If roaming the Deepwoods with Twig—meeting woodtrolls, dodging bloodoaks, and stumbling into odd societies like the termagant trogs—was your favorite part, you’ll love the lavish strangeness of Fairyland. September’s journey hops from one vividly imagined people and place to another, each with its own rules and dangers, echoing the way Beyond the Deepwoods unveils a new corner of the world every chapter.

Like Twig leaving the woodtroll path and forging through the Deepwoods to learn who he truly is, Sabriel crosses into the Old Kingdom to confront necromancy and her family’s legacy. You’ll get that same feeling of a young hero stepping into uncharted danger—only this time with necromantic bells instead of sky pirates.

If the headlong pace of Twig’s escapes—bloodoak snares, monstrous predators, and a timely lift from a skyship—kept you turning pages, Airborn delivers that same momentum in the skies. Matt Cruse battles pirates, storms, and airborne beasts aboard a luxury airship, scratching the same itch as those high-altitude rescues over the Edge.

Twig’s trek through the Deepwoods—where paths lie and trees hunt—mirrors Bilbo’s long road into peril, especially his ordeal in Mirkwood with spiders and endless gloom. If you loved wandering from one uncanny encounter to the next before a climactic rescue by unlikely allies (hello, sky pirates), The Hobbit gives you that classic, richly strange journey in spades.

If Twig’s run-ins with deceptive paths and unpredictable peoples kept blindsiding you—never knowing whether the next glade meant a friend or a trap—Hardinge’s subterranean city of Caverna will delight you. As Neverfell navigates courtiers who literally manufacture expressions, the revelations and reversals come as sharply as Twig’s jolting encounters in the Deepwoods.