This year’s ‘comfort zone’-themed Wyrd & Wonder is almost over, so it’s about time to talk about my comfort reads!
Especially since most of them are a bit, uh, idiosyncratic???
When you hear ‘comfort reads’, you probably think of things like cosy fantasy. But very few of the readers I’ve talked to about the topic have perfectly light-hearted comfort reads. Which is interesting! Why is it that sometimes very dark books can be comforting? I’m not sure it’s as simple as, no matter how bad I feel right now, I’m better off than these fictional people! You know? And the opposite can be true; sometimes very light, fluffy reads can rub us COMPLETELY the wrong way.
I don’t know, but I find the psychology of it fascinating.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: MC with PTSD, brown MCs, secondary disabled character
Goodreads
Return to the "intense...erotic...and imaginative" world of the national bestselling Black Jewels novels with this sequel to The Shadow Queen. In Anne Bishop's "vividly painted" realm, witches and warlocks channel their power through magical jewels - and one Queen has emerged from the shadows to bring hope to an impoverished people.
For years the Shalador people suffered the cruelties of the corrupt Queens who ruled them, forbidding their traditions, punishing those who dared show defiance, and forcing many more into hiding. And even though the refugees have found sanctuary in Dena Nehele, they have never been able to call it home.
Now that Dena Nehele has been cleansed of tainted Blood, the Rose-Jeweled Queen, Lady Cassidy, makes it her duty to restore the land and prove her ability to rule. She knows that undertaking this task will require all her heat and courage as she summons the untested power within her, a power capable of consuming her if she cannot control it.
And eve if Lady Cassidy survives her trial by fire, other dangers await. For the Black Widows see within their tangled webs vision of something coming that will change the land - and Lady Cassidy - forever.
Shalador’s Lady is not a good place to start reading the Black Jewel series; it’s book eight overall, and a direct sequel to book seven, The Shadow Queen, which sets up the characters, context, and overarching plot of the duology-within-a-series. You could read Shadow Queen without having read any earlier Black Jewels books if you wanted, but you’d miss a lot of Easter eggs, and the subplots featuring characters from the main series would make little sense.
This has been my go-to book when I’m depressed for years. Bishop’s prose is easy to read and very addictive, and Shalador’s Lady just makes me happy. It’s a book about rebuilding a broken community, about hope and resources and new opportunities flowing into a land and people that have been suffering for so long. It’s immensely about found-(or should that be made-?)family, about recovering from trauma, about joy. And learning how to be strong – even when you’re not strong in a typical way – so you can stand up for yourself, and protect the people who are yours to protect.
Also, LOTS of very funny, very adorable talking dogs. Insert heart-eyes here, please!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Representation: MC from fictional oppressed/orastricized minority
Goodreads
Aranthur is a student. He showed a little magical talent, is studying at the local academy, and is nothing particularly special. Others are smarter. Others are more talented. Others are quicker to pick up techniques. But none of them are with him when he breaks his journey home for the holidays in an inn. None of them step in to help when a young woman is thrown off a passing stage coach into the deep snow at the side of the road. And none of them are drawn into a fight to protect her.
One of the others might have realised she was manipulating him all along . . .
A powerful story about beginnings, coming of age, and the way choosing to take one step towards violence can lead to a slippery and dangerous slope, this is an accomplished fantasy series driven by strong characters and fast-paced action.
Unlike with Shalador’s Lady, I really can’t point to anything specific about this trilogy that makes it such a comfort read for me. I mean, I’ve always found Cameron’s writing bizarrely addictive (bizarre, because his fight scenes and such are so technical that they probably should be boring, and yet??? they’re not??? also the minor continuity errors make me twitch and I really want to know who the copy-editor assigned to him is because his books are always so full of typos, but??? I’m still completely addicted) but these books are literally a Good vs Evil war and nothing about them should work for me, but it all works for me. It’s so weird! I don’t even know, I just love these books.
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Representation: Black MC, secondary nonbinary character
Goodreads
Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.
With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.
It has always been Marca Nbaro's dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.
All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she's made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life - and scandals - behind isn't so easy.
She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .
I feel like this makes much more sense as a comfort read than the Masters & Mages trilogy, despite both being written by the same author, because amongst all the space economics (which are absolutely fascinating, btw) Artifact Space is fundamentally a story about a traumatised young woman learning that Most People Are Good, Actually, while also being fully immersed into and embraced by the career and community she’s wanted so badly for her entire life. It’s all her dreams coming true! And she gets to make actual friends! And also have Things That Are Nice, because she finally has money!
I mean, there’s also this huge conspiracy to destroy the ship she’s on and destabilise the intergalactic economy, but that just makes it interesting as well as comforting!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Amputee MC
Goodreads
“Bujold builds a better fantasy romance with compelling characters and the fascinating clash between their cultures, she a farmer’s daughter, he an adventurer on the trail of a deadly demon.”—Locus
One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold has won numerous accolades and awards, including the Nebula and Locus Awards as well as the fantasy and science fiction genre’s most prestigious honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, four times (most recently for Paladin of Souls).
With The Sharing Knife series, Bujold creates a brand new world fraught with peril, and spins an extraordinary romance between a young farm girl and the brave sorcerer-soldier entrusted with the defense of the land against a plague of vicious malevolent beings.
Meet Fawn Bluefield and Dag Redwing Hickory in Beguilement, the first book in Bujold’s unforgettable four-volume fantasy saga, and witness the birth of their dangerous romance—a love threatened by prejudice and perilous magic, and by Dag’s sworn duty as Lakewalker patroller and necromancer.
Honestly pretty much ANY book by Bujold works as a comfort read for me – her Vorkosigan saga is so compelling it really doesn’t matter WHAT’S going on in the real world, I get hooked back in every time I pick them up – but there’s something extra soft and sweet about the Sharing Knife quartet. For one thing, it’s a low-stakes series – although technically the Lakewalkers are hunting monsters, each of which could theoretically bring about the end of the world, that’s not really the main focus, and there’s a kind of tired but firm certainty that they will (almost-)always find the monsters before they become too big to stop.
Instead, this is a romance series – there’s adventure too, for sure, but mostly it’s about Dag and Fawn finding a way to be together in a place that accepts them, since their two cultures are not supposed to mix this way. It’s not exactly Romeo and Juliet…but the Lakewalkers, in particular, do just about everything they can think of to break them up. But these books are comforting because Fawn and Dag are rock-solid about each other, and have each other’s backs, and trust in their feelings for each other above everything else. There’s a big age difference between them, which I know some readers don’t like, but these two complement each other beautifully, and I’ll never stop treasuring this series for featuring a romantic relationship that encourages curiousity and asking questions and thinking outside-the-box for solutions to various quandaries. And, maybe best of all: Dag, the warrior and low-key magic-user, isn’t always the one saving the day; I love that Fawn and Dag get to save each other, over and over again, sometimes in obvious dramatic ways, and often in subtle emotional ones.
And it’s not just in the romance that curiousity is seen as a good thing; the whole series is a celebration of wonder, holding on to your sense of wonder about the world, learning to see and appreciate the small, beautiful, amazing things that are absolutely everywhere. A celebration of curiousity, too, how asking questions and learning and sharing ways of thinking and doing are never wrong.
Perfect books to curl up with somewhere cosy, tbh.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MCs, queernorm world, matriarchal culture
Goodreads
Nicolas Rathe is a pointsman, a dedicated watchman in the great city of Astreiant. During the annual trade fair, with a city filled with travelers and merchants, someone is stealing children. The populace is getting angry and frightened and convinced that a foreigner must be to blame. Rathe calls on the aid of both an out-of-work soldier, the handsome Philip Eslingen, and the necromancer Istre b’Estorr.
The art of astrology is a very real power in the kingdom and plays as much a role in politics as greed and intrigue. Rathe finds himself struggling to find the children before a major astrological event brings about catastrophe. The first in a series of fantasy novels filled with adventure, intrigue and gay romance.
I have read this series so many times I think I might have the first book entirely memorised. I think it’s something about the amount of detail in this series that makes it a comfort read; even while the main characters are investigating murders or disappearances (or both), we’re getting to explore this fascinating city, anchored not in the lofty heights of epic fantasy but in what’s being sold on the market stalls, the scent of the veggies being chopped by butchers’ apprentices, the texture of the broadsheets crowing their exaggerated ‘news’. All that description gives these books this kind of…calmly luxurious feeling? I don’t know how to put it better than that. It’s not like those cosy murder mystery series that I know exist – it doesn’t have the same feel-good undercurrent that those books usually do – but there’s just something lovely about reading about normal people existing in a fantasy world, I guess.
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy
Goodreads
Fourteen-year-old Taver didn't know he was a nobleman's bastard until his real father died. Eleven-year-old Elaku has always known she was the bastard daughter of the same nobleman - and the Empress's Witch. When the two siblings meet in the Empress of Timbra's palace, neither is aware that treachery and war threaten their home - and that they must rely on their magic, their wits, and each other to have any chance of victory.
This is another book that just makes me HAPPY, despite the fact that there is plenty of Serious Stuff happening within its pages. Everyone I’ve ever recced it to – who has gone on to read it, anyway – has also found it a ridiculously Happy-Making book, though I’ve never yet run into someone who can articulate WHY. It’s told in dual-perspective first-person from two very young MCs – and yet it’s full-on High Fantasy, with politics and magic and issues of succession, and it’s more than complex enough for an adult reader to enjoy. (It’s one of those books that needed to be self-published, because I don’t think any trad-publisher would know what age-range to stick it in – it’s really not MG despite the age of the main characters, but maybe it’s not quite Adult either??? It’s complicated.)
It’s supposed to be the first in the series, but it works very well as a standalone. And something about it just ALWAYS puts me in a good mood. Some magical X factor that cannot be bottled.
Genres: Adult, Horror, Historical Fantasy
Goodreads
At the turn of the twentieth century, a former spy is called into service to hunt down a vampire killer...
Once a spy for Queen Victoria, James Asher has fought for Britain on every continent, using his quick wits to protect the Empire at all costs. After years of grueling service, he marries and retires to a simple academic’s life at Oxford. But his peace is shattered one night with the arrival of a Spanish vampire named Don Simon. Don Simon can disappear into fog, move faster than the eye can see, and immobilize Asher—and his young bride—with a wave of his hand. Asher is at his mercy, and has no choice but to give his help.
Because someone is killing the vampires of London, and James Asher must find out who—before he becomes a victim himself.
This one is probably the oddest entry on my list, given that it’s a series about properly monstrous and unhuman vampires blackmailing a man and his wife into assisting them with their problems (generally some form of murder mystery) set pre-WW1 – aka, one of the time periods I find least interesting. AND YET. Hambly’s prose is just so damn beautiful, I can’t help be enchanted by whatever she writes. Why this series is my comfort read and not any of her others is hard to say… Maybe because my favourites among her series, apart from this one, are either unfinished (like the Sun-Cross books) or feature women dealing with a really awful patriarchy (Sisters of the Raven), or have very (to me) unsatisfying endings (Sunwolf and Starhawk, or the Winterlands series). I don’t love how the James Asher series ends, but I can accept it – and all the books leading up to it are pretty flawless. Again, these books feature a central couple (James and his wife Lydia) who consider each other perfect equals, save each other, contribute equally in solving the murders or dealing with whatever new vampire issue comes up… I’m a sucker for husbands who respect their wives, what can I say?
That’s a wrap! And probably my last Wyrd & Wonder post this year.
You can check out some of my less idiosyncratic comfort-read recs at the links below! (There may be some overlap…)
10 Books Sure to Make You Smile
Books That Make Me Smile
Gentle Books For Trying Times
10 Laugh-Out-Loud Reads
…okay, I’ve been meaning to read Those Who Hunt The Night for YEARS and I’ve been vaguely curious about Artifact Space but nobody mentioned fascinating space economics until now, and now I need to know more and shall be reading it :)
Those Who Hunt the Night is one of the best vampire books of all time, let no one dissuade you!
The space economics are so good, Imyril!!! Also I may have choked at the one scene where a character goes ‘I don’t think this is what our ancestors envisioned when they tried to build a socialist utopia’ XD
I’m going to look up Artifact Space. Sounds good!
It is! Really hope you love it!