Here are 100 books that The Dawnhounds fans have personally recommended if you like
The Dawnhounds.
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Worldbuilding is something I absolutely adore, and I have always wanted to see more fantasy in worlds created around a more modern thought process. Worlds that got away from the medieval and instead found inspiration in places like 1920s America or 1950s Mexico or anywhere with cars and motorcycles existing right alongside dragons. It’s what I try to write and its desperately what I want to read. Fantasy has so much more range than I think it is given credit for.
I love this book because it marries the brutality of military sci-fi with epic fantasy in a colossally satisfying fashion. It has dark gods, blood magic, and the grueling rigors of military training. And Ikenna, the main character, takes no crap from anyone, no matter how powerful. You can’t help but to root for her!
Blending fantasy and science fiction, N. E. Davenport's fast-paced, action-packed debut kicks off a duology of loyalty and rebellion, in which a young Black woman must survive deadly trials in a racist and misogynistic society to become an elite warrior.
It's all about blood.
The blood spilled between the Republic of Mareen and the armies of the Blood Emperor long ago. The blood gifts of Mareen's deadliest enemies. The blood that runs through the elite War Houses of Mareen, the rulers of the Tribunal dedicated to keeping the republic alive.
The blood of the former Legatus, Verne Amari, murdered.
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
Worldbuilding is something I absolutely adore, and I have always wanted to see more fantasy in worlds created around a more modern thought process. Worlds that got away from the medieval and instead found inspiration in places like 1920s America or 1950s Mexico or anywhere with cars and motorcycles existing right alongside dragons. It’s what I try to write and its desperately what I want to read. Fantasy has so much more range than I think it is given credit for.
I walked away from reading this book with my imagination completely on fire. I can promise you’ll never look at wax quite the same after reading this book. It takes the pollution of a post-industrial world but filters the premise through magic and god wars. The politics are juicy and the characters come from all walks of life.
"The Gutter Prayer is captivating and complex. Guerdon is a city that seethes with history, horror, and hidden secrets" (Nicholas Eames). A group of three young thieves are pulled into a centuries old magical war between ancient beings, mages, and humanity in this wildly original debut epic fantasy. Enter a city of saints and thieves . . .
The city of Guerdon stands eternal. A refuge from the war that rages beyond its borders. But in the ancient tunnels deep beneath its streets, a malevolent power has begun to stir.
Worldbuilding is something I absolutely adore, and I have always wanted to see more fantasy in worlds created around a more modern thought process. Worlds that got away from the medieval and instead found inspiration in places like 1920s America or 1950s Mexico or anywhere with cars and motorcycles existing right alongside dragons. It’s what I try to write and its desperately what I want to read. Fantasy has so much more range than I think it is given credit for.
This book takes an extremely fascinating time period, the Rasputin era in Russia, and throws it in a blender with dark fantasy, gore and passion. I could not get enough of the characters because they are all morally gray and come at the central dilemma of a collapsing empire with their own ambitions. Also, one of the more unique takes I’ve seen on a vampire in ages!
Winter 1917. After years on the run from a dangerous cult, twenty-three-year-old Sasza and his father have established themselves among the Odonic Empire’s ruling class. But there’s a problem: Sasza is a vampire, and vampires aren’t supposed to get involved in human governance. What the aristocracy doesn’t know, after all, cannot hurt them.
Unfortunately, Sasza is far more involved than a stealth vampire should be. Not only does he work to quell the rumors of the vampires’ responsibility for an unsolved massacre, his lover is also the pro-proletariat Ilya, the Empire’s Finance Minister, who tries to recruit Sasza into the…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Worldbuilding is something I absolutely adore, and I have always wanted to see more fantasy in worlds created around a more modern thought process. Worlds that got away from the medieval and instead found inspiration in places like 1920s America or 1950s Mexico or anywhere with cars and motorcycles existing right alongside dragons. It’s what I try to write and its desperately what I want to read. Fantasy has so much more range than I think it is given credit for.
I can’t say enough about how dark and foreboding this book is the entire way through. The gods are not kind in this book and yes, it plays with exactly how awful living in such a world would be. It’s such an atmospheric book that I swear I pictured it as being cloudy and rainy the entire way through.
I couldn’t stop thinking of it as a heavy, dark episode of a police procedural but far more critical of the powers at play.
IN THE BEGINNING, MAN WAS PREY, WITHOUT THE GODS, THEY'LL BE PREY AGAIN The old gods have fled, and the monsters they had kept at bay for centuries now threaten to drown the city of Valentine, hunting mankind as in ancient times. In the midst of the chaos, a serial killer has begun ritually sacrificing victims, their bodies strewn throughout the city. Lilac Antonis wants to stop the impending destruction of her city by summoning her mother, a blood god-even if she has to slit a few throats to do it. But evading her lover Arcadia and her friends means…
I’m autistic, with a passion for narrative structure and my brain is exceptional at predicting twists, so something genuinely surprising is a rare treat I crave and value. As a queer and trans person, I’m always looking for content in which I can see myself and my loved ones. I’m obsessed with YA thrillers that don’t just keep me guessing but also give me messy, brilliant, unforgettable queer characters to root for. These are the books that stuck with me, made me lose sleep to finish, and gave me new queer icons to love. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!
I’m an absolute sucker for a ‘what really happened that night’ tale and this is one of my all time favourites due to the unreliable narration and the sense of slowly creeping dread.
The core of this book is the messy tangle of friendship, obsession, and unspoken longing, which I can never get enough of. Throughout my first read of the story, I re-evaluated what I thought I knew, and went back to the start over and over. I had to know who was lying…
Jessica Wong is the kind of girl nobody notices. She's also the kind of girl who sees everything. There's no one better at overlooking Jess than her best friend, Angie. Jess can live without Angie knowing her real feelings, just so long as they're best friends. But when Angie meets Margot, Jess recognises that things will never be the same. Worse still, Margot is one of the rare people who sees exactly how Jess feels about Angie. As Angie falls hard for Margot and gets caught up with Margot's wealthy friends, Jess's life begins to fall apart. If she isn't…
As a queer reader and writer of horror, I have little interest in anything that could be deemed “positive representation.” Horror is most compelling when it gets honest and ugly about the bad, selfish, cruel, or simply unwise choices people make when they’re truly scared–and that includes queer people. I love queer stories that aren’t primarily romantic or neatly resolved. I like messy groups of friends, toxic emotional entanglements, and family dynamics that don’t fit in a Hallmark card. These days there are lots of stories in other genres about queer people becoming their best selves, but horror also has space for us at our worst.
This book is horror for adrenaline fiends, but it has emotional depths and a rich cast of well-developed characters to balance out its fast-paced thrills.
My favorite character in this book, and one of my favorites in the whole horror canon, is Nell Talbot, one half of the brother-sister duo of protagonists. Nell is a 100-proof disaster bisexual, surfing a wave of her own bad choices all the way to shore.
You know how a story is supposed to have an inciting incident? Nell Talbot is the inciting incident.
One of Tor Nightfire's "Horror Books We're Excited About in 2022"!
"Lyons
burnishes his reputation as a rising horror star . . . [and] keeps the pages
flying with fast-paced chills." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From the author of The Night Will Find Us comes a white-knuckled horror-thriller set across the American Southwest.
Road trips can be hell.
Siblings Jonah and Nell Talbot used to be inseparable, but ever since Jonah suddenly blew town twelve years ago, they couldn't be more distant. Now, in the wake of Jonah's divorce, they embark on a cross-country road trip back to their hometown…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am a queer writer whose early love of science fiction and fantasy gave me an outlet for my creativity and new ways of seeing myself in the world. It was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and Timeline by Michael Crichton that first introduced me to time and space travel in fiction, but it was the new Doctor Who and shows like Twelve Monkeys that made me realize how mad and wonderful stories about time and space travel could be. And once I came to terms with my own queer identities, I saw an obvious space for my own contribution to the time travel canon.
The Light From Uncommon Stars is, at its sci-fi core, a story about being human and all of the messiness that comes from that state of being.
Even the aliens share a sweet humanness – a desire to find home, to find love, to find family. Plus, you can never go wrong with a donut-shop setting. This book is queer and gender-expansive, with all the beauty and trauma that comes with each.
I wouldn’t call this book cozy – and it’s worth noting that not all of the queer characters are “good queers”, but it isn’t gritty or dark – it is what it is, and isn’t that the most beautifully human thing it could be?
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.
I’ve been a longtime reader of romantic historical and fantasy fiction, and I love to see positive queer representation in those genres. Regardless of who we love, we all need a little escapism in our lives, and it’s even better when it has heart and depth as well as romance and humor and happy ever afters (and plenty of plot). My favorite relationship dynamic is not quite enemies-to-lovers and not quite opposites-attract…it’s more direct-vs-sneaky. I hope you enjoy my five favorites in this very specific niche!
This book is fast-paced: within the first chapter, the titular captive prince, Damon, is enslaved, stripped of his royal identity, and gifted to Laurent, the young prince of a decadent foreign court. Damon, yet another straightforward soldier type (they pair so well with the slippery types), is immediately caught up in the byzantine machinations of Laurent and his uncle and is hilariously out of his depth without ever seeming to realize it.
I appreciate Damon, but I adore Laurent. He is so snarky and cool-headed, running absolute rings around Damon and playing the game like a champion despite the very poor hand his uncle has dealt him. It’s a slow-burn romance, and I loved watching their relationship evolve slowly.
From global phenomenon C. S. Pacat comes the first novel in her critically acclaimed Captive Prince romance trilogy—includes an exclusive bonus story!
Damen is a warrior hero to his people, and the rightful heir to the throne of Akielos. But when his half brother seizes power, Damen is captured, stripped of his identity, and sent to serve the prince of an enemy nation as a pleasure slave.
Beautiful, manipulative, and deadly, his new master, Prince Laurent, epitomizes the worst of the court at Vere. But in the lethal political web of the Veretian court, nothing is as it seems, and…
I’m an autistic writer with a passion for neurodiversity representation in fiction. As a child, I struggled to get into reading because I couldn’t see myself in any of the characters. That changed when I discovered Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip about a precocious boy with a big imagination who struggles with making friends and is always getting in trouble for his poor self-control. Finally, I thought—a character just like me! For people who are neurodivergent, discovering fictional characters who resemble themselves can be a powerful experience. That’s why I think neurodiversity representation in fiction is incredibly important.
Maya MacGregor, like Corinne Duyvis, is autistic, and like Corinne, Maya nails this aspect of their protagonist, Sam Sylvester. Sam is also non-binary, so there are multiple forms of minority representation in this book, which I love to see.
Unlike On the Edge of Gone, which features an end-of-the-world scenario, this book is more grounded, focusing largely on Sam’s struggles to find their place at a new school in a new town while confronting demons from their past. That’s not all the book has going on—there are also paranormal elements and a thirty-year-old mystery waiting to be solved. I found these aspects of the book to be intriguing as well.
An Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction Nominee
"Look no further for your next favorite read, because The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester has it all: a gripping murder mystery that will keep you turning pages, ghosts, romance, and a treasure trove of queer characters with depth and heart. Here's something rare-a suspenseful story that also feels like a hug." -Sarah Glenn Marsh, author of the Reign of the Fallen series
In this queer contemporary YA mystery, a nonbinary autistic teen realizes they must not only solve a 30-year-old mystery but also face the…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I love puzzles. I’ve made a career of tackling hard puzzles—from aerospace engineering to climate change policy (and now novel writing). A good mystery that keeps me turning pages is a joy, but a good mystery with an unusual investigator is awesome. I think seeing through the eyes of someone unexpected can let us appreciate new perspectives and see the world afresh. I wrote a climate fiction mystery with an amnesiac main character investigating because, in the context of adapting to climate change, perhaps it’s helpful to be less attached to the way things used to be; perhaps an investigator with no memory is just what we need.
As an aerospace engineer, I have a soft spot for aviation-related tales. The idea of a pilot crashing a commercial flight (with some cryptic final words caught on the flight recorder) terrified and intrigued me. The investigator for this one is the heartbroken fiance of the pilot who has to navigate the mystery while processing his own grief.
This intriguing queer story is the type I love where one mystery solved begets a bunch more, and the author expertly unfolds answers when the time is right. This isn’t an action-packed thriller; it’s a quiet, perfectly paced story about guilt, grief, and finding the courage to seek the truth.
2021 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction - Finalist
A modern queer tragedy about a pilot's last words, an interrupted celebration, and the fear of losing everything.
"Utterly engrossing. Coen is a hero for our era, darkly struggling amid the aftershocks of loss, but doing so with dignity, humanity, and passion." - Timothy Taylor, author of The Rule of Stephens
When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is…
