This week the Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “books that take place in/set in X”… and I’m not feeling very original, so I’m just going to talk about ten books that take place in fantasy worlds that have a deep place in my heart. I’m going to try to pick secondary world fantasies, rather than books set in slightly alternate versions of our own reality… but we’ll see.

I’m also going to try to set this up by going through my more recent reads and reviews, instead of reaching automatically for the same books I always pick. Let’s go have a look!

1. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation (manga), by Misaki, Momochi et al. This is kind of “isekai”, in that a character from one world ends up in another world. But the fun thing is that neither are our world, pretty clearly; we don’t hear a lot about Lizel’s home world, but it obviously isn’t our modern world, at the very least — and he has magic, as does his king, so it looks like a transfer from one fantasy world to another. There are hints that it could also be time travel/alternate dimensions… but either way, it’s all fantasy, all the way down. The setup of adventurers, magic and dungeons immediately places it as something rather like a Final Fantasy game, which tickled me as well — but mostly, really, I love this series because Lizel wanders around having fun and enjoying the concept of being in a new world. Also he makes very good friends in Gil and Eleven.
2. Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher. I just finished reading this on Sunday, and I had an absolute blast with it. It’s the same world as some of Kingfisher’s other books, including Paladin’s Grace, which I read recently. In some ways it’s quite a generic fantasy world quest sort of story, but Kingfisher’s style and dialogue make it lively. It’s like she’s playing with fantasy tropes with warmth and affection, not cynicism, even when she’s presenting us with a fairly typical paladin character who is trying to be oh so noble, and then has the narrative give him a thwack upside the head for being a bit of an idiot at times.
3. The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford (+ sequels). Brilliant young necromancer and mage gets assigned to a post she considers beneath her, is snooty and dismissive of the villagers, and slowly begins to settle into that village and care about the people… but at the same time, boy, Aelis reaaaally wishes she could get back to the city. (Which she does, for a while, in Advocate.) There are things that irritate me about Aelis (she wings it far too much, relies on her wealth far too much, and asks way too much of other people) but I find the magic really fun, and as Aelis’ adventures bring her to explore more of the world that shaped her and her problems, I’m really intrigued by it.
4. A Letter to the Luminous Deep, by Sylvie Cathrall (+ sequel). I loved this series so much, with Henery and E. slowly getting to know each other through letters and shyly forming a bond, despite their anxieties and (in E.’s case) outright OCD. It’s a frankly bizarre world in some ways, and it isn’t always clear about how it got that way (though at the end of the duology there are some explanations). There’s so much wonder about the sea and the mysteries within it, and I tore through both books trying to absorb and understand their mysteries.
5. The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett (+ sequel). I’ve enjoyed the fantasy worlds in several of Robert Jackson Bennett’s books, but this is the most recent I read. It’s a Sherlock Holmes homage in a fantasy world that roots the detective and the mysteries deeply into that fantasy. The mystery element isn’t always as clever as it wants to be, but the world is fascinating: the leviathans, the whole empire, the ways people have been deliberately and unintentionally altered by contact with technology derived from leviathans… I wonder where the overarching story is going, and it’s fascinating to explore the world along the way.
6. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. I would include the spin-off series as well, except that I found the handling of a particular relationship in the final one (so far?) bizarre. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more on a revisit when it doesn’t feel like a betrayal, but in the meantime I’ll use The Goblin Emperor as my exemplar for this fantasy world. Addison does a lot of worldbuilding, especially around language, but also technology, magic, culture and religion. There’s a lot going on, and so much that’s hinted at but not explored in the plot — at least, not yet.
7. The City in Glass, by Nghi Vo. This book felt like an absolute fever dream. It’s really tightly focused on a single city and the actions of an angel and a demon (not quite our religious versions of angels/demons) as they fight and thwart each other and try to guide the city. It’s really hard to describe, but it’s beautifully written, and the descriptions of the city and of Vitrine are vivid and strange.
8. The Teller of Small Fortunes, by Julie Leong. This is cosy-ish fantasy, in that there are some big stakes in the background, but mostly our characters want to stay out of the way of it all, travel together, create their little found family, and solve their fairly ordinary (for a fantasy world) problems. I found Tao’s magic (and how she chooses to use it) fascinating, and really enjoyed the journey — though compared to some of the fully realised fantasy worlds I’ve mentioned here like in The Tainted Cup and The Goblin Emperor, the world-building is a bit thinner.
9. Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I debated whether this should be in the list, particularly as I think there are meant to be correspondences between places like Xianle and Yong’an in the story with actual locations in China, while Hua Cheng’s aesthetic and background is considered a nod to Miao/Hmong origins… but I couldn’t resist including it anyway, as it also isn’t supposed to be historical China. It’s more historical China inspired, along with Chinese traditions, etc. It’s such an epic, spanning 800 years of suffering and longing, and there’s always the sense that all kinds of magic could (and will) happen. From Ghost City to the domain of Black Water Sinks Ships to Mount Tonglu and the Kiln, there’s a lot of history and magic to discover as you read. (Also, a beautiful love story.)
10. The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard. There are so many ways this is wish-fulfillment, as Cliopher is hyper-capable, and hyper-able to push through world-changing reforms that make everyone’s lives better with no downside, and it’s full of the virtues of more communal ways of living and being, and different ways of thinking. Nonetheless, the differences between this and most Western Europe-inspired fantasy are a lot of fun, and sometimes wish fulfillment and people using power in wholesome ways is just fun to read. Plus, I adored the friendship between the Emperor and Cliopher.

That was pretty fun, especially the restriction to proper secondary world fantasy instead of fantasy set in our world… I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s lists!