74 Books Like The Element of Fire

My journey with this book came at a young age, recommended to me by my older brother, and was a formative experience. Not only was it an early experience with a more adult version of the fantasy literature I’d grown up reading but it also built a bond between my brother and I, it was a shared literary experience that became special because of who I shared it with.

It opened my eyes to the idea that you could write this kind of stuff for grown-ups, and therefore, a whole new world of reading was opened to me.

When I read this at 17, I bounced off it, surprising since I'd loved every previous Zelazny. It wasn’t until a reread in my thirties that it finally clicked, becoming a favorite book by a favorite author. In retrospect, I didn’t yet have the depth of experience to see beneath the surface simplicity to the brilliantly conceived complexity visible to the reader with a bit more knowledge and breadth of literary background.

Wit shines on every page, from dialogue to description to an offbeat chapter-a-day structure highlighting each night in a most singular October.

The wild includes plenty of murder and mayhem as a cast of sorcerers that includes Dracula, Rasputin, and Burke & Hare are all colliding in a struggle for the power to shape the world through the once-a-century Lonesome October.

The weird stretches from the story of a most sympathetic serial killer to the way it's told… show more.

I read this straight through the day I found it, staying up way past my 13-year-old bedtime. The next day I sweet-talked my grandmother into taking me back to the bookstore to get the sequels. Morgon is an unlikely hero, gentle, practical, a farmer, and a master of riddles…wait a second.

Maybe he’s not so unlikely after all. The book begins with a family argument about the crown under his bed. It turns out Morgon won it in a murderous riddle game with a dead king. He's a man who can't stop asking questions and seeking the answers, no matter the cost, and that very bad habit leads him across the realm in a wild and deadly game of riddles against unknown and ancient enemies. McKillip's prose is witty and beautiful, and so is this book.

Nina is an absolute master of making things weird in ways that feel utterly natural to the world she’s writing. This starts on page one with ghosts hassling a school janitor about the impending death of two more students, and it never gets one bit less strange.

This is a book about living as an outcast, toxic family, homecoming, found family, and how sudden and unexpected love can be. On the wild side, it’s also about shapechangers, spellcasters of several varieties, ghosts, spirits, the Walking Dead, flying cars, and so much more. Every page is packed with magic, meaning, and the gentle wit that marks all of Nina’s work. If you haven’t read anything of hers, you’re missing out on one of the subtler masters of the genre, and I would recommend this as a great place to start.

This series grabbed me from page one. I don’t make a habit of reading books including the Fae, but I absolutely fell in love with everything she’s written after that.

You can tell she does her research on fae mythology, yet adds her own touches to it, including blending their world with ours.

Holly Black is a master of the fae tale. Much has been said about this trilogy already but I assure you, the praise is well-deserved. Each book has a tight and dynamic plot, prose that fairly flies off the page, and a conclusion that is very satisfying. The first book was almost deceptive in the way it presented a not-very-strong protagonist until she evolves and becomes so much more than the reader thinks her to be. It’s the best kind of fictional surprise.

This is a surprise pick. It’s the first book about “real” fairies that I read. I was 15 years old when my local librarian showed me the book. The author was best known for creating the Sherlock Holmes series, and he wrote a book about fairies? 

The Cottingley fairies appear in a series of photographs taken by two young girls living in England in 1917. When the pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of the existence of fairies. Many people accepted the images as genuine; others believed they had been faked. This fascinating account of the “sightings” allows us to get inside the mind of a highly intelligent man who also happened to believe in fairies. But were the fairies real?

I was in love with this book after just reading the blurb. And it lived up to that promise: a ridiculous bet, a male lead who falls first (and hard), and so much tension.

I connected with Edwina easily in this book, and was rooting for her happily ever after. It was so satisfying to see her unwilling to give up her dreams or allow William to win the bet, even when her heart protested the competition between them. Plus, there were so many moments of humor I was smiling or laughing during the entire time I read. 

The only Young Adult book on this list but firmly deserving of its place, this book is the perfect example of how to successfully blend science fiction and fantasy. 

Colfer takes a traditional fantasy fairy society and gives them advanced weaponry, surveillance gadgets, and time-stopping devices. It works incredibly well, and through convincing world-building I was immediately bought into the idea of fantasy creatures with sci-fi technology. 

A standout feature of the novel is the characters, whose backstories, motivations, and behaviours all help to build this science fantasy world. We get an elf “LEPRecon” officer with access to bionic wings, a centaur who heads the technology department of the “Lower Elements Police,” and a dwarven thief who sells stolen human property on the black market. They were all enormously fun to read.

The same way hearing “soap opera” used as a pejorative upsets me so much I want to fake my own death, frame my estranged father for murder, and wrest control of his business empire, hearing “fairy tale” used that way makes me want to wave a wand and turn the detractors of science fiction and fantasy into horny toads.

John Crowley’s Little, Big, winner of the World Fantasy Award, is not only a fairy tale with actual fairies, but also one that’s an actual tale. So many novels described as literary forget to tell a story. This is not one of them. In Little, Big, you’ll meet the charismatic Drinkwater family; I would say more, but it’s best if you see for yourself where this tale takes them.