Books like Shadow and Bone

Bardugo set Six of Crows in the same world as Shadow and Bone but shifted everything: the tone, the structure, the character types, and the emotional register. Kaz Brekker runs a gang in Ketterdam, a city built on trade and corruption, and he assembles a crew of six specialists to break into an unbreakable prison. The Grishaverse provides connective tissue, with Grisha powers playing a role in the heist and the political fallout from the Shadow and Bone trilogy shaping the world's tensions.

But where Alina's story follows a single chosen one, Six of Crows distributes its attention across six perspectives, giving each crew member their own backstory, motivation, and arc. Bardugo writes the heist with structural precision, layering plans within plans and revealing information at moments designed to upend what you thought was happening. The romance develops between multiple pairings within the crew, each one shaped by the specific trauma and trust issues the characters carry.

Kaz and Inej's relationship, built on restraint and unspoken understanding, operates with a different gravity than Alina and the Darkling's magnetic opposition. Readers who loved the world but wanted sharper plotting and more complex characters will find Six of Crows delivers on both counts.

Holly Black sends Jude Duarte into the faerie courts as a mortal girl raised among the Folk, hated for her humanity and determined to earn a place in a world that considers her lesser. The power dynamics between Jude and Prince Cardan mirror the tension between Alina and the Darkling: a protagonist drawn to someone whose nature makes them dangerous, unable to fully resist the pull even when logic screams to run. Black writes fae politics with the same layered complexity Bardugo brings to Ravkan court intrigue, filling every conversation with double meanings and strategic positioning.

Jude lacks Grisha powers but compensates with political skill, blackmail, and a willingness to get her hands dirty that sets her apart from Alina's more reluctant approach to power. Black builds her fae world from Irish mythology, giving it a distinct cultural texture that parallels Bardugo's Russian-inspired Ravka without overlapping. The enemies-to-lovers arc between Jude and Cardan burns with a specific cruelty that Bardugo's romances approach but never quite match, making every shift in their dynamic feel like a seismic event.

The trilogy moves fast, packing political upheaval, betrayal, and reversals into three tight books.

Sarah J. Maas drops Feyre into the faerie lands as a mortal huntress paying for a crime she committed in ignorance, and the world she enters is as dangerous and politically charged as Bardugo's Ravka. The High Lords of the fae courts wield power on a scale that matches the Darkling's shadow manipulation, and Feyre must navigate their rivalries while discovering abilities she never knew she possessed.

The trajectory parallels Alina's arc: an ordinary woman pulled into extraordinary circumstances, gaining power that changes her relationships and her sense of self. Maas writes the romance at the center of the story with an intensity that builds across books, shifting the primary love interest in a move that divided readers as sharply as Bardugo's handling of the Darkling did. The fae courts provide political variety, each one governed by different values and aesthetics, creating a map of power that echoes the Grishaverse's distinct nations.

Maas lets her series grow more violent and more sexually explicit as it progresses, pushing into adult territory that Bardugo's YA-oriented trilogy avoids. The worldbuilding expands steadily, adding realms, powers, and ancient threats that keep the stakes rising.

Leigh Bardugo wrote Ninth House as her adult debut, bringing the Grishaverse sensibility to a contemporary setting where Yale University's secret societies practice real magic fueled by human suffering. Alex Stern arrives at Yale as the university's monitor of these societies, tasked with making sure their rituals stay within acceptable bounds. The position gives her access to a world of privilege and supernatural power that mirrors the Second Army's hierarchy in Shadow and Bone, where ability determines status and the people at the top write the rules.

Bardugo writes New Haven with the same atmospheric density she brings to Ravka, turning the campus into a landscape where old money, old magic, and old secrets layer on top of each other. Alex shares Alina's outsider status, arriving from a background that marks her as different from the people she now moves among. But Alex is harder than Alina, carrying a past that has left her with fewer illusions about human nature.

The magic system ties to ghosts, alchemy, and ritual sacrifice, trading the Grishaverse's elemental elegance for something grimier and more visceral. Bardugo proves she can build a second world as immersive as her first.

Maggie Stiefvater builds Henrietta, Virginia, as a town where ley lines run beneath the surface and the dead whisper from the trees. Blue Sargent, the non-psychic daughter of a psychic family, falls in with four boys from the local prep school who are searching for the tomb of a Welsh king buried somewhere along the ley line. Stiefvater writes place the way Bardugo writes culture, making Henrietta's forests, fields, and ruined churches feel like characters in their own right.

The ensemble cast operates differently than Bardugo's Grisha soldiers: Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah each bring a distinct emotional frequency to the group, and Stiefvater develops all of them across four books with equal care. The magic in the Raven Cycle is atmospheric rather than systematic, running on dream objects, ley line energy, and psychic visions that arrive without instruction manuals. Blue's relationship with Gansey develops under a prophecy that echoes Alina's chosen-one burden: she has been told that if she kisses her true love, he will die.

Stiefvater writes prose with a precision that rewards rereading, layering imagery and foreshadowing into passages that seem simple on first encounter.

Naomi Novik builds the Scholomance as a school for wizards with no teachers, no staff, and no safety nets. Monsters called maleficaria infest every corridor, and the graduation ceremony is a gauntlet where a significant percentage of students die. El Higgins, the narrator, carries enough destructive power to level the school but has decided to be good, a choice that gets harder every time something tries to eat her classmates.

The school functions as a pressure cooker the way the Little Palace does in Shadow and Bone, concentrating talented young people in a dangerous environment where alliances determine survival. Novik writes the social dynamics of the Scholomance with satirical precision, showing how magical enclaves reproduce class structures and how kids from powerful families get advantages that students like El never receive. The magic system is metabolic, requiring calories and effort that make every spell a physical cost, giving it a tangible weight that parallels the Grisha system's bodily demands.

El's voice is acidic and funny, providing running commentary on the absurdity of her situation while genuinely caring about the people around her. Novik packs worldbuilding into asides and observations rather than exposition dumps.

Sabaa Tahir constructs the Martial Empire from Roman bones, building a military state where Scholars live under the boots of Martial soldiers and resistance is punished by death. Laia, a Scholar girl, infiltrates the empire's most elite military academy to save her brother. Elias, the academy's top student, wants to desert but cannot escape without triggering consequences for everyone he loves.

Tahir alternates between their perspectives the way Bardugo alternates between Alina's personal stakes and the broader political conflict in Ravka. The Martial Empire's control over the Scholar population mirrors the way Ravka's Grisha are conscripted and controlled, showing what happens when a state turns people into instruments. Tahir introduces supernatural elements gradually, building from a grounded military setting into a world where jinn, prophets, and the dead intervene in human affairs.

The pacing pushes hard, with short chapters and frequent reversals that mirror Bardugo's ability to end chapters on moments that force you to keep reading. Laia's growth from frightened girl to someone willing to sacrifice for her people tracks a similar arc to Alina's, though Tahir puts more physical suffering in her protagonist's path.

Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale is the Russian-rooted fantasy Shadow and Bone fans reach for when they want the folklore turned all the way up. Vasilisa grows up at the edge of a medieval Rus wilderness, able to see the household and forest spirits her village still half-feeds with offerings.

When a new priest arrives and shames the people into abandoning the old ways, the protective spirits weaken and something darker stirs in the woods. Arden gives readers the same wintry Slavic atmosphere Bardugo built the Grishaverse on, except the magic here grows out of fairy tales rather than a ranked army of Grisha.

The pacing is patient and the prose is closer to a hearthside story than a battlefield. Recommended for Shadow and Bone readers who loved the Ravkan setting and want a deeper, quieter dive into the folklore underneath it.

Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone gives Shadow and Bone readers the same shape of story in a fresh setting. Zelie lives in Orisha, a land where a tyrant king has slaughtered the maji and stamped out magic, leaving the white-haired descendants of magic-users as a despised underclass.

When a chance to bring magic back falls into her hands, Zelie sets off on a continent-crossing quest with her brother and a runaway princess, hunted the whole way by a prince who has reasons of his own. Adeyemi keeps the core Grishaverse engine, a young woman who discovers she is central to the survival of magic itself, and runs it through a West-African-inspired world with its own gods and rituals.

The romance simmers, the magic system has clear rules, and the political stakes feel real. Recommended for Shadow and Bone fans who want chosen-one fantasy with a sharper edge.

Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass is the long-running series Shadow and Bone fans graduate to when they want a heroine who grows from teenage prodigy into something far larger over eight books.

Celaena Sardothien is an eighteen-year-old assassin pulled from a salt-mine prison to compete to become the king's champion, and the contest is only the surface of a story that reaches back into buried magic, a conquered kingdom, and a destiny she spends years refusing to face. Maas hands readers the same blend Bardugo perfected, a sharp young woman, a court full of dangerous players, and a slow reveal that she is the key to her world's magic.

The series leans harder into romance and scale as it goes. Recommended for Shadow and Bone readers who want a complete arc with the same chosen-one bones and a much bigger map.

Marie Rutkoski's The Winner's Curse is the quieter cousin of Shadow and Bone, trading sorcery for strategy and keeping every ounce of the romance. Kestrel is the daughter of a Valorian general, a brilliant tactician with no interest in soldiering, who buys an enslaved Herrani boy named Arin on impulse at a market.

What follows is a tense, intelligent push-and-pull between two people on opposite sides of a brutal conquest, both hiding what they want and what they are planning. Rutkoski gives readers the same forbidden-romance charge and imperial backdrop Bardugo built around Alina and the Darkling, just without the light magic.

The pleasure here is watching two clever people try to outmaneuver each other and their own hearts. Recommended for Shadow and Bone fans who care more about the slow-burn romance and court intrigue than the magic itself.

Margaret Rogerson's Sorcery of Thorns is a one-and-done fantasy that hits the Shadow and Bone sweet spot without asking for a multi-book commitment. Elisabeth grew up in one of the Great Libraries, where grimoires are living, dangerous things that can transform into monsters if mishandled.

When a sabotage frames her for a crime, she is thrown together with the sorcerer Nathaniel and his demon servant Silas, and the three uncover a conspiracy reaching the heart of the kingdom. Rogerson gives readers the same enemies-to-lovers spark and dark-magic atmosphere Bardugo fans crave, with a heroine who turns out to matter far more than anyone guessed.

The library setting is gorgeous and the romance is genuinely swoony. Recommended for Shadow and Bone readers who want a self-contained story they can finish in a weekend.

Roshani Chokshi's The Gilded Wolves is the pick for Shadow and Bone readers who fell hardest for the Six of Crows side of the Grishaverse. Set in an alternate 1889 Paris on the eve of the World's Fair, it follows Severin, a hotelier and treasure-hunter, who assembles a crew of gifted outcasts to steal an artifact that could rewrite the balance of power.

Chokshi builds a Forging magic system with real rules, a cast that each carries a private wound, and a city dripping with secret societies. The found-family banter and clever-heist structure echo Bardugo's ensemble work, while the romance threads stay slow and earned.

The setting trades Slavic winters for gaslit French opulence. Recommended for Shadow and Bone fans who want a brainy, diverse crew pulling off an impossible job in a richly imagined world.

Elizabeth May's To Cage a God, released February 2024, is the Imperial-Russia-inspired fantasy Shadow and Bone fans have been waiting years for. Galina and Sera are sisters whose mother grafted gods into their bones, making them living weapons raised to topple an empire ruled by elites bonded to dragon-spirits from another world.

With their mother gone, the sisters split: Sera reunites with a rebel leader who is also her estranged lover, while Galina infiltrates the palace and finds her only safe harbor in a sharp-tongued princess. May keeps the Ravkan flavor Bardugo fans love, the wintry empire, the magic grafted into people's bodies, the revolutionaries pushing back against a brutal crown, while shifting the focus to two heroines and two romances.

Released February 2024. Recommended for Shadow and Bone readers who want the Slavic setting and dangerous power dynamics in a fresh adult-leaning duology.

Kristen Ciccarelli's Heartless Hunter, released February 2024, is the enemies-to-lovers fantasy Shadow and Bone fans will tear through in a sitting. Rune Winters is a socialite hiding a deadly secret: she is a witch, the most hunted thing in a kingdom that overthrew its witch queens in a bloody revolution. By night she smuggles other witches to safety.

Gideon Sharpe is the revolution's most feared witch-hunter, and when the two are thrown together, the attraction is exactly as dangerous as it sounds. Ciccarelli gives readers the same charged dynamic Bardugo built between Alina and the Darkling, a powerful young woman and a man trained to destroy what she is, sparking against each other across an impossible line. The pacing is fast and the chemistry is the whole point.

Released February 2024. Recommended for Shadow and Bone fans who want the forbidden romance dialed all the way up.