Portal Fantasy
Portal fantasy is a term you may not have heard before but that you are probably familiar with. Remember the Chronicles of Narnia? Basically, Portal Fantasy are books where the main character(s) are transported to another world for whatever reason. While it is usully clumped in with fantasy or science fiction there are enough of these types of book in both the professionally published and the indie worlds that I made pages for both of them. Behold! The best of indie Portal Fantasy!
Necromancer Awakening (Book 1 of the Mukhtaar Chronicles) by Nat Russo
Amazon: 4.4/5
Goodreads: 3.93/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Texas archaeology student Nicolas Murray has an ironic fear of the dead. A latent power connecting him to an ancient order of Necromancers floods his mind with impossible images of battle among hive-mind predators and philosopher fishmen. When a funeral service leaves him shaken and questioning his sanity, the insidious power strands him in a land where the sky kills and earthquakes level cities. A land where the undead serve the living, and Necromancers summon warriors from ancient graves to fight in a war that spans life and afterlife.
If Nicolas masters the Three Laws of Necromancy, he can use them to get home. But as he learns to raise and purify the dead–a process that makes him relive entire lifetimes in the span of a moment–the very power that could bring him home may also prevent his return. For the supreme religious leader, the Archmage Kagan, has outlawed Necromancy, and its practitioners risk torture and execution.
As warring nations hunt Necromancers to extinction, countless dead in limbo await a purification that may never come.
Nicolas’s power could be his way home…
Or it could save a world that wants him dead.
Into the Abyss (Demons of Astlan Book 1) by J. Langland
Amazon: 4.5/5
Goodreads: 4.25/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: A gateway to hell! Literally. Not a metaphor. Now, technically, the place was called “The Abyss” but it was, unequivocally, a street preacher’s vision of hell.
And Tom Perkinje, transfer student to Harding High was now trapped in the Abyss after inhaling a grand total of two times. Oh, yeah, he was also a twelve-foot tall demon with hooves, bat-wings, horns, tail, full deal!
Now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he was also enslaved, against his will, to a group of myopic wizards that had not only mistaken him for a demon on the Astral Plane; but who had bound him to his current demonic form and left him stranded in the Abyss to await their bidding.
He really wished he had not let his new friend Reggie talk him into trying the stupid drug.
Sunset: Book 1 of the Nightlord Series by Garen Whited
Amazon: 4.5/5
Goodreads: 4.23/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Eric didn’t ask to be a vampire. In fact, he didn’t even believe in them. Then he meets a beautiful woman, wakes up with a hangover, and bites his tongue with his own fangs.
Which pretty much settles the question.
Now he’s trying to hold down his day job while learning the rules of the Undead — the most important being that bloodthirsty urges and predatory instincts are a real bitch.
Upside; Eric has the beautiful Sasha to teach him the ropes, including the magic he’ll need to survive.
Downside; they’re being hunted by members of the Church of Light, who are determined to rid the world of vampires.
When Sasha is killed, and Eric is thrust into an alternate world in his quest to avenge her death. There he becomes a Nightlord, fights a dragon with the help of his magical steed, Bronze, and upchucks a sword named Firebrand.
But things get really interesting when Eric finally finds Tobias, head of the Church of Light. Soon Eric finds himself at the center of an epic battle at the literal edge of the world in a fight to keep a terrible darkness at bay.
Dragon’s Trail by Joseph Malik
Amazon: 4.6/5
Goodreads: 4.02/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Once dubbed “The Deadliest Man Alive,” Jarrod Torrealday is a former Olympic saber hopeful and medieval weapons expert banned from competition for killing another fencer in a duel. Despondent, volatile, alcoholic, yet still one of the greatest swordsmen alive, he now works for third-rate fantasy films as a technical consultant and stuntman.
When Jarrod accepts the gig of a lifetime from a sorcerer looking for a hero, he finds himself facing an invading army in a world inhabited by creatures from Earth’s mythical past. He soon learns that the enemy mastermind is also from Earth, and has laid the foundations for a new kind of war.
Tamer: King of Dinosaurs by Michael-Scott Earle
Amazon: 4.2/5
Goodreads: 4.09/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Victor Shelby ends each day wondering when his life is going to get better. His parents are dead, he struggles to pay rent, and his boss at the animal control shelter has him cleaning cages instead of working in the field. His dream of helping animals seems destined to end in a mop bucket.
Then Victor is abducted by aliens and deposited on a prehistoric world filled with hungry dinosaurs and beautiful alien women.
He doesn’t know why he is here or what his purpose is, but he finds himself fighting for survival. Most men would have been lizard kibble in a few moments, but Victor’s natural ability to empathize with animals has grown stronger, and he finds himself able to control the most docile of the terrible lizards.
Victor will have to use his taming powers to provide food, water, and shelter for the three women that he has sworn to protect. Success means they get to live another day, failure means a horrible death in the jaws of Earth’s most deadly predators.
Disclaimer: This book has ravaging dinosaurs, a lot of cursing, extreme violence, and a harem of exotic alien women. The novel is not meant for people under the age of 18.
Portals of Infinity: Book One: Champion for Hire by John Van Stry
Amazon: 4.2/5
Goodreads: 3.83/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: William is just your typical engineer fresh out of college with a stressful job, a boring life, and not a lot of prospects of anything better in the future.
Until one weekend while hiking in the woods he stumbles across a portal to another time, or perhaps another place. The more he investigates this new world the more he realizes that it may just be able to offer him a lot more than the one he’s been living in.
However, there are forces at work beyond anything that Will has ever come across before and the local Goddess seems to have taken a liking to him. Will may soon find himself getting an offer and cannot afford to refuse.
Days of Future Past by John Van Stry
Amazon: 4.6/5
Goodreads: 4.19/5
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Authors Website
Amazon Description: Paul’s been having a bad day, perhaps one of the worst days he’s ever had. And now into the middle of all this, his instructor just got drafted by some mystical goddess to help save a world.
As for Paul? Well, he’s really not supposed to be there, and if he thought he was having a bad day before all of this, it just got worse, a lot worse. He’s now on a one way trip, forced to help a man who despises him while at the mercy of the world’s biggest trickster.