#so i can narrow it down to tailor made recs AND have an excuse to do more BookTalk

[liesmyth]

do you have any book recommendations? anything like the locked tomb or just fantasy/science fiction in general? :)

Hi anon I LOVE GIVING BOOK RECS!

Unfortunately I haven’t found anything quite like TLT, but when you break it into main themes some other series come close. So, if you liked The Locked Tomb for…

Morally ambiguous lesbians and oppressive empires? Try The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. I love Baru as a character and I love and what the book does with themes of cultural assimilation and how the road to a righteous goal is paved with moral compromises until you’re not sure you’re still on the right path. Content warning for institutional homophobia, which affects the plot and the main character. It’s never gratuitous, but it’s pretty much the opposite of TLT under that point of view so heads up.

Unique worldbuilding, queer characters, distinctive sense of place in a land that was once Earth? Try The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. This isn’t to everybody’s tastes (usually people love it or hate it) but it does some VERY cool things with scifi and deservedly won a Hugo.

Intricate worldbuilding, necromancy, gothic vibes? Try The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller. This definitely hits the same “confused and confusing female main character who doesn’t know her own mind” vibes as HtN, which can be good or bad depending on your tastes, but the necromancy bits are fantastic.

Oppressive planetary empires and queer characters? Try A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. This too is about cultural assimilation and has a main murder mystery plot. Space opera about a young diplomat in a precarious position who is sort of sharing her mind space with someone else. Bonus: fun scifi worldbuilding based on some lesser-known historical empires.

Other SFF I read or reread in 2022

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett for worldbuilding, shady empires, female MC, urban fantasy vibes with a strong sense of place and a murder mystery thrown in for flavour.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge. YA fantasy with horror vibes that I very much enjoyed as an adult not usually keen on YA. There are scary eldritch gods, toxic relationships with a hopeful ending, excellent fantasy worldbuilding, a really solid sense of civilization (especially the Deaf culture of the divers that is really interwoven in the setting). Sea monsters! Secrets! Street urchins! This is one of my all-time favourites.

The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik, starting with A Deadly Education; the third book came out two weeks after Nona and it gave me emotional whiplash, because (spoiler!) the angry goth girl gets to be happy in this one! YA, very vivid very fun worldbuilding, spunky teenage heroine with a cynical disposition and death powers.

Obligatory rec for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell just because it’s one of those books that make me feel like I’m a richer person for having read them. It’s an impressive alternate history fantasy, the writing is masterful, the fae villain is unsettling and inhumanly evil, the mundane villains (pettiness, spite, centuries-old institutions) provide excellent dramatic irony. Everyone is insufferable in a petty way that’s also endlessly entertaining, and the two titular characters are absolutely obsessed with each other. The prose is a pastiche and tremendously well written. My only nitpick is that there are way too many men. I get why, given the setting the premise and the characters, and I loved the book, but since this rec originated with an ask about TLT I feel like I have to clarify that the gender ratio is pretty much the polar opposite.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones if you like spunky teenage girl protagonists, poetically described gore, critique of colonialism and indigenous displacement. This is a horror thriller not a sff, sent in the contemporary US, and it’s basically a love letter to the horror movie genre + Native American folk legends. Reccing it anyway because YMMV but to to me it really hit some of the spots that HtN does. (Content warning for off-screen CSA)

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. Speculative fiction thriller, lots of jumping between alternate timelines and wondering what exactly is going on. It’s not flawless but it’s unabashedly weird in a very fun, very unique way that I really appreciated.

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng. Unique worldbuilding, distinct narrative voices, gothic vibes, weird religious imagery. Fantasy historical fiction about cruel inhuman fae, the worldbuilding is brilliant and very vivid (and what an aesthetic it is!), the story is fucked up in a delicious way, and the prose is a delightful Brontë pastiche. Content warnings for consensual sibling incest and Christian missionaries on a mission of “civilization” through faith (it’s not portrayed in a positive way but the colonialism is definitely there).

[I only flagged content warnings that aren't canon-typical for TLT, but definitely more apply. If you need clarification on a specific book HMU]