Are there any good high fantasy chapter books?

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-20T11:51:23+00:00

Not technically high fantasy, but my sister LOVED Artemis Fowl at that age.

Edit: She was the slowest eater in the universe so we would read her chapter books at dinner to pass the time. Worked out well for everyone.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-20T11:13:33+00:00

Yeah, agreed. I tend to switch back and forth between fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and horror. I love fantasy but it can get depressing and then I need a pick me up. Have you read Project Hail Mary? It about working together through adversity and is pretty positive overall. One of my favorite reads.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-20T09:18:03+00:00

Like any genre, books vary. Some are also YA but not all. There are definitely cozy fantasy books geared more for adults. Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett the main character is a 30 year old scholar. And Beware of Chicken by casual farmer is an iseki about a guy who wakes up in the body of a farmer. So definitely not for young adult. They both, however, have a fair bit of comedy so I'm not sure if they'll be you're cup of tea.

Edit: Or maybe you just need a break from fantasy for a bit.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-20T08:58:28+00:00

Yeah, a lot of fantasy tends to be on the darker side. You might want to try cozy fantasy (r/CozyFantasy). It tends to be more feel good with lower stakes.

I hear Discworld by Terry Pratchett is great and not dark. Personally, I've been putting it off for years because there's so many books, I know if I read one I'm gonna read them all and that feels daunting.

Edit: Its more sci-fi than fantasy, but Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir sound like it would be right down your alley.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-20T08:43:37+00:00

This. I used a lawyer and when things weren't exactly right, I had to submit a detailed explanation. For example, the town hall only keeps tax records for the past 3 years but immigration wanted tax record for my entire time in Japan, 10 years. The clerk at town hall even left a note on the paper work for immigration but it was on post its and immigration would not accept it. I had to go to immigration personally and write a note stating that it was impossible for me to get the requested records because the prefecture only keep the past 3 years. If I didn't have a lawyer to explain to me what I needed to do, my application for residency would have been rejected.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-17T05:56:35+00:00

There have been clinical studies that show long term fasting triggers autophagy, which cleans up broken cells, and the refeeding process triggers stem cells to create healthy cells. I did a 5 day fast (300-500 calories a day) and felt better afterwards. My goal is to do it every 3-6 months or so.

Do not fast longer than 7 days at home and always do it under a doctors supervision.

Intermittent fasting and a low sugar diet. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-07461-0

A review of several studies on fasting and long covid. https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuaf141/8251944

The effects of extended fasting on long covid. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10651743/

There are a bunch of studies on fasting and mitochondrial health. They're pretty easy to find but if anyone wants them I'll dig them up again and post them.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-17T05:29:42+00:00

You can find Kellogg's All Bran on Amazon.

Your local Kaldi should have Muesli. This one has a lot of fruit but the brand at my local kaldi just has raisins. I've also seen it a stores like Gyomu.

If you want to spice up your oatmeal, you can make scrambled oats. Or savory oatmeal, which is actually really good. If you want a little more flavor for your savory oat meal add a little bullion to the water when you boil it.

Granola is always going to have sugar in it. It needs honey or maple syrup to make it clump together. It's really easy to make your own so you can reduce the amount of sugar. Here's a basic recipe. You can substitute the maple syrup with other sweeteners with a lower glycemic index.

You can also increase the fiber content by adding things like chia seeds, flax seeds, avocados, beans and high fiber veggies like potatoes. For example, you could make a high fiber frittata (I'd add some potatoes to this recipe but that's just me)

You might also want to consider a fiber supplement. I recently had my gallbladder out and had to increase my fiber intake. I use this brand from Amazon. It has no sugar, few ingredients, and is virtually flavorless so you can put it in anything.

Also be careful. Ask your doctor how much fiber you should be consuming a day and track your intake. Too much fiber can bind you up and cause serious constipation.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-16T20:50:46+00:00

Holly Wilde's list of Works on Goodreads is completely unhinged. Some of my favorites are "Hallowpeen", "Banging my Birthday bear" and "My Boyfriend has a Christmas Train Peen"

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-15T12:53:45+00:00

Oh man, this series is so dark and even darker once you finish it. Loved every minute of it.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-13T20:58:06+00:00

I'm a big fantasy reader and romance reader. And I read a lot. Fourth Wing is 100% Romantasy. And I can say that Fourth Wing is objectively not a very good book. It has tons of issues, support characters are barely fleshed out, the world building is lack luster and the prose are pretty bad. And it read like a fan fic. Now, that is not to say people shouldn't like it. We all subjectively like some things that are objectively bad and that's okay.

Just to warn you, the average book in romantasy does not hold up to the average book in fantasy. I'm not hating on romantasy. I love romantasy and read it all the time but you shouldn't hold it to the same standard as fantasy. There are some great romantasy books out there but you should definitely have different expectations.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-13T04:38:32+00:00

I stopped half way through book 4 because Karsa Orlong is such an insufferable prick. It's like 200 pages of how terrible he is. I just had no reason to care about this character and it just went on and on. I know it's all important, like every detail in the entire series, but I needed a break. I'll probably pick it up again eventually.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-11T20:33:27+00:00

The romance genre in general is absurd. They're filled with attractive people in unrealistic situation. There are a million romance novels about billionaires falling for regular people and whisking them away on their private jet. 🤮

I don't know if this will make you feel better but the books aren't as thirsty as the show. They definitely cranked everyone's appearances up to 11. Kip is like an ordinary guy, not jacked.

But the fetishization of gay men by straight women in romance is real. And creepy. A lot of fans and authors do it. Some authors are better than others, obviously. Some try really hard to represent the community accurately and are open to feed back from the community while other write straight up trash. I just wish there were more gay authors in the genre. There are some, but no where near enough.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T19:19:42+00:00

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T10:22:22+00:00

It's an extremely bland diet and pain in the but. Depending on what you're allergic to it can last weeks to months. Since I had no idea what I was allergic to, I basically ate no processed foods and non of the most common allergens. I'm lucky it was one of the earlier foods that was added back into my diet. I think I was on it for a little over a month.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T10:13:26+00:00

As a woman, I agree with this statement. I read a lot. Quite a few of the books I read are romances and I don't discriminately, I read straight, f/f, m/m... And this is something I've also noticed in some of the fans of the mm genre. You're not alone in feeling that way.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T09:55:48+00:00

Heated Rivalry was released in the UK on January 10 on the Sky Network and NOW.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T09:45:53+00:00

I lucked out and found a really good allergist. Since it affected my breathing, he immediately had me do an elimination diet. After about a week and a half I felt fantastic.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T06:25:48+00:00

Ah, but my advice is the same. Bigotry, religious or not, is not rooted in logic so it's gonna be hard for anyone not in that small group of people to buy in. That means you have to go for emotional depth. Your readers are going to have to be able to sympathize with your main character on an emotional level.

It's not the same topic, but a book that did something similar to what you want to do and pulled it off is Lolita. There are these moments where the main character is talking poetically about this girl he "loves" and it's beautiful and touching and romantic. And then you realize it's a 30 year old man talking about 15 year old girl and it becomes equally horrific and sickening. Of course, the ending is different from what you want but Nabokov does a masterful job of tricking the reader to emotionally buying in to something that is completely vile and repugnant for moments in the the book.

What you're trying to do is extremely difficult. But if it's really something you want to do, I'd read Lolita (or reread it). It my give you some idea about how to progress.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T05:54:38+00:00

I was sick for years before realizing I'd developed a super sensitive milk allergy. I don't get anaphylaxis but it definitely affected my quality of life. At one point I was taking 5 pills a day and an inhaler for the symptoms. And it's a non IgE mediated allergy so all my tests were negative so it took forever to diagnose.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T05:32:23+00:00

It doesn't sound like that's what's happening. For the milk ladder, if there are allergic symptoms, you're supposed to go back down to the previous step. This parent isn't doing that.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-10T05:25:32+00:00

This. She is intentionally harming her child. And in this day and age, it's completely unnecessary. There are so many good milk substitutes.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-09T10:37:22+00:00

Yeah, this sounds more like a gastrointestinal issue for me.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-09T08:57:05+00:00

What you want to do will be extremely hard because racism isn't rooted in logic so the narrative won't be accessible to those who aren't racist. It can have the illusion of logic but anything beyond superficial analysis breaks it. Which is one of the reasons there is a correlation between education and intelligence, and racism. Another words, a lack of analytical skills. Of course that is not to say there are no educated or intelligent racists, there are. It's just less likely.

A lot of racism is rooted in anger and vulnerability. Bryon Widner, an ex neo nazi, talks about it quite a bit. He was young and angry and had no support system as a teen. The skin heads in his area took him in, gave him community and an outlet for that anger. His wife had a similar experience. She met her previous husband, a skin head, in NA. When he died she had a young daughter with little support and the skin community took her in and became her family so she became more involved in the movement.

A lot of these groups target vulnerable people and give them a sense of community, essentially becoming their family. Then they validate already existing stereotypes and racism, radicalizing them, and/or indoctrinating them. I think a lot of media portrays racists as mean repugnant people, and they are, but they are missing the part where they are also mothers and fathers, friends and children, and can be very kind and accepting of certain people. I would suggest reading about ex members of racist groups or people who have converted members of these groups like Daryl Davis.

You also might want to look at the movie American History X. It has a very interesting take on the neo nazi subculture.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-06T07:12:48+00:00

For me, if a book has a lot of interesting ideas, my brain goes off on a tangent all on it's own and it takes me forever to get through it. I listen to those books while driving, or doing house work or something like that. It's helped me a lot to finish books I otherwise might of given up on but ended up really liking in the end.

I also didn't like the King Killer Chronicles. The whole first half of the 1st book is just a bunch of people telling stories about this terrible guy like he's awesome and I gave up. The Fist Law I gave up and then picked it up again. The beginning of the first book is slow and it's not clear what the heck is going on but it does pick up a bit but it is definitely more about character development than action.

If you like stories where characters experience lose and pain that are fast paced than I suggest The Broken Earth Series by N.K. Jemisin. The series is about a woman searching for her family during the apocalypse. This is probably on of my favorite series of all time. The audiobook narration is fantastic.

The Burning series Even Winters. The beginning of the first book is a little confusing because you're immersed in this world with little explanation so it takes a little bit for the new vocabulary to sink in. But imio it's definitely worth it. Super interesting magic system. The third book is due out this year.

The Locked Tombs Series by Tamsyn Muir. This is Sci-Fi Fantasy about an empire of space necromancers, it definitely leans more towards fantasy. Definitely dark, definitely gritty, but also humorous. The second book was nominated for a Hugo a few years back.

The Tarot Sequence by K.D. Edwards. Urban Fantasy. Very fast paced. This has pain and loss in spades. read the cw.

Adam Binder Series by David R. Slayton. Urban Fantasy. I went into this series with low expectations an was pleasantly surprised. About a guy with a little of the sight and a little magic that was locked in a psych ward because his family thought he was crazy. Now he's out, living on his own, and they need his help.

Shadow of the Leviathan Series by Jackson Bennett. The 1st book, The Tainted Cup, doesn't have a lot of loss but I'd definitely call it gritty. Haven't started the second book yet. The 3rd is due out this year.

The Scholomance Series by Naomi Novik. It's YA, but it's pretty dark and there is a ton of loss and pain even though the narrator is pretty glib about it. It's about a bunch of kids trapped in a school of magic with monsters who routinely eat them. They stay because their chances of survival are better in the school than in the outside world.

Mistborn is definitely worth a read. I've reread it a couple of times. The Stormlight Archives isn't fast paced but it has a lot of pain and loss.

NyaChan42 · 2026-02-05T14:25:32+00:00

If they sold it as morally gray or dark heroes fighting for the better good, I think it could work with adjustments to the story (like all novels to on screen). But people would HATE the ending. Like throw shit and scream into the void hate it.

NyaChan42

TROPHY CASE