Heya.
As the title states, I just thought I’d ask if any of you could recommend a fantasy novel series (i.e. not manga or light novel illustrated books) in Japanese.
Preferably without a lot of furigana, but I guess I might put up with those if I really like the book 
EDIT: I may not actually know exactly what light novel is… 
Soooo stupid question, but how do you know if something is a light novel or not?
Does it have to be a originally Japanese novel? You could always read stuff like the Japanese translation of Harry Potter or any other western novel.
Shin sekai yori~
Light novels are simpler and in a6 format I believe. Novels are in a5.
Best bet is to just find the novel on Wikipedia and see what it says.
I may have been completely wrong actually :b I just meant “something that isn’t illustrated, just text”
For the purposes of this thread I would like recommendations of something that is originally in Japanese… I might well read a translation of, say, Harry Potter at some point, but I don’t really need recommendations there
Shin sekai yori is in the a6 format…
I like the 朧月市役所妖怪課 series, then.
I wouldn’t really call it fantasy, since it’s in a modern Japan setting, but it has yokai.
It’s not illustrated, but some of the Japanese people from Tofugu (when we chatted about it in the Japanese only section) said it was probably a light novel 
Seconded, based on the anime.
Also, 空ろの箱と零のマリア based on the description (though maybe this is more sci-fi). This one is a light novel.
獣の奏者, based on the anime. This one is definitely fantasy and a regular novel.
Really? Huh.
Well it is a novel.
Fun fact: cleaning out her mother’s bookshelf, my 7 year old daughter found the Swedish translation of this book and insisted that I’d want it (presumably based on the fact that the title was written in Japanese).
I felt that reading translations of Japanese books probably wasn’t going to be super beneficial to my studies, but it did put it on my watch list!
I’ve updated the post to hopefully remove the need to determine whether something is a light novel or not
OK - so how are people sourcing these novels? I’ve still not figured out how to get stuff from amazon.jp.
I have ordered a lot of stuff from cdjapan.com. It’s completely in English, and they’re shipping worldwide.
Pretty sure you can just get stuff and pay for international shipping without anything more than an account. If you want ebooks you typically have to fake an address or use the address from a shipping company like Tenso.
You can also set the interface to English which helps.
Ohhh. That helps!
Seeing as light novels are now acceptable criteria I guess (since they are all text except maybe 10 or so pictures amidst 120-240 pages of text), I highly recommend 狼と香辛料. The first series is done (18 novels long), and a new sequel series is currently being published. There is a decent amount of furigana, but the medieval setting and focus on economics means that the content can get pretty dense sometimes. I personally also enjoy it for the well-paced, adult romance that is so rare in the 高校-obsessed otaku industry. 
To give a basic summary: MC, a traveling merchant, picks up a wolf girl previously worshiped as a deity for centuries and agrees to help get her to her home in return for her assistance in helping his trade. Lovingly nicknamed the Book of Economics by many readers, the plot itself is more focused on the money schemes the two find themselves in with the objective being more of the setting. As I mentioned above, there is a romantic element, too. It’s easily one of my favorites.
I haven’t read the novel, but I’m willing to be it’s more intense than the cartoon was. I really enjoyed it, but oppressive would be putting it lightly.
Sooo, trigger warning to OP I guess? very strong and dark themes. lol. Hope you do choose to read it, though. haha!