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!

This week’s theme from Top Ten Tuesday is “Books with honorifics in the title”, which I’m really not sure I can actually get a total of ten for. I guess this might be pretty dependent on genre! Anyway, let’s see how I do…

1. The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes, by Kate Strasdin. A non-fiction which discusses a Victorian woman’s “dress diary”, containing snippets of cloth from her clothes (and sometimes clothes worn by her friends and family). I found it a really fascinating delve into fabric and social history.
2. The Doctor who Fooled the World, by Brian Deer. I know, this sits kind of oddly with other books from the list, but it’s a really good takedown of the lies spread by Andrew Wakefield, and highly recommended if you’re on the fence about whether his allegations about the MMR vaccine (or vaccination in general) actually hold any truth. I consider Andrew Wakefield a mass murderer, to be clear, a man so blinded in his own search for fame and profit that he endangered the whole world — but I don’t blame people who were led astray by a man who used his position as a scientist to inspire false confidence. I feel so sorry for people who believed in what he had to offer.
3. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This is a book I’ve reread a couple of times, despite being huge. I know that not everyone enjoys it, and I honestly wouldn’t even have predicted that I would, but there’s such dense world-building and some really fun ideas about magic.
4. The Magpie Lord, by KJ Charles. I’ve read this a number of times, and it remains fun. Lord Lucien Crane isn’t entirely a good person, but he seeks his own kind of justice and fairness, and I love the way that he and Stephen Day are drawn together.
5. Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo. I really loved this slightly fantastical, dark Hollywood. It was completely enchanting. I actually might give it another read at some point.
6. The Mysterious Mr. Badman, by W.F. Harvey. I’ve more or less forgotten the plot of this one, I must admit, but I gave it 4/5 stars at the time! It’s a classic mystery, and a fairly conventional one, according to my review, which explains the rating. I really love classic mysteries, but not so much because they’re innovative or unusual — usually, more because they’re not. They’re very comforting in their predictability.
7. Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight, by R. Austin Freeman. This is also a pretty classic mystery, but an unusual one in that it shows us the commission of the crime to begin with, and then the efforts at covering it up. It’s quite slow-paced, and I did find that it dragged a bit, but I ultimately gave it four stars for making me care about the criminal. It’s very carefully written, and I did enjoy it.
8. Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates, by Kerry Greenwood. Also known as Cocaine Blues, this is the first book of the Phryne Fisher series, and it’s so much fun. For some reason, I didn’t love it when I first tried it, but when I gave it another go, Phryne won my heart. A reread is tempting…
9. Miss Jacobson’s Journey, by Carola Dunn. I read this series out of sequence, but had a lot of fun going backwards to read this one: Miriam is a great romance protagonist, and I did get fond of her two potential suitors as well — perhaps somewhat helped by the fact that I already knew one of them from the second book. I’m getting tempted to reread the whole trilogy!
10. The Duke Heist, by Erica Ridley. Putting this book here has reminded me there’s a couple of books in this series I haven’t read yet! They’re somewhere in my boxes of books in the storage unit, but perhaps once I dig them out, it’ll be time to pick them up. I’ve found all the books in the series so far really fun, and The Duke Heist is no exception. Lawrence takes a while to sort out his behaviour totally, but the way he interacts and becomes playful with Chloe is adorable.

Look at that, I made it! Maybe a couple of these are kinda cheating, but we’re gonna call it good anyway.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “books I’d like to reread”, and rereading is a topic I’m always interested in, so it seems like a good place to jump back in after a while of not taking part!

1. The Seventh Bride, by T. Kingfisher. I don’t remember this very well, except that I enjoyed it, and I always love Kingfisher’s takes on fairytale retellings. I’m very curious how it compares to my experience of Hemlock & Silver, one of her most recent — that one is so inventive, even though it’s spun out of the story of Snow White.
2. The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie. I liked this more than most people I knew back when it came out, and I’m wondering how it’d sit now; it’s the only novel by Leckie that I haven’t read multiple times. I keep thinking about it, so maybe when I unpack my books post-move it’s time to dig in.
3. A Coalition of Lions, by Elizabeth E. Wein. I recently finally managed to get round to my reread of The Winter Prince, and started on this one, but then stuff happened and it went on a backburner. I remember devouring the series, though, so I am curious to get back to it.
4. An Unsuitable Heir, by KJ Charles. I’ve been working my way around to a reread of this — the first book by Charles I ever read — for ages, but somehow I’ve never got round to it. It’s actually third in a trilogy, and I’ll probably read them in order this time (though if I recall correctly, it didn’t matter a lot). It was one of the books I read first when starting to get into romance, after requesting the ARC on a bit of a whim, and I’d enjoy a revisit.
5. The Steerswoman, by Rosemary Kirstein. I have read this first book of the series twice, paused to read something else, got distracted, and never got onto the remaining existing books. I know the series isn’t finished (at least, I seem to remember that), but I still want to explore more of it. And, uh, remember the details from the first book, because it’s been a while.
6. Among Others, by Jo Walton. This was so much The Book of my early twenties that I’m not sure if it’s quite safe to go back to it. It might be weird if it doesn’t resonate as much anymore! Or I might end up remembering why a whole bunch of books got onto my TBR (it’s very much a book about someone who reads), and that might be dangerous for my productivity. But who needs productivity?
7. The Winter King, by Bernard Cornwell. I loved this so much as a teenager, and read it several times, but it’s been a long time — I’m not sure if I even reread it when I was studying Arthuriana, because it didn’t really fit in with any of the things I was looking at. I can’t remember if Kay/Cei is even a character at all, for example (I wrote my dissertation on Cei and what the portrayal of him was doing in Arthurian texts of different periods).
8. Idylls of the Queen, by Phyllis Ann Karr. I did read this for my dissertation — in fact, it was one of my key texts (along with Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot) for the modern chapter. I don’t remember a huge amount about it now, but I’m certain I want to reread it. In fact… I wonder if I have the ebook? Hmmm. Otherwise, it’s in one of those boxes somewhere…
9. Sailing to Sarantium, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Ominously, the second book was missing when we packed up my books for the move, so I might have to repurchase it — and maybe it might be time to get some matching editions, if they’re actually in print? I scrambled together my collection of GGK’s work on a very tight student budget when I fell in love with The Summer Tree, and none of them match, and some of them are kinda gross-looking. Anyway, I remember being spellbound by this duology, so I’m eager to reread (though fair play, I’m pretty sure my wife didn’t finish it and my mum didn’t like it the way I did, so I don’t know if it’ll hit the same now).
10. Magician, by Raymond E. Feist. I don’t know if this can possibly stand up to the warm memories I have of it, but I do at least want to reread the initial three books, Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon. I loved those books so much, I really did. I don’t think I actually thought much of Feist’s other books in the same world, and certainly never read and reread them in the same way, but those first three… yeah.

There we go, got that back down to ten after briefly going overboard! I’m a great lover of rereading, sometimes just for the comfort of a familiar book, sometimes because you never know what you’ll discover when looking at something with fresh eyes.

NB: I’m not necessarily recommending these — I remember them all fondly, and remember them as being (at least mostly) very good, but who knows what’s happened since I last stepped into these particular pages? The Suck Fairy might have been by.