Recs if you like The Magicians...

books featuring or set in magic schools / universities / academies, aka, one of the best subgenres in existence !

this list has books for all ages (am actively looking for more adult options), most of the books are dark academia, and ALL of them are fantastical 🪄 recs welcome <3

(alternatively, books to fall in love with & share with others to help avoid supporting or promoting JKR. i will never shut up ab how the Nevermoor series deserves the popularity that Harry Potter enjoys !)

Many of these are the beginning of series, but all of them are about academics in fantasy settings. All cross genres are welcome.

magic systems in fantasy that resemble and incorporate real or fictional sciences! for the fantastical scientists that want magic inscriptions that feel like coding, alchemy, and magical equations fueling spells!

true dark academia that ranges from fantastical/supernatural to psychological literary fiction

Portal fantasy (middle grade through adult lit with maybe some sci-fi too).

Because sometimes you just want to read about characters literally escaping their world or temporarily exploring other ones since you’re stuck here.

(Please note: series will only contain the earliest applicable volume even if more/all are the same to avoid clutter. Also, open to recs!)

books to hate-read, recommended by the pagebound club comments

people hate the character(s) but they couldn't put the book down 😋

(antihero, villain protagonist, unreliable narrator, etc.)

boo!! tomato tomato!! 🍅🍅🍅

Based on the HRCYED 3.0 prompt! Books with weather or natural disasters/phenomena on the cover (at least one version), including: rain, storms, lightning, clouds, snowfall, fog, sunshine, tornados, earthquakes, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis.

Not an exhaustive list - feel free to suggest titles! I tried to keep it more focused on books that fit the prompt but would be harder to find (i.e. ones that don't have the key words in the title).

Forget everything you know about the golden hour. In these halls, knowledge isn't just power—it's a blood sacrifice, a cursed bargain, or a secret that could tear the stars from the sky. Whether you're navigating the lethal corridors of the Scholomance, deciphering the forbidden linguistics of Oxford’s silver-working, or joining a secret society at Yale that deals in the ghosts of the past, this list is for the scholars who prefer their ink black and their magic dangerous.

magic but what if we were making a commentary on academia. (JK who? idk who that is sorry)

an alternative for those who want to be whisked away to a magical school, that may or may not be deadly at times, created by lovely humans who aren't terfs! Misfits & Magic is such a fun, campy 2 season long D20 side quest on Dropout with a small cast reclaiming tropes and ideas that shouldn't belong to just one terrible person. I made sure to include queer and trans fantasies with school settings and just general good feeling stories!

anything that kind of gives off that dark academia, magical, chaos, LGBT. Open to recs! No actual fanfic!!!! Fanfic is fine but not on book sites, keep it to the fan spaces.

When you want a little whimsy with your journey! 🦄 Feel free to leave suggestions, always adding to this list as I think of them.

it's the 2010s, you're watching the vlogbrothers on youtube & watching the hunger games movies with your friends in cinemas

Other books and plays referenced within Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea.

See notes for information on references. (Tk)

🚧 In Progress !! 🚧 - Confirming and noting exact place / theme / etc of referenced material. Pulling from others lists atm / online until I do.

Adding the starless sea so this list can be found by those looking at the book! 👀 ✨

Dropout TV presents Dimension 20's Unsleeping City, an urban fantasy set in New York City with classic characters from Broadway Stars to Sewer Rats. Enjoy two season with the intrepid heroes and enjoy these book recommendations to pair with the vibes and cast.

I wanted to compile all the romantasy recs I've gotten... I think I read fantasy but God I'm wrong...

I've noticed that a lot of books mentioned rock group phenom The Beatles so I made a list of the ones I've read, idk

Books about 18 to 30-year-olds navigating the transition from adolescence to adulthood 🫶