If You Liked Throne of Glass: 10 Books to Read Next
Bookdot Team • •
#throne of glass#fantasy books#readalikes#sarah j maas#romantasy#epic fantasy#book recommendations#if you liked
If you’ve finished the Throne of Glass series and found yourself staring at the shelf wondering what to read next, you already know the problem. The Aelin-shaped hole in your reading life is specific. It isn’t just that you want more fantasy, or more romance — it’s that you want a protagonist who earns her power through loss rather than inherits it by birthright. You want a romance that simmers for three hundred pages before anything happens. You want side characters you didn’t expect to love who then proceed to wreck you. You want a series that gets darker, not lighter, as it progresses.
Sarah J. Maas spent eight books building the emotional infrastructure for Throne of Glass. Celaena Sardothien — and later Aelin Ashryver Galathynius — works because we watched her survive the salt mines, the glass castle, the training yards, the betrayals that should have broken her. The found family that forms around her across the series — Chaol, Dorian, Manon, Rowan, Elide, Lysandra — becomes as important as any romance. And the darkness: the way the series refuses to let Aelin off the hook for what she does in service of the things she loves.
No single book replicates all of this. But the ten below each target a specific dimension of what made Throne of Glass work — and some of them, read together, come surprisingly close.
If You Want the Assassin Protagonist: Nevernight by Jay Kristoff
The parallels between Mia Corvere and early Celaena are almost structural. Mia trains at the Red Church — a school that prepares assassins in the service of a god of darkness — with one goal: revenge for her family’s destruction. Like Celaena, she is extraordinary at killing. Like Throne of Glass, the school setting creates a crucible where alliances form and betray in equal measure, and where proving yourself means hiding what you truly are.
What sets Nevernight apart is Kristoff’s voice. The footnotes — sardonic, sprawling — comment on the action like a narrator who can’t quite believe the protagonist is doing this. The darkness goes further than Maas ever attempted. The romance arrives slowly, and that patience makes it land harder. Three books, complete, with a final installment that earns its devastation.
If You Want the Training Arc and Slow Burn: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
Two perspectives, locked in an oppressive empire. Laia is a scholar’s daughter who infiltrates the brutal Martial military academy as a spy. Elias is the academy’s finest soldier who wants to defect. The dual POV mirrors Throne of Glass’s later structure — two people on opposite sides of the same conflict, unable to be honest with each other, slow-burning toward something inevitable.
The training sequences are genuinely brutal. The empire is not cartoonishly evil but systemically so, in ways that make the world feel real. Tahir’s series is four books and finished, and it is the recommendation most consistently cited by Throne of Glass readers as their most successful transition. If you’re only going to read one book from this list, start here.
If You Want a Heroine Who Goes to Dark Places: The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Throne of Glass grows darker with each installment — Aelin becomes capable of monstrous things in service of causes she believes in, and Maas doesn’t entirely let her off the hook for it. The Poppy War goes considerably further.
Rin is a war orphan who passes imperial examinations to attend military school, discovers she can channel a god of fire and destruction, and then watches the war she expected transform into something that demands she make choices she cannot take back. R.F. Kuang draws on the history of twentieth-century China; the result is the most brutally serious series on this list. If the darkening trajectory of Kingdom of the Wicked and Empire of Storms was among the series’ appeals for you, Kuang escalates it into territory Maas never enters.
If You Want Fae Courts and Political Maneuvering: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Where Celaena accumulates power through combat and raw survival, Jude Dumont accumulates it through political cunning and relentless stubbornness. She is mortal, raised in the Faerie court after her parents’ murder, regarded as something fundamentally lesser by those around her. Her response is to outmaneuver them all — to make herself necessary to people who consider her disposable.
Holly Black’s fae world-building is gorgeous and claustrophobic in equal measure. The enemies-to-lovers romance with Cardan is among the genre’s best examples of the trope: neither character can trust the other, every scene is a negotiation, and the tension builds for an entire book before anything resolves. Three books, complete, with a finale that earns its resolution.
If You Want the Chosen One Meets Empire: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Alina Starkov discovers she harbors a power that could save her world from the Fold — a permanent swath of darkness — and is immediately swept into a court that wants to use her as a weapon. Bardugo’s Grisha world has the same lived-in quality as Erilea: geographically specific, historically textured, with cultures in genuine friction with each other.
The Darkling is one of fantasy’s most effectively written antagonists, in part because Bardugo understands exactly why he’s compelling and leans into it rather than away. Important note: the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology (same world, different characters) are distinct recommendations. Six of Crows is the better-beloved of the two and is where most readers discover the Grisha world. Both are finished.
If You Want Lyrical World-Building and Devastating Romance: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
Lazlo Strange is a junior librarian with an obsession: a mythic lost city called Weep, whose true name has been stolen from memory. Sarai is one of the last godspawn, living in the floating citadel above that city, entering the dreams of the humans below. Taylor’s prose is the most stylistically distinctive on this list — dense and lyrical, closer to literary fantasy than Maas’s more propulsive style. Readers either respond immediately or take a chapter to acclimate.
The slow-burn romance across the two-book series is genuinely devastating in ways that linger. If the Aelin-Rowan dynamic — the way it built across multiple books before becoming what it became — was a significant part of Throne of Glass’s appeal, Strange the Dreamer delivers that register.
If You Want Chess-Game Political Intrigue: The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski
Kestrel is the daughter of a celebrated general in an empire built on conquest. On impulse she buys a slave at auction, and then makes a series of choices that could unravel everything she’s built. The relationship between Kestrel and Arin has the quality of Throne of Glass’s best court scenes: neither can be straightforward with the other, every conversation is a negotiation, and the real battle is strategic rather than physical.
Kestrel’s power comes entirely from her mind — her strategy, her ability to read people and situations. This trilogy is underread relative to its quality. If the political scheming of Crown of Midnight and Queen of Shadows was among Throne of Glass’s most compelling elements for you, Rutkoski’s series is essential.
If You Want Rebellion and Court Deception: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
Mare Barrow discovers she has impossible powers in a world where ability determines social class. She’s inserted into the Silver court as a false noble and must navigate deception, allegiances, and a love dynamic that actually stings. Red Queen is more straightforwardly YA than Throne of Glass’s later installments, but its particular strength — the protagonist learning who can and cannot be trusted among people she’s come to care about — targets the same emotional register as Throne of Glass’s most effective betrayals. Four books and several novellas, finished.
If You Want Found Family Across an Epic Quest: Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
Xingyin is the daughter of Chang’e, the moon goddess of Chinese legend. When her existence is discovered, she flees and sets out to earn the power to free her mother from celestial punishment — which means surviving immortal courts, entering mortal wars, and forming bonds that complicate her purpose.
The found family that develops across the two-book series has the same emotional warmth as Throne of Glass’s inner circle, and Tan earns it just as honestly. Where Maas assembles Aelin’s court over eight books, Tan compresses the same emotional architecture into two — losing nothing in the process. The prose is quieter than Maas’s but the gut-punches land with comparable force.
If You Want the Full Epic Commitment: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
The Final Empire has been ruled by the immortal Lord Ruler for a thousand years. A legendary thief named Kelsier plans a heist to bring him down. Vin, their newest recruit, may be the most powerful Allomancer any of them has encountered — and Allomancy, Sanderson’s magic system, involves swallowing different metals to gain different abilities, one of the most rigorously constructed systems in epic fantasy.
The crew dynamic mirrors Throne of Glass’s found family. The stakes escalate across three books and then continue in a second trilogy set centuries later. If what you loved about Throne of Glass was its willingness to invest in a world across thousands of pages — to trust readers to stay for the long payoff — Sanderson understands that commitment more completely than almost anyone writing epic fantasy today.
Where to Start
The specific pleasure of Throne of Glass is difficult to replicate in a single book because Maas spent eight novels building its emotional infrastructure. But these ten books are honest substitutes for specific aspects of what made it work.
Most readers who’ve finished the series find their most immediate hit with An Ember in the Ashes — the training arc, the slow burn, the dual POV — or with Nevernight, for the assassin protagonist in a school that wants to break her. From there, The Cruel Prince is usually the natural next step: Jude’s political maneuvering reads as a close cousin to Celaena’s court years in Crown of Midnight.
The series that requires the most patience — but rewards it most fully — is The Poppy War. Give it through the first third of the second book before deciding. And if you haven’t yet read Mistborn, know that Sanderson’s Cosmere shared universe is effectively a reading-life project, not just a series. Many Throne of Glass readers disappear into it for years and don’t come out complaining.
Track every series you’re bingeing, rate each book by how hard it hit, and build your Throne of Glass recovery TBR with Bookdot — the book tracker built for readers who take their reading seriously.
Related Articles
Frequently Asked Questions
- What makes Throne of Glass different from other fantasy series?
- Throne of Glass stands out for its long-form character arc — Celaena Sardothien transforms across eight books from a slave-assassin into something far more powerful. The series weaves political intrigue, slow-burn romance, found family dynamics, and increasingly dark world-building into an epic that rewards long-term investment in ways most single-volume or short-series fantasy can't replicate.
- Is Throne of Glass appropriate for adult readers or is it strictly YA?
- Throne of Glass begins as YA but evolves into decidedly adult territory. By Queen of Shadows and Empire of Storms, the violence, moral complexity, and romance skew older. Most adult readers find the later books — particularly Heir of Fire onward — more satisfying than the first installment.
- What order should I read the Throne of Glass series?
- Publication order is recommended: Throne of Glass, Crown of Midnight, Heir of Fire, Queen of Shadows, then Empire of Storms. Tower of Dawn can be read alongside Empire of Storms (they overlap in timeline) or immediately after. Then Kingdom of the Wicked, and finally the novella collection The Assassin's Blade — best saved for after Crown of Midnight.