Here are 82 books that Elemental Links fans have personally recommended if you like
Elemental Links.
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I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
I love the main character, Arianna, and her depth. She struggles to contain the lightning spirit inside of her… and fails… and succeeds… and tries again. Plus, her mission is noble: to end a drought and save her people! Which she picked up after the death of her father as it was his quest.
Noble quests, a well-developed world with unique cultures, and rich writing connected to a spirited character hook me every time.
A storm is brewing in the kingdom. If she unleashes the power inside her, can she make justice rain?
Arianna struggles to control the tempest deep in her heart. Longing to rid herself of the quick-tempered Lightning Spirit trapped within her, she’s desperate to cool her emotions and save her people from the devastating drought that began the day she was born. But when her father is murdered during a quest to break the curse, Arianna vows to channel her powers to end the suffering and take revenge.
Teaming up with her skilled swordsman best friend, she embarks on a…
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
For this one, it is honestly difficult to say what I liked the most. The writing is superb and even masterful. You sink right into the character and fall in love. Then the POV changes and you meet the next character, and you think she/he is brilliant.
Maybe that is what I love the most: how well written and chosen each of the characters are. They represent the world, and through them, you enter a magical place without missing a step.
An Eternal Flame.
A Powerful Secret.The Republic of the Sand Sea is a dangerous land where fire wielders are forced to battle dragons for the entertainment of the wealthy families.
There are none wealthier or more dangerous than the Thirteen.
But the First of the Thirteen has gone missing and Jura, his only heir, is thrust into a world of political intrigue and threats from assassins.
In the arena, Ash, a retired Fire Dancer, is determined to reclaim his glory, no matter the unthinkable cost. Might the life of a captured child be the ultimate price?
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
This story is decidedly YA, but I like to sneak them in on occasion! There is something sweet and powerful in a coming-of-age, young adult fantasy that I find hard to ignore.
And this one has it all: two unlikely friends who must find a way to work together to save their world, surprising twists and turns, and a rich, vivid world that feels completely real. It reminds me a bit of what I loved about Narnia in a new take.
Torn from Earth, Brave Kingsfort lands alone in a wild new world. On the run from a ruthless tyrant, his unpredictable elemental power is the least of his worries until he discovers it might be his only way out.
True Harboursfort is determined to impress her parents but when a heart-breaking decision at the root of her family’s downfall is revealed, everything changes. Including herself. It’s terrifying. So why does it feel so good?
Forced to make an alliance, Brave and True must overcome their families’ lies to trust one another and survive, while…
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
For this one, I loved how utterly surprising the plot was. The book is well written, and the characters are so dynamic, but just when I thought I had things figured out, I realized I was completely wrong. There is an adventure in this one, but it really weaves around a love story… maybe a potential love story? I don’t want to give too much away!
The world is really well built, the characters are fun, and I found it difficult not to root for some sparks to fly (beyond the magical ones, of course!).
The first book in a brilliant epic fantasy series about a young woman who goes from having nothing to fighting for everything. Perfect for fans of Throne of Glass and Shadow and Bone.
She wasn’t supposed to become so powerful. She wasn’t even supposed to survive.
In an empire divided into three rings, Talise is from the lowliest and most dangerous outer ring. To escape that life, she just has to do three things.
1) Attend an elite academy for manipulating the elements of water, air, earth, and fire. 2) Become the most powerful student in her year. 3) Prove…
I'm a long-time role-player/gamemaster and reader of SFF, and I've read, created, and played (and written!) a lot of stories.Good stories come from good characters. We all know that. But part of what makes characters good is that they're believable, and to me their believability is inextricable from the worlds they come from. A world-build—setting, weather, technology, magic, science, cultures, and languages—should BE as much of a character as the protagonist(s). While I admit a fond nostalgia for ye olde semi-Euro-medieval setting, I lovea world-build that challenges or surprises me, and I love the characters and stories that come out of those worlds. I hope you do too.
I am a sucker for an unusual world-build, but I also love a good morally grey hero.
Harmon delivers both. Most of civilization exists underground with a frozen wasteland above, with populations gathered into politically discrete city-states.
The magic is half chemistry, half alchemy, and unique. Our protagonist, Ig, is an elemental bound to the service of one of those city rulers, forced by that binding to kill (or whatever else he's told). He wants to be free. And that's about where you can stop imagining you know how this story will go.
The tale is dark, violent, intricate, and grimly delightful, but there's a bright sliver of hope: just enough, anyway, to show you how dark the shadows are.
Among boiling volcanoes under Mira's frozen lands, people like Ig are forced to undergo life-threatening trials that bind chemical elements to the human body. One of Mira's most powerful elementals, Ig serves as an enforcer for Magnate Sorrelo Adriann, but is cursed with flesh binding magic that will kill him at the first sign of disobedience.
When Sorrelo is overthrown, Ig quickly learns he can do far worse than what has been asked of him so far. If he can't escape the flesh binding in time, he will have to…
Fantasy has always intrigued me since I read The Once and Future King in grade school. The number of fantasy books I’ve read number in the hundreds if not topping a thousand. In my twenties, you never saw me without a book in my hand, my nose pressed into the pages. If I wasn’t reading, I was dreaming up fantasy stories in my head, and this was long before I ever thought of writing my first book. I was a dreamer from birth and will die as one if I live to be 100 like my granny.
The Dragonlance Chronicles, while not the first fantasy novel I read, is the one that put me onto my love of, and even addiction to, fantasy adventure. There are several characters, each with their own distinct and compelling stories and personalities. The story itself is just amazing and had me devouring every book in this expansive series as quickly as I could. Twice! The mixing of not just heroics and good intentions but the darker and even self-serving side of people and seeing how their experiences shaped them to be the way they are. Even in their darkest times, you can understand, if not relate to them, and still see them with compassion.
More than three million readers have witnessed the return of the dragons... And now the books that began the best-selling "dragonlance" saga are collected in their entirety in this special edition, along with all of the artwork from the trilogy. This splendid collector's edition is a must for the millions of readers who fell in love with the fantasy world of Krynn.
My name is Alister Dray Penborn. I am a lifelong mystery lover, all the way back to my favorite childhood cartoon, Scooby-Doo, and my favorite anime, Detective Conan, or Case Closed as it was called in the US at the time of airing. It's a passion that grew over the years as I was exposed to even more great mysteries. One of the most appealing aspects is the investigation process, where a character sees the inconsistencies of crime scenes, analyzes and makes sense of events, and collects and relies on the slightest clues to act as puzzle pieces to the full picture.
When I look for books to read, my criteria are a compelling mystery, an action-packed fantasy, or a blend of both. Welcome to the both. I love this book's excellent mystery, action, and world-building balance! While the action was on par with what I expected of Sanderson, the primary and secondary characters take the story a step further with depth that made me connect with their personalities and the motivation for their actions.
They feel like real people, with their dialogue and interactions adding to the investigation’s progression, and if a writer can achieve that in a story, that sells it for me. This, along with the worldbuilding and rather fun mystery, always makes it a reread option for me.
Fans of Robert Jordan and George RR Martin alike have found a new champion of epic fantasy in Brandon Sanderson. And now, in the first of two sequels to The Alloy Of Law the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author returns to the world of Mistborn anda hunt for a mysterious assassin.
The criminal elite of Elendel were invited to an auction - which became a massacre, when an unknown assailant slaughtered everyone in attendance. Now Wax and Wayne, both able to use magic, both lawmen from the rough and ungoverned frontier territories, are on the case. All…
While Dune, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica (1980s), and other SF staples laid the foundation for my love of SFF, I was also reading about the universe from a young age. Along came Star Trek: The Next Generation in the ‘90s and the stage was set. Completing Bachelor’s Degrees in Ancient History & Archaeology; Religions & Theology; and a PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Studies copper-fastened my passion for the ancient world and the history of religion, and along with reading historical fiction and fantasy, everything merged into the almost allegorical universe you’ll find in Kiranis. Lovers of all the above will find something here.
I discovered the Pearl Saga (a trilogy) via Van Lustbader taking up the reins on Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels. While I was reading these books, I was waiting to hear from Voyager (Harper Collins) regarding an epic fantasy novel I wrote, which featured in its climactic scenes a girl using crystals to trap a dragon in a cage-like device inside a mountain. There was a delay in the publication of the third book of the Pearl Saga, and when it came out, it featured a girl holding a ‘crystal’ before a dragon, and it was called The Cage of Nine Banestones. My heart sank, but it turned out that the delay was related to the death of Van Lustbader’s father.
The trilogy begun in ‘Ring’ is for some brooding and self-indulgent, but for me it was a triumph of worldbuilding and alien realia, with technology and sorcery vying…
The opening volume in a huge epic fantasy in the tradition of Frank Herbert's DUNE series.
Struggling to survive an existence of enforced slavery on their home planet, the people of Kundala are slowly dying. Their oppressors, the V'ornn, a technologically advanced, alien race, have reigned over the Kundalans with unyielding power for more than one hundred years.
Only through the power of the lost, god-given Pearl can the Kundalans be saved from extinction, for within it lies a secret so potent it could tear the entire planet apart.
However, only one man is destined to find and wield the…
Though I write, I will always be a LitRPG reader first. I enjoy these stories for their ability to craft interesting magical worlds, their creativity of plot, and their breadth of scope. Some LitRPGs are two-dimensional, which have their place, but each of the stories I’ve listed here are most definitely not. They act as my inspiration, both in how I wish to write and in how I’d like to be more creative overall. My day job is as a technical writer for a software company, and LitRPG stories got me back into reading, forced me to think more creatively, and allowed me to follow my dream of writing my own.
One of the behemoths in the LitRPG genre, this story invented a magic system with infinite possibilities that is universally simple to understand as soon as you read how it works. More importantly, the story has some of the best characterizations I’ve ever read, introducing a cast of characters that each have defined motivations and backgrounds, helping to build out the world that the main character has been thrown into.
It starts as a story about a man whisked into another world, and quickly sets itself apart from other portal fantasies. I have yet to find any magic system like it and I thought of it often when I created my own.
Jason wakes up in a mysterious world of magic and monsters.It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil.He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.After cementing itself as one of the best-rated serial novels on Royal Road with an astonishing…
I'm a fiction author and minister from Upstate New York. As a young boy, I had many supernatural experiences. My earliest memory is of a supernatural basis. For me, the unseen world, and those things that others either deny exist or have relegated to ancient history and myth, have always been real to me. Reading, films, video games, and all other forms of storytelling were ways for me to experience the strange and the mysterious. What I found as I walked through such places as Middle Earth, Narnia, and Ice Wind Dale, was that the stories of these characters that overcame adversity, failures, and weaknesses to become heroes inspired me as well.
So, if you haven’t already noticed, for most of this list I have chosen the first book in a series. Let's be honest, if you read fantasy, then you know pretty much every book is part of a series. In The Black Prism we are introduced to one of my favorite magic systems. In this system, the magicians or “Drafters” are able to turn light into substance. Each color of the light spectrum has a different property. A drafter can create constructs using light. Most people can only access one color, but there are those special people that can use multiple colors, and of course, there are the select few who can use all. What I love about this system is that it is only limited to the strength and imagination of the user.
I am a big fan of systems that you have to think to use. Anyone can…
In a world where magic is tightly controlled, the most powerful man in history must choose between his kingdom and his son - in the first book of the New York Times bestselling Lightbringer series, one of the most popular fantasy epics of the decade.
EVERY LIGHT CASTS A SHADOW.
Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. Yet Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live.
