If you’ve finished Shadow and Bone and found yourself staring at the wall, reluctant to re-enter normal life, you’re in very good company. Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels have collectively earned over 266,000 five-star ratings on Goodreads for the first book alone, and Bardugo herself was ranked the sixth most-read author on the platform between 2016 and 2021. Those aren’t just impressive numbers. They’re a signal that something in her work hits a nerve that a lot of other fantasy doesn’t.
So what is that thing, exactly?
It’s not simply magic. Fantasy is full of magic. What Shadow and Bone does that’s harder to replicate is atmosphere. Bardugo builds a world that feels like it has centuries of weight behind it, where the politics are dirty, the villain is magnetic, and the protagonist earns every inch of her power. The Russia-inspired setting of Ravka gives the story a wintry, fable-like texture that lingers. The tension between Alina and the Darkling isn’t just romantic friction; it’s ideological. It’s the pull between power and conscience.
That’s the cocktail we’re chasing in every book on this list. Each one brings something distinct to the table, and I’m going to tell you honestly which ones deliver and which ones coast on the vibes without quite earning them.
Why the Right “Next Read” Actually Matters
A lot of readers come to Shadow and Bone through the Netflix adaptation, which premiered in April 2021 and blended the Grishaverse trilogy with the Six of Crows storyline in ways that kept even longtime fans on their toes. After that, many new readers dive directly into Bardugo’s backlist. That’s a smart move. But there’s only so much Grishaverse to go around, and eventually, you’re going to need something from another author.
The books below are organized by what they specifically scratch for Shadow and Bone fans, not just the generic “fans of YA fantasy will enjoy” label that gets slapped on everything. You deserve better guidance than that.
For Fans Who Loved the Grishaverse First
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Start here. Full stop. If you read Shadow and Bone before Six of Crows, the heist duology is your most natural next move. Set in the same universe but centered in the morally gray port city of Ketterdam, it follows criminal mastermind Kaz Brekker as he assembles a crew of misfits for a near-impossible job.
Here’s what catches most readers off guard: Six of Crows is widely considered better than the original trilogy. The ensemble structure lets Bardugo develop six distinct characters with fully realized voices, rather than filtering everything through one perspective. The pacing is tighter. The stakes feel more personal. Kaz is one of the most compelling anti-heroes in modern YA fantasy, full stop. His disability, his trauma, and his tactical brilliance are never used as decoration. They’re structural to who he is.
“No mourners, no funerals.”
That line from Six of Crows has become something of a rallying cry for the fandom, and it earns that status. The book has a Goodreads rating of 4.46 from over 700,000 ratings. That’s not a book that coasts on hype. That’s a book that delivers.
If you only follow one recommendation from this list, make it this one.
King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
Fans of the Darkling, of Nikolai Lantsov, and of Zoya will find a lot to love in this duology, which picks up after the events of the Grisha Trilogy. Nikolai is now king, and the demon lurking inside him is becoming harder to suppress.
I’ll be honest with you: King of Scars requires you to have read the Grisha Trilogy first, and the payoff is much richer if you’re already invested in these characters. It’s slower than Six of Crows and has a more sprawling structure. But Zoya’s arc in particular is extraordinary, and Bardugo’s political worldbuilding here is sharper than in any of her earlier work.
For Fans Who Loved the Magic System
A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
This is the book I hand to people who say they don’t usually read fantasy. Schwab’s premise is elegant: there are four parallel Londons layered on top of each other, each with a different relationship to magic. Kell, one of the rare Antari who can travel between them, gets tangled up in a scheme that threatens all four worlds.
The magic in Schwab’s world is tactile, intuitive, and feels genuinely dangerous in ways that most magic systems don’t. The worldbuilding is dense but never tedious, because Schwab drops you into it mid-action and trusts you to catch up. Lila Bard, the pickpocket who becomes Kell’s reluctant partner, is the kind of secondary character who routinely steals every scene she’s in.
The series has three books and remains one of the most internally consistent fantasy trilogies of the past decade. The Shades of Magic series carries a 4.16 Goodreads average across hundreds of thousands of ratings, which is solid for a trilogy where many readers find the second book a slight dip in quality. Power through it. The third book, A Conjuring of Light, sticks the landing in a way that made me genuinely emotional.
Shadow and Bone fans will recognize the same love of morally complicated magic and a world that hums with danger just beneath its surface.
The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
Set in a richly imagined version of 18th-century Cairo, The City of Brass follows Nahri, a young con artist who accidentally summons a djinn warrior and ends up in the magical city of Daevabad. What follows is a deeply layered story of politics, religion, identity, and power that has more in common with the Shadow and Bone trilogy than a surface read would suggest.
The magic here is rooted in Islamic folklore and mythology, which gives the world a texture that feels genuinely different from the pseudo-European settings that dominate the genre. Chakraborty’s research shows on every page, and the city of Daevabad itself is one of the most vivid invented settings I’ve encountered in recent fantasy. The trilogy earned Chakraborty a place on Time magazine’s list of influential people and a passionate global readership.
The political intrigue in this series is some of the sharpest in current fantasy. If the power struggle between Alina and the Darkling was one of your favorite elements in Shadow and Bone, the court dynamics of Daevabad will give you a lot to chew on.
We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal
A lush duology set in a world inspired by ancient Arabia, We Hunt the Flame follows Zafira, a hunter who disguises herself as a man to venture into a cursed forest, and Nasir, the Prince of Death sent to kill her. The enemies-to-lovers tension is well-earned, the prose is gorgeous without becoming self-indulgent, and the magic system has a real sense of consequence.
What separates this duology from a lot of its contemporaries is the attention to character interiority. Both Zafira and Nasir are carrying wounds that affect how they move through the world, and Faizal never lets the romance overshadow that. The result is a fantasy that feels emotionally honest rather than just thrilling.
For Fans Who Loved the Enemies-to-Lovers Tension
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Holly Black does not write soft villains. Cardan, the faerie prince at the center of The Cruel Prince, is cruel in exactly the way the title promises. Jude, the mortal girl who was abducted to live in Faerie, refuses to be broken by him. What develops between them is one of the most psychologically interesting enemies-to-lovers arcs in YA fantasy, because neither of them starts from a place of goodwill. There’s no misunderstanding to clear up. They genuinely dislike each other, and the shift is slow, earned, and satisfying.
Leigh Bardugo herself gave this series her endorsement, calling it “lush, dangerous, a dark jewel of a book… intoxicating.” That pull quote is not just blurb-writing. The aesthetic of The Folk of the Air trilogy has a lot in common with the Grishaverse: cold, beautiful, deeply political, with a protagonist who outsmarts enemies rather than overpowering them.
The series has three books and a fourth installment, The Stolen Heir, that moves to the next generation of characters. Start with The Cruel Prince and let the world take you.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
I know. This one is everywhere. But it’s everywhere because it works for a specific kind of reader, and Shadow and Bone fans are often exactly that reader.
Feyre is a mortal huntress who kills a faerie wolf and gets dragged to live in the faerie court of Tamlin as punishment. The world is gorgeous and dangerous, the fae are unpredictable, and the series evolves significantly in tone and intensity as it progresses. Sarah J. Maas and Leigh Bardugo occupy a similar space in the YA and new adult fantasy ecosystem, and their fanbases overlap heavily for good reason.
One honest caveat: the series takes a significant tonal shift starting in the second book, A Court of Mist and Fury, moving toward more explicit content and a darker emotional register. Many readers consider that second installment the best in the series. Others prefer the fairy-tale quality of the first book. Know your preference and adjust accordingly.
The ACOTAR series has over 1.4 million ratings on Goodreads for the first book alone, which makes it one of the highest-rated series in the genre.
For Fans Who Loved the Coming-of-Power Arc
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
This is one of those books that shouldn’t be optional for anyone who loved Shadow and Bone. Tahir’s world, inspired by ancient Rome, follows two characters: Laia, a slave who becomes an informant for the resistance to save her brother, and Elias, a soldier at the most brutal military academy in the empire who wants nothing more than to escape it.
The dual perspective structure gives the series a richness that single-POV fantasy can’t match. Both Laia and Elias are discovering their capacity for strength and moral compromise at the same time, in parallel but deeply intertwined ways. The pacing is relentless, the emotional stakes are high, and the world feels genuinely dangerous.
An Ember in the Ashes was a New York Times bestseller and spawned a four-book series. The second book, A Torch Against the Night, is arguably even stronger. The series is not always gentle, and Tahir doesn’t protect her characters from real consequences. If you want a fantasy that respects your intelligence and your capacity for discomfort, this series will deliver.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Adeyemi’s debut novel, set in a world inspired by West African mythology and Yoruba culture, follows Zelie on a quest to restore magic to a kingdom where it was violently suppressed. Children of Blood and Bone was an instant New York Times bestseller, was named one of Time magazine’s top 100 fantasy books of all time, and became a Kirkus Prize finalist. Adeyemi reportedly received a seven-figure advance for the series, which speaks to how much industry confidence went into this one.
The parallels with Shadow and Bone are real: a young woman discovers latent magical power, that power is politically dangerous, and the forces that want to suppress it will go to frightening lengths to do so. But Adeyemi’s world is its own thing entirely, rooted in a specific cultural tradition and carrying themes about erasure and resistance that give the story genuine weight.
What I appreciate most about this book is that it doesn’t flinch. The violence is brutal when it needs to be. The grief is authentic. And Zelie’s anger, which drives so much of the narrative, is never presented as something that needs to be softened for the reader’s comfort.
The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
This debut novel has been explicitly flagged as a Shadow and Bone read-alike by multiple sources, and the comparison is apt. Talasyn wields light magic in a world being consumed by shadow. Prince Alaric wields shadow magic for the empire that hunts her. When their opposing magics collide, something entirely new happens.
If you loved the light-versus-darkness dynamics at the center of Shadow and Bone, and especially if you loved the tension between Alina and the Darkling, The Hurricane Wars scratches that same itch from a fresh angle. Guanzon’s world-building draws on Southeast Asian aesthetics rather than European ones, which gives the book a distinct visual identity. The romance is enemies-to-lovers in the most adversarial sense possible, which is exactly what a lot of readers are looking for.
The book became a TikTok phenomenon after its release, gaining a massive following through BookTok before most traditional marketing had time to register. It’s earned it.
For Fans Who Want Something Darker and More Adult
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
If you’ve finished the Grishaverse and want to stay in Bardugo’s universe of ideas while reading something aimed squarely at adults, Ninth House is the answer. Galaxy Alex Stern, a survivor of a multiple-homicide with a complicated past, is recruited to oversee the secret magical societies at Yale University.
This is not a book for younger readers. It deals head-on with trauma, sexual violence, and the way institutions protect wealthy perpetrators. Bardugo won the 2019 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fantasy with this debut adult novel, and Stephen King called it “the best fantasy novel I’ve read in years.” That’s a recommendation with some weight behind it.
What makes Ninth House resonate with Shadow and Bone fans specifically is Bardugo’s consistent thematic interest in the relationship between power and corruption. The people at Yale who control magic do so not because they’re gifted, but because they’re wealthy and connected. Alex, like Alina, is an outsider forced to navigate a world that wasn’t designed for her. The tension that generates is absorbing.
The sequel, Hell Bent, is equally strong.
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan
For readers who want the same sweeping epic quality as the Grishaverse but with a more contemplative emotional register, Tan’s debut is extraordinary. Based on the legend of Chang’e, the moon goddess of Chinese mythology, it follows Xingyin, who has been hiding on the moon her entire life to protect her exiled mother. When her secret is discovered, she flees and must navigate a world full of danger, magic, and political complexity.
The prose in this novel is genuinely beautiful without ever becoming mannered, and the world Tan builds around Chinese mythological tradition has an internal coherence that rewards close reading. The romance is tender rather than combustible, which makes it a good tonal counterpoint to some of the more intense titles on this list.
This is a book for readers who want the epic scope and the found-family dynamics of the Grishaverse with a quieter emotional core.
A Word on What “Books Like Shadow and Bone” Actually Means
Here’s something worth being clear about: no book is going to feel exactly like Shadow and Bone. The Grishaverse has a specific atmosphere built out of very specific ingredients. Slavic folklore. A military setting. An anti-hero who’s genuinely compelling rather than just broody. A protagonist who earns her power through failure as much as triumph. The Netflix adaptation brought all of that to a visual medium in ways that only reinforced how distinctive the aesthetic is.
What you’re really looking for, when you go searching for books like this one, is the same feeling. The sense of a world with genuine depth. Characters whose choices actually cost them something. Magic that has rules and consequences. Romance that’s earned rather than imposed.
Every book on this list delivers some version of that feeling. The ones that deliver all of it are Six of Crows, An Ember in the Ashes, and The City of Brass. Those are the three I’d put in the hands of someone who’s never read fantasy outside the Grishaverse and wants to be similarly absorbed.
Quick Reference: Matching Your Mood to Your Next Read
You loved the Darkling most of all: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
You loved the political scheming: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
You loved the magic system: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
You loved the heist-and-crew energy: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (if you haven’t read it yet), The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
You want something more adult: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
You want something fresh with diverse world-building: We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal, Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan, The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
The Bottom Line
The fantasy genre is larger and more varied than it’s ever been, and the success of the Grishaverse is part of why. Bardugo proved, at a time when YA fantasy was dominated by dystopia, that readers were hungry for proper world-building, moral complexity, and villains who make you question your own sympathies. That opened doors for a generation of writers who are now producing some of the most interesting fantasy on shelves.
You don’t have to mourn the end of the Grishaverse. You get to discover what grew in its wake.
Start with Six of Crows if you haven’t. Then let yourself wander. The books on this list will take care of you.