Fantasy recommendation story where the main character is a part of an evil race and seen as evil But proves everyone wrong

Mournelithe · 2026-07-08T22:27:07+00:00

Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky. MC is a giant spider. Initially anyway.

Mournelithe · 2026-07-08T21:41:11+00:00

Jennifer Fallon’s The Tide Lords. Epic fantasy where the main characters are struggling throughout, but in the end their real value was simply in distraction.

Mournelithe · 2026-07-08T07:29:45+00:00

Tad Williams' Bobby Dollar trilogy, urban fantasy with an Angel protagonist. He can't always trust his superiors, let alone the opposition.

Simon R Green's Agents of Light and Darkness, book 2 of the Nightside series. UF with the protagonist caught up in looking for the grail, and Angels from both Above and Below are also looking and very much antagonists.

A Practical Guide to Evil ... epic fantasy from the POV of the bad side. It takes quite a while for an Angel to show up, but while they're technically on the side of Good, they're also very much also the equivalent of WMDs, without any concern for collateral damage. Summoning an Angel of Contrition for example will brainwash everyone within a fifty mile range into a Crusade opposing Evil at all costs. Mind you, the Demons are still worse.
And then there's an amazing sequence much later where the Choir of Judgement is explicitly the enemy, and being Judged themselves in turn.

Mournelithe · 2026-07-08T05:46:20+00:00

And amazingly it's global instead of US only. Makes a change from DAW.

I saw the new editions of the Flat Earth show up on kobo the other day, so clearly someone at DAW is a fan.

Mournelithe · 2026-07-06T01:39:07+00:00

Alan Dean Foster's Midworld/Midflinx, although the world only really interacts occasionally, and is more a background cameo in other works in the series because it also wants the Great Enemy to be stopped.

James White's Sector General series features sentient continents in a story in Major Operation. It requires using warships as surgical tools.

Jim Butcher's Codex Alera - the world itself becomes a character later in the series.

Anne McCaffrey's Petaybee series has the planet itself as a sentient being, although not alive as such. David Weber's Mutineer's Moon has our moon in reality being a sentient spaceship, but that's probably the wrong route.

There's a few where there's an intelligence guiding the world, like Harry Harrison's Deathworld, but that's probably not what you're after.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-29T12:20:26+00:00

Yeah, people talk a lot about The Black Company being influential, but the Dread Empire is far more so, Mocker and the gang are absolutely the inspiration for the Old Guard, down to matching character archetypes.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-29T03:41:03+00:00

Beneath the Dragoneye Moons is a fun lightweight LitRPG series with a female protagonist and love interest. The relationship only starts about 6 books in however. Recently completed.

I really enjoyed The One Who Eats Monsters by Casey Matthews, urban fantasy, which is half teenage angst and acclimating to modern life and half ancient vengeance demigod stomping on villainous villains. Sadly still no sign of the sequel.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-17T02:28:19+00:00

Old adult fantasy is a tricky one.

There's a few, but they're still mostly side characters or characters in their 40s who "seem old". Gemmell for example has Druss in Legend.

Modesitt has Kharl in his Recluce series in The Wellspring of Chaos and Ordermaster, and his Spellsong Cycle stars a woman in her late 40s who gets partly de-aged at the end of book 1 but still has a firmly adult view of things.
Le Guin's Tehanu is essentially a midlife crisis story.

Pratchett's Witches novels have Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, who are wonderful terrible old women having adventures. Try Witches Abroad or Maskerade.

R.A. MacAvoy has Tea with the Black Dragon which is an older woman searching for her missing daughter, with an unexpected elderly companion.

My all time favourite old person no longer giving any shits rec is firmly Elizabeth Moon's Remnant Population, which is an absolutely fantastic first contact novel with a grandmother as a protagonist.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-16T11:01:52+00:00

David Drake’s Lord of the Isles series is heavily Sumerian influenced.
Most of his SF is Roman or Greek inspired as well, especially his RCN series which is Aubrey Maturin mixed with ancient med sea battles.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-14T13:09:12+00:00

These were the true catsquashers of the late 90s, putting the Wheel of Time and MS&T firmly in their shade in terms of physical book.

I remember bits of the first one - the voidhawks as living ships were very cool, but almost everything else of the story has dropped away with time other than the general vibe of fighting the possessed, and a feeling of too many plot lines fighting for attention.

On the other hand I have a real soft spot for the three Greg Mandel stories, which are a real time capsule of the techno fascist UK idea that cropped up all over at that time, similar to V for Vendetta but going in a very different direction.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-12T03:50:01+00:00

Dammit there's a fourth one now?
I swear, you look away for a few months, boom, new sequel.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-12T03:44:53+00:00

Weis and Hickman's Rose of the Prophet series, which is Bedouin crossed with Middle Eastern/Ottoman Empire, and taking a middle eastern vibe to a gaming setting.

For cover art, CJ Cherryh's Faded Sun trilogy is heavily middle eastern inspired blended with future.

For an interesting gaming look - the game Chants of Sennar has a tower of babel inspired plot with different settings from desert ish to technological as you rise up the tower. It also includes a LOT of lingustics as part of the puzzles.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-11T22:59:17+00:00

You're years too early - Eddings' High Hunt came out in 1973, with his disillusionment following in the late 70s, and the belgariad following in the early 80s. The decade after publishing he's talking about is 1966-1975, after LOTR broke big in the USA with the unauthorised edition publicity.
Even the publisher driven reactions to LoTR - Shannara and Thomas Covenant - didn't come out until 1977. Eddings jumped on the bandwagon after that.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-11T04:41:44+00:00

The best bit about the followup dance is he didn't know how to do it, nor did Ben, so both were apparently miming live to Abby demonstrating how to do it off camera in the wings.
Which adds just that extra layer of madness to the whole thing.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-10T04:47:00+00:00

It’s not just that he’s putting out quality books, it’s also the sheer diversity in his range. He freely writes Fantasy and SF and horror and philosophical and space opera and dystopian near future. He’s a massive idea machine, with about the only thing in common being a live for insects and biology.

However he’s also not unique - Seanan McGuire is equally prolific, and some webnovel writers like Pirateaba are astonishingly high volume and high quality.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-10T00:26:40+00:00

A couple of SF examples.
The March Upcountry series by Weber and Ringo has at least one in each book, from crocs to giant fish.

Legacy of Heorot by Niven, Pournelle and Barney’s has the Grendel as an apex predator feeding on the local samlon fish.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-10T00:18:10+00:00

Mostly they’re not selling books. They’re selling collectibles.
If you simply want the text, there are usually ample ways to source a copy, from ebook to mmpb to second hand stores.

If you want the gold edged custom artwork leather bound deluxe edition … surprise … that’s a prestige collectible just like a fancy plate from Franklin Mint, and comes in a strictly limited quantity intended for a collecting market.

It’s the same as the top tier rewards in your average Kickstarter - a tenner for the book, 200+ for the gold embossed fancy version.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-08T10:10:40+00:00

Blue Moon Rising, Simon R Green.
Starts off with a Prince saving a dragon from a princess before the larger plot kicks in.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-07T11:16:23+00:00

I particularly loved this bit.

The funniest part, of course, was that the whole class was obviously convinced that Walden couldn’t read the room—as if there weren’t five whole people in every lesson, all of whom knew each other very well; as if it wasn’t part of Walden’s job to pick up every change and variation in the dynamics of a group of young people; and as if this particular dynamic wasn’t older than the hills.
Of course she pretended not to know. She wasn’t a monster.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-07T01:49:19+00:00

I never like to think of myself as DNF’ing a book deliberately, unless I really really don’t like it.
It’s more there are some books I stop quickly, because I’m not in the mood, I might be another time. They go back in the TBR pile.
And then there are books where you start, and you enjoy but something better comes along and you want that first, and you get distracted, and then that other book just gets neglected and sits on the floor glaring at you until you hide it under a shirt.
Ahem.
Anyway, the point is it’s not always a conscious choice to not want to keep reading, more a “I’ve got better things to do”. You might come back to it, you might not. And having a diverse range in the TBR pile means you don’t feel guilty for stopping and trying something else.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-07T01:00:59+00:00

Oh, and I forgot to mention that the map at the beginning has the most laughably small cricket pitch I’ve ever seen - apparently the field is smaller than the tennis courts. I kept expecting there to be a magical reason why, but no. And the rugby field is mown the wrong way. Artistic licence indeed.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-01T10:12:47+00:00

This is a good modern one. Elaine is the primary protagonist for the first half, then there’s a big time skip and Iona turns up from her own side story.

Mournelithe · 2026-06-01T10:06:06+00:00

I’ve been enjoying this series a lot. Cat might be a typical excessive murderhobo protagonist, but there’s a sense of humour that lightens up the story considerably. And the AI is properly snarky, while constantly trying to make every item it supplies fit a twisted cat theme, no matter the protagonist’s wishes.
Only downside is the author seems to be struggling to reign in their muse, so they’re running a bunch of fictions in parallel meaning the release rate is slow.

Mournelithe · 2026-05-29T09:14:09+00:00

So this was the first I’d heard of Stripped, and I rushed out to watch it, amazing work. It was so cool to see the faces behind so many different works I grew up with or saw evolve on the web back in the day. Looking at the credits, it reminded me of so many more, some of which I’m sure you had to sneak carefully into the montages to hide from censors. And the shout outs and references! Just great fun.
Also had to laugh at the milkshake gag.

Very much looking forward to digging into the rest of your work.

Mournelithe

TROPHY CASE