I love fantasy books with quality plot, character development and well written romantic content - These are my favorites
Reddit refugee here, I've been posting my book reviews on /r/Fantasy for years and figured some of you all would be interested in a best of list. My full list of all book reviews can be found here, but most of the links are broken right now because the Fantasy subreddit is still private. Still, perhaps the titles, authors and keywords are helpful.
What I enjoy
A brief list of things I care about in books, to help you jugde whether your taste overlaps:
- a good balance of romance and plot, where there is prominent romance but never feels like the story is just about that
- quality prose and dialogue
- believable relationship development, including romantic tension and explicit payoff for it
- high stakes drama, be it interpersonal, warfare, duels, court politics or heists
- LBGTQ+ main characters and queer romance
Note that these aren't the only qualities of the books listed below, just generally what I look for. I'll also gladly take recommendations for fantasy books that fit these criteria if you have any!
Books
Kushiel's Legacy by Jacqueline Carey
A divinely blessed masochistic courtesan and spy uncovers conspiracies against the crown of fantasy France. This series is probably my absolute favorite for how it combines intrigue, romance, kink and action, all with excellent prose and characterization. It has deliciously horny worldbuilding and ends up telling an epic fantasy story with an incredibly unique protagonist.
Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco
A recent addition to my absolute favorites. The author described the book as "vampire couple finds himbo in the trash and takes him in". If you're not sold on that, imagine a vibe like Netflix Castlevania and The Witcher - vampire hunter who's highly competent but looked down upon, vampire science, undead threat, dark gothic kind of setting, sprinkled with some "who's the real monster actually?" philosophy.
A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
A Dowry of Blood is about healing from abusive relationships through murder. It's also walks an excellent line between being sexy and horrible. It tells the story of Dracula's "brides", and the beautifully messed up relationship the four of them have.
Note: this one can't be described as having a "romantic subplot", since that implies some sort of happy ending. You know, because of the murder. (that's not a spoiler, it's revealed on page one)
A Charm of Magpies by KJ Charles
A disgraced nobleman returns to England years after escaping his father and finds himself and his family estate haunted. He hires a magician - who happens to bear his family a grudge. The Magpie series is fast paced, highly entertaining, well written, and plays with some delicious power dynamics between its initially hostile and soon reluctantly mutually attracted main characters.
Folk of the Air by Holly Black
The only YA series on this list, Folk of the Air holds a special place in my heart for its delicious fairy court politicking and for not pulling its punches. The titular Cruel Prince is a wonderfully hateable love interest, and even though I feel a few years too old to properly enjoy this series, the stabby and vicious dynamics between the two leads is just wonderful.
Nightrunner by Lynn Flewelling
A young man gets innocently imprisoned and receives unexpected help from his cellmate: a spy, rogue, thief and nobleman. The latter offers him a way out and an apprenticeship, which leads to well... spying and thievery, but also sinister necromantic plots against the throne. The highlight of this series is the ongoing relationship development between its leads. Book 1-2 are fantastic, book 4-5 are really weird, but the whole series remains a favorite despite some strange choices.
Rook & Rose by M.a. Carrick
A skilled con artist, a masked vigilante that challenges aristocrats to duels, and a dashing crime lord turned nobleman. The Rook & Rose series shines in its rich worldbuilding and prose, but especially in its handling of its main characters' multiple secrets, cons and identities. And especially shines when those schemes start crumbling down and some of the secrets become unveiled.
If the third book in the trilogy sticks the landing later this year, this series will firmly establish itself among my all time favorites.
The Stariel Quartet by AJ Lancaster
Years after leaving her family, a young woman returns home for her father's funeral and soon needs to deal with a magical estate that has a mind of its own, and discover that there may be more magic in the world around her than she's realized. The Stariel series is cozy and home-y in many ways, but doesn't shy away from tension either, and I find myself still in love with the main characters even long after finishing the series. I also really enjoyed the spinoff, A Rake of His Own recently!
Harrow Faire by Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Most of the books on here are fantasy with romance, while this one sits more firmly in the capital R Romance genre. But it is dark romance ("villain gets the girl"), and features an absolutely unhinged love interest, a lot of murder, and an evil circus. The series isn't without flaws (some of the side characters get a bit too much page for
how flat they are, and the pacing is a tiny bit uneven in parts), but I blasted through all five (short) books in a week because I had so much fun with it.
The Last Binding by Freya Marske
This series takes place in an early 20th century England where a secret magical society exists in parallel to the world 'as we know it'. There's even a bit of magical British bureaucracy that reminded me of aspects of the Harry Potter books, though the series have little in common otherwise.
Every book in this trilogy follows the same overarching plot, but features a different pairing of main characters and romantic leads. It's queer, fun and fast-paced, though sometimes a bit on the fluffy and romancey side for my taste.
That's just a brief selection of favorites, I highly recommend heading over to the reddit post (I should back that up at some point with Reddit's future being a bit shaky rn) to find more titles.
Thank you for reading! There's lots more to say on each of theses books of course, but I didn't want this to get way too long.
Let me know if you found this interesting, if you have similar books you'd recommend to me, or just share if you also enjoyed any of these books. This is my first post on Tildes and I'm happy to meet new fellow readers :)
Can I just +1 this. A really good series with a great mix of romance, fantasy and politicking. I can't say too much for fear of spoilers, but the characters are all really well fleshed out including the non-humanoid ones. It's great worldbuilding.
M.a. Carrick is a pen name for two writers, Alyc Helms, and Marie Brennan. While I'm sure Alyc is a great writer in her own right I want to highlight Marie Brennan's amazing Victorian low fantasy novels:
A Natural History Of Dragons
This is a memoir style book, which chronicles Lady Trent on her adventures through Victorian mysogyny to become the world's most knowledgeable and experienced dragon naturalist. It's a great book for worldbuilding, featuring all sorts of interesting drawings and facts about the dragons of the world she lives in. I especially love the spin off From Darkness Into Light (Which unfortunately does not feature Lady Trent) as it's written entirely from journals and newspaper clippings, it's really smartly done.
I also have a completely unrelated recommendation that's somewhat similar to The Stariel Quartet's vibe imo
Half A Soul
This one has more magic involved, faeries come into it, but the essence is that Dora is figuring out how to find love when it's possible the entire emotion has been removed from her, due to losing half a soul. Can you even love if you don't recognise or understand the emotion?
There's more to this series, I never read #2, but #3 is quite good.
Thanks for the other recs, I'll probably check out Kushiel's legacy, Folk of the Air, Nightrunner, and The Last Binding.
Thanks for the tips!! Yeah, a friend of mine really likes the Lady Trent books too, I should give those a try so far!
I have also heard good things from other friends about Half a Sou, but it hasn't actually been on my wishlist yet (I do all my reading on audible), I've added it now. :D
Oh, I highly suggest checking out Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. It is my favorite book I have read so far in 2023 and checks all of the boxes you mentioned in your post. Excellent prose and dialogue, fun romance, DRAGONS!, high stakes drama, twists and turns. It was so good.
I've been seeing that one all the time on /r/fantasyromance recently, but have also seen a lot of people being kind of underwhelmed by it after so much excitement... Can you tell me a few books you've also enjoyed? Have you read Daughter of no Worlds, for example? That's another popular pick recently that I liked well enough.
It’s so nice to see some unfamiliar titles on this list! I feel like whenever people talk about fantasy romance it’s always ACOTAR and other titles (I’m drawing a blank) repeated over and over.
I didn’t go over to Reddit to check out what other books you’ve read because I’m participating in the boycott, so I apologize if you’ve read these.
I recommend anything by T. Kingfisher. Her world building is great, her characters are unique, she likes to turn fantasy stereotypes on their head and her books are hilarious. The audiobooks are good too.
The Raven’s Shadow Series by Anthony Ryan — it doesn’t have as much romance as the other books on your list, but it’s an awesome fantasy series with a very good audiobook.
I thought of T. Kingfisher too! I've been binging her audiobooks as I've been unwell and the lightheartedness of her books really did help. Her books are very comforting.
I love her world building and I want more of it. The gnolls are a really fascinating race. Her tendency to flip fantasy stereotypes is fun too.
I've listened to the Clocktuar series and also the Paladin series.
But honestly, I don't really know whether to actually recommend her. I can't tell whether her writing is good. I don't dislike it. They're great for light consumption.
The way she writes romance can also be quite tiresome. There's a specific formula she uses over and over again which gets tiresome and obvious when you listen to the three Paladin books back to back.
But I power through the romance in those books because I really want more of the world that she has built and enjoy the characters as individuals.
I'm reading Nettle and Bone now because there's no romance in this one. It's not in the same universe, but I kind of need a break from her romance formula.
I'm being kind of critical, but I do actually really like her books and I will eventually make my way to Sword heart, which is in the same universe as the Clocktuars and Paladin series.
What I really hope for though, is that she will eventually write a book with all the Saint of Steel Paladins working together as group for most of the book. They're a great team and are very supportive of each other.
I haven’t heard whether there’s going to be anymore books in the Saint of Steel Series or not. I hope so.
I can’t say I had an issue with her romances, but I did read them fairly spread out simply because they hadn’t all been released.
There is going to be! I googled it after I listened to the third book.
She tweeted about it last year. But no extra news after that.
https://twitter.com/UrsulaV/status/1534033937227456513?s=20
That would be why I didn’t hear about it: I’m not on Twitter.
If I had to guess, I would say it’s going to be about all of them working together to figure out who/what murdered the Saint of Steel. I don’t feel like she introduced any of the other Paladins (or any other characters) to indicate that they’re going to get their own book. Thoughts?
From what I got off Reddit (so I don't know if this is true), she planning on going through every Paladin. So there'll be quite a few books.
It's a bit of wishful thinking on my part, but I really want her to do one of the female Paladins next. She did have a very brief scene.
I think she's going to continually do a story from every Paladin's point of view with the main story of what killed their God happening in the background. Kind of like how the previous books have been.
But I really do hope she does do a book with all the Paladins working together in the end. I love their carmadarie.
That’s probably more likely. There’s 9 or 10 Paladins total? I know there were 10 who were surviving as of the first book, but didn’t one commit suicide throughout the course of the series? 2 — maybe 3 — of whom were women. Maybe I should do a reread, I feel like my memory is shit.
I don’t think it’s wishful thinking to hope the next book is about one of the women. It’s entirely possible, they’ve at least been introduced which seems to be a prerequisite.
Random question: favorite book of the series?
Nope. Nobody committed suicide throughout the course of the series. Everyone who unwillingly died or killed themselves did it before the series started.
The third book is my favourite overall. It's because I like Piper the best out of all the love interests and I like gnoles. I'm very fascinated by the gnoles and was glad to get more or that. There was also more lore on ancient tech, which I've been wanting since the Clocktuar series.
I do feel like the two guys lusted for each other pretty quickly though. I wish they had more character build up beforehand.
Plot wise, I like the first book better. The third book was pretty simple in comparison.
Edit: I just realised I don't remember the second book as much. I'll double check if there's suicide in there. I really doubt it.
I think book one is my favorite because of the MMC and the plot. Like you, I wasn’t a huge fan of the FMC but I didn’t dislike her enough for it to ruin the book.
I did really enjoy finding out more about the gnoles in the third book. That was great.
Maybe she didn’t feel the need to do as much character build up because both characters had been in previous books? Plus, on the attraction note, haven’t the characters known each other for a while before the book started? They were at least acquaintances.
I've been wanting to read ACOTAR for a while, not really because I think I'll enjoy it but because I feel like I need to have an opinion on it in order to properly participate in genre discussion and use it as a comparison for what I am or am not looking for 😅
Totally understandable about avoiding reddit. Yes, I have read some Kingfisher, namely Paladin's Grace and A House with Good Bones. I quite enjoyed both and might pick up more by her in the future - I enjoy her humor, and that she's not afraid to have mature (30+) main characters.
Re. Anthony Ryan, I heard good things about Blood Song but heard many people say the quality drops off drastically after that - did you enjoy the whole trilogy?
I did enjoy the whole trilogy. I have heard the same thing, tho. Maybe not everyone is a fan of the additional POVs? The first book is written mainly from one POV while the other two books add in 4 more, 3 of which are women.
I see in your list that you reviewed The Priory of the Orange tree! I dare not look as I'm still reading it, about 250 pages to go. Been on it for almost a year - I have periods of not reading at all and it's quite the heavy book for someone whose usual pace is 2 or 3 titles per year.
I am bookmarking this thread but would definitely love recommendations for books similar to this one - especially ones that have lesbian relationships!
Not sure how to do spoiler tags on Tildes (the "formatting help" link doesn't have anything on it?), so spoilers ahead for aforementioned book:
I've just gotten to the part where Loth and Ead returned to Inys! They've had their winter banquet and Ead and Sabran are reunited and omg my heart, it's so good 🥰
You’re right about Tildes not having a spoilers tag, but you can use the details tag in that way:
https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/text-formatting#expandable-sections
The standard recommendations for that would be The Unbroken by CL Clark, She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker Chan, and The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri. All three are planned trilogies with 2/3 books out, afaik. The Tiger's Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera might be up your alley too.
All of those had their cool things and their issues for me, but if you're looking for more in the general vein of Priory, go for it. Also in case you missed it, Priory got a prequel recently: A Day of Fallen Night.
Thank you very much! I have bookmarked your comment for later!
Just wanted to check in and say I finished reading Priory which was great even though the ending was a bit rushed.
Definitely going to buy the prequel, and I wanted to let you know that the author has also said that a third book may happen eventually!
I'm glad you liked it! Totally get what you're saying re. the ending being rushed, that's a really common complaint for the book and I agree. I don't yet know if I'll read the prequel, though I have heard from some book friends that it's better in terms of pacing :)
That's good to hear! I'll go to the book store when I am able then!
How much romance is there in the Stariel quartet - is it more of a subplot? I'm intrigued and will probably read anyway but want to know what I'm getting before I go in.
It's not billed as primarily romance, but the central relationship is definitely a significant part of the story and of the characters' motivations. It soon becomes a bit "us vs the world", where there's not a ton of intrinsic tension between the two leads, but trials they endure together - from family interference to political issues, to faerie magic.
There's always more going on than "just" romance.
May I recommend T. Kingfisher? Paladins Grace, the Clocktaur duology and quite a few others. She's building up a quite fleshed out world.
Yes, I read Paladin's Grace and liked much about it, but didn't feel like continuing right away because the constant "oh no she/he can't possibly be interested in me" was getting a bit grating. I'll return to Kingfisher sooner or later though I assume, because there's definitely stuff I really enjoy about her writing.
Yes, I personally prefer her dark fantasy and young adult stuff (I read Minor Mage to my then seven year old son a year or so ago) to her fantasy romances. Excellent all round writer though.
What's your favorite among her dark fantasy stuff then? 👀
The Twisted Ones which is a riff on Machen's The White People.
Thank you!
Try Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon, ticks all your boxes I think and is my personal favorite book
Thanks!
You're the first person I've come across who's read A Charm of Magpies! I was honestly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I won the first book in a giveaway and honestly wasn't expecting much, but it drew me in and I absolutely devoured it.
In a similar vein, have you read The Doctrine of Labyrinths series by Sarah Monette? It's a tetralogy of dark fantasy novels with what I think is some of the best worldbuilding I've ever read. They can be hard to find new, but I know for sure that Amazon has some copies used, and there are some ebooks floating around. I rank the series at the top of my list of favorite books of all time, so I highly recommend them.
It just does what it does so well imo!! I absolutely loved it and was just sad it was over too quickly.
I hadn't heard of these - do they have good/prominent romance as well, or is it "just" a good fantasy series in general?
N.K. Jemisin is awesome! She turns a lot of typical sci-fi fantasy tropes on their head. I suggest the broken earth trilogy. She is my favorite author to read right now.
I read and liked the Broken Earth trilogy, but I definitely would not recommend them to anyone looking for romantic subplots. Yes, there is a relationship happening at some point, but it does not reach any sort of romantically satisfying conclusion and it makes up a few chapters in book 1, while most of the trilogy is very low on romance.
I fell in love with her with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Have you tried The City We Became?
No I haven't read anything else of hers yet!
A Charm of Magpies is great and tbh KJ doesn't miss. I have never read anything by her that I didn't thoroughly enjoy, and I've devoured most of her catalogue.
I recommend Winter's Orbit and Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell. Same universe, standalone stories. Ocean's Echo is the more fantastic of the two, even though the setting is technically sci-fi, and my favorite.
Your interests seem to overlap with mine quite a bit, so I'll have to branch out and read some of your recommendations. Thank you!!
I've been trying to read more, recently. I'm moving soon and one goal at my new place is to have a cozy reading area.
Just curious if you tried typing your suggestions in ChatGPT and seeing what other books it suggests (and if you also liked them)
I have 3 books on hold from the library based on this and going to see how it works out.
Check your library's online resources, and see if they have Novelist-- you can find read a likes, similar authors, and more!
I'm totally thrilled with this suggestions! I run the SFF book club at my library, so I'm always looking for good, forward moving SFF titles!
I just finished Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkins
Currently reading Leviathan Wakes for book club!
Have you tried Robin Hobb?
I'm (on and off) reading The Expanse as well, and enjoying it quite a bit!
No, I have not tried any Robin Hobb. I always got the vibe that it might be a bit too depressing for my taste, but I know she's highly regarded and popular.
Yes, I just finished Leviathan Wakes. I thought it was well written, and there were actually some twists that I didn't see coming, which is surprising. The book club has decided to read the next one as well, although it's not our "official" book lol
As far as Hobb, there are highs and there are lows. As of yet, no one that I know that has read them has done anything but love them. It is a journey, for sure.