Recs if you like The Spear Cuts Through Water...

Standalone fantasy books that won't make you invest your life in a dozen installments

Books that are part of 3 or more quests ✨for easier planning! Initially thought of making this on my shelf, hope the members of pb find this helpful!! (The list is incomplete, I'm working on checking & adding new quest books🙌🏻 thanks for the love ❤️🥹)

Books that appear on 5 or more quests. It's a 5-for-1 deal! Just for you!

This is an ongoing list as I'm adding manually as I come across them, so feel free to comment additions!

The SCP is an organization that Secures, Contains, and Protects our world against anomalous objects, entities, and phenomena. Be advised: these books contain such SCPs that have escaped confinement and have caused havoc and destruction. Read at your own peril. And remember to document your findings.

These are books that don't rush to impress you. They simmer while the author adds in the layers. They may confuse you or bore you at first - but if you give them time to cook you'll end up with a delicious meal of a book!

Always taking recommendations! If you are recommending a series - the layers need to come together by the end of the first book (not half way through the series).

Books that inspired or are similar to Studio Ghibli films

"The end is already written. Your actions are up to you, you can choose to get off this ride whenever. We both know you won't do it." Books with this vibe

tangled narratives and re-formed genres sprouting from the toxic ground of colonialism

Ever felt overwhelmed by Quests? Well, we currently (August 1st 2026) have over 100 of them, totaling 4000+ different books. Ofc you’re overwhelmed.

Ever wished there was a easy way to see the overlap of all the quests, so you could better strategize on where to start for max badge-achievement? Well, we don’t have that (yet?). But here I’m giving you a list of every book on Pagebound that’s in 5 or more Quests. Hopefully you’ll find it helpful. NB: Time limited Quests not included. Too much upkeep, sorry.

Enjoy, and happy questing

If we are going to do Qwordy's the Hardest Reading Challenge You'll Ever Do 3.0 - we should probably get some Pagebound badges along the way! I'm specifically going to be adding books from Quests and readalongs that go past the July start date and match at least one of these title prompts: Periodic Table, Familial Terms, Rainbow of Words (also Joseph's coat), Numerical Titles, Titular Counting 5+, Pun in the Title, and First & Last Name in the Title. Recommendations welcome!

this is for aesthetics only

one time I told my friend that I was reading a book about cannibalism and they said, "I think you already told me about this" and I said, "that cannot be true, that has to have been a different gay cannibalism book." also look, I don't know about these emoji.

Do you feel like you've read everything there is to read? Or get annoyed that the same books are on all the rec lists? Well, here are some more obscure masterpieces!

Some of the covers are terrible - especially among the older or self-pubbed books; there's a few YA in here; and some that are science fantasy rather than 'pure' fantasy. But trust me: they're all EXCELLENT. (And if you already love a bunch of these, let's be friends!)

These books utilize first person, second person, and third person perspective- ideally all three but books with some combination of the three are also included.

Perfect for fantasy lovers with not enough hours in the day!

Feel free to mention any I missed in the comments 😊

(Broadly defined) Poetic, dreamy, strange, odd fantasy/sci-fi. Doesn’t have to be all of these things at once, mostly it’s fantasy/sci-fi that ‘breaks the norm’ (in style, prose and story)- whatever that means. Or books wonderfully odd, in any sort of way.

I’m not such a fast reader, neither do I have the golden touch finding only books that fit in this list… ‘Breaking the norm’ can be seen as rather subjective, so I’d love any suggestion that you feel fit (and why do you feel they fit?).

this is a collection of books that contain more stories within their stories, almost like an endless corridor of doors that lead to more doors or an infinite matryoshka doll
(always open to suggestions!!)

Queer books and books written by queer authors that are featured in the indie game "Tiny Bookshop", a cosy bookstore management life sim by the studio Neoludic

A list of horror books with stunning cover art because sometimes we do judge a book by its cover. Obviously this list is subjective but it’s diverse and inclusive.

Ongoing list so please feel free to suggest!

A masterlist of standalone adult fantasy novels (no novellas).

Always looking for recs!