We all enjoy reading to escape–to find a new world and visit places that we’ve never been to before. But, what if you actually could go into a new world? What would you do if you found a way into another world? Let’s read more about it and find out!
What is Portal Fantasy and Why Do We Like It?
Portal Fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy where characters find a means of entering a strange new world. This method can range from a tornado (as in The Wizard of Oz) to a wardrobe (as in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). The thing that most distinguishes this from other types of fantasy adventures is that it’s an unusual means. A team travelling on foot to a new city is not portal fantasy, nor is it if you get onboard a spaceship and travel there. But, if your spaceship goes through a black hole and ends up in an alternate universe? Yeah, I’d say that counts!
Readers enjoy portal fantasy for a number of reasons. Of course, there’s the thrill of a good fantasy series, with a strange new world to discover. Since our protagonist is not from this world initially, we get to learn all about it through their eyes. And there’s also something exciting about watching an average person step into extraordinary situations. What would we do in such a situation? These stories allow us the fun of thinking about that from the safety of our most comfortable reading nooks at home!
Does it Have to be a Portal?
When I was a kid, my friend and I would play games where we’d suddenly get sucked into a portal and end up in a fantasy world (the world itself would change, based on our interests at the time, but they usually involved dinosaurs). But, for this to be portal fantasy, does it have to be an actual portal? Not at all! Here are a few other methods that could count instead:
- A black hole
- A rabbit hole
- A book
- A tornado
- A door
- Death
- An arcane ritual
- Water
- A trance
- Video games or computers
Related Genres:
If you enjoyed learning about portal fantasy and would like some more suggestions, here are a few other genres you could try:
- Fantasy: This is sort of a no-brainer, but basic fantasy has a lot of the same elements as portal fantasy, including of course, a mysterious fantasy world and interesting races of creatures
- Science Fiction: Like fantasy, this genre can transport you to a strange new world
- Isekai: A Japanese genre (mostly included in manga and light novels) that features a character being transported to another world or dying and reincarnating into it
- Adventure: There’s usually not much fantastical about it, but readers still enjoy the thrill of the journey
Recommended Reading:
Here are some portal fantasy titles to get you started on your reading journey. Enjoy!
The Hollow Places (T. Kingfisher) Pray they are hungry. Kara finds the words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring this peculiar area–only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more one fears them, the stronger they become.
While I would certainly classify this book as horror/fantasy, I think it still holds up well for this week’s genre. Most of the speculative fiction genres work well as portal fantasy, in fact!
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) This classic story has been read by generations of children. Alice was bored one afternoon, sitting outside with her sister, so when a white rabbit with a waistcoat and a pocket watch comes running past, she decides to follow him. After taking a tumble down his rabbit hole, she finds herself in the nonsense world of Wonderland, where animals can talk, snack cakes and little bottles of drink can make you change in size, cats disappear (except for their smiles), and babies turn into pigs. As she discovers all the fun, and nonsense, and danger that Wonderland has to offer, Alice also can’t help wondering how she is ever going to find her way home again.
If you enjoyed this one, consider reading the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
11/22/63 (Stephen King) Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
Inkheart (Cornelia Funke) Twelve year old Meggie learns a shocking secret: her father has the ability to “read” the characters right out of the story. So he makes it a point never to read aloud, as it’s unknown who will be summoned. And magic always requires a sacrifice: for every character who is brought to life, someone else from the real world disappears back into the book. One cruel night, Meggie’s father reads aloud from a book called INKHEART– and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. Meggie must learn to harness the magic that has conjured this nightmare. For only she can change the course of the story that has changed her life forever.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis) Narnia… the land beyond the wardrobe door, a secret place frozen in eternal winter, a magical country waiting to be set free. Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor’s mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don’t believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Lion Aslan, they realize they’ve been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch’s sinister spell.
