, signal theory, Bayesian inference, inversion, quantum tunneling, and materials science are all elements of the internally consistent system of dynamics.” Lee Hunt

I admit this one is a stretch, but the writing and premise are superb and worthy of recommendation. Many experiments have been done trying to prove or disprove telepathy and telekinesis, which are the magic in Rossano’s Talented. Quantum physics is moving in this direction. All our speculations may predict the future!

I am impressed with the family system in these books. The seventh son is special. The seventh son of a seventh son (Sept Son) is a ruler. Suddenly a daughter is born and blows everyone’s expectations and ambitions to smithereens. She has powers like a seventh son. Her love for the Sept Son threatens the kingdom.

A boarding school, mysteries, magic, and animals – another classic in the making as far as I’m concerned!

It stars an autistic girl who is reluctantly sent off to boarding school – but the school and her experience that follows is far from what you’d expect. Alice’s autism is portrayed authentically, and we get to climb right inside her mind to share her worries and anxieties and in turn her actions.

Her autism is intrinsic to her character and that’s what makes this book so real. But, for me, the most marvelous aspect of this book is that an autistic character plays the lead in an exciting fantasy any child would be thrilled to read. 

When it comes to building a world the readers can get involved in, you have to be careful not to reveal too much in the beginning. You want to captivate your readers, have them invest more and more time into exploring the world, allowing it to open up. The Ropemaker shows how well a fantasy story can be written this way. The distant and frightful empire is shrouded in mystery as Tilja and the others begin their adventure, but said mystery is slowly dismantled as they progress through their journey, coming to understand their enemy by living amongst them, all while seeking out a way to protect their home from invasion. 

This is a beautifully written YA fantasy that has the flavor of a traditional epic—like the Lord of the Rings—but also brings us intimately close to its characters, their individual cares, and their unique world. The story centers on Aerin, the king’s daughter, and her journey from being an outcast at her father’s court to becoming a hero in her own right—at the expense of a dragon, unfortunately. 

The Hero and the Crown is often praised as an example of classic feminist fantasy. It was one of the first stories I encountered where the goal of the female main character wasn’t to be rescued or married. But in my opinion, it’s McKinley’s lyrical and compelling prose and fantastic world-building that truly makes this a not-to-be-missed read.

This fascinating, gender-swapped Pinnochio retelling has a few hints of Frankenstein, and is gorgeously written. The main character, Pirouette, begins life as a tree and is carved into a puppet by her father, then brought to life by the magic of the blue moon. When the powerful Margrave of Tavia commissions Pirouette and her father to make one hundred wooden soldiers or risk imprisonment, they have no choice to comply. And then the Margrave makes an additional demand: he wants Pirouette to carve him a life-sized assassin—and then bring it to life. But is she making a monster or a masterpiece? And can she keep her own origins a secret?

As a kid, I loved all kinds of fiction—sci-fi, fantasy, realistic, historical—pretty much anything I could get my hands on! D.J. MacHale’s Pendragon series magically captures the best of every genre. In The Merchant of Death, Bobby Pendragon, a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy, finds himself pulled into an alternate dimension ruled by a magical tyrant. Bobby learns he is a Traveler, someone gifted with the ability to travel between alternate dimensions (called Territories) and his destiny is much bigger than he could ever have imagined. The Merchant of Death is a thrilling start to a captivating YA adventure!

One of the most popular children’s book series of the twentieth century, all of the books in the series feature the author speaking directly to the reader, detailing past events, reminding the reader of personality traits of the characters, and providing the reader with background details about the world the reader finds themselves in.

More so than the other books on the list, it’s clear the voice is that of C.S. Lewis though, rather than a seemingly separate narrator.