May is Wyrd and Wonder, a fun month-long fantasy blogging challenge that comes with daily prompts. I originally wanted to pick a couple of the daily prompts to make posts for, but I found that I didn’t have enough to talk about for each prompt to make a post – instead I’m taking inspiration from Zezee with Books and doing one post covering a lot of the prompts. This one is going to cover (some) of the prompts from day 1 to 15!
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Day 1: Set Your Path
I actually did do this prompt, so check out my May TBR.
Day 2: Werewolves
I have, of course, read quite a few books with werewolves in my time. However, few of them have remained as books I keep on my shelves and recommend. Not because I don’t like werewolves or shapeshifters (I do) but because a lot of those books were very much of their time (as things that follow trends often are). I know it can be done well though, because there are some books with werewolves or shapeshifters that I still very much enjoy to this day (most of which are slightly less traditional werewolves, so I’m saving them for another prompt). Instead, for this one, I’m going to signpost you to another blogger’s post for inspiration: Based On A True Story.
Day 3: Transformations – Stories of change, not shapeshifting
Although I wasn’t as much of a fan of The Everlasting as I know a lot of people are, I do think it’s an incredible example of character growth because boy did our main character annoy me for the first half (or more) of the book – and not in a “this is a poorly-written character way” but in a “this character is flawed in exactly the way that makes me angry-frustrated at people in real life” kind of way. Check out my review for my full thoughts.
Day 4: That’s Not A Moon – Stories where the moon is more than it seems
I did technically post on the 4th of May, and my post for this day is actually one of my favourite posts on the blog (even if it’s completely unrelated to the prompt): it’s my beginner’s guide to Ilona Andrews’ books.
If you’re looking for posts that actually recommend books for this topic, though, Starr K @Pages & Procrastination shared some books from her TBR.
Day 5: Bonded – Soul mates or bonded mates
As I talk about in my Buzzwords post, I don’t really like ‘fated mates’ or soul mate set ups in books – I often feel like the stories lack a sense of genuine connection. Plus, we don’t have fated mates/soulmates in real life (at least not in the magic-will-tell-you-they’re-the-one kind of way), so I think it feels even less genuine and engaging because of that.
Bonded mates, on the other hand, if we mean people who decide to use magic to bond themselves deeply or permanently on a psychic level or some variation of that, then that I can absolutely get behind (once a relationship has been established organically). An example that comes to mind for this one would be The Second Death of Locke (see my review where I discuss how this avoids the pitfalls of soul mates).
Day 6: Eclipse – Overshadowed/underrated books
Some of these fantasy books are more popular than others, but they’re all books that I don’t think get talked about enough:
Pretty much everything by Ilona Andrews would count for this – although their most recent book is getting some good traction. They’re definitely beloved by many, but they don’t have a mainstream following and are impossible to find in bookshops, so I definitely think that counts as underrated. My personal favourite series is The Innkeeper Chronicles, but they’re all so great that I recently did a beginner’s guide to help you pick which of their series to start with/read next.
Apart from that, The Incandescent got some attention last year but I think it deserved far more. Under the Earth, Over the Sky is beautiful and underrated (support indie authors!) and A Taste of Gold and Iron is the perfect fantasy + romance + political intrigue combination that I never hear anybody talking about. It has proven a successful recommendation for me in real life, though.
Day 7: Reflections – Retellings
I’m not hugely into retellings these days, but they had a massive moment when I was a teenager, so some of my favourite YA fantasies are definitely retellings.
A series that I haven’t read in ages and don’t have copies of anymore but that I loved as a teenager would be the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer, which features retellings of many stories. I also had a thing for Arabian Nights retellings like The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh and A Thousand Nights by E. K. Johnston.
As for adult books, I read The Bloody Chamber and other stories by Angela Carter in my IB English literature class when I was 17 and it’s definitely very explicit, but such an interesting and well-written take on stories with a feminist twist (although not necessarily in a girl boss kind of way… sometimes they serve more to show the true horrors hidden within some of these stories.
Day 8: Cast a long shadow – Favourite fantasy since last W&W
I have a hard time picking favourites, so I’ll just pick a couple books that I’ve really enjoyed between the end of May last year and the beginning of May this year.
![[Review] This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews](https://keirasbookmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/featured-image-size-48.png?w=600&h=450&crop=1)
![[Review] The Second Death of Locke by V L Bovalino](https://keirasbookmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/screenshot-2025-10-31-at-10.24.07.png?w=600&h=450&crop=1)
![[Review] The Incandescent by Emily Tesh](https://keirasbookmark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/screenshot-2025-08-10-at-15.37.36.png?w=1200&h=900&crop=1)
My favourite fantasy book of 2026 so far is This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, although I have also been enjoying some books by T. Kingfisher and I quite enjoyed A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping too. Last year, my top two fantasy books were probably The Second Death of Locke and The Incandescent.
Day 9: Half moon in Aquarius – Stories featuring astrology, influence of stars, celestial bodies, planetary alignments etc.
The first book that came to mind for this prompt was actually not a fantasy book at all, but a literary mystery: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Our main character believes in astrology and it is quite a key part of her character and in some ways the plot as a whole.
I don’t really have any fantasy books to recommend for this prompt, so I’ll signpost you to the one blogger I could find who did a recommendations post for this prompt: Pages & Procrastination.
Day 10: Moon flowers – Lunar deities in religion, folklore or fiction
This is one of the topics that I don’t really have a good recommendation for but that sounds really interesting to me.
Anouk @ Time for Tales and Tea did an interesting post about lunar magic which appeals to me in a similar way as lunar deities, and Starr K @Pages & Procrastination also offered some ideas. I still feel like I could do with some more recommendations though, so please do leave me some in the comments if you have any ideas!
Day 11: Kelpies – Watery shifters; or cautionary tales, tales set in Scotland, Celtic fantasy
I couldn’t think of any books with ‘watery shifters’, so I decided to go for a historical fiction meets magical realism book set in Scotland that incorporates a lot of Scottish folklore (and should be taken as a pretty serious cautionary tale, as with everything fae and Folk).
The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson
1850s Scotland: Isabel’s doctor husband had been assigned to the Loch Katrine waterworks. It’s no place for a lady, but maybe this wild place can bring her some consolation after a series of miscarriages that have denied her motherhood. But as life quickens within her again, a darker presence is also emerging. Maybe the navvies were right to worry about digging too deep and disturbing the land of faery.
Day 12: Flower Moon – Cover art featuring the (full) moon
I have quite a lot of books with moons (or what I’m choosing to interpret as a moon) on them, so I tried to stick to fantasy books that I’ve read.
Check out my review for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me here!
Day 13: Crescent offerings – Novellas or short stories
I couldn’t think of any fantasy novellas or short stories I particularly wanted to highlight that I’ve already read, so I decided to highlight one of the collections on my TBR that I’m looking forward to reading.
In The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, you can dine at a restaurant at the end of the universe, cultivate to immortality in the high mountains, watch roses perform Shakespeare, or arrive at the island of the gods on the backs of giant fish to ensure that the world can bloom.
A collection of fantasy and sci-fi short stories by Chinese authors.
If you like short stories and are also into sci-fi as well as fantasy, you should definitely check out my review for If We Cannot Go At the Speed of Light and see if that would be up your alley too!
Day 14: Wendigo – Stories featuring lesser known shifters from around the world
Not Wendigo specifically, but the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews features a whole range of were-animals from lions and wolves to hyenas and bears, as well as other shapeshifters from mythologies around the world.
Day 15: Current read
This is a pretty fitting one to end on! I’ve actually got quite a few books on the go at the moment, but only one of them is fantasy:
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
A tree erupts from the body of an Imperial officer. An eccentric detective and her new magically-altered assistant must investigate.
I’m about a quarter through the book and I wasn’t hugely feeling it to begin with, but I think it still has promise! The plant/body horror adjacent aspects do give me the creeps though.
And with that, Wyrd and Wonder is halfway done! Please leave your fantasy recommendations down below, and if you’re participating in the challenge this year, leave me a link to your favourite blog post of the challenge so far (self-promo is encouraged).
Keira x
Keira's Bookmark 