It may come as no surprise that the woman with the dragon layout has a thing for fantasy.

But in case you hadn’t noticed yet … I do. Fantasy is definitely my thing. It makes up the majority of what I read, and even when I read other genres, they tend to have a fantasy/magical realism bent. So as a service to the community, who better to help guide the poor, lost, misguided souls along the path of fantasy?

The greatest thing about fantasy is that it comes in all sorts of different flavors, so it’s an easy cross-over between other genres and fantasy. The genre’s just that expansive.

So I’ve decided to divide this post into genres. Whatever your preferred genre is, these books will be a good fantasy starter, a nice medium between fantasy tropes and the tropes of other genres. So without further ado … let’s get to the recommendations! They’re in alphabetical order by genre … and I use that word loosely, because I may have totally made up my own random groups.

Action/Adventure

For those who want some heart-pounding action with a little magic in the mix

               

The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t with Her Mind: Reluctant hero Teagan Frost would rather be watching Netflix on her couch, but instead, she’s out saving the world from … well, some other person who mysteriously has powers like she does.

Rebel of the Sands: A sweeping, Middle Eastern inspired world, where Djinn exist, and being the offspring of one could prove fatal.

Burn the Dark: Supernatural meets Buffy, where Robin hunts witches for her successful YouTube channel, and only she knows that the videos are real. Until something bigger and badder than just a coven of witches rears its head.

Diamond City: Assassin Aina is forced to work with her enemy to pull off one last “heist” after she botches an assassination attempt. What she stumbles into, instead, is a conspiracy of massive proportions.

Ink and Bone: A world where the Great Library controls knowledge with an iron fist and uses alchemy to spread whatever information they want people to know. Jess learns that the Great Library isn’t the benevolent leader it seems to be.

Anime-Inspired

For those who love anime, who want manga but with words and no pictures

           

Steel Crow Saga: Pokemon meets Full-Metal Alchemist in this world of steelpacters and soulpacters, where enemies have to join forces to stop a seemingly unstoppable threat.

Shadow of the Fox: Half kitsune Yumeko is tasked with protecting one part of the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers, and she’s forced to work with (and deceive) an enemy in order to secure safe passage to her destination. But nowhere is really safe when you’re traveling with enemies.

Howl’s Moving Castle: This one is a little cheating, because it was already turned into an anime movie … but did you know that this is a series with three books? Betcha didn’t.

The Will and the Wilds: With a very Studio Ghibli feeling, this is a slow-burn romance between a human and a mysting, set in a charming but dangerous world.

Classics

For those who want a fantastical twist on old favorites

               

Deeplight: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea meets Frankenstein in this coastal city, where the gods have torn each other asunder, everyone has secrets, and nothing is quite as it seems.

Black Leviathan: Moby Dick with dragons. A high fantasy world, where Lian is caught up in hunting an eldritch dragon. The adventures are big, but the stakes are bigger.

A Curse So Dark and Lonely: A Beauty and the Beast retelling, where the world is a little bit darker, the danger is very real, and the “damsel in distress” isn’t exactly waiting around for a prince to save her.

The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep: Full of characters right out of classic literature (especially Charles Dickens’ work). Charley Sutherland can read characters out of books, which is a never-ending source of struggle between him and his brother. Especially when said characters start to threaten the well-being of the city and both brothers are dragged into a dangerous plot.

A Study in Brimstone: A comedic take on Sherlock Holmes, where Sherlock is really a warlock and poor Watson has to be the voice of reason in a world where very little truly makes sense. All the cases have a supernatural bent to them.

Contemporary

For those who want something set in the modern world but dipped in fantasy

               

The Astonishing Color of After: When Leigh’s mother commits suicide, she turns into a bird, and Leigh must unravel the secrets of her mother’s family and past in order to figure out how to put her mother’s spirit to rest.

Every Heart A Doorway: Children who don’t belong in this world often discover doors to worlds that better suit them, but sometimes they stumble their way back here. Sometimes against their will. And sometimes they’ll do anything to return to their world.

The Library of the Unwritten: In a library in hell, where books sometimes come to life, a librarian must go on a quest against heaven itself to recover the ultimate book.

A Monster Calls: A heart-wrenching story about a boy whose mother is sick, and every night, a monster comes to visit him and tells him, where he has to decide who’s right and wrong. Yet, it’s never clear-cut and never quite what he expects.

The Ghost Collector: Shelly can catch ghosts in her hair, but the one ghost that she wants to find more than anything is nowhere to be seen: that of her mother.

Dark Fantasy

For those wanting to join the dark side (we have cookies!)

               

Vicious: Everyone’s a villain, even the heroes, as Victor and Eli discover the secrets behind becoming an EO (ExtraOrdinary) before realizing how dangerous such a secret can be.

Nevernight: Mia attends a school for assassins with the ultimate goal of avenging her father by murdering the people responsible for his death. But nothing is as easy as it seems, and the school has secrets of its own.

House of Salt and Sorrows: A retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, with a creepy, darker backdrop as each of the sisters die mysteriously, one by one, and Annaleigh must discover the cause behind the sisters’ deaths before it’s her turn.

Into the Drowning Deep: Mermaids are real. Victoria knows this because seven years ago, they attacked the Atargatis and killed everyone on board, including her sister. So of course she has to be part of the voyage that sets out to prove they’re real, once and for all.

Wicked Saints: Wicked Saints worship Ruthless Gods. Nadya is the only saint who can talk to all the gods, though she doesn’t know why. When her monastery is attacked, she sets off to kill the enemy king and end the war, once and for all.

Epic Fantasy

For those wanting to dabble in epic worlds, but not sure where to start

               

Warbreaker: In a world where the dead return as gods and color magic is a thing … well, nothing is quite as it seems. Not the magic. Not the gods. Certainly not the kingdom.

A Time of Dread: In a world where the Ben-Elim are angelic (but anything other than angels) and the Kadoshim are … well, technically demons, but only slightly worse than the Ben-Elim, all the other races are caught in the middle of this age-old war between the two and must fight for their right to exist.

Mort: The first of the Death trilogy and a great place to start the Discworld books, if you were curious. Mort is a boy that doesn’t seem to be able to do much right, and yet Death chooses him as an apprentice anyway. While Mort learns what it means to be Death, Death learns what it means to be human.

Six of Crows: Life in Ketterdam is anything but pretty, and yet Kaz Brekker has managed to thrive. With one last heist, he’s determined that he and those who join him can finally get what they’ve been looking for … if they manage to pull off the impossible.

Marrow Charm: In a world where magic has corrupted the planet, many people live underground. Azzy did, too, until her brother was banished for possessing magic, and now she must brave the dangers of Above in order to save her brother.

Historical

For those who want a little alternative history or fantastical pasts

               

Dread Nation: This book answers the question: what if zombies rose during the Civil War? Navigating life post-zombie apocalypse in a racist South is difficult, but Jane makes it work, until things start going sideways and she stumbles onto a dangerous plot.

The Night Tiger: Full of Chinese superstition and magical realism. Ren wants to find his master’s missing finger so he can lay his spirit to rest within the 39-day mourning period. Ji Lin wants to be a doctor, but she lives in a world where women don’t get to aspire to such things. When she stumbles across a severed finger at her job, her life and Ren’s become intertwined.

Just One Damned Thing After Another: Totally my guilty pleasure read. Disguised as a school of history, St. Mary’s takes a more hands-on approach to studying the subject … by being there. Full of adventure-laden trips to the past, where nothing ever goes quite right, and laugh-out-loud humor.

Fawkes: This book combines historical fiction and magic with a fantasy retelling of the Gunpowder Plot, where powers are based on color, but no one can agree how they should work.

The Lady Rogue: Theodora knows that, as a woman, she’ll never have the same liberties for adventure and exploration as her father’s assistant, Huck. But when her father goes missing, Huck and Theodora have to team up for an adventure of their own.

Mid-Grade

For those wanting a lighter, more whimsical sort of fantasy

               

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky: Still reeling from the death of his best friend, Tristan wakes one night to find a strange creature stealing his best friend’s diary. Before he knows it, he’s punched a hole between worlds and tumbled into MidPass, to a world where black gods and folk legends exist and something dark is wreaking havoc.

The Trials of Morrigan Crow: Morrigan has been cursed to die at 12 since the day she was born. When she somehow escapes her fate, she finds herself in a whimsical place known as the Wundrous Society, but she can’t help but wonder if she truly belongs there and what secrets her benefactor, Jupiter North, are keeping from her.

What We Found in the Corn Maze and How It Saved a Dragon: When three kids stumble upon a book of magic, they think it’s fun … at first. Until they discover the spells are mostly useless and they don’t always work. Then a weird boy with blue skin stumbles out of one of their fridges, and their whole perspective on magic changes.

The Wolf of Cape Fen: The residents of Cape Fen are trapped there by magic, the same magic that makes dreams come true … if you bargain with Baron Dire. Which Eliza and her sister, Winnie, didn’t do, but when Baron Dire’s wolf comes after Winnie, Eliza realizes someone must have bargained with Winnie as the price. And now she’s determined to save her sister, no matter the cost.

Twist: Neha has a secret: the characters that live in the town in her sketchbook are real. But when the monsters from Eli’s horror stories also invade her sketchbook, the characters are about to become a whole lot more real … and so are the monsters.

Romance

For those seeking fantastically sweet couples that’ll make you melt

               

The House in the Cerulean Sea: Linus, a quiet, solitary 40-year-old, is content with his mediocre life, until his job takes him to an island that houses a mysterious cast of miscreants—including the Antichrist, a were-Pomeranian, a wyvern … and Arthur, of course.

The Shadows Between Us: An entirely Slytherin romance, between two characters with self-serving ulterior motives.

Black Bird of the Gallows: Harbingers are attracted to imminent death and destruction, but Reece can’t help what he is. When Angie realizes the boy she’s falling for isn’t human, she finds herself smack dab in the middle of a war between good and evil, and she may be the only person who can save her town from imminent disaster.

A Crown of Wishes: Gauri and Vikram are sworn enemies, but if they work together, they stand the best chance of winning the Tournament of Wishes and having their own desires granted. Except the tournament (and each other) aren’t quite what they expected.

Wintersong: A retelling of Labyrinth. When her sister is abducted by the Goblin King, Liesl travels to the Underground to save her.

Space Opera

For those wanting to bridge the sci-fi/fantasy divide and explore the more technical side of fantasy

               

Gideon the Ninth: A mouthy cavalier teams up with a woman she despises to represent the Ninth House for glory in a trial to see which house’s representative will have the honor of ascending. But then people start dying, and the trial becomes a whole lot more deadly than it was ever intended.

All Systems Red: An AI system has gone rogue and hacked its governing chip after killing a bunch of people, dubbing itself Murderbot. Now it has to deal with what it means to have choice and what that means for its future.

Illuminae: When Kady and Ezra’s home planet is attacked, a few survivors manage to flee to the relative safety of spaceships, as they make their way to a jump point so they can signal for help. Unfortunately, the warship tailing them is the least of their worries, as a deadly plague breaks out on the ship and their AI goes rogue (and slightly murderous).

The Last Human: In a universe that seems to function smoothly, Sarya is the biggest threat: a human. Some say the last human. But the universe is bigger and more complex than she ever imagined, and Sarya has many things left to discover about herself and the truth of her people.

Aurora Rising: An eclectic group of teenagers (none whom you’d necessarily consider a “hero”) have to band together in order to save the galaxy. “They’re not the heroes we deserve. They’re just the ones we could find. Nobody panic.“

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