Books By Rachel Neumeier

by Rachel Neumeier
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13 books
Because I’ve written novels in a wide stylistic range, when anyone asks me which of mine they should try, I always suggest that it’s probably best to go to Amazon or Goodreads and read some of the top reviews for different books, then try a sample of whatever seems most appealing. A complete list of all my titles would be too long, so let me lump them up into reasonable categories.
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The Tuyo series

Tuyo

Rachel Neumeier, 2020
The Tuyo series, seven books at the moment, is my personal favorite. Writing the first book made me decide to move into self-publishing, a fantastic decision, as I’m sure I would never have written most of the other books in this series if Tuyo had been traditionally published. That would break my heart. The main trilogy (Ryo’s trilogy) is Tuyo, Tarashana, and Tasmakat, and I will just add that Tasmakat is very long and if I were doing it again, this would be Ryo’s quintilogy. The other books are largely ancillaries to the main trilogy, but Tano will lead into another main series set in this world.
The Death’s Lady series

The Year's Midnight

Rachel Neumeier, 2021
The Death’s Lady series isn’t much like the Tuyo series. It’s very different both stylistically and structurally. It’s a double portal story that starts off in our world and then moves into a different world. Some of my books are really fairy tale, though not retellings. Others are adventure fantasy. This series isn’t either of those subgenres. It’s not exactly epic fantasy either. The epic took place in the backstory. I’d say the first book is literary fantasy, and barely fantasy at all. The second and third are high fantasy, kind of. The fourth really is high fantasy. Probably. This is by far the least classifiable series of mine. This is my brother’s favorite of mine, my mother’s favorite, my cousin Eric’s favorite. It’s high up on my list too.
My four YA fantasies all came out from Random House, though I continued one story after I got serious about self-publishing.

The City in the Lake

Rachel Neumeier, 2011
The City in the Lake is a fairy tale; not a retelling of any kind, but a fairy tale nevertheless.

The Keeper of the Mist

Rachel Neumeier, 2017
The Keeper of the Mist is a story about friends and family and growing into yourself. It’s high fantasy.

The Floating Islands

Rachel Neumeier, 2012
The Floating Islands is my most popular and best-selling traditionally published title. It’s an adventure story, continued in The Sphere of the Winds.

The White Road of the Moon

Rachel Neumeier, 2017
The White Road of the Moon is an adventure story, a little dark in places. To create White Road, I cannibalized the first thing I ever wrote, a sprawling and unpublishable fantasy trilogy. White Road contains about a third of that trilogy and something semi-close to the original plot.
My traditionally published high fantasy novels include:

The Griffin Mage

Rachel Neumeier, 2011
This trilogy is high fantasy with a fairy-tale tone. It features griffins, so, I mean, who doesn’t love griffins? My personal favorite of the trilogy is the second. Each book stands alone, each features different characters, but there is a single story arc that flows throw all three books, so they’re best read in order.

House of Shadows

Rachel Neumeier, 2014
House of Shadows also has something of a fairy tale tone. It’s heavier on political machinations than most of my novels. I don’t have rights to the first book, but I wrote the second book, Door into Light, anyway because a scene that occurs late in the story was very compelling to me and I wanted to write that scene.

The Mountain of Kept Memory

Rachel Neumeier, 2017
The Mountain of Kept Memory is often read as YA, but it was published as an adult novel. I think it could go either way. It presents as fantasy, but it might be far future SF depending on what the reader thinks of the backstory. I personally love this one, which features some difficult and ambiguous relationships.

Winter of Ice and Iron

Rachel Neumeier, 2017
Winter of Ice and Iron is most definitely not a YA novel. It’s the other book created by cannibalizing my first unpublishable trilogy. It’s got some very cool stuff and one of my all-time favorite characters, plus a new plot. It’s high fantasy and the closest thing to real epic fantasy I’ve ever written.
The Black Dog series
My SF includes two stories so far.

No Foreign Sky

Rachel Neumeier, 2020
No Foreign Sky is fast-paced space opera inspired by H. Beam Piper’s Little Fuzzy and by a lifetime of reading C. J. Cherryh’s work. It features a great alien species. I’ve never designed an alien species before. I really enjoyed writing this and expect to continue with a direct sequel plus probably a prequel story.

Invictus

Captive
Rachel Neumeier, 2023
Invictus, presented as a duology because of its length, was also inspired by C. J. Cherryh, especially Cyteen. It’s kind of a political thriller space opera, not nearly as fast-paced as No Foreign Sky. I had a terrible time with it because everyone has secret plans and I had no idea what any of those plans actually involved when I wrote the first half. As you can imagine, I got horribly stuck when I needed to know what those plans were, but still didn’t. The story finally got unstuck and I think it came out quite well.