Book Recs: What to Read If You Like Wheel of Time

On a whim, I decided to start a whole new style of rec post on this blog. I’ve done a few of these on my own blog before, so I figured why not transfer the idea over to this one! Here’s how it goes: I pick (or you suggest—feel free to leave any requests in comments!) a popular book or series, think of a bunch of tropes, themes or character archtypes in that book/series, and rec books which also fit those tropes, themes and archetypes. And in this case, they’re all gay!

The first of these posts is going to be about the big fantasy monster that is Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. Fourteen books long, it’s one you would be excused of being intimidated by. If you have read it, however, and are looking for similar(ish) books, then this post is for you! So let’s get going.

A lot of these titles are available on Scribd, so if you want to check out that service but don’t have an account yet, use my invite code to get 2 months for free! (This also gives me one free month.)

Epic, Multi-POV Fantasy

Wheel of Time is a series with, if you’ll excuse my French, a metric fuckton of POVs. And while I haven’t ever come across any other books with quite as many POVs, I’ve dug up a couple with more POVs than you might usually have (although still not nearly as many as Wheel of Time‘s 147 unique POVs). Both of these are also fantasies that I would call epic in scope. The Black Coast (gay mc, bi/pan mc, nonbinary mc) is probably the better fit of the two, with multiple POVs and a plot which spans continents. The Traitor Baru Cormorant (lesbian mc with hemilateral neglect, sapphic li, gay mc, nonbinary mc), while only mostly single POV, is a series that expands POVs and scope as it goes on. Both of these put the epic into epic fantasy.

Healer MC

One of my favourite characters in the series has to be Nynaeve (despite Robert Jordan’s best efforts), so obviously one of the themes and tropes I had to put in here was the healer main character. I have two quite different recs for you here. The first is The Pull of the Stars (lesbian mc, lesbian li, gay character), which is distinctly not fantasy, but it’s set in a hospital ward and the main character is a nurse. The second rec is a more typical fantasy healer, in Laurie J. Marks’s Fire Logic (lesbian mcs, gay mcs).

Chosen One

The concept of chosen one (ta’veren) comes up a lot in Wheel of Time. Rand is the most obvious example, but Perrin and Mat are also, less strongly, ta’veren too. And since that concept loosely translates to chosen one, here are a couple of books featuring that! A Hero at the End of the World (British Chinese gay mc, gay li) is a subversion of the chosen one: what if the chosen one didn’t manage to fulfil what they were chosen to do? Meanwhile, in The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza (Cuban American bi mc, sapphic li), Elena is the chosen one in the way that the world is most likely coming to an end, and she’s there performing miracles, healing people, and just maybe being able to save everyone.

Humble Beginnings

All of the protagonists of Wheel of Time start life from humble beginnings. As much as they end up lords and princes and powerful witches, and so forth, they all started off in a small village, hidden away from the rest of the world. Similarly, in Blackheart Knights (bi mc), where neither POV protagonist is someone you might point out as special, both of whom rise unexpectedly into positions of power. The Unbroken (Black lesbian mc, bi mc with a physical disability), a little differently, involves a soldier lifted into empire-making or empire-breaking power.

Predetermined Fate and the Cyclical Nature of Time

A big part of Wheel of Time, more than strongly evidence by the series name, is about the cyclical nature of time, events repeating themselves, reincarnation and predetermined fate. Frankly, She Who Became the Sun (Chinese & Mongolian cast, nonbinary lesbian mc, lesbian mc, gay mc, bi mc) might also have fit into the above category of humble beginnings, but what decided me on this is that the entire plot is predicated on a rejection of one’s fate (unlike in Wheel of Time, as much as Mat might try). My second rec is a bit different: Holly and Oak (achillean mcs) is more about reincarnation and cycles—in it, a town’s coven greet the winter solstice every year, with the ritual killing of the Holly King by the Oak King.

Curses

In the first book, Mat picks up a cursed object, and that curse follows him around for a while (and, arguably, impacts him throughout the series), so my next topic for recs is, obviously, curses! In A Marvellous Light (gay mcs), one of the main characters is hit with a curse, leading to a reluctant partnership with the other main character to break it. In Mamo (Filipino sapphic mc, sapphic mc), the death of a witch leaves a curse on a town that must be resolved.

Women With Power

There is magic in Wheel of Time‘s world, but it’s magic that can (initially, at least) only be wielded by women. The reason for this is because, of the two sources of power (men’s and women’s—I know, let’s set aside the binariness of it for a moment), men’s is tainted and will therefore drive them mad. Now, I have a lot to say about this series and its concept of women with power (none of it positive!) but since it’s a big aspect of it, I figured it’s a good place to start for recs. The Jasmine Throne (Indian lesbian mcs) may be a somewhat obvious rec, but it really fits, especially men’s fear and suspicion of women with power, a theme that is very present with the Aes Sedai. The Midnight Girls (lesbian mc, bi mc, gay side character, bi side character) also features women with power, a power which they use to tear out the hearts of men.

Animal Magic

On top of having women (and a few men) who can wield magic, the series also features a different kind of magic: Perrin’s. In short, Perrin has an affinity with wolves which gives him, among other things, enhanced senses, magical dreaming abilities, and potential shapeshifting. So, I racked my brains to come up with some books which also feature animal magic of a similar type. Witch, Cat and Cobb (lesbian mcs, trans mcs) has a talking pet cat, while The Bone Shard Daughter (lesbian mcs) is a little more like Wheel of Time with… whatever kind of animal Mephi is (cute, that’s what kind).

Good vs. Evil

At its centre, Wheel of Time is about a battle between Good and Evil. Yes, you might argue some of the good characters are a little morally grey (although, in the grand scheme of things and compared to other books, they’re not so much), but the bad guys are distinctly evil-with-a-capital-E. While The Spear Cuts Through Water (achillean mcs) isn’t quite capital-E-evil (I mostly just wanted to recommend this), it’s about unrooting a tyranny, which is, in itself, pretty evil. The Circle (lesbian mc, bi mc) is closer to a genuine Good vs. Evil battle—about a group of young witches being hunted by an ancient evil.

What would you rec?

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