100 books like Returning

Three worlds in one book! There’s the not-so-important world of the Ancelstierre, roughly Edwardian or early-20th-Century-ish, and there’s the Old Kingdom, basically medieval, where Charter Magic wars with Free Magic (and how well Nix thinks through the workings of his forms of magic).

But the third world is the one that takes the cake! An underworld of the dead, with its different levels, gates, and sills. Sabriel discovers her own special inheritance and powers—OK, that’s standard fantasy fare, except that Sabriel’s powers are those of an abhorsen. It’s the Abhorsen’s role to make sure that the dead stay dead, and journey on down into the deeper levels of death. Of course, the dead who keep coming back are the ones who drive the narrative!

River of Shadows is a romance-leaning fantasy series starter, but here, the quest story comes first. It’s a fairy tale retelling with a bit of everything: a Beauty & The Beast arc, Hades & Persephone vibes, morbid humor, steamy scenes featuring the hapless Hanna and the God of Death… I could go on!

It’s an adult dark fantasy with horror elements that’s also chock-full of humor, mixing the tragic with the comic in an artful way. What’s not to love?

I will admit, Halle could have made her heroine a little less Mary-Sue, but we can forgive her that because the wondrous worldbuilding, plot, and varied characters more than make up for it. It was fun to read, making me LOL with every turn of the page.

This story starts with Harper getting kicked out of a foster home before being sent off to the spooky Shadowford Home for Girls in the fictional town of Peachville, Georgia. Things go from bad to worse when a local cheerleader is found dead, and Harper gets sucked into a small-town mystery.

The book reads like a paranormal detective story, with a touch of romance. Harper is no P.I., but she is magic, and the twin mysteries of her origins and the town’s history dovetail nicely as the story progresses.

I particularly sympathized with the heroine’s plight as an outsider at a new school, something I’ve experienced many a time myself. The good thing about it is, it makes for some moving storytelling.

This book is right up there with Sabriel as one of the first female-led fantasy books I read and loved. It’s an epic fantasy for adults, but I can see younger readers enjoying it, too. It’s wholesome and optimistic, with vivid descriptions of the natural world.

Daleina is an academy student learning elemental magic. She partners with Ven, a former champion, to save the land of Renthia from spirits bent on cleansing the land of humans. As you might imagine, that’s no simple feat.

This book resonated with me because I’m a nature child at heart. (Some might say a wild child… LOL). There is a sparkling magic in the great outdoors, and this book captures it beautifully.

This book is a masterclass on how to write fantasy. The worldbuilding is immaculate, the characters are complex with big personalities, and I was laughing out loud (not an exaggeration) from the first page.

Rasia and Nico are Black girls who know what they want. They constantly clash with each other, never giving an inch when they can take a mile, and I want every lover of fantasy to read this book.

An amazing play about an amazing man, artist Norval Morrisseau. Surreal and yet very real, the play deals with three very important periods in this groundbreaking artist's life as he created a whole genre of Canadian art. The audience is given a window into the man's highs and lows, and how in the end, he became rose above it all and became a legend.

Cyteen won a Hugo Award in 1989 and pushed the envelope on both world building and character development. For me though, it was the author’s exploration of what it means to be human that made this book one of my all-time favourites. 

In Cyteen, there are born humans and made people. Some of the made people are clones of a particularly powerful individual, but most are created to perform a function. These lower-ranked people are taught everything they need to know by ‘tape’, while they sleep. 

The book asks some deep philosophical questions about what makes a person human, and whether any of us have the right to create ‘sub-humans’ for our own benefit. These are powerful questions that still beg for answers.

This is my bible, the book I’ve read more times than any other. It’s three books in one—Wolf in Shadow, The Last Guardian, and Bloodstone. There’s clearly some direct inspiration here in relation to the mystical power source that keeps cropping up (no spoilers). Some things just get in your head and reintroduce themselves when you least expect it. Jon Shannow is my favourite literary creation, Gemmell my favourite author. Overall, heroic and epic fantasy has had the most influence on my writing style, but I’ve merged it with contemporary language and the vision of large-scale sci-fi. I learned a lot from reading Gemmell, and The Jerusalem Man’s post-apocalyptic setting sees the sharp-shooting anti-hero face darkly religious demagogues, mutated creatures, and insidious megalomaniacs. Shannow is a troubled soul trying to be good in a world of relentless evil, but Gemmell’s writing is sharper, less… show more.

This story was interesting in the way that the author had two main characters who were twins with widely different roles. With one taking the role of the chosen one and the other being in a place to save her, this was an intense rollercoaster ride from beginning to end. Not to mention the worldbuilding, traveling through lightning, was a very unique idea that amped up the suspense. 

If you’ve ever wondered what life was like for the people living in the Americas after the last ice age, then read this book. Through the eyes of Young Hunter, we explore what we now call New England thousands of years before the first Europeans crossed the Atlantic. And through Young Hunter, we learn to use weapons, how to survive in the wild, Native American folktales and names, and we learn why Young Hunter’s people fear beings called the Ancient Ones. All of these worldbuilding layers are revealed as Young Hunter embarks on a dangerous journey tracking the creatures that attacked his people, with each layer drawing you in until you are as fearful of the Ancient Ones as Young Hunter and just as determined to face them.