Guys, can you recommend your favorite fantasy books where the protagonist isn’t a teenager & the character development, plots, and general level of writing are deeper and more nuanced than what’s in typical YA lit? 👀

I realised that it’s super hard to find a story set in a magical (or just an interesting imaginary/fairytale) world that wouldn’t target a very young audience and would largely avoid common tropes. No hate for YA, I just completely grew out of it (in my thirties) and can’t read novels about children romanced by grumpy 100-year-old strangers without cringing anymore. For example, novels like The girl who fell beneath the sea, As long as the lemon trees grow, Nobody in particular are cute and fairly well-written but they were too reductive and naive for me to enjoy. Most popular fantasy I see in recs and different lists/shelves are on that level (which makes sense statistically and from the marketing perspective but essentially drowns books for other target audiences in the flood).

It’d be fun to see how fantasy words are experienced by adults with a fully developed brain (think late twenties and onwards). I get why 16-yo are those who’d be impulsive enough to jump inside a weird portal and try to save the world against all odds, which a tired working adult would rather ignore. 😆 But there must be more to fantasy than one special teenager saving the universe. The only examples I can think of is something like Game of Thrones (which I like a lot), maybe The Magicians and Kuang’s Babel and Katabasis (although the MCs were on the younger side in those). Apart from what I mentioned above (adult MC and writing), I’m open to virtually any stories and mixed genres.

If you could pack one suitcase and move into any fictional home immediately - where are you going?

Drafty castles absolutely count. So do crooked cottages, dramatic cliffside mansions, hobbit holes, chaotic city apartments, enchanted libraries, and suspiciously affordable small-town farmhouses.

Are you:

🌧️ Living your best moody life in a crumbling estate?

🌿 Baking bread in a cozy woodland cottage?

📚 Secretly hoping your house comes with hidden passageways and a mildly concerning attic?

🕯️ Choosing vibes over structural integrity?

Drop the book + the home + one reason you’d survive (or absolutely wouldn’t).

Bonus: what’s the first thing you’re decorating or rearranging when you move in?

Let’s see where PageBound is relocating.

guys does anyone know the book that's about a rich guy that gets sent to be like a lieutenant or something in an outpost at the edge of a creepy forest? I think he doesn't really want to be in the military but is doing this for the moment and is completely unqualified. the book may or may not have a bit of horror?

i think it's sci-fantasy but I'm not sure and I don't even remember the author's name T_T

I don't know what to call them other than experimental novels or like.. interactive novels? But has anyone read Cain's Jawbone, Finnegan's Wake, House of Leaves, etc? I bought me and my sister each a copy of Cain's Jawbone and we keep saying we're gonna work through it but keep putting it off. I'm visiting my sister and it's staring at me from her bookshelf LOL Anyways what did you think of them? What are some other novels that are similar that you enjoyed?

For me, it’s Beloved by Toni Morrison. It shows how truly awful humans can be to each other but also how humans find themselves through ghosts.

I want to expand my library with diverse authors! I rarely read with the author in mind when I read for entertainment, but as I learn more about problematic authors I want to see what else is out there. Who are your favourite authors who demonstrate diversity, either through their writing or their lived experiences? Or both 🙃