When Wildwood had its premiere at the BFI I read a lot of reviews praising the animation but knocking the story for being full of epic adventure and fantasy tropes. My only reaction to that was, "That's awesome!" I am a millenial and have fond memories of endlessly rewatching things like POTC, LOTR, Harry Potter, Kingdom of Heaven, Troy etc over and over on my old TV set. And obviously, times have changed and we haven't gotten anything like it since, but I do long for it.

Because you know, I've watched dozens of movies over the years that of course yes I can praise for having good cinematography, acting, witty dialogue etc. But deep down, we all want that movie that's "just our thing" so to speak.

And Wildwood finally scratched that itch. While I went in expecting a good ol fantasy romp with supposedly the best stop motion animation ever attempted, I wasn't expecting such an emotional and involving storyline examining yes your classic tropes of courage, heroism, and the fantastical. But also loss, guilt, regret, family and the lengths people will go for their loved ones. I knew going in the villainess would have a tragic backstory, but I didn't expect to see her, by villain standards, be so vulnerable and to be such a good foil for the main character. And for all the talks that the story was predictable, I did not expect the choice that would be presented to the main character, let's just keep it at that. It was just such a well rounded character driven story and that unlike animated movies nowadays, has just the right amount of emotion without veering into the sentimental. Disney/Pixar movies do that a lot and even if I do enjoy their movies for the most part, I appreciated Wildwood for adding just the right dose.

As a fantasy movie, it definately had everything that tickled my fancy. Characters having their moments of heroism, beautiful environments, armies marching in rythm, battles. You name it.

If I have one gripe with the movie, especially in the second half there does end up being a lot of lore and politics with all the factions, but we're only given like one sentence explanations of each before the mad dash to the climax. Funny since this movie is already over 2 hours long, which is an eternity for an animated movie, not least a handmade one. But I wouldn't have minded an additional 20 minutes to flesh everything out.

Nonetheless, I am finally glad a movie brought me back to my youth and the good ol days of being transported to another world for an epic adventures! 9/10

Welcome to the daily recommendation requests and simple questions thread, now 1025.83% more adorable than ever before!

Stickied/highlight slots are limited, so please remember to like and subscribe upvote this thread for visibility on the subreddit <3

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This thread is to be used for recommendation requests or simple questions that are small/general enough that they won’t spark a full thread of discussion.

Check out r/Fantasy's 2026 Book Bingo Card here!

As usual, first have a look at the sidebar in case what you're after is there. The r/Fantasy wiki contains links to many community resources, including "best of" lists, flowcharts, the LGTBQ+ database, and more. If you need some help figuring out what you want, think about including some of the information below:

• Books you’ve liked or disliked
• Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy
• Series vs. standalone preference
• Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc)
• Complexity/depth level

Be sure to check out responses to other users' requests in the thread, as you may find plenty of ideas there as well. Happy reading, and may your TBR grow ever higher!

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^{tiny image link to make the preview show up correctly}

art credit: special thanks to our artist, Himmis commissions, who we commissioned to create this gorgeous piece of art for us with practically no direction other than "cozy, magical, bookish, and maybe a gryphon???" We absolutely love it, and we hope you do too.

I’ll be honest, I went into this not knowing anything about the plot or concept, just based on the strength of how much I loved The Everlasting by the same author. I assumed from the title that this would also be a little Arthurian-adjacent, but it’s way more of a fairy-tale story than anything. No connection to Arthur beyond a tower named Avalon. I think if I had read the blurb, I would not have picked this up. Just a plot and concept that does not typically appeal to me. 

The writing style of The Everlasting that had gripped me from the first pages was just not present in Witches. In fact, it read way more juvenile, on the edge of YA, which is another thing that’s just not for me. And romance, which was a central feature and very well done in Everlasting, felt forced and half-baked in Witches. 

I was also baffled by some of the world-building. This is supposed to be a highly patriarchal society where women have been spurned for witchcraft, but/and many male historical figures or fictional heroes have been genderbent. So this version of Odysseus is a woman, yet trickery and cunning is not a heroic trait for a woman in this world. So how does that change the Odyssey? We also get mentions of Charlotte Perrault and Andrea Lang and the Sisters Grimm as famous folklorists, but why would women scholars be held in such esteem? (And why genderbend Andrew Lang at all when Leonora Blanche Lang was right there? I think it would perhaps have been better to showcase how the work of women was historically overlooked in favor of propping up their male collaborators, both in the fictional world and in ours. Especially considering the themes of the book.)

It also has very white feminism. Someone with a now-deleted account left a few very good comments about this in the FIF book club discussions a few years back, which I felt encapsulated my own misgivings. It’s not the worst thing in the world; it’s trying, at least. While Harrow makes an effort to include various characters of color, they read more as token inclusions to serve the stories of the white main characters, who are, despite the environment in which they were raised, somehow more open minded and progressive than anyone else of this period would be. Despite having a prominent interracial lesbian romance, the story mainly highlights the queerness of it, rather than attempting discussions around intersectionality. It’s a similar story when it comes to the inclusion of classism and the labor movement. In fairness, there may simply not have been space for it, what with three main characters each needing their own character arcs. 

And this brings me to the impression I get of this book as a whole: that it’s trying to do too much, and ends up doing a lot of things poorly rather than a few things well.

All that being said, there are things I still enjoyed. The story picked up in the second half, and often kept me guessing as to where it would go. The three main characters felt distinct, and their anger at the world justified. I especially appreciated Agnes’s arc and the centering of motherhood.

But the only reason I finished this is because I buddy-read it with a friend; as I said, had I read the synopsis I would not have picked it up myself. (My friend had given me a list of books to choose from, and I landed on this just because I saw Harrow’s name.) It’s wild to go from one of my favorite reads of the year in The Everlasting, to having this one be such a huge disappointment. It also does a very specific meta thing in its ending which is a pet peeve of mine, something that without spoilers The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue does too.

Bingo: Judge a Book by its Title, Book Club or Readalong, Politics and Court Intrigue (HM, as a mayoral election is a major plot point)

After a very sudden illness I just lost one of my best friends Cheddar. Cheddar was a goofy pitbull mix with personality for days. I almost named him Mouse after Harry Dresden's dog, but it my partner didnt love that name and isn't a Dresden fan. I am looking for lightish fantasy stories that feature awsome dogs or other furry friends. Anything that touches on the special relationships between humans and their pets in an escapist fantasy world, would be really appreciated.

Edit: Before this becomes overrun with Dungeon Crawler Carl rec, I am aware of how awesome Princess Doughnut is.

Are there any books set in the modern day that use typical fantasy tropes and archetypes. I guess what I'm looking for are fantasy archetypes wandering the streets of 2026. A barbarian and a battlemage duking it out on the streets of London or a spellsword and a nightblade plotting in a dark back alley in New York. Are there any fantasy series out there which fit this vibe?

Review originally on JamReads

Some novels definitely feel as terribly accurate to the times, a wake-up call that leaves us with much to think about, and Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends is one of those. An ambitious sapphic, climate-fiction speculative thriller that also puts the effort of becoming a character study over grief and self-destruction, a plot that keeps us asking questions about the central mystery, and a terribly accurate book for our times.

At the center of the plot, we have Dr. Cassandra Barlowe, just after finding her ex-lover and leader researcher on deleria (a drug that allows to see alternative futures), Dr. Yana Gusniv, has died in mysterious circumstances. A moment that starts a journey for Cass, while she's being investigated as a suspect for it, to discover the truth behind Yana's death, using the own drug to try to find what happened, while self-torturing herself with visions of herself and Yana in other timelines where they might would have been happy together.

Cass is a marvelously complex character, and we get to know her very intimately, especially as past, present and future become intertwined in the narration; she's suffering a lot, emotionally destroyed with Yana's death even if six years have passed since they took different ways. A person that is at the absolute bottom, almost self-destroying herself using the deleria, trying to find what could have happened, but also reviving and experiencing really painful moments, false hope that also feels like not being able to let Yana go.

However, even when this book is a really well-executed character study, I found the ideas behind it extremely compelling (but also a bit scary). The way deleria is eating the funds for any kind of investigation, just aiming to find that perfect solution in the alternative futures; the thing is, sometimes you might need to compromise with a less than perfect solution, a temporal help that might allow to alleviate the problem, even when it's not the perfect answer (and it also feels as a parallel to how LLMs are trying to cannibalize science promising those unachievable goals while at the same time they are the ones contributing to burn the planet). The climate collapse that is described is not a far-fetched future, and again, it's still possible to reverse it; there's hope, but we need to acknowledge the problem and stop shrugging our heads because "this is not a definitive solution".

Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends is a brilliant novel, a piece that invites the reader to think about its themes while following the deconstruction of Cass looking for a clue about Yana's death. Another book that puts A.D. Sui on my auto-buy list!

Still Lost: Tales From 2080 by Sam A. Miller

Bingo Square: Five Short Stories (HM)

My IRL book club strikes again! Not because it was this month's book, but as a suggestion from one of the friends I made there.

The premise is the author finds these stories on a mysterious floppy disc while dumpster diving and is, ah, rather forcibly made the custodian of the stories here. 

What did I think? Not bad. I was expecting it to be stories about dealing with the aliens, instead it's about people. Yes, the Xenos do put in some appearances, but they aren't the focus. 

• Foreword: How the author found the disk and the stories.
• Prologue: How the aliens came and we got into this mess. The aliens are amusing, all powerful and annoyed. And disappointed in humanity. ★★★★★★★
• Xenos: A grade student meets with a Xeno for an exchange. The Xeno is trying to get samples, but there are restrictions on how it can be done. So, the Xeno is left to deal with perverts. It's a funny story and also gets into a new religion established after contact.★★★★★★★★★
• Being a Nothingness: A man dealing with crippling anxiety seeks out a new treatment that would allow him to communicate with his unconscious mind that's responsible for his anxiety. It doesn't go as expected for them. ★★★★★★★
• Eggs For Roman: A bit like Flowers for Algernon, but Algernon is a baboon called Habbibi (who prefers to be called Roman). It's an uplift story, and one where we humans don't come off looking good in any real sense. ★★★★★★★★★
• Four Little Words: Annoying botanist is very smug, technically correct and annoying. Not very realistic in how people immediately changed tacks. ★★★★★★
• Bloodstreams: Professional hit man who takes out only hits on the annoying and aggravating. I mean, who wouldn't want to take out a petty tyrant of an HOA president? But it's not solo work. No, he's generating content and there are rival streamers. ★★★★★★★
• The Prophet: A skeptical industrial hacker seeks out a “prophet” and gets into something he didn't expect. ★★★★★★★★
• Beat: A story of new addiction and a young man's fall to rock bottom. ★★★★★★★
• Story Notes / Conclusion: Author's notes for the stories. 

7 stars on average. “Eggs for Roman” and “Xenos” were the winners for me. “The Prophet” was close though, and if someone did that to my dog…

Very much a first book though. And I’m taking away a star for only being able to read it on my tablet.
Six stars. ★★★★★★

I remember Josiah Bancroft announced several years ago that he was planning to do an anthology book for the Babel world but it’s been radio silence since then as far as I’m aware? Does anyone know if there have been any updates? Tbh I hopped off of his current Hexologist series pretty early on, it just wasn’t for me, so I really hope he returns to Babel soon. It’s one of the most genuinely unique and distinctive fantasy series I’ve ever read (I love how it feels like an 19th century novel, like a mishmash of Gullivers Travels, Wonderland, Jules Verne and HG Wells) and easily the most representative of the steampunk genre.

I was enjoying my read of As You Wake, Break the Shell quite a bit already, being a sucker for the beautiful hard work of solarpunk as Becky Chambers writes it, when I came across this paragraph:

[Cora] also kinda thought that changing a recipe was maybe the best way to give a mental thumbs-up to the person who'd given it to you, because after all, they'd gotten that recipe from someone else, who'd gotten it from someone else, on and on and on, all the way back to the first time somebody stuck a bug on a stick over a campfire. Something always drifted, when you copied it. That was just the way of things. And any sort of activity that made you really feel that chain reaching way back behind you--those were the things Cora relished.

I was so instantly charmed by this idea, of recipe drift akin to genetic drift, of generations of influence altering the outcome of a meal as much as a species, that I knew I had to recreate a recipe from this book. With some small modifications, for taste, convenience, and narrative resonance. 😉 So, without any further ado, please feast your eyes on:

Meredith's Take on Cora's Take on Otto's Take (on Becky Chamber's Take on Mary WanderPolo's Take) on Apple Cake

A gently spiced cake with a pointedly sweet topping! Goes very nicely with a mug of the Cypsela greenhouse chef's bittersweet hot chocolate on the side.

tldr: 10/10. An emotional and unique story about autonomy, survival, and the right to exist on your own terms. It asks: What would you give up for a quiet life?

TW: Child Death

Spoiler-Free Review:

For those unfamiliar with the story, The Fifth Season, the first book in N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, follows three orogenes, people with the ability to manipulate seismic and thermal energy.

Our three main characters are:

Essun: A woman in her forties who discovers that her husband has murdered their three-year-old son and fled with their older daughter. Her story is told in second person, while the other two are told in close third person.

Damaya: A young girl who is sent to the Fulcrum, an institution where children with the power of orogeny are trained.

Syenite: A young woman who has spent years training at the Fulcrum and is now sent on a mission alongside a powerful mentor.

Following these three stories is heart-wrenching. Jemisin takes some big risks, particularly with the shifting narrative perspectives and her use of humor throughout an otherwise devastating story, and they completely pay off. The book rewards readers willing to engage with the complexity of its world.

The second-person POV creates an interesting tension between intimacy with the character and emotional detachment.

If you enjoy:

• Bene Gesserit breeding plans in Dune
• Banter between Shallan and Jasnah in The Way of Kings
• Or the way Nesta must confront her own trauma and reckon with how it shapes her relationships with those around her in A Court of Silver Flames

I think you'll find something to latch onto here.

All three women possess superhuman abilities, but those powers don't make them immune to grief, fear, or the limitations imposed upon their lives. They exist in a world where they are treated like dangerous livestock, struggling simply to survive. Some are more successful than others, and while their motivations differ, they share a common experience: the systems governing their lives promise them peace and stability, provided they fulfill their assigned roles.

My only critique, and something I could see other readers struggling with, is that the worldbuilding and the concept of Seasons can initially be difficult to grasp. Jemisin introduces a lot of unfamiliar information without immediately explaining how it all fits together. Personally, I'm comfortable being confused for a good chunk of a book since I'm more of a vibe reader.

I laughed, I cried, I was shocked, and I stayed up past my bedtime. This, for me, had everything I need in a satisfying book. The reader is treated with respect. Information isn't hand-fed to you or "lore dumped" through pages and pages of monologuing villains. Seeds planted in early chapters have satisfying, earned payoffs later on, and there's so much more to glean from a reread.

Now onto some specifics and thus spoilers ahead...

Now, I love heresy and evil religious institutions, and the Fulcrum and their nasty Guardians had me by the throat. I went into this book completely blind, so it took me a while to understand orogeny and its place in this world.

I know the Fulcrum isn't a religious institution, but I see major parallels between its teachings and those of dogmatic religious institutions. Schaffa tells Damaya that she is "a gift of the Earth, but Father Earth hates [them], never forget, and his gifts are neither free nor safe." This immediately reminded me of Catholic teachings about original sin: being made in God's image, yet born with something you must spend your life seeking absolution for.

But watching Schaffa take Damaya away from her family and begin indoctrinating her into believing that her worth comes solely from her obedience to the Fulcrum was heartbreaking. And then he broke her hand.

I knew immediately that this book was going to challenge me, in the best possible way.

On a reread, I noticed that when Essun is about to kill people in her village, she hears a male voice in her conscience saying, "Naughty, naughty." I believe this is meant to be Schaffa's voice. He has so insidiously wormed his way into her psyche that even after she believes him dead, she still hears his judgment.

And I do believe Schaffa loved Damaya, but not in a healthy way. His love reminds me of a farmer's affection for his livestock. He cares for and protects them, but ultimately considers them his property, to be disciplined when they step out of line. In his mind, they simply don't know any better.

And I am so proud of myself. Maybe y'all figured this out sooner, but the whole time I was trying to understand how the three women's stories were connected. Then there was a line suggesting that Damaya wouldn't understand something until she was older, and it clicked: Oh shoot, Damaya is Essun, and that probably means she's Syenite, too.

The way the Fulcrum completely lied to and poisoned its orogenes is fascinating. I think Jemisin does an amazing job of portraying indoctrination without making it over-the-top or cartoonish. It's insidious but powerful.

I keep thinking about it, and I really do think dairy cattle are the best comparison for how the Fulcrum treats its orogenes. Bred, prodded, confined, and ultimately slaughtered when they can no longer produce or cooperate.

The concept of bodily autonomy goes beyond women being used as incubators. We see Alabaster live his life as a stud, denied love, rest, and choice. These are the very things Syenite believes she'll be granted if she can just earn a few more rings.

Alabaster sees himself as a tool, thanks to the conditioning of the Fulcrum. But by the end, he's decided how and where he will be wielded. I don't see him, at least in this book, as a revolutionary, but rather as a tortured man pushed to his breaking point, disillusioned with the institution that raised him.

The whole system is a lie.

So that's that on that. What do y'all think? Have you read The Fifth Season or the rest of the trilogy? If not, does it sound like something you'd be interested in?

Looking for Fantasy books that have many super short, self contained vignettes or prose miniatures. Anything shorter than the average short story length. Not looking for poetry but prose poems and similar forms count

I just finished reading Idols Fall, the third book in the Iconoclasts series by Mike Shel. I have questions. I liked the first two books, but there are so many things about the third book that confused me. Maybe some of you smart people can help me understand.

1. What was the point of Ilanda’s story?

A large part of the book was dedicated to Ilanda and her political struggles, the barbarian invasion and the “flame child”. I just couldn’t get my head around how these stories impacted Agnes’ story and her mission to destroy the “gods”. I feel these stories were developed and concluded pretty much independently.

Have I missed something? How do Ilanda’s decisions or the events in the realm affect Agnes’ mission which we have been following for three books?

1. What was the deal with the «flame child»? Why didn’t the “gods” care about her?

If I remember correctly, Ilanda’s magic talking sword says that it can’t foresee/see the “flame child’s” actions. This seems significant since it can usually make accurate prophetic predictions of the future. Doesn’t this point towards the “flame child” having powers fundamentally different to those of the “gods”?

Why then is this revelation seemingly of no consequence to the main story? As far as I remember the implications of this are never brought up. The “gods” don’t seem to find it a big deal. Which I should think it is considering the nature of magic. Which brings me to my next question.

1. How does magic work?

We are told that magic will disappear from the world if the “gods” are killed, so Belu must survive to save magic and avoid societal collapse. However, the «gods» were originally powerful sorcerers. Hoarding magical power to such an extent as to make them practically gods. Humans now channel magic through them somehow. Lending types of magic from specific «gods». Magic leaving the world if the «gods» die is told to us and Agnes by Belu, herself a “god”, thus giving her ample reason to lie about this to save her skin. Agnes, or the book, never stops to ask the question “if the “gods” started out as sorcerers, didn’t magic have to exist before the “gods”? Should we be fine if they die?”

What happens to the magically inhabited swords if the “gods” die? They are after all the same powerful sorcerers that the “gods” themselves were. Would that magic stop working? If not, could they then take on the mantle of the “gods” and be the new magic dispensers?

Also, Agnes butchers all the “gods” except Belu, who then takes on all duties of dispensing magic to worshippers, regardless of which “god” they previously prayed to for magic? I just don’t understand it.

1. What was the purpose of main characters losing agency?

Agnes and Ilanda (maybe more characters, can’t remember) become increasingly dependent on magical advisors who know exactly what they have to do and when. This happens a lot in the last book. I feel this makes their actions somehow less meaningful and they lose agency. Is there a point to this that I don’t understand?

1. Ilanda has a magical talking sword as well now?

Her sword suddenly comes to life after she starts killing people with it and turns into a powerful magical advisor. I felt this came a bit out of thin air. Were there hints or foreshadowing for this that I missed? It just suddenly showing up and stealing the show made her packing it away in a box not feel very impactful. Especially since she just turn to another magical advisor in the form of a talking head moments later.

1. What happened to the implied moral ambiguity of the “gods”?

Reading the books I felt that I was lead to believe that maybe Agnes’ talking sword wasn’t quite honest and maybe there would be some sort of betrayal. Or that Timilis had made some elaborate plan that steered Agnes towards making a mistake. But no, the «gods» were evil as shit and deserved to die. Every shady character and advisor actually told the truth and no one was misled (except that Belu was the sword’s wife and there was a grudge – that was however irrelevant). There was implied moral ambiguity that turned out to black and white.

Were there deeper moral conflicts that I didn’t pick up on?

1. What happened to Qeelb?

He was left behind thousands of years in the past. When this happened I immediately expected it to be revealed that he had survived, gained power and become an important part of the ancient uprising against the “gods”. Maybe he was one of the swords all along? That dude in the cave? I looked forward to going back through the books to look for hints and foreshadowing. However, revelation never came. Or did I miss it?

It seemed like an obvious cool twist to throw into the mix.

That was perhaps more of a rant disguised as questions. But I am curious if anyone can answer some of them.

Thank you!

A lot of steampunk novels and other media really focus on the romanticism of the age of steam and whimsical gizmos, completely ignoring the horror-show that was the industrial revolution or the wealth of stories, commentary about the cost of progress that can be drawn from it; and I think it's as strange as it is disappointing. Rigid class stratification, trade unions seen as a threat to the established order so much so that the early unionists were shipped to penal colonies, imperialism, and more. There's so much that can be dug into within the genre but a lot of media just... doesn't.

I know the punk suffix was cribbed from cyberpunk to denote an aesthetic style rather than content and commentary, but what I'm asking in a long winded way is are there any steampunk books, comics, series, etc. that do actually deal with the nasty parts of the industrial revolution/Victorian-inspired societies?

I'm from China, and I'm curious about popular fiction in Europe and the US.

In China, web novels are a huge industry, often emphasizing entertainment, fast pacing, familiar tropes, and reader engagement.

Does the West have a similar fiction market? Are web serials, LitRPG, and progression fantasy the closest equivalents?

I'm also curious how Western readers view these works. Are they considered mainstream entertainment, niche fiction, or something like literary junk food?

I'd love to hear your perspectives!

I recently read “The spear cuts through water” and absolutely loved everything about it. It could really have been about anything, but I was just in awe of the execution of the story through the exposition and the prose and the deep care you can tell Jimenez put into this book. Really reads like something Ocean Vuong would have written if he delved into the genre imo (that is praise from me)

So I’m wondering if theres other queer fantasy stories that read the same, that feel bigger than life and has great prose that isn’t too purple. Not interested in YA, unfortunately. thank u

Hello! I am a big fan of high fantasy, and am looking for a book that has a general theme of foxes or a fox-themed character (preferably the main character, but I am not incredibly picky).

I know this is an odd request lol. I am getting a new puppy this summer, and am really really stuck on what to name her. I usually like to have my call names and registered names picked out in advance. My current dog of the same breed is named Suren/Wren "Foxes and Folklore", and I really want a name that matches the vibe AND the theme. So a fantasy book character associated with foxes in some capacity with a two-syllable, elegant-ish name with good nickname opportunities. Obviously I would like to read the book or series first before deciding if I like it enough to name my dog after! This is a super tall order, I know, which is why I'm asking around in several spaces to get ideas.

I am NOT looking for Once Upon A Broken Heart (I just didn't like the series at all, and don't love the name Evangeline for a dog), or The Stolen Heir by Holly Black (what my current dog is named after). Any other recommendations are fair game though!!

TIA and if anyone needs any more details I'm happy to do my best to answer any questions lol

ETA: I realized reading back through that I didn't make it super clear, but the puppy will be female! So the most important beats:

- Female dog

- Fox-adjacent at least

- Two syllable name

- Nickname opportunities (Like, my current dog's legal name is Suren. But she's called Wren with equal consistency, which has turned into nicknames like Wrenesmee, Wrenyth Paltro, Wrenny Egg, Kylo Wren, Wrenaissance Faire etc etc. Vs a name like Vixen, which is really hard to derive a good nickname from)

Like I said, tall order, I totally understand that!! I'd just love some ideas to bounce off of!

I just recently picked up ‘Freedom and Necessity’ at a used bookstore having zero expectations and I ended up absolutely loving it. It’s a historical fantasy epistolary novel by Steven Brust and Emma Bull that revolves around the 1848 Revolutions and feels SO much like 19th century/Victorian literature be it through the prose, narrative structuring, etc just as Jonathan Strange does (though more in the vein of Wilkie Collin’s, Arthur Conan Doyle and George Elliott while JS is more Jane Austen).

What are other fantasy books out there that feel like homages to classic world lit? I love Books of Babel which feels like a love letter to Jules Verne, HG Wells, Lewis Carroll and Borges

Code and Codex by Yoon Ha Lee
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Genderqueer/nonbinary (genderfluid?) bisexual MC, major disabled bisexual character, major bisexual character, past F/F
PoV: First-person, present-tense, masquerading as third-person, past-tense
Published on: 27th October 2026
ISBN: 1668059991
Goodreads

Three-time Hugo Award finalist Yoon Ha Lee returns to science fiction with a swashbuckling space opera about fighting against an evil empire trying to erase history.

In the stars-spanning Censorate, languages other than the Republic’s own lingua rubra, which has reality-altering properties, are forbidden. Nevertheless, there are discrepancies. The Censorate’s star forces are called the Athenaeum Navy, and each of its ships is referred to as a codex. Instead of port and starboard, its soldiers refer to verso and recto. The unholy “stigmata” gouged into the ships’ hulls might, to a foreign scholar, bear a resemblance to verboten texts in other languages.

The Censorate is ruled by its Peacock, Aurelia, feared for the power of panopticon: she can look through anyone’s eyes. Moreover, Aurelia’s mastery of lingua rubra lets her force anyone who can understand her to follow her orders. Valentina, sold to Aurelia’s family as a child to be Aurelia’s oath-sister and companion, is its Swan, responsible for extracting useful information from foreign texts, then destroying them as well as entire languages through arcane arts. Valentina is assisted in her work by lower-ranking linguists and AI assistants who accept temporary contamination by foreign languages as a necessity of their work.

But this isn’t enough for Aurelia. She wants to control and deploy the Censorate’s thousand-year traitor and prisoner, the Basilisk, a man with a gaze so lethal that he destroyed its fleet of old through camera feeds. Unfortunately for her, the Basilisk gave himself a form of aphasia that makes him immune to her commands.

Highlights

~fantastical linguistics
~weaponised shadows
~what is personhood, anyway?
~make it pretty (to make it horrifying)
~less ‘unreliable narrator’ and more ‘not-human narrator’
~one Most Excellent winged cat

I freely admit that I didn’t always understand this book, but I absolutely adored it.

In some surprising ways, Code & Codex is very reminiscent of Lee’s Machineries of Empire series: we have a protagonist, Valentina/Val, the Swan, who is a devoted, unthinking sword to a higher power, and who has a plot-relevant robotic companion; the Basilisk, Jenner, is a general who destroyed his own armada and has been locked up for centuries because of it; Aurelia, the Peacock who rules the Censorate, is not completely dissimilar to Kujen, the Nirai Hexarch in Machineries of Empire (though Kujen was much more likeable). Unlike Machineries of Empire, the story here is zoomed-in, intimate, the bigger picture left vague, and although we have space stations and spaceships, Code & Codex leans more towards the Fantasy end of the Science Fantasy spectrum than the Machineries trilogy did. And where Machineries of Empire gave us fantasy-maths, Code & Codex is all about fantasy linguistics.

the shadow gulping down the noise of her footsteps as an unwholesome substitute for succulent phonemes. Later, after the fight, it expressed its displeasure by belching tritones notated in lute tablature.

By which I do not mean, actual linguistics in a fantasy setting. This is a fantastical, in-no-way-realistic take on linguistics, which actually makes for a more approachable set-up since you don’t need to know anything at all about linguistics to enjoy the magic based on it! (Though I have no idea how readers of the paper editions are going to manage; I relied heavily on the dictionary function of my ereader for this one, since there are a lot of technical terms from linguistics and grammar getting used in context of the magic, and also in the intricate metaphors and similes that run wild throughout the book, and I wouldn’t have been able to make sense of half of them without my dictionary.) Like the math of Machineries of Empire, Code & Codex’s fantasy linguistics are best appreciated as a magic system unfathomable to us mere mortals. At one point, the narrator describes them as

esoteric and exoteric magics

which sums up the impossibility of making sense of it all very nicely.

(That being said, I’d love to see someone compare Code & Codex and Language of Liars, this year’s other linguistics-focussed SFF release, on the basis of their wholly different takes on linguistics!)

Possibly it’s my own bias against math showing, but I felt that there was a lot more wonder to the linguistic magic than there was to Machineries of Empire’s math. I prefer soft magic systems, and I think a vital part of writing a soft magic system is the sense of wonder. Magic should feel magical, should make me gasp with awe and delight, give me shivers, make my hair stand on end. Code & Codex gave me all of that; I was endlessly enchanted by every reference to or example of magic! Most of it is beautiful, even when it’s also horrifying, and I loved how wildly original it felt, how weird and strange, and how Lee also utilises elements of music and speech and book-binding into the magic, not ‘only’ linguistics. IT IS EXTREMELY COOL.

Her blade of erasure was, embarrassingly, prone to nutritional deficiencies, particularly of serifs, that had to be remedied with regular supplements.

It does not hurt at all that the prose is gorgeous, reminiscent of Lee’s micro-fictions (if you haven’t read The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales or The Candlevine Gardener and Other Stories, you absolutely need to!) This is a book full of beautiful, fantastical things stunningly described, jewelled masks and wonderful clothes and weaponised shadows, and on one level I know Lee is creating this sense of dissonance on purpose, contrasting all this beauty with the horrific crimes of the Censorate – but also I am a very shallow fantasy reader, and beautiful fantasy-things + beautiful prose just makes me happy.

Melisande, then as now the Flame of Solis, her dark, curly hair gilded red-gold at the ends and caught up in a net of pyrope and garnet, sheathed like a famished sword in military red. Jewels glittered at her fingers, traced unstable orbits through the air with her every gesture; her perfume was of smoked rose petals and tobacco, absolute and all-purpose dilapidation.

This is the least of it, though – what makes the prose so special is far more than (very) pretty visuals. Code & Codex features a magic system based on linguistics, and there’s magic in Lee’s language; mythical creatures populate Lee’s synonyms and metaphors,

words of phoenix kindling and salamander kiss,

and references to the folklore and the occult abound,

Aurelia’s eyes lit like the legedermain fingertips of a hand of glory.

all of which utterly enchanted my myth-geek self (Lee gets so many points from me for utilising mythical creatures that rarely come up in English-language fantasy, like amphisbaena and simurgh). There’s so much wordplay – look at the above quote! ‘Legedermain’ literally means sleight-of-hand, so using it as a descriptor for a hand of glory is just–!!! Or terms like ‘amphisbaena companions’ – amphisbaena being a kind of serpent with a head at each end, instead of a tail; is that not such a fun way to talk about someone being two-faced?! Sometimes the wordplay is extremely wry, like this example–

on the grounds that one should avoid following a metaphor off a cliff-hanger.

I am unashamed to say I cackled at that one!

It’s not just wryness; there’s a strong thread of unexpected humour woven through the book. Moments or objects of silliness interrupt the serious, to the point that more than once I had to do a double-take to make sure I’d read a sentence correctly. Some of these are down to the narrator’s voice (and their deeply unimpressed opinions on the various characters), but some are more like…reminders that reality is sometimes ridiculous, no matter what we do. Ala, the winged cat Valentina acquires early in the book, supplies a lot of this – I can only assume Lee has lived with cats himself, to get Ala’s behaviour and personality so realistic! – but not all.

Valentina’s voice might be her particular weapon, but the most vital systems on her codex relied upon mastery of keyboard instruments, from the pianoforte to the virginal to the (eccentric, admittedly) hurdy-gurdy.

A hurdy-gurdy?! Seriously? This is the terrifying, unstoppable Swan, whose sword can destroy minds and mummify bodies with one touch, and she has to sometimes play the hurdy-gurdy?!

Magnificent. I love it.

There’s so much beauty – my favourite kind of fantasy-beauty – in Code & Codex, and it’s not just there to delight shallow readers like me; it’s a deliberate contrast to all the evil in the Censorate – all the evil Valentina herself has perpetuated. But it’s not just a contrast, because that would mean the evil isn’t beautiful, or the beautiful isn’t evil, and they both are – and that makes the evil worse, makes it more horrifying (because we expect evil to be ugly, despite knowing better, and when you make evil beautiful you turn it into something the reader appreciates and enjoys, making us just a tiny bit complicit, making us part of it). The humour in this book is doing something similar – I can’t figure out how to articulate this, but it’s showing us something important by its contrast to how serious most of the book is, just as the contrast of beauty and evil is showing us something important. It’s…humanising; one thing humour/comedy has always done is knock the high-and-mighty off their pedestals, and the comedic moments in Code & Codex are…reminding us that under the impressive titles (Swan, Peacock, Basilisk) and awe-inspiring powers (the song of lethe, the panopticon gaze, the gaze of guillotines) these characters are all still flesh and blood, still mortal, with all that implies. The same is true for the…I don’t know whether to call them ‘ideas’ or ‘ideals’…that the characters talk about, claim to represent or even embody. There’s a particular moment in the climax of the book where Ala urinates on a dress, and it snaps all the grand, dramatic tension out of the scene, it’s a contemptuous rejection of the grand, dramatic speech that’s just been made. It’s such a powerful, eye-opening thing! And I think Lee’s using the humour for that, like that, throughout.

It is unknown how her shadow would deal with Pig Latin, the Voynich manuscript, or heavy metal umlauts, but we have our suspicions.

All this without touching on the actual plot of the book, which I guess is because the story itself was very much secondary to me: I loved this one for the prose and the magic and the world Lee’s created here, how clever (and often esoteric) the writing is, the mystery of who is narrating the story and why. Which is not to say that the plot is uninteresting, because it isn’t, but it wasn’t what kept me reading. (In fact, I restarted my reading of this three times, always around the 70% mark, because I couldn’t bear for it to be over!)

the domesticated beetles and butterflies that provided season-appropriate ornamentation, traveling from room to room and feasting upon household-specific nectars, without which they could not survive

Like I said before, the story here is zoomed-in, focussed very tightly on Valentina, and to a somewhat lesser extent Aurelia and Jenner. We get asides and explanations that help paint the picture of what the wider Censorate looks like and how it functions, but to be honest it always remains a little hazy. It’s an interesting approach for a dystopian story, and for what becomes an overthrow-the-dictator story; I don’t remember any books with similar plots that kept the focus this narrow. But it worked for me, because Valentina and Aurelia and Jenner all interest me. I have such a massive love for characters who are unthinking-swords, like Valentina is, and I loved how complex and messy and messed-up her relationship with Aurelia is. Valentina was literally bought as a child to be Aurelia’s companion and champion (which in this context means duellist), and almost literally worships her – even though Aurelia has so much control over her she can even will Valentina to change sex, which she does on a whim or whenever she requires sexual service from Valentina/Val. Which is actually quite low on the scale of ‘deeply dodgy stuff Aurelia does’, and that should tell you a lot.

Edict and edit differ by one letter in this telling.

Jenner’s present interested me a bit less, but the piece-by-piece reveal of his backstory, of how he got to where he is now, how he became who he is now, fascinated. (Especially his relationship to the narrator.) And the reveal of what happened to his armada all those centuries ago–! Talk about a gut-punch, my GODS!

The actual plot is much as the book’s description says: Jenner escapes, and Aurelia sends Valentina to get him back. But that relatively straightforward quest is broken up by constant – not flashbacks, but explorations of Valentina and Aurelia’s past, from their childhood up to the coup through which Aurelia became the latest Peacock. The storytelling is far from linear; although the present timeline is mostly told in order, we can go from moments in Valentina’s childhood to what exactly she and Aurelia did to Melisande, Aurelia’s great general, and back again. It jumps around, but I didn’t have any trouble following, and ended up finding it much more interesting than the present-day parts. There’s a lot about – identity and personhood, and what it makes you if you’re defined by your relationship to another person. Can a person be a weapon; can a weapon be a person? Watching Valentina fold herself up tighter and tighter (origami-like, which, origami comes up several times in the book, especially via the paper-crane spaceships!) to be what Aurelia wants is like watching a train crash: awful, and very difficult to look away from. You feel such pity for her, aided by the fact that we see very, very little of the crimes Valentina performs on Aurelia’s behalf. (Which is yet another interesting writerly choice. Valentina looks a lot more innocent, in this narrative, than we know her to be, and are reminded of near the ending.) Whereas Aurelia is always monstrous – some of my favourite mini-scenes were the glimpses we got of her relationship with her parents, because they drove it home so hard that Aurelia was terrible from the get-go.

And of course, the straightforward ‘get the Basilisk back’ quest does go off the rails. What ought to be a simple retrieval mission ends up…not that. In a way that I admit I did not quite follow.

Honesty is the best policy failure,

Honestly, towards the last quarter or so of the book, I did start to get a little lost. A certain relationship seemed to spring up out of nowhere, and I genuinely wasn’t sure what was going on in some scenes, or when they were happening. The beginning of the climax baffled me; when did they discuss doing this, and when did they set out to do it? Same with the end of the climax – wait, how did they know to do that, and how did that work? I read those parts three times, and I’m not sure if I managed to miss those things all three times, or if they were actually kind of handwaved. It’s what cost Code & Codex half a star in my rating, despite how much I love the book overall!

(I keep thinking about the titles of the Peacock and their left and right hands, the Swan and the Basilisk. One of these is not like the others: a basilisk is not a bird! ((It’s also mythical, in our world, but in the Censorate sheep are legendary creatures, so I’m willing to bet actual swans and peacocks are too.)) In legend, though, a basilisk is the egg of a snake or toad that is then hatched by a chicken. (((The Series That Must Not Be Named got it wrong; a chicken egg hatched by a toad creates a cockatrice, not a basilisk. Not that you needed another reason to avoid those books, but on top of everything else they’re poorly researched.))) Could that be the bird connection? I hope Lee explains the choice of titles in an interview sometime, because I’m dying to know!)

The high spires of Solis Tower pierced Valentina like first love and final lobotomy.

This is a book of sibylline syllables and incandescent prose, with gloriously strange magic and powerful humour, showering us in so many of my favourite things – books and book-binding, messy queerness, deeply screwed-up character dynamics, beautiful fantasy imagery, and a cat who is the actual hero of the novel. (She saved the day by urinating on that dress, okay. Read the book if you don’t believe me!) I really don’t care that I was confused sometimes; in so many ways Code & Codex feels like it was written just for me (even if I might not be quite smart enough to follow everything Lee was doing). The actual writing on the pages, the experience of reading it, held me spellbound – pun absolutely intended – and I already want to read it all again.

Expect it on my best of year list in December!

You can find more of my reviews, rec lists, and weekly publishing roundups at Every Book a Doorway!

I’m looking for some fantasy books with rogues, thieves, scoundrels as main characters. I’m more interested in real rogue D&D/RPG archetypes, with some thieves/assassin guilds around. I’ve read Locke Lamora’s first book, and it wasn’t that. Any suggestions?

I like horror. I really like fantasy. Is there any books that meld the two well?

Hi, can I please get some recs for something besides ASoIaF that has that deep medieval setting, focused on high court / royal politics, drama and romance? — (has romance but not of the Romance genre, so also not ACoTaR. Has sex but is not erotica).

Preferably something immersive and indulgent, with some action, duels, what have you, but more about the soap opera. Also preferably a lengthy, epic saga.