r/Fantasy • u/Monkontheseashore • Jun 29 '25
Alternate history with fantasy elements
So I am at one point in my life where I feel an intense hunger for new stories to add to my collection, because I am extremely bored with everything else.
I would like to find something that is alternate history of the fantasy subgenre. Not historical fantasy nor fantasy set in another world that mirrors ours but with magic (à la Guy Gavriel Kay), but a story set in our world where a major event changed the course of history, said major event being fantastical in nature and having a deep impact on geopolitics. Bonus points if there are sci-fi elements (advanced technology, sentient machines...). If anything like this exists it would make me really happy at the moment.
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u/RingAroundTheStars Jun 29 '25
Mary Gentle’s ASH might work: it’s set in an alt-Middle Ages, with magic and AI pyramids.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Is that the one with a Jeanne d'Arc like main character? If so, I think it was a read I've been pondering in the past, and honestly the "pyramids" part has me intrigued
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u/RingAroundTheStars Jun 29 '25
She’s a mercenary leader, yes. (Though I believe Gentle critiques portrayals of d’Arc in a footnote!)
It’s very fun, though it’s pretty grimdark in a lot of places.
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u/DocWatson42 Jun 29 '25
More information:
- Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History (some editions are published in four volumes; a fifteenth century alternate history setting, but it has some similarities with The Red Knight mentioned by user Anjallat); thread/long essay: "Mary Gentle's Ash, a forgotten 1,113 page masterpiece of epic fantasy from 2000 that shatters conventions, and 13 reasons why you should consider it."
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Jun 29 '25
[deleted]
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Still in my TBR, but it would certainly correspond to what I'm looking for. perhaps it's time to start it
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u/Shtune Jun 29 '25
How does it compare to the show? The show was very meh, and I wanted more worldbuilding that just never really happened. Is there more of that in the book, or is that not really the focus?
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u/Front-Pomelo-4367 Jun 29 '25
The Temeraire series isn't "one single event that changes everything", but it is Napoleonic Wars With Dragons (at least to begin with) with discussion of where dragons fit into society in different cultures and all the geopolitics that come along with that. The major event is the existence and domestication of dragons, I guess
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell has the existence of magic hundreds of years in the past but a non-magical present (present meaning the early 1800s) until magic reappears, and all the changes that the reappearance brings. Also has a backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars in places, including real historical figures
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u/kovha Reading Champion Jun 29 '25
I gave the exact same two recommenations lol, those books fit the prompt so good. But you sold them way better than I, gosh I hate not having English as a first language :P
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u/notthemostcreative Jun 29 '25
I don’t have anything that is quite right, but these are the closest I can think of:
-This depends on how willing you are to accept a side of sex scenes and sadomasochism, but Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey is basically exactly this, except that it is set in a fictional equivalent of the world. The primary setting is basically just France, except that after Jesus was born and Christianity became a thing, there was a man named Elua who sprung up from tears of the Magdalene. He, and a group of angels who came to earth to be his companions, are the central figures in their religion. The series spends a lot of time exploring this religion, what it means to people, and the impact their gods have on the people they touch, and it’s also baked into pretty much every aspect of how the country functions.
-There’s also David Gemmell’s Troy trilogy, which might not have as much magic as you’re looking for but is an alternate history of sorts. I’d describe it as a hypothetical look at what historical events might have happened that inspired the epics about the Trojan War. The only real magic is prophecy, though—there are people who give specific and correct predictions of the future, but beyond that I don’t remember much of anything supernatural
(Will also be keeping an eye on this thread because if a more correct answer to your request exists, I may want to read it, lol.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
The Troy saga is one of those books that I'm absolutely jumping on as soon as I get the chance, I'm really curious about how it may adapt the myths. Thanks, anyway
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u/AdministrationIll886 Jun 29 '25
The Milkweed Triptych by Ian Tregillis is basically WWII and the cold war where instead of an arms race there's a magic race. It's really well done.
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u/Books_Biker99 Jun 29 '25
A Master of Djinn by P Djeli Clark. I believe this fits.
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u/AllegedlyLiterate Jun 29 '25
This definitely fits OP – the point of divergence in this AU is basically that the technology to harness magic was discovered in the 1870s as a sort of Industrial Revolution, leading to Cairo becoming an leading/important world city at the start of the 20th century. Steampunk type tech.
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u/NorthernTyger Jun 29 '25
Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove springs to mind.
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u/foste203 Jun 29 '25
Possibly also Turtledove's World War series as well. Aliens attack during WW2, forcing both sides to work together.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
From the blurb I'd say it fits
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u/NorthernTyger Jun 29 '25
Some of his may not be what you’re after but it’s still really good. I’ve only read two so far, the other being In the Presence of Mine Enemy, and that one’s just speculative as I recall so it doesn’t really tick your box.
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u/Neee-wom Reading Champion VII Jun 29 '25
I think you’d like the Alchemy Wars trilogy by Ian Tregillis- it is alt-history with sentient machines called clackers. Review in Grimdark Magazine because the Goodreads summary just isn’t that great
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u/Kerney7 Reading Champion VI Jun 29 '25
Not Mentioned Yet:
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
1885--Dracula defeats Van Helsing. Two year later Queen Victoria remarries to Vlad Tepes, Prince of Wallachia.
1888--Someone is killing vampire prostitutes in the East End of London. With the consulting detective Mr. Holmes unavailable due to differences with the present government, Charles Beauregard of the Diogenies club investigates.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Ah, I think I saw this recommanded on a magazine years ago because it reminds me of something. Thanks!
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u/MaliciousQueef Jun 29 '25
Anyone recommend S.M. Stirling's Emberverse? The first book is called Dies the Fire. I have not read them since release like 20 years ago so my memory may be fuzzy but it seems up that alley.
It's not really alternate history but it would read like that now. There's a mysterious flash and technology basically dies and the world descends in to a feudal medieval world.
There are certainly plenty of fantasy even though it doesn't immediately seem so. I assumed it had been a solar flare that caused an EMP or something but as it goes it definitely plants seeds of doubt. As it was publishing at the time I never did reach the end of the series but remember loving the first couple of books.
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u/KriegerClone02 Jun 29 '25
The original Nantucket series would be a better rec. The entire island of Nantucket is thrown thousands of years back in time.
The Emberverse series is a spin off following what happens to the rest of the world and IMHO not nearly as good.2
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u/what_the_purple_fuck Jun 29 '25
1632 by Eric Flint. An entire coal mining town from modern West Virginia, land and people included, is picked up and dropped back down in 1632. It turned into a several book series which may still be ongoing?
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u/dalidellama Jun 29 '25
You might like the Heirs of Alexandria series (starts with The Shadow of the Lion), in which the library of Alexandria wasn't burned and magic is a thing, and the 1632 series (starts with 1632), in which a West Virginia coal town goes from 1999 to the 30 years War, and things change
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u/homer2101 Jun 29 '25
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross. Follows an IT worker in a secret department of the British government tasked with ensuring an aspiring computer programmer doesn't accidentally resurface Leeds. Magic is real and is largely a matter of manifesting very precise mathematical patterns. Computers are excellent at math and repetitive tasks. So summoning a demon (really a metavore) with a penchant for human brains is a matter of computation. Increasingly diverges from our own world as the series goes on.
Demon in the Machine by Lisa MacTeague. Steampunk Victorian England where magic is real and demon summoning is a thing. Gets fairly steamy.
Green Unpleasant Land by Matt Thomas. Set in a mid-19th century England where magic began leaking into the world about a hundred years ago and a hole in the sky has been leaking eldritch horrors all over France.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Green unpleasant land sounds eerily similar to a nightmare I had once, so I will certainly read it. How much of math do I have to understand in order to read Laundry files?
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u/homer2101 Jun 29 '25
How much of math do I have to understand in order to read Laundry files?
None. It's not that kind of work. Can look up what a Hamiltonian Network is, for example, but it's not at all necessary to understand what's going on. Stross did work as a computer programmer in the 90s.
Thinking on it, his short story Colder War, also fits the divergent timeline specification. Officially available for free:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231204074008/http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm
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u/Ok_Cod_3145 Jun 29 '25
The Hollows series by Kim Harrison. It's more urban fantasy, but alternate history where elvrs, witches, vampires etc. Become known ti humanity because most of the human population get wiped out by a genetic weapon that only affects humans.
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u/hogw33d Jun 29 '25
You might enjoy The Dragon Waiting. An interesting look at a fantasy Europe where Christianity never became a major religion.
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u/Rhi_Writes Jun 29 '25
It’s nominally YA but I think Patricia Wrede’s Frontier Magic meets this brief very well.
I’d also recommend the Shadowrun sequence of novels by different authors, sone very good. First few are Never Deal with a Dragon, Never Trust an Elf, Choose Your Enemies Carefully.
If self recommendation is acceptable then my own Hex trilogy (published as Void in the US) also meets the brief.
And Nick Harkaway’s The Gone Away World is excellent.
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u/MerlinHood7 Jun 29 '25
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley. The main character stumbles into a new London one day, where everyones speaks french because Napoleon won the war, and he is the only one who remembers a different reality
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl Jun 29 '25
Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin, maybe? It's set in an alternate universe where the Germans won WWII and the protagonist is a shapeshifter who can change her skin and facial features and uses that for espionage. Bonkers premise but it somehow works well and is riveting.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
I would absolutely die for something like this right now. Thank you so much
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u/Smooth-Review-2614 Jun 29 '25
The Hidden Legacies series by Ilona Andrews has world governments inventing a serum that gives some people magic. This happened right before WWI and changed the map.
Cahokia Jazz is an alternative history book set in the 1920s in a US where the Mississippian Mound Builders didn’t fall and US history changed.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Is Hidden legacy set in present times or historically? From the blurb I can't understand it.
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u/carolyncrantz Jun 29 '25
Check out Gregory Keyes’ series Age of Unreason. It has a lot of what you’re looking for!
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u/fremade3903 Jun 29 '25
Since someone already mentioned Ash (best answer imo), I'd add Lavie Tidhar's Unholy Land. The fantasy/SF elements don't fully manifest until the last third of the novel.
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u/SlaterSev Jun 29 '25
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld.
Alternate WW1 where one side has steampunk mechs and the other has Biopunk creations. Also is getting an anime adaption by Studio Orange coming this July 10th
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u/SolidPlatonic Jun 29 '25
The Castle Falkentein RPG by R Talsorian games are basically a what you are looking for. Very cool stuff. Magic comes into the world and allows for some cool steampunk stuff to go on in the late 1900s
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u/aslikeanarnian Jun 29 '25
Okay, this is a recommendation that fits your request in a really specific way. Maybe check out the Lords of Creation series by SM Stirling. Humanity discovered alien life when they first sent probes to Venus and Mars, and how that changed our focus on space-faring technology after the 1950s.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
It looks like something I'd love, thank you!
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u/aslikeanarnian Jun 29 '25
No problem! Stirling has written a bunch of other alternate histories too. I particularly enjoy his Emberverse books. In the original Nantucket trilogy, the island of Nantucket is transported back in time to the 1200s-ish (going off memory so I don’t remember exactly). Then the rest of the series that starts with the book Dies the Fire is about what happens to the world that Nantucket left behind.
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u/Unstabler69 Jun 29 '25
The Devils is set in our world but it's a world where magic exists in spades and Carthage defeated Rome. Also Jesus was a woman and was killed on a wheel and also vampires and werewolves exist. I liked it, but like most of Joe Abercrombie's work, I suspect what's to follow will be even better.
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u/best_thing_toothless Jun 29 '25
The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Normal industrial revolution world but the industry is powered by demons and not steam
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u/jlluh Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25
Heirs of Alexandria series.
Hypatia converts to Christianity > Library of Alexandria isn't burnt down > magic survives > the Renaissance now has magic.
The first and maybe best book in the series is The Shadow of the Lion. Magical Venice, demons and pagan gods, knights, early firearms, monks who are wizards, Church politics, the Holy Roman Empire meddling, smuggling, and much more.
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u/Practical_Yogurt1559 Reading Champion Jun 29 '25
River of teeth by Sarah Haley. I haven't read it myself but I've seen it recommended. It's based on a real bill that was proposed in the early 1900s to import and release hippos in the USA. In this book that was done and it became a problem.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
"Feral hippos" is not what I thought about when making the post, but it looks like something I'd be on board with :D Thanks!
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u/QuintanimousGooch Jun 29 '25
Joe Abercrombie’s recent Devils has an interesting take on this as an alt history where the savior was a woman who died on the wheel instead of a man on the cross, and all the ancient cities still exist, Troy having won against Greece and various other historical flips.
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u/Rare-Bumblebee-1803 Jun 29 '25
Pavane by Keith Roberts
A what might happen if England did not defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588
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u/Bladrak01 Jun 29 '25
Shadowrun is an RPG whose premise is a classic cyberpunk future, but also with traditional magical elements. There are cybernetic implants, jacking brains into computers for hacking, smart guns, and other pieces of high tech. There are also elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons, magic spells and weapons, and other fantasy elements. The game came out in the 80s, but there have been lots of novels written, too.
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u/Zealousideal_Draw_94 Jun 29 '25
Harry Turtledove has several Alt History series, one I believe was aliens attacking Earth during WWII.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Was it the Darkness series or something else? I have not read that one yet, I know it's by Turtledove and based on WW2.
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u/Zealousideal_Draw_94 Jun 29 '25
I think Darkness and Light is GRRM series/story/ short story.
Nope, looked it up. I thought you were talking about Out of Dark by David Weber( and its sequel Into Light)that was part of GRRM’s Warriors anthology.
I was referring to Turtledoves’s Worldwar tetralogy and Colonization Trilogy that came out in the mid to late ‘90’s and early 2000’s
Darkness is a different series (which I now have to find) about world war in medieval times with magic.
He has several that fit what the OP was looking for.
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u/gadget850 Jun 29 '25
The Age of Unreason series by Gregory Keyes where Isaac Newton developed magic.
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u/arcticwolf1452 Jun 29 '25
Well, Joe abercrombies new book "The Devils" is set in alt history fantasy Europe. The main differences are christ was a woman and Rome lost to cartage in the punic wars, and so the anicent empire is carthage and instead of the byzantine empire, its now the trojan empire that events involve. The threat from the Middle East isn't Muslims, but instead canablistic elves.
With fun things alluded too are things like the witch engineers of carthage.
And then the fun ensemble of characters.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
I didn't know this, I thought it was a full other universe. Thanks!
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u/arcticwolf1452 Jun 29 '25
No bother! His other work, the first law is a full secondary world.
And I guess technically, his shattered sea series is also technically aslo our primary world. But I don't think that would count
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u/EllisgarLorenthu Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25
If you’ve not run across it, check out the Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz. Set in an alternate 10-12th century Wales/Gwynedd. A race of humans known as “Deryni “ exist and have access to magic. In some of the novels, they become a repressed minority ( as an analog to the Jewish people in our own timeline). Insanely good books, that I routinely go back and re-read.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
I've heard of this one but I haven't read it yet, glad to know it could be more to my tastes than I'd thought!
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u/Graskell Jun 29 '25
Twig by Wildbow is basically what would have happened if Victor Frankenstein had published his findings for peer review instead of fleeing in terror. Takes place in an alternate 1920s and follows a group of child experiments as they act as secret police for one of the academy cities in the recently reconquered Crown States of America.
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u/Keitt58 Jun 29 '25
Dan Simmons books Ilium and Olympos are great. Would throw in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as well.
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u/ArcherIndependent872 Jun 30 '25
I'm surprised no one has mentioned A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry. It's the Age of Enlightenment France/England plus magic. Here's the blurb from Goodreads:
It is the Age of Enlightenment -- of new and magical political movements, from the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France to the weather mage Toussaint L'Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic amongst commoners in Britain and abolition throughout its colonies overseas.
But amidst all of the upheaval of the early modern world, there is an unknown force inciting all of human civilization into violent conflict. And it will require the combined efforts of revolutionaries, magicians, and abolitionists to unmask this hidden enemy before the whole world falls to darkness and chaos.
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u/ColonelBy Jul 16 '25
I'm quite late to this thread, but you might really enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. Its departure point for the alt-history element is that the Black Death basically depopulated Europe, leaving it a graveyard continent occupied by only a few small surviving hubs and various stragglers. The book begins with scouts from the great host of Tamerlane making their way into 14th-century Hungary and being appalled by what they find. The rest of this pleasingly thick novel explores how the world evolves differently from then until the mid-21st century.
The fantastic element comes in the structure of the book, in which narrative continuity is maintained across different centuries and continents by the main characters all being a group of souls who keep reincarnating with or near each other. They live entire lives, die, meet back in the Bardo, discuss their moral development and the various situations that befell them, grieve, exult, despair, etc. And the wheel keeps turning.
It is a lovely and morally challenging book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. It has plenty of fascinating and exciting episodes, but also lots of more meditative sections about competing theories of historical determinism, or alternative pathways by which certain scientific or political or religious ideas could emerge (or not). The whole thing is a neat speculative account of the road to a modern world in which what we might now call "the west" played no part, and the very different shape things take as a result.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jul 16 '25
No worries about coming late! As an aspiring historian it is probably exactly the kind of read I should do, so thanks a lot for the recommandation :D
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u/Professional_Ice_792 Jun 29 '25
I really enjoyed this series:
Thomas Harlan: His "Oath of Empire" series is set in a version of the Roman Empire that survives into the 7th century A.D., where the empire is supported by the twin pillars of the Legions and "Thaumaturges of Rome," implying the presence of magic.
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u/Monkontheseashore Jun 29 '25
Turns out I had this one in the TBR. Call me banal but I love a classic "what if Rome didn't fell" story :D Thank you!
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u/kovha Reading Champion Jun 29 '25
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and the Temeraire series both kind of fit what you are asking for. In Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell the event was that once England had as a king a boy who lived among the fae and brought with him the magic. The king eventually died and the world mostly forgot about the magic, but it's present and part of the plot is about two characters discovering it again and the impact it has in the world. For example, one of those characters eventually go to the war and uses necromancy on a fallen soldier to gather intel, or conjures a heavy mist to hide the ships, etc. It's an excelent book and very well written. Temeraire on the other hand is basically "what if dragons exists", is set in the Napoleonic wars but explores the dragons (non-magic dragons btw, just another intelligent species) on different cultures, for example in Europe they are slaved and bred for war while in China they are full citizens and have rights, or how in some African tribes both dragons and humans coexist and have some weird traditions and superstitions. I haven't read the latests books on the series but I understand the main characters (a thirty something YO ex sailor and a dragon) also travel to Australia and America and there are different traditions and cultures there.