100 books like The Chosen and the Beautiful

This YA novel is unquestionably one of my all time favourite reads. It’s about an asexual Apache girl with her ghost-dog sidekick in a world full of magic including faeries and vampires. The prose, the plot, the characters, the narrative structure—it was all brilliant and brought to life the story of a girl who can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill from her Lipan Apache family. A story that could’ve remained delightfully cute and sweet takes a decidedly darker turn when Elatsoe’s cousin is the picture-perfect town of Willowbee. As Elatsoe begins to investigate, she uncovers some seriously gruesome secrets in an alternate version of small-town America shaped by magic and monsters.

This book gave me shivers, both from the monsters and the evil that humans are capable of.

This novella from P. Djeli Clark manages to be action-packed while still dealing with heavy topics like racism and slavery. It’s the 1920s, and Maryse Boudreaux is a Black woman living in the deep south of the United States. Maryse and her friends have formed a militia to fight the ‘Ku Kluxes,’ monsters who take the form of Ku Klux Klan members to spread hate further.

There are points in this book where it seems like all is lost, which makes it all the more satisfying when the heroes rally. 

This is one of those books where you’re like – the premise couldn’t possibly be as good as the execution.  And yet it is. The dystopic world in which Sid has to take the punishment for all of Knox’s behavior is so rich and dark and delicious it resonates as a class critique of our own world without even having to try. It’s a knock-out debut, and I can’t wait to jump into London’s Black Wings Beating, which is next on my Kindle.

When I first started reading this book, I thought it would be like every other fantasy novel featuring an orphan who goes to an elite school for magic. How wrong I was! Unlike the other books on this list which are more or less set in our world (but with magic!) The Poppy War is actually a secondary world fantasy.

What warrants its place on the list (besides being very good) is the fact that the plot points mirror the events of World War II, specifically the fighting between Japan and China.

This book is not for the faint of heart—there were some sections I found really tough to get through, especially knowing they were based on real-life events. But by then I was hooked, eager to see war orphan Rin realize not only her magic powers but her leadership capabilities.

This is one of the best examples of the… show more.

Have you ever wished you knew what your pet was thinking? That you could communicate with them with words or even with the power of your mind? I know I have.

This book is basically a chronicle of the Napoleonic Wars…but with dragons! When British naval Captain Will Laurence forms a bond with the dragon Temeraire, it changes both of their lives. The two are pressed into service, fighting against Napoleon’s own squad of dragon-riders.

The air battle scenes are thrilling, but the real heart of the book is the bond between Will and Temeraire. It is a daring adventure tale but also a fabulous, cozy read. Reading it makes me wish I had a dragon pal that I was telepathically bonded to (though I’m not too keen to have to square up with Napolean). 

Dreadnought is a fantastic story about a young trans girl who inherits the powers of the most powerful superhero in the world.

Like Captain Marvel, it bestows upon her the looks of her idealized form. Unfortunately, this goes over like a ton of bricks with her family that she hadn't revealed herself to. The coming-of-age drama doesn't take a back seat to the superheroics, though, and I absolutely love the characters created by the author. 

You gotta give props to Flewelling, who wrote a fantasy series with queer male protags in 1996! Just imagine – before Will & Grace, before Queer as Folk, before gay marriage was even a thing, she had the courage to write this deeply moving spy espionage fantasy book and the relationship between the noble rogue Seregil and his mentee/lover Alec was basically what I used as a model for every romantic relationship in my life. Also, the protag in my first two books was named Alek. Coincidence? I think not.

If dragons and elves are the mainstays of traditional fantasy, then mushrooms and squids are the mainstays of weird fantasy. And there’s no city with more squids or mushrooms than Vandermeer’s Ambergris. A haphazard port town infested by fungi and built on ancient ruins holding dark secrets, there’s nothing quite like Ambergris.

What I love so much about Vandermeer’s trilogy is that the city evolves and changes. City of Saints and Madmen is an excellent short story collection that introduces the setting in peacetime, and by the end of Finch it has seen so much conflict and upheaval that Ambergris evolves into a completely different and yet equally fascinating city. 

For a more traditional take on fantasy, Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria is lovely and immersive, a fascinating new world worthy of Ursula Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.

Reportedly, she created Olondria from a combination of regions in Turkey and North Africa, and it feels absolutely fresh and instantly powerful. A teenage merchant becomes haunted by the ghost of a young girl and must find a way to put her to rest.

But the story is really about the power of books and stories and language itself. It’s a love letter to adventure and open seas, harbors, and alleys, and snowy mountains in the distance.

Ms. Samatar holds several advanced degrees in language and literature, including Arabic and various African dialects, and you can feel the joy of her verbal artistry dancing on the page.

Stranger is not to be missed.

I adore Ead!! Unsurprisingly, that's why I’m including this book in my recommendations. One of three central characters (including my second favourite in this book – Sabran), Ead won me over because she’s just fantastically capable, but not showy about it at all. She’s the kind of person you’d love to have at your side through thick and thin. 

I got a little bit of a Robin Hobb vibe from this book which also made it a winner for me because I love all of Hobb’s work. This is a monster of a book (and it’s a standalone), but the pacing moves quite quickly despite the length and I never got stuck or felt like it bogged down in too much detail. The world building is fantastic and brings the story to life.