What to read after “The Land: Founding” by Aleron Kong: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
After a catastrophic injury leaves him paralyzed, former combat medic Joe transfers his consciousness permanently into a new full-immersion game. There he chooses the ritualist class, a secretive path most players ignore, and studies obscure lore, follows hidden quests and bends the game's rules in pursuit of real power.
Jason, an office supplies manager, is pulled from Earth into a world of magic and monsters. There he gains a strange essence that grows stronger with every fight, gathers a circle of companions, and learns that power, friendship and morality do not always agree.
Corin Cadence enters the Serpent Spire to earn a magical attunement and learn what happened to his missing brother. He leaves with an unusual power, then studies at Lorian Heights Academy, chasing forbidden knowledge and building a team around his strange abilities.
Betrayed by his guild, Oren wakes trapped inside the game New Era Online as a low-level goblin. Cut off from his old character and hunted by players and monsters alike, he must rebuild from nothing, grow his settlement, and find a way back to his human life.
In Sacred Valley children advance through ranks of sacred power, but Lindon is born Unsouled and left behind. Refusing his place, he trains in secret and enters the valley's tournament, hoping to earn a path out before his weakness costs him everything.
Bullied at school and ignored at home, Jason escapes into Awaken Online, a full-immersion game, and chooses the path of the necromancer. His growing power and undead army make him the game's villain, and his choices there begin to change his real life.
Diving into the new VR game Ascend Online, Marcus logs in expecting adventure but is separated from his friends and dropped into a remote frontier village under goblin attack. He rallies the villagers to drive the raiders off, then helps them rebuild their ruined homes while learning how real the game world can feel.
When a system integrates Earth, Jake Thayne is pulled into the Tutorial along with everyone else. Forced to hunt monsters and absorb their power, he grows far faster than most, while the world he returns to is no longer the one he left.
When an alien corporation turns Earth into a lethal dungeon for an intergalactic reality show, Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, enter the levels. Carl's only plan is to survive the cameras, the monsters and the audience.
Reidon Ward is a sickly orphan with almost no chance of reaching the military academy, until he is fitted with a rare CAD. Admitted to Galens Institute, he must climb its brutal rankings and prove that his weak body can survive the training meant to break him.
Kell is one of the last Antari, magicians who can travel between four parallel Londons: Red, Grey, White and the lost Black. After a smuggling exchange goes wrong, he flees into Grey London and meets Lila Bard, a thief who talks her way into his journey. Together they must keep a dangerous object from falling into the wrong hands.
Nahri has survived in eighteenth-century Cairo by faking healings and stealing what she can. A careless summoning calls a djinn warrior to her side and drags her to Daevabad, a city of magic and old feuds, where her true blood makes her a threat to everyone around her.
Will Parry, a boy on the run after a violent encounter, crosses through a window into another world and meets Lyra Silvertongue. Together they search for Will's missing father and for the source of the mysterious Dust, while a knife that can cut openings between universes draws them into a war far larger than either of them.
Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer sets out from New Hampshire to California to find a talisman that may save his dying mother. His road runs through the Territories, a parallel world where many people have counterparts, and where the same journey carries dangers he could never face in his own world.
Tress lives on an island where the seas are made of deadly spores. When the man she loves is taken by the Sorceress, she leaves her ordinary life, gathers an unlikely crew and sails toward the midnight sea to bring him home.
Kinch Na Shannack owes his guild of thieves more than he can ever pay. To settle the debt he tags along with a scarred knight on a journey to find women taken by goblins, through a world of old wars, hungry gods and creatures that would happily eat a thief.
Doctor Adoulla Makhslood is the last real ghul hunter in the desert city of Dhamsawaat, and he wants only to retire. When a series of murders points to a powerful supernatural enemy, he takes up his sword again with his young apprentice and a fierce tribeswoman, and the three pursue the danger beyond the city walls.
Loulie al-Nazari, the Midnight Merchant, trades in jinn relics with her jinn bodyguard Qadir. When the sultan forces her into a search for a lost lamp, she must cross a desert of jinn, thieves and old stories, where the line between merchant and prey keeps shifting.
In 1925 the explorer Percy Fawcett walked into the Amazon to find a fabled civilization he called Z, and never came out. Decades later a journalist follows the same trails, sifting clues and rumors to learn what became of the missing expedition.
Karou studies art in Prague and fills her sketchbooks with monsters, the same strange creatures who raised her. Running errands for her guardian, she does not know she stands between two warring peoples. When an angel named Akiva scorches the doors she travels through, her hidden life begins to fall apart.
Clay Cooper left his days as a mercenary behind for a quiet life. Then an old bandmate arrives to say his daughter is trapped in a besieged city, and Clay must round up the ageing, out-of-shape heroes of Saga for one more job.
In 1879 the USS Jeannette sails for the Arctic, chasing a theory about a warm open sea at the pole. Trapped and then crushed by the ice, the crew abandon ship and begin a desperate march across the pack toward Siberia.
On her sixteenth birthday Meghan learns that her little brother has been swapped for a changeling and that the fey are real. To get him back she enters the Nevernever, a dangerous world divided between Summer and Winter courts, where she is drawn to a prince she was raised to fear.
Prince Rhen is cursed to relive his eighteenth year as a monster until a girl falls in love with him. Harper, torn from the modern world into his dying kingdom, only wants to go home, but the curse and the enemy at the gates will not wait.
Start with “Ritualist”, “He Who Fights with Monsters”, “Sufficiently Advanced Magic”: they are the closest to “The Land: Founding” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Land: Founding” these are LitRPG, Portal Fantasy, Survival), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Ritualist”, “He Who Fights with Monsters”, “Sufficiently Advanced Magic”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
