# The War Shelf: full text Military fantasy and science fiction: where to start and what to read next. --- # Military Fantasy Books: Where to Start URL: https://thewarshelf.com/military-fantasy-books Military fantasy is fantasy told from inside an army: soldiers, officers and mercenaries, sieges and campaigns, with the war itself at the center rather than in the background. Start with the three books below, then pick by the kind of war you want: mercenary companies, sieges and supply, muskets and gunpowder, soldiers in the making, wars seen from several sides, the big epics, or war played for laughs. ## Start here Must read classics: ### The Black Company Glen Cook Start with The Black Company, then Shadows Linger and The White Rose A mercenary company serves sorcerous tyrants and tries to stay loyal to itself. Read it for how a military unit survives, and stays loyal to itself, under corrupt masters. Heads-up the first chapters can confuse, and you see less of the characters' inner lives than in Abercrombie. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @therealjackfinn YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, The Unabashed Reader, Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (Wired) Readers on Reddit ### The Heroes Joe Abercrombie Start with The Heroes (standalone in the First Law world) Three days of battle between two armies, seen by commanders and exhausted veterans. Read it for command failures, soldiers' viewpoints and the gap between heroic reputation and battle. Heads-up it follows the First Law trilogy, so newcomers miss some returning characters. Awards British Fantasy Award and David Gemmell Legend Award nominee, 2012. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @therealjackfinn YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, The Unabashed Reader Readers on Reddit ### The Thousand Names Django Wexler Start with The Shadow Campaigns, book 1 A colonial regiment fights a religious uprising in a desert colony, seen partly through Winter, a woman serving disguised as a man. Read it for Napoleonic-inspired warfare, regimental friendships and battles where tactics matter. Heads-up this is the opening campaign; the revolutionary politics come in later books, the book focuses strongly on soldiery, not magic (for most of it), it is slower paced. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn, @tl_routledge YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, Megan Nagle Readers on Reddit ## Mercenary companies Soldiers who fight for pay, and what happens when the pay, the employer or the cause runs out. ### The Red Knight Miles Cameron Start with The Traitor Son Cycle, book 1 A mercenary captain takes a contract to defend an abbey against creatures of the Wild. Read it for command, martial detail and fighting supernatural enemies. Heads-up a big ensemble, not one recruit's story. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn Readers on Reddit ### Sheepfarmer's Daughter Elizabeth Moon Start with The Deed of Paksenarrion, book 1 Paks leaves an arranged future behind to join a mercenary company and learns army life from the bottom. Read it for training, duty and a woman's development as a soldier. Heads-up book one is about becoming a soldier; the later paladin story comes after. Awards Compton Crook Award for best first novel, 1989. Recommended by YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (Wired) Readers on Reddit ### The Ten Thousand Paul Kearney Start with The Macht, book 1 A mercenary army loses its employer and has to fight to survive. Read it for army cohesion, retreat and the consequences of failed command. Heads-up ancient-style warfare, no gunpowder. Recommended by YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book ### A Crown for Cold Silver Alex Marshall Start with The Crimson Empire, book 1 A retired conqueror is dragged back into violence, and her old captains with her. Read it for aging warriors, a dangerous reputation and the return of old alliances. Heads-up a sprawling revenge story, not a warm reunion. ### Age of Iron Angus Watson Start with Iron Age trilogy, book 1 An aging Iron Age mercenary looking for work ends up fighting a brutal local ruler. Read it for rough humor, an older fighter and violence grounded in an Iron Age setting. Heads-up invented magic and comic exaggeration, not historical realism. ### Scourge of the Betrayer Jeff Salyards Start with Bloodsounder's Arc, book 1 A young scribe rides with a warband whose captain won't say what the mission is. Read it for an outsider's view of soldiers, their bonds and dangerous orders. Heads-up the mission is deliberately obscure; if The Black Company's opening put you off, this may too. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn ### Ash: A Secret History Mary Gentle Standalone (published in four volumes in the US) A woman raised by mercenaries commands her own company in an alternate 1477, with arquebuses, artillery and an invasion out of a darkened Carthage. Read it for grounded campaign life, a great siege and a secret history that grows stranger as it goes. Heads-up about 1,600 pages, with vivid violence and an early mention of child rape. Awards British Science Fiction Association Award and Sidewise Award, 2001; Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### The War Hound and the World's Pain Michael Moorcock Start with the first von Bek novel A mercenary in the Thirty Years' War is sent by Lucifer to find the Holy Grail. Read it for fantasy set squarely in the Thirty Years' War. Heads-up a philosophical quest, not a campaign novel. ## Sieges, supply and survival Wars decided by walls, food, money and what people do when they run out of all three. ### Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City K. J. Parker Start with The Siege, book 1 A colonel of engineers with no respect for authority has to defend an unprepared city. Read it for engineering, scarce resources and improvisation under siege. Heads-up practical problem-solving and a compromised narrator, not battlefield magic. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It K. J. Parker Start with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City An actor and professional liar is pressed into a dangerous role in a city under siege. Read it for the siege seen by a con man instead of an engineer. Heads-up book two of The Siege; read Sixteen Ways first. ### Legend David Gemmell Start with Legend (the first Drenai novel) The aging warrior Druss joins the defense of a fortress against an overwhelming army. Read it for courage, leadership and sacrifice under siege. Heads-up one concentrated defense, not a long arc. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### Sunset Mantle Alter S. Reiss Standalone novella An exiled soldier decides to defend the threatened settlement where he has found a reason to stay. Read it for a compact story of choosing a place to defend, with practical danger and personal stakes. Heads-up a novella, so little room for a big cast or a long campaign. ### A Dirge for Sabis Leslie Fish and C. J. Cherryh Start with The Sword of Knowledge, book 1 An empire holds a weapon that could save it, if its rulers will see it and pay for it. Read it for survival that hinges on decisions about technology and money. Heads-up an invention-and-money crisis, not squad camaraderie. ### The Company K. J. Parker Standalone Retired soldiers try to build a settlement on a remote island. Read it for what shared service conceals, and whether soldiers' habits can build a civilian life. Heads-up the bonds come under pressure; this is not warm camaraderie. ## Muskets and gunpowder Line infantry, cannon and magic. For the full list, see our guide to flintlock fantasy. ### Promise of Blood Brian McClellan Start with Powder Mage, book 1 My pick A coup, a revolution and powder mages in a world close to revolutionary France. Read it for mages who draw their power from gunpowder, and a war seen by a general, a marksman and a detective. Heads-up it opens after the coup, with adult leaders already in charge; part of the book is an investigation. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2014. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @tl_routledge, @blakearthurpeelofficial YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, Megan Nagle, Library of a Viking Readers on Reddit ### Guns of the Dawn Adrian Tchaikovsky Standalone A kingdom runs out of men in a musket war against its revolutionary neighbor and starts conscripting women. Read it for what service does to someone, and how her view of the war changes. Heads-up there's a lot of home-front life; it's not one battle after another. Recommended by Instagram: @tl_routledge Readers on Reddit ### Death's Angels William King Start with Death's Angels Soldiers of the Seventh Infantry uncover a plot to wake an ancient evil. Read it for soldiers caught in a sorcerous conspiracy. Heads-up it turns into a supernatural quest rather than staying with the campaign. ### Gunmetal Gods Zamil Akhtar Start with Gunmetal Gods A conquering army meets janissary resistance while supernatural powers join the war. Read it for religious war seen from both sides, and magic worse than defeat. Heads-up horror and religious violence are central. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn ### Hawkwood's Voyage Paul Kearney Start with The Monarchies of God, book 1 (five novels) Invasion, religious persecution and an expedition carrying refugees across an unknown ocean, in a world loosely based on Renaissance Europe. Read it for early gunpowder and cannon, war and church power. Heads-up several strands; not only a naval adventure or one regiment's story. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn Readers on Reddit ### His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik Start with Temeraire, book 1 My pick The Napoleonic Wars, fought with an aerial corps of dragons. Published in the UK as Temeraire. Read it for the bond between officer and dragon, and military service in the air. Heads-up alternate history built around one officer, not a war-college romance. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel and Compton Crook Award, 2007; Hugo Award nominee. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @therealjackfinn YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (Wired) Readers on Reddit ### The Guns Above Robyn Bennis Start with The Guns Above The first woman to command a ship in her country's airship corps serves on the front line of a war. Read it for airship operations and the weight of command. Heads-up institutional prejudice is a major thread. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn ## Soldiers in the making Recruits, cadets and young officers learning what the army is for. ### Shaman's Crossing Robin Hobb Start with The Soldier Son, book 1 A second son born to be a soldier enters the cavalry academy as plague arrives from the frontier. Read it for a soldier's education and a frontier caught between two ways of life. Heads-up book one is the academy and the frontier, not battles from the start. ### The Rage of Dragons Evan Winter Start with The Burning, book 1 A young soldier turns grief into a relentless drive to become strong enough for revenge. Read it for an underdog soldier's relentless struggle to get stronger. Heads-up revenge drives everything; he is not a protector hero. Awards Named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @therealjackfinn ### Furies of Calderon Jim Butcher Start with Codex Alera, book 1 (six books, complete) A fifteen-year-old without the elemental powers everyone else has finds himself at the center of a rebellion. Read it for an underdog's ingenuity, elemental magic, and legions, sieges and duels in later books. Heads-up book one doesn't deliver legion command yet, and readers flag sexual violence. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### Stiger's Tigers Marc Alan Edelheit Start with Chronicles of an Imperial Legionary Officer, book 1 Indie A captain inherits a poor company and a dangerous mission to resupply an isolated garrison. Read it for Roman-inspired military organization and a veteran officer protagonist. Heads-up readers find much of it drill and preparation, with late, brief battles and a light Roman flavor. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn Readers on Reddit ### The Poppy War R. F. Kuang Start with The Poppy War trilogy, book 1 (complete) My pick A war orphan tests into the empire's elite military academy, and the school story turns into a brutal war drawn from the Second Sino-Japanese War. Read it for strategy, martial training, shamanic magic, and what war does to the people who wage it. Heads-up it depicts war crimes; reviewers give a content warning. See our page of books like The Poppy War. Awards Compton Crook Award, 2019; Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it YouTube: RazuTales Readers on Reddit ### The Daughters' War Christopher Buehlman Prequel to The Blacktongue Thief Galva, a young noblewoman and soldier, looks back on surviving a long war against goblins, fought alongside war corvids bred for combat. Read it for a soldier's memoir, with letters and journal extracts, and the bonds between siblings at war. Heads-up graphic and gruesome, and there is no overarching plot beyond survival. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### Control Point Myke Cole Start with Shadow Ops, book 1 In the present day, an army officer whose job is hunting people with magic manifests a forbidden power himself. Read it for contemporary military fantasy: a modern army, with magic. Heads-up set in today's world rather than a secondary fantasy world. Awards Compton Crook Award for best first novel, 2013. Recommended by YouTube: Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (Wired) ## Wars seen from several sides ### She Who Became the Sun Shelley Parker-Chan Start with The Radiant Emperor, book 1 A girl takes her dead brother's identity to survive and pursues greatness through rebellion, in a reimagining of the rise of the Ming dynasty. Read it for ambition, rebel armies and rival commanders. Heads-up historical fantasy in which war serves a story of ambition. Awards British Fantasy Award for Best Novel and Best Newcomer, 2022; Hugo Award nominee. ### We Ride the Storm Devin Madson Start with The Reborn Empire, book 1 A princess, an assassin and an exiled warrior captain as an imperial alliance falls apart. Read it for foreign service, factional politics and competing views of one war. Heads-up the soldiers are one strand of three. ### Godblind Anna Stephens Start with Godblind trilogy, book 1 Border defenders face an invasion by followers of the Red Gods, and betrayal at home. Read it for border defenders, an invading religion and political collapse. Heads-up a brutal premise and many factions. ### We Are the Dead Mike Shackle Start with The Last War, book 1 An undefeated warrior caste loses its country in days, and five people fight the occupation that follows. Read it for an occupied nation fighting back, seen from both sides of the war. Heads-up there are torture scenes, and it sits mid to high on the grimdark scale. Recommended by YouTube: ToriTalks ### The Bone Ships RJ Barker Start with The Tide Child, book 1 Rival sea nations hunt a dragon whose bones could decide their war. Read it for shipboard duty, naval warfare and a world shaped by scarce resources. Heads-up the nautical world and its terms take some getting used to. ## The big epics Long series where war is one of the main engines. ### Malazan Book of the Fallen Steven Erikson Start with Gardens of the Moon (ten books, complete) An empire's soldiers fight campaigns across a world thick with history, gods and mages. Read it for soldiers, deep history, hard moral questions and vast convergences. Heads-up the first book explains very little. Awards Gardens of the Moon: World Fantasy Award nominee, 2000. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy YouTube: Bitten by a Radioactive Book, The Unabashed Reader Readers on Reddit ### The Stormlight Archive Brandon Sanderson Start with The Way of Kings A soldier tries to keep expendable men alive in the war on the Shattered Plains. Read it for scale, magical discovery and soldiers holding each other up. Heads-up it's long, and the series isn't finished. Awards The Way of Kings: David Gemmell Legend Award, 2011. ### A Song of Ice and Fire George R. R. Martin Start with A Game of Thrones Dynastic war across Westeros, with a supernatural threat building in the north. Read it for political intrigue, family conflict and characters' inner lives on a huge scale. Heads-up two books are still to come, with no release date. Recommended by YouTube: Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (Wired) ### The Darkness That Comes Before R. Scott Bakker Start with The Prince of Nothing, book 1 A holy war gathers armies and sorcerers in a world haunted by a past apocalypse. Read it for philosophical conflict, religious power and an apocalyptic past. Heads-up readers call the series bleaker than Malazan, with disturbing sexual content later on. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn ### Malice John Gwynne Start with The Faithful and the Fallen, book 1 My pick Aspiring warriors and rival rulers are drawn into a war that keeps spreading. Read it for fast-paced battles and duels on an epic scale. Heads-up a classic good-against-evil story, so less morally gray than most books here. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2013. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Reddit ### The Grace of Kings Ken Liu Start with The Dandelion Dynasty, book 1 (four books, complete) A rebellion against an island empire, and the wars that decide what replaces it. Read it for war on a large scale and the rise and fall of states. Heads-up politics and philosophy over squad-level combat. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2016; Nebula Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Reddit ### The Wolf Leo Carew Start with Under the Northern Sky, book 1 The warrior people of the north fight to hold their border against the human kingdom to the south. Read it for battle-heavy epic fantasy; one battle runs over forty pages. Heads-up it mixes real and invented place names and ends on a cliffhanger. Recommended by Instagram: @therealjackfinn ## Warhammer's soldiers Military science fantasy from the Warhammer 40,000 universe. ### First and Only Dan Abnett Start with Gaunt's Ghosts, book 1 (16+ novels) My pick An Imperial Guard regiment fights through the Sabbat Worlds crusade, with a rival regiment and treachery in its own command. Read it for infantry warfare and regimental loyalty: the Sharpe of Warhammer 40,000. Heads-up science fiction rather than fantasy; some knowledge of the setting helps. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club, HoodGuard, 7 Books for New Warhammer 40k Readers Readers on Reddit ## War played for laughs, mostly ### Kings of the Wyld Nicholas Eames Start with The Band, book 1 Retired mercenaries get the old band back together when a comrade asks for help on a dangerous mission. Read it for older fighters, affectionate banter and a reunion with real stakes. Heads-up an adventuring band, not a regiment. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2018. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @therealjackfinn ### Monstrous Regiment Terry Pratchett Start with Monstrous Regiment (no other Discworld books needed) Pratchett's satire of war and authority, told through a young woman's enlistment. Read it for war and authority seen through comedy and a female recruit. Heads-up it's comedy, though not always a happy one; not grim realism. Recommended by YouTube: The Unabashed Reader Readers on Reddit ### Grunts! Mary Gentle Standalone Orcs find modern weapons in a dragon's hoard and turn into caricatured Marines. Read it for an orc unit's identity and a savage inversion of heroic fantasy war. Heads-up extreme black comedy and graphic violence. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ## Realistic battles and logistics in military fantasy "Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." The line is usually credited to Omar Bradley, though a documented version comes from Robert H. Barrow, a US Marine general, in the San Diego Union of 11 November 1979: "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics. Professionals talk about logistics and sustainability in warfare." An attribution to Bradley appears in a reader's letter in The Economist of 16 November 1996. Somewhere between the two, the line lost half its words and changed generals. When readers go looking for "realistic" military fantasy, they usually mean the battles: tactics that mirror or are closely inspired by how soldiers and armies behave in the real world, commanders who don't win by doing something obviously stupid, a clear sense of who is standing where doing what. And beyond that, whether the weapons and terminology are used correctly. All that matters, but there's another side to the coin. Armies spend far more time not fighting than fighting, and in the meantime they are eating, waiting to be paid and dragging everything they own along with them. A fantasy army that only exists on battle days is a stage army, however realistic the battle is written. Supplying an army was part of its strategy and could determine a war's outcome. The idea of making war pay for itself goes back at least to ancient Rome, where the historian Livy (59 BC–AD 17) credits Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), who sent the grain contractors home in Spain in 195 BC, with the phrase bellum se ipsum alet: "The war will feed itself." Much later, the German poet Friedrich Schiller put a similar phrase into the mouth of General Isolani in Die Piccolomini, the second part of his Wallenstein trilogy: Der Krieg ernährt den Krieg—"War feeds war." In 1625, during the Thirty Years' War, Wallenstein was raising an army for Ferdinand II, using his wealth and access to credit to get it into the field. Forced contributions from the territories supporting his troops helped meet the expense. Enemy, neutral or ally, the distinction mattered rather less when payment was due. Wallenstein wasn't the only commander making civilians pay. In Telgte, the town authorities borrowed money to meet contributions demanded by different commanders, driving the town deeper into debt. The war fed itself at somebody else's expense. What is often forgotten when mentioning "war" here is that it also included the soldiers' families and the people working around them: cooks, washerwomen, merchants and servants. All of them needed feeding too. This baggage train, or Tross, is a part of the army that fantasy rarely shows. In the Thirty Years' War, soldiers traveled with substantial numbers of women, children and other camp followers whose work helped keep the army supplied. They needed feeding, but the soldiers depended on them too. For a fantasy story drawing on this period, the baggage train is one of the better sources of inspiration, I think. Someone from it could become a soldier, or a soldier could end up working in it. Of course that has been done before; it's not as though no stories have tried it. But it should be on the list when judging a story's realism or writing one yourself. Like everything else, realism has to earn its place. Having a realistic army in a fantasy setting is a weird thought anyway, and the detail should go only as far as it helps immerse readers in the world. In the end, every story needs to be just that, a story. And it needs to work as a story, which sometimes means leaving out the more mundane or dirty side of war. Django Wexler jokes that readers aren't especially interested in "the details of orc logistical and latrine arrangements," and he is right. Battles and logistics have to serve the story first and be realistic second. So where do these concerns turn up in fiction? Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. J. Parker puts an engineer in charge of defending a city that lacks the food and weapons it needs for the coming siege. Resources and improvisation are built into the premise. In A Dirge for Sabis, credited to Leslie Fish and C. J. Cherryh, having the weapon is only part of the problem: the threatened empire's rulers must also recognize its value and agree to pay for it. Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes concentrates on a single three-day battle, seen from both sides and different levels of command. Parker's The Company follows five veterans trying to build a life on an abandoned island after their military service. They approach different parts of the question: how you prepare for war, how you experience it and what you carry home. ## From the author of this site ### Only the Banners Change Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteFree novelette Read it for Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it. Heads-up Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another. Read it free ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Read it for pikes, muskets and artillery in a world where soldiers who believe the same thing in formation create real, physical magic; a mystery worked out by veterans who already know the field; and friends trying to keep alive a woman who counts herself among the acceptable losses. Get notified at launch ## FAQ ### What is military fantasy? Fantasy told from inside an army. The war is the center of the story, not its backdrop: soldiers, officers and mercenaries, campaigns, sieges and the cost of all of it. ### Where should I start with military fantasy? The Black Company by Glen Cook for a mercenary company, The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie for a single battle, and The Thousand Names by Django Wexler for musket warfare. ### Are there standalone military fantasy books? Yes: The Heroes, Guns of the Dawn, The Company, Monstrous Regiment, Grunts! and the novella Sunset Mantle all stand alone. ### Which military fantasy series are complete? Malazan Book of the Fallen (ten books) and the Powder Mage trilogy that starts with Promise of Blood are both complete. ### Which military fantasy books are most realistic? It depends on what you mean by realistic. For sieges and supply, try Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and A Dirge for Sabis; for battle seen from the ranks, The Heroes. The essay above explains why logistics matter as much as tactics. ## Sources Book descriptions: the site's book catalog, built from publisher pages and reviews for each book. The essay's sources are in its footnotes. --- # Grimdark Fantasy Books URL: https://thewarshelf.com/grimdark-fantasy-books Grimdark is fantasy without the reassurance that your beloved hero will survive. Also, why do you even love him? He's probably awful (which is what makes the genre interesting!). In grimdark stories, flawed or outright brutal protagonists feature in stories where good and evil are hard to tell apart and violence comes with consequences. The books below focus on grimdark books with soldiers, veterans and wars in it. Start with the three classics, then pick by what you want: soldiers and veterans, big bleak epics, or antiheroes and outlaws. ## Start here Classics: ### The First Law trilogy Joe Abercrombie Start with The Blade Itself Flawed people, sharp humor and compromised power in a world of wars and government intrigue. Read it for compelling flawed people, verbal humor and power that corrupts. Heads-up the endings are bleak; don't expect redemption. Awards The Blade Itself: Compton Crook Award finalist, 2008. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @fitandfantasizing, @gennareading, @noahsbriskreviews YouTube: SuperCliff, Brian Lee Durfee, Mike's Book Reviews, Library of a Viking ### The Black Company Glen Cook Start with The Black Company, then Shadows Linger and The White Rose A mercenary company serves sorcerous tyrants and tries to stay loyal to itself. Read it for how a military unit survives, and stays loyal to itself, under corrupt masters. Heads-up the first chapters can confuse, and you see less of the characters' inner lives than in Abercrombie. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading, @noahsbriskreviews YouTube: Nick Reads Fantasy ### Prince of Thorns Mark Lawrence Start with The Broken Empire, book 1 A young prince leads a band of outlaws on a path of revenge and ambition. Read it for a forceful first-person antihero and ruthless ambition. Heads-up Jorg's cruelty is the point, and flashbacks jump around in time. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading YouTube: Megan Nagle, Brian Lee Durfee, Library of a Viking ## Soldiers and veterans Grimdark about people who fight, and what fighting leaves of them. ### Blackwing Ed McDonald Start with Raven's Mark, book 1 A compromised veteran guards a damaged frontier against hostile supernatural powers. Read it for a compromised veteran, an investigation and the defense of a ruined world. Heads-up one veteran and a mystery, not a regiment's daily life. Recommended by YouTube: Megan Nagle ### Priest of Bones Peter McLean Start with Priest of Bones (four-book arc, complete) An army priest comes home from war to find his city's businesses taken by rival gangs. Read it for a veteran's loyalties tested by organized crime and the state. Heads-up a postwar turf war, not battlefield action, and some readers tire of its repeated phrases. Recommended by Instagram: @fitandfantasizing YouTube: Megan Nagle, Mike's Book Reviews ### The Steel Remains Richard K. Morgan Start with A Land Fit for Heroes, book 1 An alienated war hero sets out to free an enslaved relative while his old comrades face their own trouble. Read it for alienated veterans, sharp anger and the uneasy aftermath of heroic service. Heads-up explicit sex and violence, and uneven pacing. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### We Are the Dead Mike Shackle Start with The Last War, book 1 An undefeated warrior caste loses its country in days, and five people fight the occupation that follows. Read it for an occupied nation fighting back, seen from both sides of the war. Heads-up there are torture scenes, and it sits mid to high on the grimdark scale. Recommended by Instagram: @fitandfantasizing YouTube: ToriTalks, Mike's Book Reviews ### A Crown for Cold Silver Alex Marshall Start with The Crimson Empire, book 1 A retired conqueror is dragged back into violence, and her old captains with her. Read it for aging warriors, a dangerous reputation and the return of old alliances. Heads-up a sprawling revenge story, not a warm reunion. ### Godblind Anna Stephens Start with Godblind trilogy, book 1 Border defenders face an invasion by followers of the Red Gods, and betrayal at home. Read it for border defenders, an invading religion and political collapse. Heads-up a brutal premise and many factions. Recommended by YouTube: Mike's Book Reviews ### Gunmetal Gods Zamil Akhtar Start with Gunmetal Gods A conquering army meets janissary resistance while supernatural powers join the war. Read it for religious war seen from both sides, and magic worse than defeat. Heads-up horror and religious violence are central. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews YouTube: Fina Reads ### We Ride the Storm Devin Madson Start with The Reborn Empire, book 1 A princess, an assassin and an exiled warrior captain as an imperial alliance falls apart. Read it for foreign service, factional politics and competing views of one war. Heads-up the soldiers are one strand of three. ## Big and bleak Epic scale, dark worlds and wars that swallow everyone. ### A Song of Ice and Fire George R. R. Martin Start with A Game of Thrones Rival houses fight over a throne while a supernatural threat builds in the north. Read it for violence, moral conflict and characters whose survival is never certain. Heads-up two books are still to come, with no release date. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @fitandfantasizing YouTube: Brian Lee Durfee, Mike's Book Reviews ### Malazan Book of the Fallen Steven Erikson Start with Gardens of the Moon (ten books, complete) An empire's soldiers fight campaigns across a world thick with history, gods and mages. Read it for soldiers, deep history, hard moral questions and vast convergences. Heads-up the first book explains very little. Awards Gardens of the Moon: World Fantasy Award nominee, 2000. Recommended by YouTube: Brian Lee Durfee ### The Darkness That Comes Before R. Scott Bakker Start with The Prince of Nothing, book 1 A holy war gathers armies and sorcerers in a world haunted by a past apocalypse. Read it for philosophical conflict, religious power and an apocalyptic past. Heads-up readers call the series bleaker than Malazan, with disturbing sexual content later on. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews YouTube: Brian Lee Durfee ### The Court of Broken Knives Anna Smith Spark Start with The Court of Broken Knives Plots gather around the ruler of a threatened imperial city as a rival power prepares for war. Read it for dark epic war and political conflict. Heads-up demanding, unusual prose and a slow first 20–50 pages; the characters are meant to be unlikeable. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### The Mirror Empire Kameron Hurley Start with The Worldbreaker Saga, book 1 Rival societies collide across parallel worlds with unstable magic. Read it for radical worldbuilding and a struggle that resists familiar fantasy defaults. Heads-up hard to get into: several worlds and unfamiliar institutions. ### The Poppy War R. F. Kuang Start with The Poppy War (trilogy) Rin wins a place at an elite military academy, then war comes, and divine power with it. More: Books like The Poppy War Read it for military education, national survival and the moral cost of overwhelming power. Heads-up the school story turns into brutal war. Awards Compton Crook Award, 2019; Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @gennareading YouTube: SuperCliff ## Antiheroes and outlaws Fewer armies, more knives. ### Between Two Fires Christopher Buehlman Standalone A disgraced knight wounded at Crécy protects a girl who sees angels as plague and monsters overrun France. Read it for a burned-out knight and medieval horror, with Heaven and Hell at war. Heads-up more horror than fantasy, with disturbing imagery and an early threat of sexual violence. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading, @jlreadstoperpetuity ### Best Served Cold Joe Abercrombie Standalone, set after the First Law trilogy Betrayed, wounded and with her brother murdered, Monza Murcatto hunts the duke responsible. Read it for a brutal revenge story across a war-torn land. Heads-up Monza is hard to warm to, and some scenes are disturbing. Awards British Fantasy Award and David Gemmell Legend Award nominee, 2010. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading ### Beyond Redemption Michael R. Fletcher Start with Manifest Delusions, book 1 Three violent opportunists plot to kidnap a child in a world where delusion can change reality. Read it for unstable alliances, grotesque magic and repellent protagonists. Heads-up extreme criminal grimdark, with no soldiers and no one to like. ### The Grim Company Luke Scull Start with The Grim Company, book 1 A band of damaged antiheroes is caught between oppressive mage-lords. Read it for damaged fighters, rebellious ambition and open magical threats. Heads-up despite the title, a broad ensemble, not a mercenary-company story. ### Where Loyalties Lie Rob J. Hayes Start with Best Laid Plans, book 1 Indie Pirate captains scheme and fight for power and survival. It won the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off in 2017. Read it for crew loyalty, ruthless leadership and ship-to-ship fights. Heads-up pirate society, not a formal army, and tied to the author's earlier books. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading ### The Lies of Locke Lamora Scott Lynch Start with Gentleman Bastard, book 1 A crew of con artists works the canals of a Venice-like city until things turn dark. Read it for confidence tricks, friendship and verbal ingenuity. Heads-up urban crime and wordplay, no soldiers. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy YouTube: Megan Nagle, SuperCliff ## On the Grimdark fantasy genre and realism Spoiler warning: this section reveals a major twist in Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. In The Two Towers, Gimli and Legolas spend the battle of Helm's Deep keeping score. By morning the dwarf is ahead by one orc, and the two of them treat it as a friendly rivalry. Joe Abercrombie, the British author whose First Law trilogy did more than most to shape grimdark, sees it differently. "They stack up bodies and they count the number of dead," he said on the 2 To Ramble podcast. "It's fine because they're orcs, right? But if they're not orcs, that is horrifying." Heroic stories have always worked this way. The good guys can kill and destroy and not many viewers or readers bat an eye. The most obvious anecdote is probably Marvel. When the Hulk punches through an office tower, nobody in the cinema wonders who was working on that floor. The violence is there to show how powerful and heroic the hero is, nobody really looks at the destruction or deaths. Aragorn, as Abercrombie puts it, can kill hundreds and still end up "a sensitive lover and a positive king and a good friend." I think Abercrombie is right here because the older I'm getting the more the realism or unrealism bothers me in my fiction. "Realism is always a tough word to use in relation to fantasy, or for that matter fiction of any kind," as Abercrombie himself has stated and he is right on that account as well. Fiction, by its nature is somewhat unrealistic, not because it is fantastical and features magic and invented worlds, but because all fiction reduces reality to something that can be written about. Something that is portrayed through dialogue, that even when written realistically and good, is too perfect. In fiction we show readers only what they need to see. If you see a realistic scene, like a character having diarrhea, then there is a reason for that scene. It either characterizes the character or it drives the plot, or there simply needs to be a comic relief scene or we need the character to be in that situation to start off. Good writing features scenes that do character work and plot work at the same time, so realism within that framework means not that everything must be like real life but rather that a story must be as close to reality so that the fourth wall is not broken, so that a reader can continue to be immersed in a story. The Grimdark subgenre asks what would happen if a fantasy hero isn't that much of a hero but more a flawed main character. Abercrombie calls The First Law "a commentary on heroic stories," a cautionary tale about taking them too seriously, and his most famous character makes the point in person. Before the books begin, Sand dan Glokta was a dashing cavalry officer. Captured and tortured in the war, he came home crippled and took up torture himself: a hero who survived, but came home deeply damaged and traumatized. Here I have to shout out the performance of Steven Pacey, whose performance in the audio book version is brilliant. After having read the book, hearing him perform Sand dan Glokta, was like seeing the character come alive. The genre's name is older than Abercrombie, even if he called himself @LordGrimdark on Twitter (as a joke). It originally comes from the tagline of the wargame Warhammer 40,000, "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." From there it was first an insult as it was used to refer to books that readers deemed too dark. Some readers told Abercrombie that life isn't as bleak as this. Abercrombie finds that a strange complaint. His books were never meant as the last word on what life is like. They sit on the shelf beside a great deal of cheerful heroic fantasy and comment on the shortcomings or features of those books. Abercrombie is careful not to claim too much. Still, he argues that a book about war that ignores the world's darkness "can seem a little dishonest," and he has no more time than his critics for grimdark that "simply revels in its own filth and violence without questioning it." That leaves a fair question. If the darkness is supposed to be honest, how does it compare with the real thing? Abercrombie says he reads a lot of military history and first-hand accounts of battle to make his own wars feel authentic, and that's a reasonable place to start. Most grimdark is set in something like the Middle Ages, but medieval wars are hard to check it against. They mostly reach us through chronicles written for kings and abbots, and the people whose villages burned rarely got a say. The Thirty Years' War makes a better test. Fought between 1618 and 1648, it came late enough for printing presses, letters and censuses to record what happened to ordinary people. It was also early enough that armies still marched on foot, carried pikes and swords alongside their muskets, and took cities by siege and storm. It's about as close as history gets to a grimdark war with witnesses. Fought mostly across the Holy Roman Empire, the war began as a quarrel between Catholic and Protestant states and grew into a contest that drew in Spain, Sweden and France. Its most notorious moment came in May 1631 at Magdeburg, a Protestant city that had sided with Sweden. After a siege, Imperial and Catholic League troops under Count Tilly stormed the walls on 20 May, with his general Pappenheim leading the assault. Dietrich von Falkenberg, the officer the Swedes had sent to hold the city, was shot dead. "I believe that over twenty thousand souls were lost," Pappenheim wrote afterward, and he was on the winning side. The sack of Magdeburg, 1631, workshop of Matthäus Merian. Public domain. SourceIn 1630, more than 25,000 people lived in Magdeburg. About 5,000 survived the four days that followed, and a census in 1632 found 449 inhabitants. Fire destroyed 1,700 of the city's 1,900 buildings, although nobody seems to have intended it to spread. Otto von Guericke, a councillor who lived through it, noticed something worse than the killing. Once the townspeople ran out of valuables to hand over, he wrote, "the real trouble began." In Rome, Pope Urban VIII congratulated Tilly for having "washed [his] victorious hands in the blood of sinners." German gained a verb: to magdeburgisieren a place was to wipe it out. Jacques Callot, The Hanging, from The Miseries and Misfortunes of War, 1633. Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0. SourceGrimdark readers sometimes treat the genre as a modern invention, but the seventeenth century had already produced its own. In 1633, the year French troops invaded his home duchy of Lorraine, the printmaker Jacques Callot published Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre, eighteen etchings of soldiers looting, burning and being punished for it. In the best known, the eleventh, soldiers hang from a tree like fruit while their comrades stand around watching and a priest on a ladder reads the last rites. The V&A calls the scenes invented but "true-to-life," which is about as much as anyone can ask of fiction. The first great war novel came thirty-five years later, from someone who had carried a musket himself. Taken by soldiers as a boy, Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen served as a musketeer and later as a regimental secretary. His Simplicissimus (1668) opens with cuirassiers, heavily armored cavalry, torturing the narrator's father and burning the family farm. From there it lurches between atrocity and farce in a way that wouldn't look out of place on a modern grimdark shelf, and a review in the London Review of Books calls it "the first ever war novel." It also made the Schwedentrunk famous. In this "Swedish drink," victims had foul liquid forced down their throats until they gave up where the money or food was hidden. The name blamed the Swedish army, which had entered the war in 1630, but the practice belonged to anyone unpaid and hungry enough, camp followers and marauders included. Magdeburg packed into four days what the rest of the war did more slowly. Across the whole war, the historian Peter Wilson estimates that about 1.8 million soldiers and at least 3.2 million civilians died. He also estimates that the population of the Empire fell by "at least a fifth," which he notes was proportionally "a far higher loss than that suffered in either world war." Asked late in the twentieth century to rank their country's disasters, Germans put the Thirty Years' War ahead of both the Nazi era and the Black Death. I can't think of a grimdark novel that kills a fifth of its world, and I suspect any that tried would be accused of overdoing it. So if grimdark is too dark, history hasn't noticed. What it shares with heroic fantasy, more often than either would like, is the idea that violence belongs to someone impressive. Swap Legolas's tally for a torturer with the best lines, or a warlord who says what everyone else is too squeamish to say, and the scoreboard is still there; it just keeps a different score. Abercrombie has met the readers this produces. Bayaz, the wizard at the heart of The First Law, is "very obviously the villain," he says, and still people tell him, "Man, I love Bayaz, he's so great." The Thirty Years' War had very few charismatic villains. Its armies were enormous and rarely paid on time, so they lived off whatever country they were standing in, by levy when they could and by theft when they couldn't. The soldier pouring filth down a farmer's throat wasn't a sadist with a tragic backstory; he wanted to know where the grain was. Nor was anyone particularly in control. The fire that gave German its word for total destruction seems to have spread by accident. That wouldn't have surprised Abercrombie. He studied psychology, and the part he focused on, he told 2 To Ramble, was "human reliability and human error." He also says that much of military history is "a history of failures and disasters and mistakes more than it is a history of success." Neither the hero with the scoreboard nor the villain with the best lines quite fits a war like that, which is rather the point. Glen Cook seems to have understood this. His Black Company novels, starting in 1984, follow a band of mercenaries through a long, dirty war. Cook served in the US Navy from 1962 to 1972, for a time attached to a Marine Force Recon unit, and left it a month before it shipped out to Vietnam. His characters, he has said, are "real soldiers," and the series "doesn't glorify war; it's just people getting on with the job." That is closer to Magdeburg than any dark lord, because there the job was the problem. If you'd like your fantasy to take that job seriously, pikes, muskets and unpaid wages included, that's where pike-and-shot fantasy comes in. ## From the author of this site ### Only the Banners Change Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteFree novelette Read it for Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it. Heads-up Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another. Read it free ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Read it for pikes, muskets and artillery in a world where soldiers who believe the same thing in formation create real, physical magic; a mystery worked out by veterans who already know the field; and friends trying to keep alive a woman who counts herself among the acceptable losses. Get notified at launch ## FAQ ### What is grimdark fantasy? Fantasy with morally compromised characters, bleak outcomes and violence that has consequences. It often reacts against heroic fantasy, where the good side can kill without anyone counting the cost. ### What is the difference between grimdark and dark fantasy? The terms overlap. Dark fantasy usually means fantasy with horror and the supernatural at its center. Grimdark is about moral outlook: antiheroes, compromised sides and war without glory. A book can be both, like Gunmetal Gods. ### Where does the word grimdark come from? From the tagline of the wargame Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." The essay above tells the rest of the story. ### What are the best grimdark books to start with? Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, starting with The Blade Itself; Glen Cook's The Black Company; and Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns. ## Sources Book descriptions: the site's book catalog, built from publisher pages and reviews for each book. The essay's sources are in its footnotes. --- # Flintlock Fantasy: The Complete Guide URL: https://thewarshelf.com/flintlock-fantasy Flintlock fantasy is fantasy that mixes muskets, magic and fantastical creatures. Usually set in worlds that draw on the period from roughly 1750 to 1840, it says goodbye to the knights, feudal kingdoms and chivalric warfare more commonly associated with traditional fantasy and welcomes the new, modern world, just as history did in the 18th and 19th centuries. The name comes from the flintlock itself which was the ignition mechanism of the musket: a piece of flint held in a spring-loaded hammer, or "cock", strikes steel to create sparks similarly to how a modern day cigarette lighter works, igniting the gunpowder and firing the musket. It was first used in the 1610s and became the standard musket type by 1700. Instead of the medieval chivalric code or a society organized around peasants, church and nobility, flintlock fantasy draws on everything that made this period special: from muskets, standing armies in uniform and revolutions to the Napoleonic Wars, early modern dueling and colonial conquest. Enlightenment ideals, the beginnings of modern science, early industrialization and the Age of Sail also inspire these worlds. Start with the three books below. After that, the books are grouped by the history they borrow from: revolutions, empires and the Napoleonic Wars; colonial frontiers; dragons and airships; and, before the flintlock, the age of pike and shot. ## Start here If you read only three, read these. They top the Goodreads gunpowder-fantasy list and turn up again and again in reader recommendations. ### Promise of Blood Brian McClellan Start with Powder Mage, book 1 My pick A coup, a revolution and powder mages in a world close to revolutionary France. Read it for mages who draw their power from gunpowder, and a war seen by a general, a marksman and a detective. Heads-up it opens after the coup, with adult leaders already in charge; part of the book is an investigation. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2014. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @blakearthurpeelofficial, @griffincooperfantasy YouTube: Megan Nagle, Library of a Viking ### The Thousand Names Django Wexler Start with The Shadow Campaigns, book 1 My pick A colonial regiment fights a religious uprising in a desert colony, seen partly through Winter, a woman serving disguised as a man. Read it for command, regimental friendships and battles where tactics matter. Heads-up this is the opening campaign; the revolutionary politics come in later books. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it YouTube: Megan Nagle Readers on Reddit ### Guns of the Dawn Adrian Tchaikovsky Standalone My pick A kingdom runs out of men in a musket war against its revolutionary neighbor and starts conscripting women. Read it for what service does to someone, and how her view of the war changes. Heads-up there's a lot of home-front life; it's not one battle after another. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Readers on Reddit ## Revolutions, empires and musket armies The heart of the genre: secondary worlds that feel like the 18th and early 19th centuries, with line infantry, artillery and politics in upheaval. ### Sins of Empire Brian McClellan Start with Gods of Blood and Powder, book 1 A mercenary general, a spy and a convicted war hero in a young nation's capital on the edge of revolt. Read it for Lady Vlora Flint and her mercenary company. Heads-up set ten years after the Powder Mage trilogy; it reads better after Promise of Blood. ### The Unbroken C. L. Clark Start with The Unbroken A conscript soldier returns with the imperial army to the homeland she was taken from. Read it for split loyalties between comrades, empire and home. Heads-up the relationship and political bargaining drive the book as much as the fighting. ### A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians H. G. Parry Start with this book The French and Haitian revolutions and British abolition, reimagined with magic built into who holds power. Read it for history-heavy political fantasy about who is allowed to wield power. Heads-up debates and maneuvering, not campaign tactics. ### Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke Standalone English magic returns during the Napoleonic Wars, and one of its magicians goes to war with Wellington. Read it for period texture, magical rivalry and eerie faerie folklore. Heads-up long and digressive, written in the style of 19th-century fiction. Awards Hugo, World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Awards, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2005. ### Grave Empire Richard Swan Start with Grave Empire An imperial war collides with a diplomat's investigation into an apocalyptic prophecy and attacks on soldiers. Read it for imperial institutions, gunpowder warfare and occult dread. Heads-up horror and several viewpoints; not a battlefield procedural. ### A Darkness Forged in Fire Chris Evans Start with Iron Elves, book 1 Muskets, cannon and magic in an empire heading for war. Read it for straightforward gunpowder military fantasy. Heads-up reviewers find the plot familiar: an ancient evil and an alliance of races. ### Death's Angels William King Start with Death's Angels Soldiers of the Seventh Infantry uncover a plot to wake an ancient evil. Read it for soldiers caught in a sorcerous conspiracy. Heads-up it turns into a supernatural quest rather than staying with the campaign. ### The Black Prism Brent Weeks Start with Lightbringer, book 1 Light-based magic, political schemes and the defense of a city in the Seven Satrapies. Read it for a defined magic system and a lot of political maneuvering. Heads-up sexual violence is referenced; some readers dislike how the series ends. Awards David Gemmell Legend Award nominee, 2011. Recommended by Instagram: @blakearthurpeelofficial ## Frontiers and colonies When the guns move to the edge of the map: colonial wars, frontier militias and borderlands. ### At the Queen's Command Michael A. Stackpole Start with Crown Colonies, book 1 The Seven Years' War spills into a fantasy colonial America in 1763; an officer is sent to survey the frontier. Read it for magic-fired muskets and the road to revolution. Heads-up a slow start with the survey mission. ### The Way of Renegades Steve D. Wall Start with The Way of Renegades An exiled war hero, a secretive bard and a young leader hunting muskets for her people. Read it for new weapons and outsiders forced to cooperate. Heads-up several viewpoints and secrets; a frontier ensemble, not one regiment. ### Legacies L. E. Modesitt Jr. Start with Corean Chronicles, book 1 A young man hides his magic, serves in the militia and is captured by an invader who uses magic to enslave. Read it for service, practical competence and survival under coercion. Heads-up a slow soldier's coming-of-age, not veteran banter. ### Witchy Eye D. J. Butler Start with Witchy Eye A girl with a talent for hexing is pulled into the politics of an alternate America. Read it for Appalachian folk magic in an epic conflict. Heads-up an unfamiliar alternate history with a growing cast. ### Old Nathan David Drake Start with Old Nathan A backwoods wizard with a flintlock rifle faces monsters and violent men. Read it for folk magic and practical judgment. Heads-up local and episodic; the rifle doesn't make it military fantasy. ### The Highlands Burn Joe Kassabian Start with The Foundling Brigade Saga, book 1 A young highlander survives a mercenary attack on his village and joins a mercenary brigade for revenge, in a war of rifles and sorcery. Read it for rifles, a mercenary brigade and an Armenian-inspired highland setting. Heads-up a 2026 release with few reviews so far. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ## Dragons and airships in the age of the musket The same wars, fought in the air too. ### His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik Start with Temeraire, book 1 My pick The Napoleonic Wars, fought with an aerial corps of dragons. Published in the UK as Temeraire. Read it for the bond between officer and dragon, and military service in the air. Heads-up alternate history built around one officer, not a war-college romance. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel and Compton Crook Award, 2007; Hugo Award nominee. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Readers on Reddit ### The Guns Above Robyn Bennis Start with The Guns Above The first woman to command a ship in her country's airship corps serves on the front line of a war. Read it for airship operations and the weight of command. Heads-up institutional prejudice is a major thread. ## Before the flintlock: pike, shot and the early modern wars Before the flintlock came the matchlock: tercios, mercenary companies, sieges and the Ottoman frontier. These books borrow from the 15th to 17th centuries. ### Ash: A Secret History Mary Gentle One novel (split into four volumes in the US) A mercenary captain's war in an alternate 1477, with arquebuses, artillery and a siege. Read it for the grounded detail of campaign life in a mercenary company. Heads-up very long, with vivid violence; reviewers also note an early mention of child rape. Awards British Science Fiction Association Award and Sidewise Award, 2001; Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### The Drawing of the Dark Tim Powers Standalone An aging soldier of fortune in Vienna during the Ottoman siege of 1529 turns out to be a reincarnation of Arthur. Read it for assaults on the walls, Swiss-run artillery and Turkish bombardment, with myth on top. Heads-up a 1979 secret history; funny and swashbuckling first, then much darker. ### Gunmetal Gods Zamil Akhtar Start with Gunmetal Gods A conquering army meets janissary resistance while supernatural powers join the war. Read it for religious war seen from both sides, and magic worse than defeat. Heads-up horror and religious violence are central. ### Hawkwood's Voyage Paul Kearney Start with The Monarchies of God, book 1 My pick One of the few series closer to the age of pike and shot, opening with the fall of a holy city much like Constantinople. Read it for gunpowder and cannon in an early modern fantasy war. Heads-up several storylines; not only a naval adventure. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Readers on Reddit ### Children of Earth and Sky Guy Gavriel Kay Standalone Venice, Dubrovnik and the Ottoman frontier in all but name, seen through an archer, an artist, a spy and a merchant. Read it for the 16th-century Adriatic and border raiders. Heads-up literary and reflective, with light magic; not battle-driven. ### The Cardinal's Blades Pierre Pevel Start with The Cardinal's Blades Richelieu's elite team in an alternate France where dragon-blooded powers complicate the intrigue. Read it for swordplay and comrades in a Dumas-style early modern adventure. Heads-up a team adventure, not massed battles. ### The War Hound and the World's Pain Michael Moorcock Start with the first von Bek novel A mercenary in the Thirty Years' War is sent by Lucifer to find the Holy Grail. Read it for fantasy set squarely in the Thirty Years' War. Heads-up a philosophical quest, not a campaign novel. ### The Dark Lands Markus Heitz Standalone in English My pick In 1629, two women undertake a secret mission through war and supernatural danger. Read it for the Thirty Years' War as dark fantasy adventure. Heads-up travel and occult missions, not army command. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### 1632 Eric Flint Start with 1632 A modern West Virginia town is dropped into the Thirty Years' War in 1631. Read it for modern know-how against 17th-century armies. Heads-up alternate history with time travel, not fantasy. ### Iron Company Chris Wraight Warhammer Fantasy A broke, hard-drinking former Imperial engineer is hired to bring down the walls of a rebel mountain fortress with a small, under-equipped force and its artillery. Read it for engineers, gunners and a siege in Warhammer's gunpowder Empire. Heads-up set in Warhammer's Old World; some familiarity helps. ## Indie flintlock Self-published and small-press books that flintlock readers on Instagram and in author circles keep passing around. Expect fewer reviews and rougher editing than in the big-publisher books above, and some very good finds. ### Honor for the Dead Connor Ludovissy Start with Reukanaz, book 1 Indie A soldier with a rifle and "a little bit of runic magic" is hunted by his own comrades in a stalemated war. Read it for a gunpowder war told from the ranks, with a power-hungry sergeant. Heads-up a small series with few reviews. ### God Slayer Robert Jones Start with The Black Powder Prophecy, book 1 Indie Readers call it "flintlock low-fantasy" and "a solid war story" with gritty battles. Read it for believable battle sequences. Heads-up readers mention editing problems, a slow, exposition-heavy start and a crowded cast. ### Black Powder, Black Heart Seth Hobbs Start with Sendyne Flintlock Fantasy Chronicles, book 1 A government assassin in a world centuries after a revolution, ruled by a powerful church, with war coming. Read it for dark flintlock fantasy about church politics and civil war. Heads-up a debut with little review coverage so far. ### No Man's Daughter Justine Lombardi Start with The Killing Frost Cycle, book 1 A fugitive takes an arcane rifle from her father's undead hands to hunt a monster in a 19th-century world of Norse and Appalachian folklore. Read it for a cursed rifle on a mountain frontier. Heads-up a monster hunt, not a war. ### Blades Forged P. J. Ashton Start with Empire of Knives, book 1 Indie Self-described as "grimdark epic fantasy of war"; reviewers call it extremely dark. Read it for violence and mentally unstable heroes, if that is your thing. Heads-up no redeemable characters, according to its reviews; the blurb doesn't mention guns, though the cover suggests the flintlock era. ### A Gospel of Black Powder Rotaru Mihai-Cristian Standalone (106 pages) Indie Gunpowder against an aristocracy of mages who treat everyone without magic as lesser. Read it for a short, new take on powder versus privilege. Heads-up a novella, published May 2026. ## What these books get right about musket warfare The best flintlock fantasy gets the army right: the line of musketeers matters more than a single skilled marksman. Drill can decide battles, and a good infantry square can hold off cavalry. Battles grew larger, and gunpowder smoke hid so much of the field that those fighting often didn't know who was winning until somebody ran. Read more: How Musket Warfare Actually Worked ## Where the genre begins and ends The term flintlock fantasy has been around since at least 1994, when reviewer Andrew Darlington used it for Stephen Hunt's novel For the Crown and the Dragon. But it did not catch on as either a label or a distinct subgenre for another nineteen years, even as Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) and Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels (from 2006) brought magic into the Napoleonic Wars of our own world. That changed around 2013, when Brian McClellan's Promise of Blood and Django Wexler's The Thousand Names appeared within months of each other. Brent Weeks's cover blurb for Promise of Blood called it "not only the finest flintlock fantasy I've read, but also the most fun." Readers still argue about what exactly the term defines. Is a Wild West story with magic flintlock fantasy, or does it belong to the broader category of "gunpowder fantasy"? What about stories drawing on the late nineteenth century or the early twentieth, which often count as gaslamp fantasy or steampunk? Are airships allowed? For this guide, dragons and airships fit as long as they fly over musket armies. Wild West stories with magic, railways and revolvers belong to the broader category of gunpowder fantasy. The further a story moves into steam engines and electric light, the closer it drifts to gaslamp fantasy or steampunk. ## The most important omission readers often make is that they forget that the flintlock is older than its genre suggests. Very few of these books care what kind of lock their muskets actually use, and most of the best-known examples draw on the period after 1750: the age of revolutions, mass armies and increasingly modern states. The name is a little misleading, then. The flintlock appeared in France in the 1610s, became the standard infantry weapon between about 1650 and 1700, and began to be replaced by the percussion cap in the 1820s; the British Army began converting its Brown Bess muskets in 1839. The century in which the weapon became firmly established—the century of Louis XIV's wars, the siege of Vienna in 1683 and the War of the Spanish Succession—hardly appears in the genre at all. Read more: Matchlock vs Flintlock: The Century Fantasy Skips ## Before the flintlock: the age of pike and shot The earlier era of pike and shot—roughly 1500 to 1650, or sometimes stretched toward 1700—is the era in which the flintlock was invented. It is almost entirely absent from the genre, which is a huge missed opportunity. Paul Kearney's The Monarchies of God, set in a world loosely based on Renaissance Europe, and Michael Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain, set during the Thirty Years' War, are rare exceptions. That age was defined by different things: mercenaries, wars of religion, conquistadors, voyages of discovery, early settlement and colonization, and the Renaissance, rather than standing armies, uniforms, Enlightenment ideals, Napoleon and early industrialization. Knights still rode in armor and hussars still charged with lances, but now alongside muskets and cannons. Put a knight of the 1550s next to a cavalryman of the 1750s and the break is plain to see. And it wasn't the flintlock that ended the age of pike and shot, but the bayonet: once musketeers could fix a blade to their muskets and still fire, the pikeman had no job left, and by the early 18th century he was gone. Read more: Pike-and-Shot Fantasy ## From the author of this site That earlier age is the one I write about. If you want to see it with magic in it, my free novelette Only the Banners Change is set on a Cossack-style river frontier, where a small community has to pay tribute to the empire by sending it their boys. They are secretly drawn into war, partly against their will, by two of their leaders who want to save their own child. The magic in this world works only when people believe the same thing, which means manipulation risks an even deeper betrayal. You can get it by signing up to my newsletter. The first full novel, The Witch Field: Acceptable Loss, follows in 2027. ### Only the Banners Change Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteFree novelette Read it for Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it. Heads-up Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another. Read it free ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Read it for pikes, muskets and artillery in a world where soldiers who believe the same thing in formation create real, physical magic; a mystery worked out by veterans who already know the field; and friends trying to keep alive a woman who counts herself among the acceptable losses. Get notified at launch ## FAQ ### What is flintlock fantasy? Fantasy set in a world of muskets, cannon and gunpowder armies, usually modeled on the age of revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars, roughly 1750 to 1840, rather than the Middle Ages. ### What is the best flintlock fantasy book to start with? Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan or The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. They are the two books with the most votes on Goodreads' gunpowder fantasy list. ### Is flintlock fantasy the same as steampunk? No. Steampunk centers on steam technology and a Victorian feel; flintlock fantasy centers on black-powder weapons and the armies and revolutions of the musket age. Some books, like The Aeronaut's Windlass, sit in between. ### Is flintlock fantasy the same as gunpowder fantasy? Mostly, though readers draw the line in different places. "Gunpowder fantasy" is the wider term and also covers the matchlock era and industrial worlds. ### Which flintlock fantasy books are mostly about the war itself? The Thousand Names (command and regiments), Gunmetal Gods (a religious war from both sides), The Guns Above (airship command) and Honor for the Dead (a soldier's view from the ranks). ## Further reading ## Literature Andrade, Tonio, "The Arquebus Volley Technique in China, c. 1560: Evidence from the Writings of Qi Jiguang", in: Sim, Teddy Y. H. (ed.), The Maritime Defense of China. Ming General Qi Jiguang and Beyond, Singapore 2017, pp. 73–92. Archer, Christon I./Ferris, John R./Herwig, Holger H./Travers, Timothy H. E., World History of Warfare, Lincoln 2002. Börekçi, Günhan, "A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries' Use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman-Habsburg War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins", in: Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59/4 (2006), pp. 407–438. Duffy, Christopher, Fire and Stone. The Science of Fortress Warfare 1660–1860, New York 1975. Kalaus, P., "Schiessversuche mit historischen Feuerwaffen", in: Von alten Handfeuerwaffen, Graz 1989. Muir, Rory, Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon, New Haven/London 1998. Parker, Geoffrey, "From the House of Orange to the House of Bush. 400 Years of Revolutions in Military Affairs", in: Militaire Spectator 172/IV (2003), pp. 177–193. Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, Cambridge 1996. Rogers, Clifford J., "Tactics and the Face of Battle", in: Tallett, Frank/Trim, D. J. B. (eds.), European Warfare 1350–1750, Cambridge 2010. Strickland, M./Hardy, R., The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose, Stroud 2005. --- # Pike-and-Shot Fantasy Books URL: https://thewarshelf.com/pike-and-shot-fantasy-books Pike-and-shot fantasy is fantasy set at the technology level of roughly 1500 to 1700, when pikemen and musketeers fought side by side, mercenary regiments caused more trouble than they were worth, and wars were fought over religion and dynasty. Very few books draw inspiration from this era. Good places to start are Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle, Hawkwood's Voyage by Paul Kearney and Gunmetal Gods by Zamil Akhtar. ## The books Before the flintlock came the matchlock: tercios, mercenary companies, sieges and the Ottoman frontier. These books borrow from the 15th to 17th centuries. ### Ash: A Secret History Mary Gentle One novel (split into four volumes in the US) A mercenary captain's war in an alternate 1477, with arquebuses, artillery and a siege. Read it for the grounded detail of campaign life in a mercenary company. Heads-up very long, with vivid violence; reviewers also note an early mention of child rape. Awards British Science Fiction Association Award and Sidewise Award, 2001; Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### The Drawing of the Dark Tim Powers Standalone An aging soldier of fortune in Vienna during the Ottoman siege of 1529 turns out to be a reincarnation of Arthur. Read it for assaults on the walls, Swiss-run artillery and Turkish bombardment, with myth on top. Heads-up a 1979 secret history; funny and swashbuckling first, then much darker. ### Gunmetal Gods Zamil Akhtar Start with Gunmetal Gods A conquering army meets janissary resistance while supernatural powers join the war. Read it for religious war seen from both sides, and magic worse than defeat. Heads-up horror and religious violence are central. ### Hawkwood's Voyage Paul Kearney Start with The Monarchies of God, book 1 My pick One of the few series closer to the age of pike and shot, opening with the fall of a holy city much like Constantinople. Read it for gunpowder and cannon in an early modern fantasy war. Heads-up several storylines; not only a naval adventure. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Readers on Reddit ### Children of Earth and Sky Guy Gavriel Kay Standalone Venice, Dubrovnik and the Ottoman frontier in all but name, seen through an archer, an artist, a spy and a merchant. Read it for the 16th-century Adriatic and border raiders. Heads-up literary and reflective, with light magic; not battle-driven. ### The Cardinal's Blades Pierre Pevel Start with The Cardinal's Blades Richelieu's elite team in an alternate France where dragon-blooded powers complicate the intrigue. Read it for swordplay and comrades in a Dumas-style early modern adventure. Heads-up a team adventure, not massed battles. ### The War Hound and the World's Pain Michael Moorcock Start with the first von Bek novel A mercenary in the Thirty Years' War is sent by Lucifer to find the Holy Grail. Read it for fantasy set squarely in the Thirty Years' War. Heads-up a philosophical quest, not a campaign novel. ### The Dark Lands Markus Heitz Standalone in English My pick In 1629, two women undertake a secret mission through war and supernatural danger. Read it for the Thirty Years' War as dark fantasy adventure. Heads-up travel and occult missions, not army command. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### Demon Summoner: Apprentice Greg Walters Start with The Feldsher's Apprentice, book 1 My pickIndie Eighteen-year-old Gustav, whose father dies in a mercenary raid, is apprenticed to a "Black Feldsher" in the last years of the Thirty Years' War. Read it for the end of the Thirty Years' War, with real history and supernatural creatures mixed together. Heads-up more supernatural than most books here; self-published. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Kirkus Reviews ("a lively and absorbing tale") ### 1632 Eric Flint Start with 1632 A modern West Virginia town is dropped into the Thirty Years' War in 1631. Read it for modern know-how against 17th-century armies. Heads-up alternate history with time travel, not fantasy. ## From the author of this site This is the age I write about. If you want to see it with magic in it, my free novelette Only the Banners Change is set on a Cossack-style river frontier, where a small community has to pay tribute to the empire by sending it their boys. They are secretly drawn into war, partly against their will, by two of their leaders who want to save their own child. The magic in this world works only when people believe the same thing, which means manipulation risks an even deeper betrayal. You can get it by signing up to my newsletter. The first full novel, The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss, follows in 2027. ### Only the Banners Change Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteFree novelette Read it for Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it. Heads-up Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another. Read it free ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Read it for pikes, muskets and artillery in a world where soldiers who believe the same thing in formation create real, physical magic; a mystery worked out by veterans who already know the field; and friends trying to keep alive a woman who counts herself among the acceptable losses. Get notified at launch ## Pike And Shot – A Neglected Era Jacob de Gheyn II, a musketeer from Wapenhandelinghe (The Exercise of Arms), 1607, the first illustrated drill manual. Public domain. Source The pike-and-shot era is notoriously underappreciated in popular history, so as a historian studying this period, I'm not at all surprised that it has been neglected in fantasy as well. History, for many people, unfortunately goes something like this: ancient Greece – ancient Rome – Vikings – knights – British Empire – Napoleon – industrialization – First and Second World Wars – Cold War – present. Somehow, we get from knights to Napoleon without anyone having to explain where all the muskets came from. Among the missing chapters are the Renaissance and the pike-and-shot era, roughly from 1500 to 1700. It's a complicated period in which adversaries often divide along religious lines rather than neatly corresponding to nation states. It is also essential to understanding how modern states developed and how European expansion reshaped the world. Between the large empires of the period and along their edges lay wild frontiers and the people who lived on them: the Cossacks, the Grenzers, the large Arab nomad communities, the peoples of the Eurasian steppe and the settlers in the Americas. Even pirates would not be out of place on that list. It's one of the richest periods history has to offer, and it needs more love when it comes to fantasy. ### What pike and shot was On 2 March 1476, about 18,000 Swiss and their allies, most of them infantry, confronted the army of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, near Grandson. On paper, Charles had plenty in his favor: formidable cavalry, powerful artillery and an enormous war chest. Days earlier, he had hanged or drowned the 412 men of the Grandson garrison after promising to spare them. But his cavalry failed to break the Swiss vanguard. When he ordered a withdrawal to better ground just as the Swiss main body arrived, the maneuver turned into a rout. The Swiss took about 400 of his guns and so much treasure that they rioted over dividing it. Apparently, military discipline only went so far once there was jewelry to divide. Less than a year later, Charles was dead outside Nancy, and the Swiss had given Europe's rulers plenty to think about. The pike and the discipline to use it were a large part of the answer. At up to 5.4 meters, it could project well beyond a horseman's lance, and a deep square could put several rows of steel points between a charging horse and the men in the front rank. William Garrard wrote in 1591 that a pike square was "as hard to be pierced by a horse as an angry porcupine or hedgehog with the end of a bare finger." Pikes were also cheap, and basic pike drill could be taught much faster than the skills of a knight or a trained archer. So everyone copied the Swiss, the Landsknechts and the Spanish first among them. Then the guns caught up. At Bicocca, on 27 April 1522, Swiss pikemen in French service charged across open fields under artillery fire, ran into a sunken road and earthworks, and were shot down by Spanish arquebusiers under Fernando d'Ávalos, with Frundsberg's Landsknechts dug in alongside them. Estimates put Swiss losses at more than 3,000 dead, against around 200 Imperial losses. Whether the Spanish already fired in organized rotating volleys is still debated. To my mind, the earthworks and the Swiss insistence on attacking before their supporting artillery was ready explain more than any new drill does. Guicciardini wrote that the Swiss went home "diminished in numbers, but much more diminished in audacity," and Spanish gained a word: a bicoca is a bargain, something won cheaply. Bicocca didn't end the pike. It showed what happened when pikemen attacked a prepared position without enough support. On its own, a pike square was vulnerable to gunfire, including cavalry using the so-called caracole: riding up, firing their pistols and wheeling away. Shot on its own was vulnerable to a charge. Robert Barret, an English soldier who had spent most of his career among the French, Dutch, Italians and Spaniards, put it best: "The one without the other is weakened the better halfe of their strength." The Spanish tercio, standardized in 1534, was built on that idea and dominated European battlefields for about a century. For a fantasy writer, that cooperation matters more than the spectacle of two hedges of spears grinding into each other. By the late sixteenth century, battles were increasingly decided by shooting, and much of the pike's work was protecting the men doing it. The next change was the (re)introduction of drill. From the 1590s, Maurice of Nassau and his cousins rebuilt the Dutch army into smaller, shallower units, drawing partly on Roman and Byzantine manuals. In 1594, Willem Lodewijk described the countermarch in a letter to Maurice: each rank fires and steps to the rear, so that "before the last ranks have fired, the first will have reloaded." Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden took it further with six ranks instead of ten, light regimental guns and salvoes. At Breitenfeld, on 17 September 1631, Tilly, who had sacked Magdeburg four months earlier, routed the Saxons within about an hour. The Swedish second line under Gustav Horn re-formed to meet him, and in the end it was Tilly's tercios that broke. It's easy to make too much of this. Three years later at Nördlingen, the tercios beat the Swedes decisively, and historians such as David Parrott and Geoffrey Parker warn against reading Breitenfeld as the death of the old system. The guns won in the end, but only slowly. At the start of the sixteenth century, perhaps a tenth of European infantry carried firearms; by the Thirty Years' War, it was about half. Around 1700, many European armies were abandoning the pike, and in 1704 Spain reorganized its tercios as regiments. The socket bayonet allowed a musketeer to fire with a blade fixed beside the muzzle. The pikeman's job had become an attachment. ### Two gunpowder ages If you've read flintlock fantasy, it's tempting to think of pike and shot as the same world with older guns. They are really two different gunpowder ages. Flintlock fantasy usually borrows from the years between the Seven Years' War and about 1840: standing armies, national uniforms and line infantry with bayonets instead of separate ranks of pikemen. Pike and shot is the age before that, of armies often raised for a particular war, field signs alongside increasingly uniform clothing, and wars fought over religion and dynasty. Several of the military changes separating the two gathered pace between about 1650 and 1700. These are broad contrasts in European warfare. Practices overlapped, and different armies changed at different times. -——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- Pike and shot (c. 1500 to 1650/1700) Flintlock fantasy's age (c. 1750 to 1840) -—————————- — ——————————————————————————————————————————— — -——————————————————————————————————--- Infantry Pikemen fighting alongside arquebusiers and matchlock musketeers, in formations including tercios Line infantry with flintlock muskets and socket bayonets; separate pikemen largely gone Cavalry Lancers, cuirassiers in three-quarter armor, reiters with wheellock pistols, Polish winged hussars Hussars, dragoons, lancers and cuirassiers; much less extensive armor, where worn Who fights A mixture of permanent troops and forces raised for a war, including mercenary companies and regiments raised by military contractors Standing armies paid by the state, supplemented or expanded through wartime recruitment and conscription Dress Varied clothing with field signs such as scarves, sashes and sprigs of foliage; growing use of regimental colors and uniform dress Standardized military uniforms are the norm What the wars are about Religion, dynasty and territory: the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years' War, the Ottoman frontier Empire, dynasty and revolution: the Seven Years' War, the American and French revolutions, Napoleon The wider world The Renaissance, European oceanic expansion, the conquistadors and colonies in the Americas Global empires, the Enlightenment, early industrialization -——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- The break, c. 1650 to 1700. Several of the changes cluster around these fifty years: The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War in 1648. Uniform dress becomes increasingly common during the later seventeenth century. Earlier experiments included Swedish infantry under Gustavus Adolphus and the New Model Army's red coats from 1645. Flintlocks increasingly replace matchlocks as standard infantry weapons. The socket bayonet helps end the pike. Earlier plug bayonets fitted inside the muzzle and prevented firing. Socket bayonets, introduced in the later seventeenth century, allowed musketeers to keep firing with the blade attached. Hugh Mackay's innovation after Killiecrankie in 1689 was a ring fitting, rather than an uncontested invention of the socket bayonet. These changes also sit within a longer debate about the military revolution. Michael Roberts called 1560 to 1660 a "great divide separating medieval society from the modern world"; Geoffrey Parker stretched the military revolution to 1530 to 1710. Neither span gives us a neat boundary between two fantasy settings, but both help explain how much changed between them. ## Bibliography ### Primary sources Barret, Robert. The Theorike and Practike of Moderne Warres. London, 1598. Barwick, Humphrey. A Breefe Discourse, Concerning the Force and Effect of All Manuall Weapons of Fire. London, c. 1592. Garrard, William. The Arte of Warre. London, 1591. Guicciardini, Francesco. Storia d'Italia. Florence, 1561. William Louis of Nassau to Maurice of Nassau, 8 December 1594. Koninklijk Huisarchief, The Hague, Ms. A22-1XE-79. ### Literature Andrade, Tonio. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. "Bayonet." In Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. Black, Jeremy. European Warfare, 1494–1660. London: Routledge, 2002. Clodfelter, Micheal. Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015. 4th ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2017. Dodge, Theodore Ayrault. Gustavus Adolphus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1895. Notario López, Ignacio, and Iván Notario López. The Spanish Tercios 1536–1704. Oxford: Osprey, 2012. Oman, Charles. A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century. London: Methuen, 1937. Parker, Geoffrey. "The Limits to Revolutions in Military Affairs: Maurice of Nassau, the Battle of Nieuwpoort (1600), and the Legacy." Journal of Military History 71, no. 2 (2007): 331–72. Parker, Geoffrey. "The 'Military Revolution,' 1560–1660 – a Myth?" Journal of Modern History 48, no. 2 (1976): 195–214. Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Parrott, David. "Strategy and Tactics in the Thirty Years' War: The 'Military Revolution'." Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 38 (1985): 7–25. Roberts, Michael. "The Military Revolution, 1560–1660." In The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, edited by Clifford J. Rogers, 13–35. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. First published Belfast, 1956. Rogers, Clifford J. "Tactics and the Face of Battle." In European Warfare, 1350–1750, edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim, 203–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Rodríguez Hernández, Antonio José. "The Spanish Imperial Wars of the Sixteenth Century." In War in the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1600, edited by Francisco García Fitz and João Gouveia Monteiro. London: Routledge, 2018. Van Nimwegen, Olaf. The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588–1688. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010. ### Online "Pike & Shot Tactics." BCW Project. https://bcw-project.org.uk/military/tactics. Queloz, Dimitry. "Grandson, Schlacht von." Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 17 July 2007. https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/008883/2007-07-17/. Wiener, James Blake. "The Battle of Grandson." Swiss National Museum blog, June 2020. https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2020/06/the-battle-of-grandson/. --- # Military Science Fiction Books: Where to Start URL: https://thewarshelf.com/military-science-fiction-books Military science fiction follows soldiers, pilots and ship crews through the wars of the future: boot camp, power armor, fleet battles, and what fighting does to the people who do it. Every book below was recommended by a YouTube channel, an Instagram book creator or a named reviewer, or won or was shortlisted for a major science fiction award; each card says which. Each card also says what to know before you start. The list is spoiler-free. ## Start here The classics that come up on almost every list. ### Starship Troopers Robert A. Heinlein Standalone What it is Johnny Rico enlists after high school, goes through boot camp, learns to fight in power armor and is sent to war against an alien species the soldiers call the Bugs. Good to know as much moral and political philosophy as combat, and readers still argue about its politics. One creator calls it the easiest book to start a discussion with. Awards Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1960. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts, Secret Sauce of Story Craft ### The Forever War Joe Haldeman Start with The Forever War What it is a soldier is drafted into an interstellar war. Travel near the speed of light means far more time passes at home than for him. Haldeman was drafted and fought in Vietnam, and it shows. Good to know power armor, but the real subject is what the war is for. Forever Peace is a separate novel, not a sequel. Awards Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Armor John Steakley Standalone What it is Felix, a soldier in power armor on the planet Banshee, survives battle after battle, and the book stays with what that does to his mind. A second storyline follows a different man on another world. Good to know often compared to The Forever War. One creator found the second storyline a slog to get through. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts, Secret Sauce of Story Craft ### Ender's Game Orson Scott Card Start with Ender's Game (the novel) What it is a gifted child is put through brutal war games at an orbital Battle School to prepare for an alien invasion. Good to know a much younger hero than the rest of this list. Awards Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. Recommended by Instagram: @thekennygould (for Red Rising fans) YouTube: Hugonauts Readers on Goodreads ## Power armor and the front line ### All You Need Is Kill Hiroshi Sakurazaka Standalone (translated from Japanese) What it is a new recruit in a power suit dies in battle against the alien Mimics and wakes up on the same day, again and again, until a legendary soldier named Rita helps him find a way out. Good to know the book behind the film Edge of Tomorrow, with a different ending. Short. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts, Secret Sauce of Story Craft ### The Light Brigade Kameron Hurley Standalone What it is Dietz joins a corporate army for a war with Mars. Soldiers are broken down into light and beamed to the battlefield, and Dietz's drops start going wrong: the battles she remembers don't match the war she is told about. Good to know a mystery as much as a war story. One creator rates it ten out of ten. Awards Hugo Award finalist and Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist, 2020. Recommended by YouTube: Secret Sauce of Story Craft ### Old Man's War John Scalzi Start with Old Man's War What it is old people are recruited to fight aliens in exchange for new young bodies, and the hero goes to war with friends his own age. Good to know funny and fast; a playful answer to Starship Troopers and The Forever War. Awards Hugo Award finalist, 2006; the series won the Hugo for Best Series in 2026. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Steel on Target Kevin Ikenberry Start with The Buzzer War, book 1 (six books) What it is after his power-armored infantry unit is overrun by insect-like aliens, Lieutenant Mike Sandhurst is left for dead, rescued and reassigned to tanks, where he has to learn armored warfare from scratch. Good to know tanks, infantry and air support fighting together; reviewer Jim Chapman ranks the series among the best of recent decades. Recommended by YouTube: Burn Enough (reviewer Jim Chapman's top 10), Burn Enough (Jim Chapman's best of 2025) ### Hammer's Slammers David Drake Start with Hammer's Slammers (linked stories) What it is Colonel Hammer's mercenary armored regiment, with supertanks and powerguns, fights other people's wars. Drake served with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. Good to know brutal close combat; one reviewer reads it as a horror story about war. Each story ends on a grim note. Recommended by Tor.com review ### Columbus Day Craig Alanson Start with Expeditionary Force, book 1 Indie What it is aliens invade Earth, and a soldier who helps capture one ends up shipped off to fight on another planet. Good to know humor and competence; one reviewer calls it the military-SF Dungeon Crawler Carl, while the other found a main character's banter cringeworthy. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ## Ships and fleets ### On Basilisk Station David Weber Start with Honor Harrington, book 1 What it is Honor Harrington, a captain in the Royal Manticoran Navy, fights age-of-sail naval battles in space: broadsides, crossing the enemy's T, and plenty of politics. Good to know Master and Commander in space. Slow and detailed; one of the two reviewers bounced off it. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Warship Joshua Dalzelle Start with Black Fleet trilogy, book 1 Indie What it is an aging starship and its captain, in a fleet that has not fought in generations, run into aliens who have wiped out human colonies. Good to know straightforward ship combat with believable orbital maneuvering. The reviewer liked book three less than the first two. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### The Vorkosigan Saga Lois McMaster Bujold Start with Shards of Honor or Barrayar What it is a military and aristocratic family in a feudal interstellar society. In Barrayar, Cordelia, who cannot win by violence, has to find other ways through a coup. Good to know over twenty episodic books, some more military than others; you can stop anywhere. Awards Hugo Award for Best Series, 2017. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Downbelow Station C. J. Cherryh Start with Downbelow Station (Alliance-Union universe) What it is Pell station is caught between a declining Earth Company, its neglected Fleet and the rising Union. Refugees from a destroyed station pour in, and the station's leaders have to hold it together. Good to know as much about logistics, refugees and station politics as about battles, told through several viewpoints. Awards Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1982. ### The Mote in God's Eye Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle Start with The Mote in God's Eye What it is when an alien probe arrives from the Mote system, the Imperial Navy sends two warships and an embassy to make first contact with the Moties. Good to know a source of many military-SF conventions. A reviewer flags dated attitudes: the navy has no women, and the Empire treats destroying whole worlds as an option. Awards Hugo and Nebula Award nominee; second in the 1975 Locus poll. ### The Expanse James S. A. Corey Start with Leviathan Wakes What it is the politics of war inside and between the factions and governments of a settled solar system, seen from both the powerful side and the underdog rebellion. Good to know not military SF at the start; the military side grows from around book five or six. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ## War and what it costs ### The Parafaith War L. E. Modesitt Jr. What it is one soldier goes from ground combat to pilot school to the intelligence service in a war with strong religious undertones. Good to know about the ethics of war and how hard it is to stop fighting once the enemy has been made into something other. Ignore the cover: it looks like a romance novel and isn't one. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Use of Weapons Iain M. Banks Culture series What it is a soldier working for the Culture's Special Circumstances fights in other civilizations' wars. Two timelines alternate. Good to know the same creators also recommend Look to Windward from the series, for what it says about soldiers and trauma. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie Start with book 1 of the trilogy What it is the artificial intelligence of a warship, which controls human bodies as part of itself. Half the story follows a military occupation of a colonized planet. Good to know only book one is military SF; the sequels change focus. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Ninefox Gambit Yoon Ha Lee Start with Machineries of Empire, book 1 What it is Captain Kel Cheris, disgraced for unorthodox tactics, gets one chance to redeem herself: retake a fortress held by heretics, with the help of Shuos Jedao, an undead tactician who never lost a battle but once destroyed two armies, one of them his own. Good to know the author's debut and the first book of the Machineries of Empire series. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2017; Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke finalist. ### Some Desperate Glory Emily Tesh What it is Kyr has trained all her life on Gaea Station, where the last of humanity survives, to avenge Earth's destruction. When Command sends her brother to near-certain death and assigns her to bear children, she escapes, and finds the universe is not what she was taught. Good to know a book about being raised inside a militarized cause, and what it takes to leave it. Awards Hugo Award for Best Novel, 2024. ### Embedded Dan Abnett Standalone What it is a journalist is secretly embedded through a chip in a soldier's head to witness a battle. When the soldier is knocked out, the journalist has to work his body and survive. Good to know a civilian's view of combat; the creator lists it as an honorable mention because the hero isn't a soldier. Recommended by YouTube: Secret Sauce of Story Craft ## Near-future war ### The Red: First Light Linda Nagata Start with The Red, book 1 What it is Lieutenant James Shelley leads a high-tech squad on night patrols against insurgents in Africa's Sahel, in a war the defense industry keeps going for profit. His one edge is an uncanny sense of danger. Good to know wired soldiers, drones and exoskeletons; a Locus reviewer compares its shift in tone to the gap between Starship Troopers and The Forever War. Awards Nebula Award nominee; John W. Campbell Memorial Award finalist. ### Ghost Fleet P. W. Singer and August Cole Standalone What it is a near-future war in which a peer adversary cuts off American power projection, fought with drones, 3D printing and new military technology. Each section opens with a quote from Sun Tzu. Good to know a techno-thriller grounded in real research rather than space opera. Recommended by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller encouraged all Marines to read it (Military.com); an Army officer's review in Foreign Policy says every Army officer should read it ## Newer standalones ### Rubicon J. S. Dewes Start with The Crucible Cycle, book 1 What it is Sergeant Adrien Valero has been killed and revived 96 times in an unwinnable war against a more advanced alien enemy. A transfer to a covert team changes how she fights. Good to know ends on a big cliffhanger. Recommended by YouTube: Secret Sauce of Story Craft ### In the Black Patrick S. Tomlinson What it is Captain Susan and her team investigate missing scout drones and uncover a plot that mixes space opera with military politics, partly from an alien's point of view. Good to know short, at about 350 pages, but the ending is a cliffhanger. Recommended by YouTube: Secret Sauce of Story Craft ### Misfit Soldier Michael Mammay Standalone What it is a sergeant who joined the army to hide after a con went wrong gets a chance to run a con that could save a squadmate and turn the war, if he can manage to be a good soldier. Good to know light and fun; the creator calls it the author's weakest book. Recommended by YouTube: Secret Sauce of Story Craft ## Long-running reader favorites ### Steel World B. V. Larson Start with Undying Mercenaries, book 1 (19+ books) What it is Earth, a backwater province of a galactic empire, rents out its legions as mercenaries. Soldiers who die can be revived from stored data, and James McGill joins the lowest-ranked legion. Good to know pulpy and darkly funny. One reviewer calls it "a solidly mediocre pulp sci-fi series" with continuity problems. Recommended by YouTube: Burn Enough (reviewer Jim Chapman's top 10) ## Coming from fantasy? Red Rising and Empire of Silence are science fiction that fantasy readers love; see our page of books like Red Rising. For Warhammer 40,000's soldiers, start with Gaunt's Ghosts on our Warhammer page. ## FAQ ### What is military science fiction? Science fiction whose main character serves in a future military and goes through battle. Most books lean toward one of two kinds of war: soldiers in power armor, or ship-to-ship combat in space. ### Where should I start with military science fiction? Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein or The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. They are the two classics most lists begin with, and they take opposite views of war. ### Are there standalone military science fiction books? Yes: Starship Troopers, Armor, All You Need Is Kill, The Light Brigade and Embedded all stand alone. ### What are good books about power armor? Starship Troopers, Armor, The Forever War and All You Need Is Kill. ### Which military science fiction books have won the Hugo Award? Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Downbelow Station, Ender's Game and Some Desperate Glory all won the Hugo for Best Novel. The Vorkosigan Saga won the Hugo for Best Series. ### Is there military science fiction like Master and Commander? David Weber's Honor Harrington series, starting with On Basilisk Station. ## Sources Recommendations: the YouTube videos, Instagram post and reviews linked on each card; the Goodreads "Readers who enjoyed Red Rising also enjoyed" list. Awards: Science Fiction Awards Database and The Nebula Awards. Book descriptions: the linked videos, plus Aethon Books (Steel on Target), Doc Hammer (Undying Mercenaries), EBSCO Research Starters (Downbelow Station), James Nicoll Reviews (The Mote in God's Eye), Bookshop.org (Ninefox Gambit), Waterstones (Some Desperate Glory), Mythic Island Press (The Red: First Light), library catalog records (Rubicon). Publishing status: Book Series in Order (Craig Alanson) and Gratitude Geek podcast (Joshua Dalzelle). --- # Warhammer 40K Books: Where to Start URL: https://thewarshelf.com/warhammer-40k-books Black Library has published hundreds of Warhammer novels, and most readers ask the same question first: where do I even start? Every 40K book below was recommended as a starting point by the author of this site, Instagram book creators, YouTube channels or readers on Reddit, and each card says who. Each card also says how much you need to know about the setting. The last section covers Warhammer Fantasy. The list is spoiler-free. ## Start here The three books recommended most often. You can start any of them without knowing the setting. ### Eisenhorn Dan Abnett Start with Xenos, or Eisenhorn: The Omnibus My pick What it is Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn hunts daemons, aliens and heretics, and over the series goes from a zealous servant of the truth to working with the powers he swore to destroy. The publisher calls it "part detective story, part interplanetary epic." The omnibus collects Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus and The Magos, plus four short stories. Good to know an investigation more than a war story, with few Space Marines or space battles. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews, @thekennygould (for Mass Effect fans) YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club, HoodGuard, 7 Books for New Warhammer 40k Readers ### Gaunt's Ghosts Dan Abnett Start with First and Only, or The Founding omnibus (First and Only, Ghostmaker, Necropolis) My pick What it is Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt leads the Tanith First and Only, a light infantry regiment of survivors from a destroyed world, through the Sabbat Worlds crusade. Good to know military science fiction about ordinary soldiers in one regiment: infantry warfare, rival regiments and treachery in the command. One reviewer says it "works extremely well for readers unfamiliar with the Warhammer 40,000 universe." The series runs to more than sixteen novels. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews, @noahsbriskreviews (beginner guide) YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club, HoodGuard, 7 Books for New Warhammer 40k Readers Readers on Reddit ### Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium Sandy Mitchell Omnibus of the first three novels: For the Emperor, Caves of Ice, The Traitor's Hand My pick What it is Commissar Ciaphas Cain is celebrated as a hero, but all he wants is an easy life away from danger, and he survives on luck, bluff and self-preservation. The books are presented as his memoirs, edited and footnoted by Amberley Vail. Good to know a comedy with a straight face, and lighter on lore than most Warhammer fiction. Some running jokes repeat across the novels. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club, HoodGuard, 7 Books for New Warhammer 40k Readers ## Space Marines ### Brothers of the Snake Dan Abnett Linked short stories ending in a novella What it is one Space Marine of the Iron Snakes chapter, followed from early in his career. It shows how Space Marines think and fight, and how few of them there are for the wars they are needed in. Good to know stories rather than one novel; a good reference point for Space Marines in other books. Recommended by YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club ### Helsreach Aaron Dembski-Bowden What it is the Third War for Armageddon, told through Reclusiarch Grimaldus of the Black Templars. Good to know Space Marine war in a besieged city; the creator calls it the quintessential Warhammer 40,000 experience. Recommended by YouTube: HoodGuard ## The Imperial Guard at war ### Cadia Stands Justin D. Hill My pick What it is Cadia, the fortress world that guards the Imperium against Chaos, in the war that leads to its fall. Good to know pairs with The Fall of Cadia below. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it YouTube: HoodGuard ### Fire Caste Peter Fehervari What it is an Imperial Guard regiment is thrown into a jungle war against the T'au that has already lasted fifty years. Good to know the creator calls it underrated, with plenty of twists. Recommended by YouTube: HoodGuard ### Double Eagle Dan Abnett My pick What it is bomber and fighter pilots try to hold back a Chaos advance until the Imperial Guard can arrive. Good to know an air war; the creator compares it to Masters of the Air. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club ## Machines and the Mechanicus ### Titanicus Dan Abnett My pick What it is Chaos Titans attack a forge world, and the god-machines of Legio Invicta defend it. Good to know the creator recommends it to Gundam and Evangelion fans. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it YouTube: HoodGuard ### Priests of Mars Graham McNeill Start with Forges of Mars, book 1 What it is a vast Adeptus Mechanicus ark ship carries Tech-Priests, Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Titans beyond known space in search of a lost expedition. Good to know a cross-section of the Imperium on one ship; the creator calls it a less traditional starting point. Recommended by YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club ## The enemy's side Chaos Space Marines, the Imperium's oldest enemy. ### Storm of Iron Graham McNeill What it is the Iron Warriors, Chaos Space Marines and masters of siegecraft, lay siege to one of the Imperium's fortress worlds. Good to know told from both sides of the walls; the dread builds toward an outcome that feels inevitable. Recommended by YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club ### Night Lords Aaron Dembski-Bowden Start with Soul Hunter, or the Night Lords omnibus What it is Talos and his squad of Night Lords, Chaos Space Marines who wage war through terror, raid and scavenge across the stars with no hope of resupply. Good to know villains you end up rooting for. HoodGuard says not to start here: it hits harder once you know the Night Lords' history. Recommended by YouTube: Benjamin's Book Club ## Read next These assume some knowledge of the setting. ### Ravenor Dan Abnett Start with Ravenor: The Omnibus (Ravenor, Ravenor Returned, Ravenor Rogue) My pick What it is Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor and his band of operatives investigate a daemonic conspiracy that takes them out of the Scarus Sector and through time. Good to know the same author's second Inquisition trilogy; read Eisenhorn first. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### HIVE Dan Abnett Black Library, 2026 My pick What it is on the hive world Sacramentus, the planetary governor has been deposed in a scandal and the city slides toward chaos. An outsider is installed as governor while the Adeptus Arbites hunt traitors, gangs grab territory and forbidden cults grow bolder. Good to know law enforcers and city politics rather than soldiers; new in 2026. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### The Infinite and the Divine Robert Rath Followed by The Wicked and the Warped What it is two Necrons, Trazyn the Infinite, a collector of history, and Orikan the Diviner, an astromancer, have been rivals since they were alive. When Orikan steals an artifact from Trazyn's galleries, their feud runs for thousands of years. Good to know often laugh-out-loud funny, with more dialogue than action. HoodGuard calls it a must-read but not a first book: it helps to know the Necrons first. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### The Fall of Cadia Robert Rath My pick What it is Abaddon the Despoiler launches the 13th Black Crusade against Cadia, the fortress world that guards the Imperium against Chaos. Viewpoints include Lord Castellan Creed, Abaddon himself and a soldier thrust into command. Good to know one reviewer says it "is definitely not a good novel for beginners." Read it once you know the setting. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### Horus Rising Dan Abnett Start with The Horus Heresy, book 1 What it is Horus and his Luna Wolves, still loyal to the Emperor, in the years before the civil war that shaped the Imperium. Good to know both creators say it means more if you know the setting. The first three books, Horus Rising, False Gods and Galaxy in Flames, are essentially one story; the full series is very long. Recommended by YouTube: HoodGuard, 7 Books for New Warhammer 40k Readers ## Warhammer Fantasy: my picks No creator we follow has recommended these yet, so they are our own picks. They are set in the Old World, the setting of Warhammer Fantasy, not in the 41st millennium. ### Trollslayer William King Start with Gotrek & Felix, book 1, also in The First Omnibus My pick What it is Gotrek, a dwarf Slayer, and his human companion Felix go from one adventure to the next through a world of Chaos and monsters. Good to know episodic, with graphic peril. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### Valnir's Bane Nathan Long Start with Blackhearts, book 1, also in Blackhearts: The Omnibus My pick What it is nine convicts and their keeper choose a suicide mission over the noose and are sent deep into enemy territory to recover a relic that could turn the war. Good to know small-unit missions rather than army warfare. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### Iron Company Chris Wraight Black Library, 2009 My pick What it is Magnus Ironblood, a broke, hard-drinking former Imperial engineer, is hired to bring down the walls of a rebel mountain fortress with a small, under-equipped force after an earlier army vanished. Good to know engineers, artillery and a siege in Warhammer's gunpowder Empire; some Old World familiarity helps. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### Grimblades Nick Kyme Part of Black Library's series on the Empire's armies, later in The Empire omnibus My pick What it is rank-and-file soldiers defend the Reikland against an orc and goblin invasion while the Elector Counts quarrel and a plot against their prince unfolds. Good to know a soldier's-eye view of a campaign. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ### Sword of Justice Chris Wraight Start with book 1 of a duology, collected in Swords of the Emperor My pick What it is Ludwig Schwarzhelm, the Emperor's Champion, is sent to Averland to oversee a new Elector Count and must hold the province together against greenskins and rival princes. Good to know commanders and politics rather than rank-and-file soldiers. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it ## FAQ ### Where should I start with Warhammer 40K books? Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn or Gaunt's Ghosts. They are recommended as starting points more often than any other books, and neither needs any knowledge of the setting. For comedy, start with Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium. ### What is the Gaunt's Ghosts reading order? Start with First and Only, then Ghostmaker and Necropolis. The omnibus The Founding collects all three. ### Where does the Horus Heresy start? With Horus Rising by Dan Abnett (2006). The Horus Heresy is a civil war set about 10,000 years before Warhammer 40,000. Fifty-four books carry the Horus Heresy name, some of them anthologies, and ten Siege of Terra books follow. The last, The End and the Death, came out in three volumes and ended the series in 2024. ### Do I need to play the game to read the books? No. Gaunt's Ghosts, Eisenhorn and Ciaphas Cain are all recommended to readers new to the setting. Leave The Fall of Cadia, The Infinite and the Divine and the Night Lords books for later. ## Sources Recommendations: the Instagram posts and YouTube videos linked on each card; readers on Reddit. Descriptions of Brothers of the Snake, Helsreach, Cadia Stands, Fire Caste, Double Eagle, Titanicus, Priests of Mars, Storm of Iron, Night Lords and Horus Rising: the YouTube videos linked on those cards. Book descriptions: publisher descriptions and reviews collected in the site's book catalog, plus Simon & Schuster (Eisenhorn), Simon & Schuster (Ravenor), SFFWorld (The Founding), SFFWorld (Ciaphas Cain), Track of Words (The Infinite and the Divine), At Boundary's Edge (The Fall of Cadia), Warhammer Community (The Wicked and the Warped) and PC Gamer (the Horus Heresy). --- # Books Like Red Rising URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-red-rising Finished Pierce Brown's saga and looking for the same brutal stakes? Every book below has been recommended to Red Rising readers by Instagram book creators, or is regularly read alongside it by readers on Goodreads. Each card says which. Red Rising is science fiction, but its readers move freely between science fiction and fantasy, so this list has both. Each card also says how the recommended book is different to Red Rising. The list is spoiler-free. ## The closest matches The books recommended most often. ### The Will of the Many James Islington Start with Hierarchy, book 1 Like Red Rising a rebel hides inside the elite academy of a Rome-inspired empire, where everyone gives up their strength to the people above them. The difference fantasy, not science fiction, and book one centers on the academy and its politics. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews, @thekennygould, @griffincooperfantasy, @judgingby_thecover Readers on Goodreads ### Empire of Silence Christopher Ruocchio Start with The Sun Eater, book 1 (seven books, complete) Like Red Rising a nobleman's son in an interstellar empire tells how history came to see him as a monster. The difference a slower, reflective first-person memoir; it does not have Red Rising's momentum. Recommended by Instagram: @thekennygould Readers on Goodreads ### Dune Frank Herbert Start with Dune Like Red Rising a noble heir is betrayed and fights for a desert planet where one resource ties together religion, ecology and imperial power. The difference denser and slower, with a lot of terminology and political exposition. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews, @thekennygould Readers on Goodreads ### The Poppy War R. F. Kuang Start with The Poppy War trilogy, book 1 (complete) Like Red Rising a war orphan tests into an elite military academy, and the school story turns into brutal war. The difference fantasy drawn from the Second Sino-Japanese War, not science fiction. See our page of books like The Poppy War. Awards Compton Crook Award, 2019; Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @thekennygould, @judgingby_thecover ## Deadly contests and war games ### The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins Start with The Hunger Games trilogy, book 1 Like Red Rising a teenager from an oppressed district is forced into a televised death contest run by the capital. The difference young adult, and the arena is about survival rather than building an army. Recommended by Instagram: @books_with_brooks (recommends Red Rising to Hunger Games fans), @judgingby_thecover (recommends both Red Rising and Battle Royale to Hunger Games fans) ### Battle Royale Koushun Takami Standalone Like Red Rising a class of students in an authoritarian alternate Japan is forced to fight to the death. The difference a large student cast and graphic violence; no rebellion arc. Recommended by Instagram: @judgingby_thecover (recommends both Red Rising and Battle Royale to Hunger Games fans) ### Ender's Game Orson Scott Card Start with Ender's Game (the novel) Like Red Rising a gifted child is put through brutal war games at an orbital Battle School. The difference a much younger lead, and no caste rebellion. Awards Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. Recommended by Instagram: @thekennygould Readers on Goodreads ### Iron Widow Xiran Jay Zhao Start with Iron Widow, book 1 Like Red Rising a girl signs up to pilot a giant war machine to avenge her sister, then turns on the system that uses up its women. The difference young adult; giant robots powered by their pilots instead of a war game. Recommended by Instagram: @thekennygould ### Gideon the Ninth Tamsyn Muir Start with The Locked Tomb, book 1 Like Red Rising a sword-fighter escorts a necromancer to a decaying house where competing heirs face deadly trials. The difference gothic horror, puzzles and irreverent humor; much stranger than Red Rising. Recommended by Instagram: @thekennygould ## Fantasy with the same brutality ### The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie Start with The First Law trilogy, book 1 Like Red Rising morally gray people, sharp humor and power that corrupts. The difference fantasy, slower to reach its battles, and its endings are bleak rather than triumphant. Awards Compton Crook Award finalist, 2008. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews, @griffincooperfantasy, @griffincooperfantasy (calls Red Rising "The First Law in space (kinda)") ### The Rage of Dragons Evan Winter Start with The Burning, book 1 Like Red Rising an underdog soldier's relentless training and fight to become stronger inside a violent hierarchy. The difference revenge drives it, in an African-inspired world with a Bronze Age feel. Awards Named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### Ironbound Andrew Givler Start with Ironbound, book 1 Like Red Rising soldiers, training and political competition in a Roman-inspired society, with a strong sense of brotherhood. The difference progression fantasy: getting stronger is the main draw, and it is not a realistic Roman military novel. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews ### Mistborn: The Final Empire Brandon Sanderson Start with the Mistborn trilogy, book 1 Like Red Rising a young woman from the bottom of an oppressive empire joins a plot to overthrow its immortal ruler. The difference a crew and a precise magic system at its heart, not armies. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews (recommends Red Rising to Mistborn fans) Readers on Goodreads ### Malice John Gwynne Start with The Faithful and the Fallen, book 1 Like Red Rising aspiring warriors and rival rulers caught in a spreading war, with constant action and momentum. The difference traditional epic fantasy with a clear fight between good and evil. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2013. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy ## Rebellions and power struggles ### The Grace of Kings Ken Liu Start with The Dandelion Dynasty, book 1 (four books, complete) Like Red Rising a rebellion against an island empire, and what it takes to start a movement. The difference slower and broader, with many viewpoints and competing philosophies. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2016; Nebula Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy ### Jade City Fonda Lee Start with Jade City (trilogy complete) Like Red Rising clan war, political drama and betrayal, with loyalty that costs everything. The difference a modern city and martial-arts magic, not a caste rebellion. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy ## FAQ ### What should I read after Red Rising? The Will of the Many by James Islington is recommended most often, followed by Dune, The Blade Itself, Empire of Silence and The Poppy War. ### Is Red Rising science fiction or fantasy? Science fiction: it is set on a colonized Mars. Its readers often come from fantasy and go on to it, which is why this list mixes both. ### Are there books like Red Rising with a deadly contest? Yes: The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, Ender's Game, Iron Widow and Gideon the Ninth all put their characters through deadly trials or war games. ## Sources Recommendations: the Instagram posts linked on each card; reader signals from the Goodreads "Readers who enjoyed Red Rising also enjoyed" list and the matching lists for Dune, Ender's Game and Mistborn. Book descriptions: publisher descriptions and reviews collected in the site's book catalog. --- # Books Like The Poppy War URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-poppy-war Looking for something to read after R. F. Kuang's trilogy? Every book below has been recommended to Poppy War readers by Instagram book creators or book websites, or is regularly recommended alongside it by readers on Goodreads and Reddit. Each card says which. None of them is a copy, so each card also says what is different. The list is spoiler-free; the essay on the history behind the trilogy below it is not. ## The closest matches The books recommended most often. ### The Sword of Kaigen M. L. Wang Standalone Like The Poppy War Asia-inspired setting, an invasion, extraordinary powers and what war costs one family. The difference a household under invasion, not an academy. Recommended by Instagram: @jlreadstoperpetuity Websites: She Reads Readers on Goodreads and Reddit ### Jade City Fonda Lee Start with Jade City (trilogy complete) Like The Poppy War Asia-inspired setting, power and loyalty, and what they cost the people who hold them. The difference clan war and martial arts in a modern city. Recommended by Websites: She Reads, TheReviewGeek Readers on Goodreads and Reddit ### She Who Became the Sun Shelley Parker-Chan Start with The Radiant Emperor, book 1 Like The Poppy War a survivor takes her dead brother's identity and fights her way to power in a reimagining of the rise of the Ming dynasty. The difference quieter magic and more intimate stakes. Awards British Fantasy Award for Best Novel and Best Newcomer, 2022; Hugo Award nominee. Recommended by Instagram: @jlreadstoperpetuity, @griffincooperfantasy Websites: She Reads ### The Rage of Dragons Evan Winter Start with The Burning, book 1 Like The Poppy War a driven young soldier inside a violent hierarchy. The difference revenge drives it, and the historical roots differ. Awards Named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Reddit ### Red Rising Pierce Brown Start with Red Rising (science fiction) Like The Poppy War an underdog from the lowest caste fights his way into the elite, and the cost of that climb. The difference science fiction on Mars; book one is a brutal contest, and the wider war comes later. Recommended by Instagram: @judgingby_thecover, @thekennygould, @kadenloveauthor_ Readers on Goodreads ## Empires, rebels and the price of power ### The City of Brass S. A. Chakraborty Start with The Daevabad trilogy, book 1 Like The Poppy War an outsider is drawn into the dangerous politics of a divided magical city. The difference court politics and djinn, not a battlefield-first story. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Websites: She Reads ### The Grace of Kings Ken Liu Start with The Dandelion Dynasty, book 1 (four books, complete) Like The Poppy War Asia-inspired setting, rebels and rising states, with the sweep of history. The difference political and historical breadth rather than one young soldier's story. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel, 2016; Nebula Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy ### Blood Over Bright Haven M. L. Wang Standalone Like The Poppy War a city's prosperity turns out to depend on slaughtering another people. The difference set in a scholar's lab, not a war, with a dense magic system that slows the plot. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Goodreads ### The Water Outlaws S. L. Huang Standalone Like The Poppy War an imperial weapons instructor is branded a criminal and joins mountain outlaws, in a reimagining of the Chinese classic Water Margin. The difference outlaws fighting the empire from outside, not an army from within. Recommended by Instagram: @jlreadstoperpetuity ## Dark schools and dark turns ### Nevernight Jay Kristoff Start with The Nevernight Chronicle, book 1 Like The Poppy War a young woman trains at a deadly school on a path of revenge. The difference an assassin's revenge, not a war; bloody, with sex and plenty of swearing. Recommended by Instagram: @jlreadstoperpetuity ### Red Sister Mark Lawrence Start with Book of the Ancestor, book 1 Like The Poppy War a girl trained as a warrior at a convent school, then drawn into church and imperial politics. The difference warrior nuns and church politics, not a national war. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### The Shadow of What Was Lost James Islington Start with The Licanius trilogy, book 1 (complete) Like The Poppy War old secrets and a plot that pulls the rug out from under you. The difference prophecy and puzzle-box plotting rather than war trauma. Recommended by Instagram: @judgingby_thecover ## Gray morality and brutal factions ### The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie Start with The First Law trilogy, book 1 Like The Poppy War a dark tone, flawed characters and gray morality. The difference no turn from school to war; sharp humor instead. Awards Compton Crook Award finalist, 2008. Recommended by Instagram: @noahsbriskreviews (recommends The Poppy War to First Law fans) Readers on Reddit ### Where Loyalties Lie Rob J. Hayes Start with Best Laid Plans, book 1 Indie Like The Poppy War brutal pirate factions who barely get along, with an empire out to crush them. The difference pirate society, not a formal army. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ## The History Behind The Poppy War Spoiler warning: this article discusses major events in The Poppy War, including the ending. R. F. Kuang seems to have taken “write what you know” as permission to make her history degree more useful than the reader would like. The twists in The Poppy War have sparked some anger, but she’s translating human horrors into fantasy and showing us what our ancestors—and likely many of us, given the same circumstances—are capable of. Just as Tolkien drew on Finnish, Norse and Old English languages and cultures, Kuang drew on Chinese history when writing The Poppy War. The plot, she has said, is “mirrored almost entirely on the Second Sino-Japanese War.” That war began in July 1937, when fighting near Beijing escalated into Japan’s full-scale invasion of China, and ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945. It became part of the wider Second World War, though the fighting in China began two years before the war in Europe. Book one draws directly on the Battle of Shanghai, the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese Army’s center for biological warfare and human experimentation. You don’t have to look very hard to find Japan and China here. The Federation of Mugen, a small, militarized island empire, basically Japan, invades the Nikara Empire, a vast neighbor whose provinces answer to rival warlords as much as to the throne, basically China. The novel depicts the atrocities directly, including massacre and human experimentation. Readers have criticized Kuang for her portrayal of the Nanjing Massacre, particularly because the story starts with a more traditional outsider-goes-to-a-magic-school arc that resembles Harry Potter. Readers and reviewers made that comparison, and it is easy to see why. It also leaves you rather poorly prepared for what follows. Just as war is sudden, disastrous and traumatic, so is Kuang’s turn in The Poppy War. The gruesome acts seem to come out of nowhere and, to my mind, that is exactly the point. It’s supposed to hit you and, judging from the comments I’ve read across the internet and the opinions I’ve heard in private, hit it did. Still, that explains the effect without changing the fact that the setup for both the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731 analogues could have been better. That is more a craft question. The ending brings in another historical parallel. Rin uses the Phoenix to trigger a volcanic eruption beneath Mugen, destroying its homeland and killing civilians as well as soldiers. The god supplies the power, but the decision is hers. The comparison is with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, though Kuang takes the destruction further, to the devastation of an entire island nation. By then, the reader has been given plenty of reasons to want Rin to win. Having to face what she does with that victory is rather less comfortable. Asked about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki comparison, Kuang pointed to the familiar justification that the bombings prevented even more deaths by ending the war. The trouble is that we cannot know how many people would have died otherwise. Her own answer leaves that uncertainty intact: “Rin’s action was horrific; was it the best action? I honestly have no idea.” She condemns the atrocity while remaining unsure whether another choice would have led to less suffering. She also says the book was meant to ask that question and present different viewpoints, rather than settle it. You can argue with how she handles the ending, but the lack of a comfortable answer is deliberate. Some of the craft problems might simply come down to this being a debut written at nineteen. Kuang graduated in history from Georgetown days after the novel came out. She wrote the first draft during a gap year in China while working as a debate coach. Without university homework waiting for her in the evenings, she found time to write a novel. Finishing one at nineteen is commendable enough; I’m not sure we need to pretend the rough edges aren’t there to give her credit. Her sources included Western historians such as Jonathan Spence, John King Fairbank and Frank Dikötter, and the Chinese historian Ray Huang. On Nanjing she read Iris Chang, though she notes that many historians have since challenged Chang’s analysis. She also drew on her grandparents’ stories of the war in China. So that covers the “war” in The Poppy War. What about the poppy? The poppy gives us opium, which takes us back another century. The First Opium War ran from 1839 to 1842, the Second from 1856 to 1860. Britain fought Qing China in the first, joined by France in the second, forcing concessions over trade, territory and foreign access. “I’ve been obsessed with the Opium Wars for a long time,” Kuang has said, and she imagined a world where the drug is a source of power rather than humiliation. She drafted book one after reading about Nanjing, “from a place of rage and anger.” Later she came to see the danger in revenge stories, noting that the Chinese Communist Party uses such traumas to stir nationalism. Fantasy, in her words, is “a distorted mirror” for working through personal and family trauma. She also describes the trilogy as “what if Mao Zedong was a teenage girl?” You can probably see why this belongs in a guide to military fantasy. ## FAQ ### What should I read after The Poppy War? The Sword of Kaigen by M. L. Wang and Jade City by Fonda Lee are recommended most often, followed by She Who Became the Sun and The Rage of Dragons. ### Is The Poppy War based on real history? Yes. Kuang has said the plot is "mirrored almost entirely on the Second Sino-Japanese War," and book one draws on the Battle of Shanghai, the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731. The essay above has the details. ### Is The Poppy War grimdark? It is often shelved as grimdark. It opens as an academy story and turns into brutal war, which is why it also appears in our guide to grimdark fantasy. ## Sources Recommendations: the Instagram posts and websites linked on each card; reader signals from Goodreads and Reddit. Book descriptions: publisher descriptions and reviews collected in the site's book catalog. History essay: sources in the footnotes. --- # Books Like The Will of the Many URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-will-of-the-many Finished James Islington's Roman-inspired academy story and want more? Every book below has been recommended to Will of the Many readers by Instagram book creators or readers on Reddit, or is regularly read alongside it by readers on Goodreads. Each card says which, and what is different. The list is spoiler-free. ## The closest matches ### Red Rising Pierce Brown Start with Red Rising (science fiction) My pick Like The Will of the Many a low-caste outsider hides his identity to enter the elite school of the ruling caste, and the school turns deadly. The difference science fiction on Mars, and far more violent; book one is a brutal contest. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy, @griffincooperfantasy (also recommends The Will of the Many to Red Rising fans), @noahsbriskreviews (recommends The Will of the Many to Red Rising fans), @thekennygould (same), @judgingby_thecover (same) Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads (read together in both directions) ### The Shadow of What Was Lost James Islington Start with The Licanius trilogy, book 1 (complete) Like The Will of the Many the same author's style, and a world whose mysteries come apart slowly. The difference several intertwined viewpoints and time-related magic, rather than one narrator in an academy. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Reddit ### Empire of Silence Christopher Ruocchio Start with The Sun Eater, book 1 (seven books, complete) Like The Will of the Many a character-driven epic told in the first person, in a vast and dangerous empire. The difference science fiction, and a slow, reflective memoir with a long opening. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Reddit ## Gifted students and hard schools ### The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss Start with The Kingkiller Chronicle, book 1 My pick Like The Will of the Many a brilliant young narrator tells his own life story, much of it about getting into and through a university of magic. The difference a slower, more lyrical book with no rebellion plot; the series is unfinished. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy Readers on Reddit ## Clever heroes and loyal friends Readers on Reddit recommend these to Will of the Many fans for the wit and the friendships. ### The Lies of Locke Lamora Scott Lynch Start with Gentleman Bastard, book 1 Like The Will of the Many a brilliant lead who wins by outthinking everyone around him, with friendship at the center. The difference con artists in a Venice-like canal city, not an academy; the story turns dark later. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### Theft of Swords Michael J. Sullivan Start with Riyria Revelations, book 1 (complete) Like The Will of the Many a conspiracy that grows from one crime into something much larger. The difference two established adult partners, a thief and a mercenary, and a lighter, bantering tone. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ## Big series readers pick up next Recommended by readers on Reddit, and readers who loved these on Goodreads also loved The Will of the Many. ### Mistborn: The Final Empire Brandon Sanderson Start with the Mistborn trilogy, book 1 My pick Like The Will of the Many a young woman from the bottom of an oppressive empire joins a plot against the people on top. The difference a heist crew and a precise magic system instead of an academy. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads ### The Stormlight Archive Brandon Sanderson Start with The Way of Kings My pick Like The Will of the Many an underdog at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy, ancient secrets, and war on a vast scale. The difference very long, many viewpoints, and the series isn't finished. Awards The Way of Kings: David Gemmell Legend Award, 2011. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads ### The Rage of Dragons Evan Winter Start with The Burning, book 1 Like The Will of the Many a low-ranked young man fights his way up a brutal hierarchy. The difference revenge drives everything, and the training is for war, not exams. Awards Named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads ## FAQ ### What should I read after The Will of the Many? Red Rising by Pierce Brown is recommended most often, by four Instagram creators, readers on Reddit and Goodreads readers. Islington's earlier Licanius trilogy, starting with The Shadow of What Was Lost, is the pick for his style. ### What is the sequel to The Will of the Many? The Strength of the Few, book two of the Hierarchy series. ### Is The Will of the Many like Red Rising? Yes, closely: both follow a lowborn hero hiding his identity inside an elite school run by the ruling class. Red Rising is science fiction and much more violent. ## Sources Recommendations: the Instagram posts linked on each card; reader threads on r/HierarchySeries (credited as Readers on Reddit); reader signals from Goodreads "Readers who enjoyed ... also enjoyed" lists for Red Rising, Mistborn, The Way of Kings and The Rage of Dragons. Book descriptions: publisher descriptions and reviews collected in the site's book catalog. --- # Books Like Dungeon Crawler Carl URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-dungeon-crawler-carl Finished Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl and want something with the same vibe? Every book below was recommended to Dungeon Crawler Carl fans by a book site, a book creator or Dinniman himself, or is read by the same readers on Goodreads. Each card says which, and what is different. The list is spoiler-free. ## The closest matches ### Columbus Day Craig Alanson Start with Expeditionary Force, book 1 Indiescience fiction Like Dungeon Crawler Carl aliens invade Earth and an ordinary soldier gets swept into the war, with humor running through the disaster. The Hugonauts call it the military-SF Dungeon Crawler Carl. The difference military science fiction, with no game show and no levels. One reviewer found a main character's banter grating. Recommended by YouTube: Hugonauts ### Kings of the Wyld Nicholas Eames Start with The Band, book 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a band of retired mercenaries reunites for one last, very dangerous job, fighting monsters all the way. Griffin Cooper's reason for pairing them: absurd humor and emotional moments. The difference a fantasy world with no game, no system and no audience; the jokes are about aging adventurers treated like rock stars. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2018. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy (recommends DCC to Kings of the Wyld fans) Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved Kings of the Wyld also loved DCC) ### The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie Start with The First Law trilogy, book 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl gritty and violent, with characters who are funny and hard to sort into heroes and villains. The difference grimdark epic fantasy with no game; slower to get going. See our grimdark page. Awards Compton Crook Award finalist, 2008. Recommended by Barnes & Noble Reads (Nina Braca) Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved The Blade Itself also loved DCC) ## LitRPG and progression If what you want is the leveling up, these keep the game mechanics or the climb. ### He Who Fights With Monsters Shirtaloon (Travis Deverell) Start with book 1 LitRPG Like Dungeon Crawler Carl an office worker is pulled into a magical world and has to level up to survive the monsters, with plenty of humor. Like DCC, it started online. The difference a lighter, cleaner sense of humor than Carl's. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger), ComicBook.com (Nicole Drum), Barnes & Noble Reads (Nina Braca) ### Unsouled Will Wight Start with Cradle, book 1 progression fantasy Like Dungeon Crawler Carl an outcast born without the power everyone else has leaves home and fights his way up in a world full of monsters. The difference no stat screens; martial-arts cultivation instead of a game show. Recommended by Matt Dinniman, on the cover: Cradle is "explosively fun, endlessly addictive" Pan Macmillan ### Mage Tank Cornman Start with book 1 LitRPG Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a man who respawns after dying in a fantasy world decides to become an unstoppable tank, with chaos and crude humor. The difference a slow-burn progression story without DCC's televised dungeon. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger), Book Riot (Liberty Hardy) ### Sufficiently Advanced Magic Andrew Rowe Start with Arcane Ascension, book 1 progression fantasy Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a young man climbs a dangerous dungeon to find his missing brother. The difference a magic-school story built around a clever magic system. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger) ## Funny, violent science fiction ### We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Dennis E. Taylor Start with Bobiverse, book 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a tech entrepreneur wakes up centuries after his death as an AI sent into space, in a story that mixes exploration and humor. The difference exploration and AI rather than a fight for survival in a dungeon. Recommended by ComicBook.com (Nicole Drum) ### All Systems Red Martha Wells Start with The Murderbot Diaries, book 1 (novella) Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a sarcastic, self-aware security android keeps its humans alive while trying to uncover its own past. The difference a short novella with a more personal story. Recommended by Barnes & Noble Reads (Nina Braca) ### Starter Villain John Scalzi Standalone Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a bumbling heir inherits a supervillain empire, and the comedy is dark. The difference a comedy set on Earth, with no dungeon. Recommended by Barnes & Noble Reads (Nina Braca) ### Old Man's War John Scalzi Start with Old Man's War Like Dungeon Crawler Carl funny, fast and violent: old people are recruited to fight aliens in exchange for new young bodies. The difference a conventional army, not a game. See our military science fiction page. Awards Hugo Award finalist, 2006; the series won the Hugo for Best Series in 2026. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved Old Man's War also loved DCC) ### Red Rising Pierce Brown Start with Red Rising Saga, book 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a deadly contest staged by the people in power, and a low-born hero who learns to beat it from the inside. The difference played straight, with almost no comedy. See our page of books like Red Rising. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (DCC is first on Red Rising's Goodreads list) ## Horror with jokes For the monsters and the gallows humor. ### John Dies at the End Jason Pargin (as David Wong) Start with John Dies at the End Like Dungeon Crawler Carl crude jokes, science-fiction weirdness and apocalyptic danger. The difference horror-comedy in a small American town, not a dungeon. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger) ### Tales From the Gas Station Jack Townsend Start with volume 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a sleep-deprived gas station clerk faces cosmic horrors while trying to keep his job; Nerdist says its humor and horror walk hand in hand, as in DCC. The difference horror built around a night-shift job, with no levels or fights to win. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger) ### Horrorstör Grady Hendrix Standalone Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a late-night shift in a furniture store turns into a creepy, funny horror story. The difference told in the style of a furniture catalog. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger) ### The Hike Drew Magary Standalone Like Dungeon Crawler Carl an ordinary man on a business trip ends up on an endless trail of monsters, with a foul-mouthed talking crab for company. The difference a journey along a trail rather than a game show. Recommended by Book Riot (Liberty Hardy) ### Gideon the Ninth Tamsyn Muir Start with The Locked Tomb, book 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl necromancers in a haunted gothic palace in space, with humor Nerdist compares to Carl's. The difference gothic horror and puzzles; much stranger than DCC. Recommended by Nerdist (Jess Harshbarger) ## Darker than they look Griffin Cooper groups DCC with these as books that hide heavy material under the surface. ### The Poppy War R. F. Kuang Start with The Poppy War trilogy, book 1 (complete) Like Dungeon Crawler Carl a story that starts in one register and turns brutal; it opens as a military-academy story and becomes a war. The difference no humor to soften it, and it depicts war crimes. See our page of books like The Poppy War. Awards Compton Crook Award, 2019; Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee; named in TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books (2020). Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy (lists it with DCC among books darker than they seem) ### Traitor's Blade Sebastien de Castell Start with Greatcoats, book 1 Like Dungeon Crawler Carl loyal companions and quick banter on the surface, with characters carrying trauma underneath; the creator points to PTSD and torture. The difference three disgraced traveling magistrates in a fantasy kingdom; swordplay and politics, not monsters and levels. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy (lists it with DCC among books darker than they seem) ## What Matt Dinniman reads In a Goodreads interview, Dinniman named Robert R. McCammon's Swan Song and Dan Simmons's Carrion Comfort among his favorite horror novels, and recommended Nick Cutter's The Troop to readers who like gruesome horror. ## FAQ ### What should I read after Dungeon Crawler Carl? For the humor and the war, Columbus Day by Craig Alanson. For the found family and the monsters, Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. For more LitRPG, He Who Fights With Monsters, which three book sites recommend. ### Are there books like Dungeon Crawler Carl that aren't LitRPG? Yes: Columbus Day, Kings of the Wyld, The Blade Itself, We Are Legion (We Are Bob) and John Dies at the End all keep some of the humor or the danger without game mechanics. ### What books does Matt Dinniman recommend? He has endorsed Will Wight's Cradle series, and named Swan Song, Carrion Comfort and The Troop as horror favorites. ## Sources Recommendations: the articles, posts and video linked on each card; Goodreads "Readers who enjoyed ... also enjoyed" lists for Red Rising, Kings of the Wyld, Old Man's War and The Blade Itself; Goodreads interview with Matt Dinniman. Book descriptions: the linked articles and publisher pages, and the site's book catalog. --- # Books Like Powder Mage URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-powder-mage Finished Brian McClellan’s trilogy and want more muskets, generals and magic that changes the battle? Every book below was recommended to Powder Mage readers by McClellan himself, a book creator, readers on Reddit, or is read by the same readers on Goodreads. Each card says which, and what is different. The list is spoiler-free. Want to stay in McClellan’s world first? Sins of Empire starts the Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy ten years after the original, with Lady Vlora Flint commanding a mercenary company in a city on the edge of revolt. Read the original trilogy first. ## The closest matches ### The Thousand Names Django Wexler Start with The Shadow Campaigns, book 1 (five books) My pick Like Powder Mage gunpowder armies, an officer’s command and regimental relationships, with a magical threat building underneath. The difference it opens as a colonial campaign, and the magic stays hidden for longer; the revolutionary politics come later in the series. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Brian McClellan himself, in a 2014 r/Fantasy AMA YouTube: Megan Nagle (lists it with Promise of Blood among flintlock fantasy picks) Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads (the series’ second book is on Promise of Blood’s list) ### In the Shadow of Lightning Brian McClellan Start with Glass Immortals, book 1 Like Powder Mage McClellan again: a former general, political upheaval and a death that leads into a larger crisis. The difference a separate world, where magic comes from godglass, a strategic resource, rather than from gunpowder. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ### The Justice of Kings Richard Swan Start with Empire of the Wolf, book 1 Like Powder Mage if Adamat’s investigation was your favorite thread: an imperial Justice uncovers a conspiracy behind an aristocrat’s murder. The difference a legal investigation told by the Justice’s scribe, Helena, with less campaigning and no powder magic. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (on Promise of Blood’s list) ## More guns and magic ### The Black Prism Brent Weeks Start with Lightbringer, book 1 (five books, complete) Like Powder Mage a defined magic system with costs, political maneuvering and armed conflict, including the defense of a city. The difference the magic is drafting light, not powder. Sexual violence is referenced, and some readers dislike how the series ends. Awards David Gemmell Legend Award nominee, 2011. Recommended by Instagram: @blakearthurpeelofficial (lists it with Powder Mage among gunpowder fantasy books) Readers on Goodreads (first on Promise of Blood’s list) ### The Alloy of Law Brandon Sanderson Start with Mistborn Era 2, book 1 Like Powder Mage gunplay and inventive combinations of magical abilities, from the writer McClellan studied under. The difference an industrial-era lawman adventure, not army fiction, and it can spoil the first Mistborn trilogy. Recommended by Instagram: @blakearthurpeelofficial (lists it with Powder Mage among gunpowder fantasy books) YouTube: Megan Nagle (lists it with Promise of Blood among flintlock fantasy picks) ### His Majesty’s Dragon Naomi Novik Start with Temeraire, book 1 My pick Like Powder Mage officers adapting military practice to extraordinary battlefield power, in a Napoleonic-era war. The difference an alternate history of our world, and the power is a dragon bonded to a naval captain. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel and Compton Crook Award, 2007; Hugo Award nominee. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it YouTube: Megan Nagle (lists it with Promise of Blood among flintlock fantasy picks) Readers on Reddit ### The Waking Fire Anthony Ryan Start with Draconis Memoria, book 1 Like Powder Mage an explorer, a naval officer and a spy caught up in a conflict over drake blood that grants magical powers. The difference more naval and industrial than a land war. Recommended by YouTube: Megan Nagle (lists it with Promise of Blood among flintlock fantasy picks) ## Big wars and soldiers’ stories Fewer guns, but the same readers rate them highly. ### The Pariah Anthony Ryan Start with Covenant of Steel, book 1 Like Powder Mage a military epic about war and dangerous belief, with religious politics. The difference it begins with an outlaw’s life before the soldiering, and there is no gunpowder magic. Recommended by Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads (on Promise of Blood’s list) ### Blood Song Anthony Ryan Start with Raven’s Shadow, book 1 Like Powder Mage a boy raised in a warrior order grows into a soldier who fights his king’s wars. The difference one man’s story, told largely in flashback, with no guns. Recommended by Readers on Reddit Readers on Goodreads (on Promise of Blood’s list) ### Malice John Gwynne Start with The Faithful and the Fallen, book 1 My pick Like Powder Mage aspiring warriors and rival rulers drawn into a war that keeps spreading, with fast-paced battles. The difference a swords-and-shields epic with no firearms. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2013. Recommended by My pick: Sandro has read it and recommends it Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy (lists it with Powder Mage in a military fantasy starter kit) Readers on Goodreads (on Promise of Blood’s list) ### The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie Start with The First Law trilogy, book 1 Like Powder Mage flawed officers, an inquisitor and compromised power, with plenty of dark humor. The difference grimdark, slower to reach the battlefield, and the magic is restrained. See our grimdark page. Awards Compton Crook Award finalist, 2008. Recommended by Readers on Reddit ## What Brian McClellan reads In a 2014 r/Fantasy AMA, McClellan, who studied under Brandon Sanderson in college, named Wesley Chu’s The Lives of Tao and Django Wexler’s The Thousand Names as the last books he had really enjoyed. ## From the author of this site ### Only the Banners Change Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteFree novelette Read it for Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it. Heads-up Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another. Read it free ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Like Powder Mage an army at war in a gunpowder world, where magic decides whether a line holds, and an investigation runs underneath. The difference pike and shot (ca. 1500–1650) rather than flintlock line infantry, and a veteran witch-major’s investigation instead of a coup. Get notified at launch ## FAQ ### What should I read after Powder Mage? Django Wexler’s The Thousand Names, which McClellan himself has recommended, for more gunpowder armies. Then In the Shadow of Lightning, McClellan’s own newer series. ### Is Powder Mage flintlock fantasy? Yes. Its powder mages draw power from gunpowder, and it is the series most often named as the place to start: the developers of the game Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn told Game Rant to begin the genre with it. See our flintlock fantasy guide for the wider shelf. ### Are there books like Powder Mage with more investigation? The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan and McClellan’s In the Shadow of Lightning. ## Sources Recommendations: the posts and video linked on each card; Brian McClellan’s 2014 r/Fantasy AMA; an r/powdermage “what should I read next” thread (credited as Readers on Reddit); Goodreads’ “Readers who enjoyed Promise of Blood also enjoyed” list. Book descriptions and awards: the site’s book catalog and the Science Fiction Awards Database (sfadb.com). --- # Books Like The Black Company URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-black-company Glen Cook’s mercenaries serve a sorcerous tyrant and try to stay loyal to each other, told by their physician and annalist, Croaker. If that is what you want more of, every book below was recommended to Black Company readers by a book site or book creators, or is read by the same readers on Goodreads. Each card says which, and what is different. The list is spoiler-free. ## Soldiers, mercenaries and compromised service ### Gardens of the Moon Steven Erikson Start with Malazan Book of the Fallen, book 1 (ten books, complete) Like The Black Company an empire’s soldiers fight campaigns in a world thick with gods and mages, with soldiers at the center. The difference a vast ensemble and a much bigger, more complicated story than a company chronicle. Awards World Fantasy Award nominee, 2000. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy (lists it with The Black Company in a military fantasy starter kit) Readers on Goodreads (first on The Black Company’s list) ### The Heroes Joe Abercrombie Standalone in the First Law world Like The Black Company three days of battle seen by exhausted veterans and failing commanders, and the gap between reputation and the fighting. The difference one battle from many viewpoints, with less sorcery; it follows the First Law trilogy, so newcomers miss some returning characters. Awards British Fantasy Award and David Gemmell Legend Award nominee, 2012. Recommended by Instagram: @griffincooperfantasy (lists it with The Black Company in a military fantasy starter kit) ### Kings of the Wyld Nicholas Eames Start with The Band, book 1 Like The Black Company retired mercenaries reunite for one last job, fighting through a monster-filled forest to a besieged city. The difference warm and funny where Cook is terse and bleak. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best debut, 2018. Recommended by The Portalist (Vernieda Vergara) ### The Daughters’ War Christopher Buehlman Prequel to The Blacktongue Thief Like The Black Company one soldier’s survival in a long war, inside an untested all-women unit fighting goblins with war corvids bred for combat. The difference a soldier’s memoir with no overarching plot, and the violence is graphic. Recommended by The Portalist (Vernieda Vergara) ### Savage Legion Matt Wallace Start with Savage Legion, book 1 Like The Black Company a seemingly perfect empire hides disappearances, and a woman joins its expendable fighting unit to search for a missing lawyer. The difference an empire’s throwaway conscripts rather than a professional company. Recommended by The Portalist (Vernieda Vergara) ### In the Eye of Heaven David Keck Start with In the Eye of Heaven Like The Black Company a disinherited nobleman becomes a sellsword, working for cruel employers while he tries to win land of his own. The difference one knight-errant’s story, not a company’s. Recommended by The Portalist (Vernieda Vergara) ## Darker and stranger For the moral murk and the sorcery. Readers of The Black Company on Goodreads rate these highly. ### The Blade Itself Joe Abercrombie Start with The First Law trilogy, book 1 Like The Black Company grim, funny and full of people who are hard to sort into heroes and villains. The difference more interior access to its characters, and slower to reach the battlefield. Awards Compton Crook Award finalist, 2008. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading (lists it with The Black Company among grimdark picks) Readers on Goodreads (on The Black Company’s list) ### The Darkness That Comes Before R. Scott Bakker Start with The Prince of Nothing, book 1 Like The Black Company a holy war gathers armies and sorcerers in a world haunted by a past apocalypse. The difference philosophical and very bleak; readers flag disturbing sexual content in the wider series. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (second on The Black Company’s list) ### The Blacktongue Thief Christopher Buehlman Start with Blacktongue, book 1 Like The Black Company a world scarred by goblin wars, and a veteran soldier, Galva, as a companion. The difference an adventure narrated by a talkative thief, not a campaign chronicle. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (on The Black Company’s list) ### The Devils Joe Abercrombie Start with The Devils, book 1 Like The Black Company a mission team of monsters and killers, with violent action and black humor. The difference a mission team rather than army service. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (on The Black Company’s list) ### Heroes Die Matthew Woodring Stover Start with The Acts of Caine, book 1 Like The Black Company extremely violent and morally dark. The difference a science-fiction frame, and very graphic violence, including rape and torture by the villain. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (on The Black Company’s list) ### Prince of Thorns Mark Lawrence Start with The Broken Empire, book 1 Like The Black Company a band of killers led by a ruthless antihero. The difference Jorg’s cruelty is the point, so don’t expect warm camaraderie. Awards David Gemmell Morningstar Award nominee, 2012. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (on The Black Company’s list) ### Between Two Fires Christopher Buehlman Standalone Like The Black Company a disgraced knight wounded at Crécy protects a girl who sees angels as plague and monsters overrun France. The difference horror more than fantasy, set in our own fourteenth century. Recommended by Instagram: @gennareading (lists it with The Black Company among grimdark picks) ## Sieges and last stands Readers who loved these on Goodreads also loved The Black Company. ### Legend David Gemmell Start with Legend (the first Drenai novel) Like The Black Company soldiers facing impossible odds: the aging warrior Druss joins the defense of a fortress against an overwhelming army. The difference heroic where Cook is cynical. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved Legend also loved The Black Company) ### Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City K. J. Parker Start with The Siege, book 1 Like The Black Company a military narrator gives a dry, close account of compromised service. The difference an engineer improvising a siege defense, with no sorcery. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved Sixteen Ways also loved The Black Company) ## From the author of this site ### Only the Banners Change Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteFree novelette Read it for Cossack-style frontier war, gritty humor, defiance against empires, pike-and-shot warfare, and magic that costs the one who uses it. Heads-up Not a full campaign. It's an introduction to the world of the Witch Field, not a full book. It's a novelette about a community that must decide whether they welcome one empire to get rid of another. Read it free ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Like The Black Company the view from inside an army that is willing to spend its own people, with soldiers, engineers and officials each seeing part of what is happening. The difference pike and shot rather than sorcerous empires, and an investigation by a veteran witch-major instead of a company chronicle. Get notified at launch ## FAQ ### What should I read after The Black Company? For more soldiers in a world of gods and mages, Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson. For one battle seen by the men fighting it, Joe Abercrombie’s The Heroes. ### Are there books like The Black Company that are less bleak? Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames keeps the mercenaries and the loyalty and adds warmth and humor. Gemmell’s Legend is heroic where Cook is cynical. ### Did Glen Cook write anything else like it? Cook’s Garrett P.I. novels, starting with Sweet Silver Blues, are noir fantasy mysteries rather than war stories. See our page of books like The Tainted Cup. ## Sources Recommendations: the article and posts linked on each card; Goodreads “Readers who enjoyed … also enjoyed” lists for The Black Company, Legend and Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. Book descriptions and awards: the linked article, the site’s book catalog and the Science Fiction Awards Database (sfadb.com). --- # Books Like The Tainted Cup URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-tainted-cup Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Tainted Cup, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards in 2025, sends the brilliant, eccentric investigator Ana Dolabra and her magically altered assistant Din to solve the death of a high imperial officer, in an empire threatened by leviathans. Every book below was recommended to its readers by a book site or a reviewer, or is read by the same readers on Goodreads. Each card says which, and what is different. The list is spoiler-free. ## The closest matches ### A Drop of Corruption Robert Jackson Bennett Shadow of the Leviathan, book 2 Like The Tainted Cup Ana and Din again, this time investigating a vanished officer and a locked tower. The difference it is the sequel, so read The Tainted Cup first. Recommended by The Portalist (Archita Mittra), Vinit Nair’s blog ### The Justice of Kings Richard Swan Start with Empire of the Wolf, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup an imperial investigator, part detective, judge and executioner, uncovers a conspiracy behind an aristocrat’s murder, with his assistant at his side. The difference darker and more violent, and told by the assistant, his scribe Helena. Recommended by Vinit Nair’s blog ### City of Stairs Robert Jackson Bennett Start with The Divine Cities, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a murder investigation that opens up an empire’s history: a spy, Shara Thivani, investigates a death in Bulikov, a city ruled by the power that defeated its gods. The difference a spy under diplomatic cover instead of a detective duo, and divine miracles instead of altered bodies. Awards World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award finalist, 2015. Recommended by Vinit Nair’s blog ### Fer-de-Lance Rex Stout Start with the first Nero Wolfe novel (1934) Like The Tainted Cup the original genius detective and legman assistant: Nero Wolfe solves cases from his New York house while Archie Goodwin does the legwork and tells the story. The difference a 1930s American mystery, with no fantasy at all. Recommended by Booklist and The New York Times Book Review, both quoted by the publisher, compare Bennett’s detective to Nero Wolfe ## Investigations in strange places ### The Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison Start with The Cemeteries of Amalo, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup Thara Celehar, a cleric who can sense the last experiences of the dead, investigates deaths with patience and compassion. The difference a gentler book, and one man’s cases rather than an eccentric duo. Awards Mythopoeic Award nominee, 2022. Recommended by Vinit Nair’s blog ### The Raven Scholar Antonia Hodgson Start with Eternal Path, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a neurodivergent investigator solves a murder amid political intrigue. The difference the murder takes place during a high-stakes tournament. Recommended by The Portalist (Archita Mittra) ### The Hexologists Josiah Bancroft Start with The Hexologists Like The Tainted Cup magical investigators solving cursed cases, as a partnership. The difference lighter, and the partners are a married couple, Iz and Warren Wilby. Recommended by Vinit Nair’s blog ### The Last Smile in Sunder City Luke Arnold Start with The Fetch Phillips Archives, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a former soldier turned private investigator works cases in a city where magic has vanished. The difference grittier noir, told by the investigator himself. Recommended by Vinit Nair’s blog ### Sweet Silver Blues Glen Cook Start with Garrett P.I., book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a fantasy mystery focused on detective work, with a noir edge. The difference an older series (1987) about a private eye rather than an imperial investigator, by the author of The Black Company. Recommended by The Portalist (Archita Mittra) ### Rivers of London Ben Aaronovitch Start with Rivers of London, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a probationary police constable gets drawn into a magical murder investigation. The difference a police procedural in modern London. Recommended by The Portalist (Archita Mittra) ## Alternate-history detectives BookBrowse pairs these with The Tainted Cup. ### The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Michael Chabon Standalone Like The Tainted Cup a hard-drinking detective, Meyer Landsman, investigates the murder of a neighbor in his cheap hotel, in a world history took somewhere else. The difference no magic: an alternate history in which Sitka, Alaska, became a temporary homeland for displaced Jews after the Second World War. Awards Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Sidewise Awards, 2008. Recommended by BookBrowse (read-alikes for The Tainted Cup) ### Cahokia Jazz Francis Spufford Standalone Like The Tainted Cup a detective, Joe Barrow, investigates a killing staged to look like a sacrifice, and the case threatens to spark violent unrest in the city. The difference no magic: 1922, in an alternate America where a Native-led state survives in Illinois. Recommended by BookBrowse (read-alikes for The Tainted Cup) ## If you liked the empire more than the murder Readers who loved these on Goodreads also loved The Tainted Cup. ### Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City K. J. Parker Start with The Siege, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a resourceful narrator solves problems inside an empire’s institutions while the city is under threat. The difference an engineer improvising a siege defense, not a murder investigation. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved Sixteen Ways also loved The Tainted Cup) ### The Traitor Baru Cormorant Seth Dickinson Start with The Masquerade, book 1 Like The Tainted Cup a gifted imperial accountant working inside an empire’s institutions, and the cost of doing it. The difference political and economic intrigue rather than a murder case. Recommended by Readers on Goodreads (readers who loved Baru Cormorant also loved The Tainted Cup) ## From the author of this site ### The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Sandro Andreatta By the author of this siteComing 2027 Four years after her student, the chosen one, died when the witch field collapsed above him and destroyed a city, Witch-Major Irena Vahn is exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier. There she finds the same magical pattern that killed him, and a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Like The Tainted Cup an investigation inside an empire’s institutions, by people who already understand the magic; you piece together how it works from clues and observations, as they do. The difference a military fantasy set in a pike-and-shot war, with no detective duo. Get notified at launch ## FAQ ### What should I read after The Tainted Cup? Its sequel, A Drop of Corruption. After that, The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan, for another imperial investigator and his assistant. ### Is The Tainted Cup inspired by Sherlock Holmes? The publisher pitches Ana and Din as a Holmes-and-Watson-style duo, and Booklist calls the book inspired by Nero Wolfe. If you want to try the original, start with Rex Stout’s Fer-de-Lance. ### Are there fantasy mysteries like The Tainted Cup that are less dark? The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison and The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft are both gentler. ## Sources Recommendations: the articles linked on each card; BookBrowse read-alikes; the publisher’s page for The Tainted Cup (Penguin Random House); Goodreads “Readers who enjoyed … also enjoyed” lists for Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City and The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Book descriptions and awards: the linked articles, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, the site’s book catalog and the Science Fiction Awards Database (sfadb.com). --- # If You Like This Game or War Film, Read This Book URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-video-games-and-war-films Each card pairs a game, film or series with a book that shares something with it, says what the book is, and what to know before starting. The list is spoiler-free. ## Shooters and space war ### Empire of Silence Christopher Ruocchio Start with The Sun Eater, book 1 (seven books, complete) science fiction Pairs with Halo What it is Hadrian Marlowe, a nobleman's son in an interstellar empire, looks back on the life that made him infamous. Good to know a slow, reflective first-person memoir with a long opening journey before the wars arrive. ### House of Suns Alastair Reynolds science fiction Pairs with Interstellar and Halo What it is six million years ago a woman split herself into a thousand clones who now roam the galaxy and meet every two hundred thousand years. Two of them arrive late to a reunion and find their line being hunted. Good to know deep-time space opera about a family of immortals, not a military story. ### Eisenhorn Dan Abnett Start with Xenos, or the Eisenhorn omnibus Warhammer 40,000 Pairs with Space Marine, Dawn of War, Warhammer 40k, Mass Effect What it is Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn hunts daemons, aliens and heretics across the Imperium, and over the trilogy starts working with the powers he swore to destroy. The publisher calls it "part detective story, part interplanetary epic." Good to know an investigation more than a war story. No Warhammer knowledge needed. See our Warhammer starter page. ### The Faith of Beasts James S. A. Corey Start with The Mercy of Gods (The Captive's War, book 1) science fiction Pairs with The Expanse and Mass Effect What it is humans live as captives of the Carryx, an alien empire that rules thousands of species through war, while an agent of the empire's enemy works inside its palace. Good to know this is book two; the series starts with The Mercy of Gods. By the authors of The Expanse. ### First and Only Dan Abnett Start with Gaunt's Ghosts, book 1 (16+ novels) Warhammer 40,000 Pairs with Space Marine, Dawn of War, Warhammer 40k, Doom, Sharpe What it is Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt leads the Tanith First, a light infantry regiment of survivors from a destroyed world, through the Sabbat Worlds crusade. Good to know infantry warfare, rival regiments and treachery in the command, rather than one super-soldier. See our Warhammer starter page. ### Paradise-1 David Wellington Start with Red Space, book 1 science fiction Pairs with Dead Space and Alien: Covenant What it is an exiled officer is sent to a new colony. Her ship is ambushed on the final approach, its AI is corrupted, and the colony doesn't answer. Good to know horror: derelict ships, a rogue AI and something wrong with the colonists. Long, and it ends on a cliffhanger. ### The Genesis of Misery Neon Yang Start with book 1 of a trilogy science fiction Pairs with Evangelion and Armored Core What it is Misery Nomaki, a cynical girl from a poor outer colony, is hailed as a prophesied messiah and pilots a holy mech in a religious war she doesn't believe in. Good to know mech battles share the stage with questions of faith. Book one ends just as the big reveals start. ## Soulslikes and dark fantasy RPGs ### Between Two Fires Christopher Buehlman Standalone Pairs with Elden Ring What it is Thomas, a disgraced knight wounded at Crécy, protects a girl who sees angels as they cross France during the Black Death toward Avignon. The plague is a front in Lucifer's war on Heaven. Good to know medieval horror. Content note: an early threat of sexual violence. ### In the Shadow of Their Dying Michael R. Fletcher and Anna Smith Spark Novella Pairs with Dark Souls and Berserk What it is Tash, the third-best available assassin in a city under siege, takes a job to kill the king, and finds a demon guarding his chambers. Good to know short and very gory, with dark humor in the assassin's chapters and poetic brutality in the demon's. ### Empire of the Vampire Jay Kristoff Start with Empire of the Vampire, book 1 Pairs with The Witcher 3 What it is there has been no sunrise for twenty-seven years, and vampires are building an empire on the ruins of humanity's. Gabriel de León, the last silversaint of an order of monster hunters, is a prisoner forced to tell his story. Good to know horror as much as fantasy, and long: over 700 pages in paperback. ### Bloodmage Stephen Aryan Start with Battlemage (Age of Darkness, book 1) Pairs with Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher What it is years after a war against battlemages, a city fears magic, and bodies drained of life start turning up. A member of the Watch recruits a gifted young man to find the killer. Good to know book two of a trilogy and a thriller set in one city, not a war novel; start with Battlemage. ## War, stealth and crime ### War Song Michael Michel Prequel to The Price of Power Indie Pairs with Ryse: Son of Rome and Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes What it is a miner who has lost his family to an occupying empire decides how far he will go against it, in the first stirrings of a rebellion. Good to know a short prequel; one reviewer says it stands alone but is best read after The Price of Power. ### Daughter of Crows Mark Lawrence Start with The Academy of Kindness, book 1 Pairs with Dishonored and John Wick What it is Rue, now old, is one of the few girls who survived an academy that trains them as agents of retribution. When violence reaches her door, she goes after revenge for lost friends. Good to know darker than Lawrence's earlier grimdark, with horror elements; past and present are interwoven. ### Jade City Fonda Lee Start with Jade City (trilogy complete) Pairs with Yakuza 0 What it is rival families fight for territory and power in a modern, East Asian-inspired city where jade gives warriors their abilities. Good to know clan war and martial arts, not armies; family obligation drives it. ## War films and series Most of these are our own picks; each card says which. ### The Thousand Names Django Wexler Start with The Shadow Campaigns, book 1 (five books) Pairs with Sharpe What it is soldiers of Vordan on campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with something supernatural at stake. Good to know book one is a campaign; the revolutionary politics come later in the series. ### Gunmetal Gods Zamil Akhtar Start with Gunmetal Gods Pairs with Kingdom of Heaven What it is a conquering army meets resistance from janissaries as supernatural powers enter a religious war. Good to know horror and religious violence are central. ### His Majesty's Dragon Naomi Novik Start with Temeraire, book 1 Pairs with Master and Commander What it is naval captain Will Laurence bonds with a dragon and joins the Aerial Corps in an alternative Napoleonic war. Good to know the human–dragon bond is at the center, as much as the war. Awards Locus Award for Best First Novel and Compton Crook Award, 2007; Hugo Award nominee. ### On Basilisk Station David Weber Start with Honor Harrington, book 1 science fiction Pairs with Master and Commander What it is Honor Harrington, a captain in the Royal Manticoran Navy, fights age-of-sail naval battles in space: broadsides, crossing the enemy's T, and plenty of politics. Good to know slow and detailed; one of the two reviewers bounced off it. ### On Stranger Tides Tim Powers Standalone Pairs with Master and Commander What it is a man forced into piracy is drawn into Blackbeard's supernatural schemes in the Caribbean. Good to know pirates and magic, not naval service. ## FAQ ### What books are like Halo? Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio and House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds. ### What books are like Mass Effect? Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn, a Warhammer 40,000 trilogy, and James S. A. Corey's The Captive's War. ### What books are like Dark Souls or Elden Ring? Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman for Elden Ring, and In the Shadow of Their Dying by Michael R. Fletcher and Anna Smith Spark for Dark Souls. ### Is there a book like Doom? First and Only, the first Gaunt's Ghosts novel by Dan Abnett. ## Sources Book descriptions: publisher descriptions and reviews collected in the site's book catalog, plus Simon & Schuster (Eisenhorn), Hachette (House of Suns), Hachette Australia (The Faith of Beasts), Bibliosanctum (Paradise-1), Garik16 (The Genesis of Misery), Fantasy Book Critic (In the Shadow of Their Dying), LoveReading (Empire of the Vampire), SFFWorld (Bloodmage), FanFiAddict (War Song) and The Fantasy Hive (Daughter of Crows). --- # What Flintlock Fantasy Books Get Right About Musket Warfare URL: https://thewarshelf.com/what-flintlock-fantasy-gets-right-about-musket-warfare In Promise of Blood, reliably hitting a distant target is part of a powder mage's arsenal and, considering how hard it was to hit a single man much beyond close range, rightly so. Powder mages ingest gunpowder and use their powers to guide their bullets and hit targets at distances an ordinary musketeer could never hope to match. Similarly, in Naomi Novik's Temeraire, aimed fire is a specialist's job, left to a handful of riflemen strapped into a dragon's harness. Both books respect the musket's limitations, starting with its unrifled barrel. A musket barrel was a smooth tube. Unlike a rifle, it had no rifling, the spiral grooves that grip a bullet and spin it so it flies straight. A musket ball was a sphere cast from lead. Musketeers often loaded lead balls a good deal smaller than the bore, which meant that when the musket was fired, the ball bounced off the barrel walls on its way out. It left the muzzle spinning in whatever direction the last bounce had given it, and that spin could curve its flight away from where the soldier had aimed. That made the musket a poor weapon for hitting a single man beyond close range but a reasonable one for hitting a crowd. Commanders knew this and trained their soldiers accordingly. The military historian Rory Muir puts it bluntly: "Both the design of the musket and the training infantry received discouraged them from deliberate aiming; rather they were taught to load as quickly as possible, level the musket in the general direction of the enemy and—at least in theory—fire in simultaneous volleys." Range was the other limit. Leonard and Thomas Digges warned in 1590 that "our common shot, if they discharge not within an hundred pace [roughly 75 meters], they wil wast their powder, and do little or no hurt at all to their Enimies." Inside that range, a musket hit very hard. Modern tests put a well-charged 42.5 g musket ball at around 3,100 joules as it left the barrel. An arrow from an exceptionally strong archer reached 130 to 150 joules, and a heavy steel-bowed crossbow about 200. A musket ball was credited with piercing a top-quality corselet (a piece of armor protecting the torso) at about 180 meters and killing an unarmored man at about 550 meters. The military historian Clifford Rogers adds that a man hit by a musket ball was very unlikely to go on fighting, while men struck by several arrows or bolts often did (although that depends greatly on the type of arrow or bolt, the armor and the distance). Volleys were something officers came to love because they gave them control. A soldier allowed to fire at will could fire his musket somewhere in the general direction of an enemy just to have an easy excuse to step out of the line of fire. By contrast, a rank firing on command could not do that and thus offered an officer many more options to influence the outcome of a battle and maximize the effectiveness of the weapons at his disposal. Maurice de Saxe, the German-born Marshal of France, left a picture of what happened without that control, complaining about his men firing at night: "since the officers cannot see them in the dark, they are content to rest the muzzle on the palisade and blast away at random." Even with that discipline, battlefield fire was wasteful. Muir estimates that at the end of the 18th century armies fired somewhere between 200 and 500 bullets for every fatal wound. That is a great deal of loading for one man to die. Mostly, they opened fire too early and at too long a range. What the musket didn't need was years of practice. Humphrey Barwick, a 16th-century military writer, thought six days were enough to train a pikeman and sixty a handgunner, whereas an archer or a man-at-arms took years. It is worth noting that an archer can be trained somewhat quickly, but mastering the weapon takes time, especially at high draw weights, which are needed for penetrating power and require a great deal of strength. Of course, archers had advantages: for example, they had the next arrow ready to loose much faster than a musketeer could reload his musket. A matchlock musketeer had to look after his burning match as well as the powder, ball and priming, and a Dutch drill manual of 1607 breaks the procedure into forty-two motions. Barwick reckoned a skilled man could manage forty shots an hour on the practice ground, about one every ninety seconds, although many captains expected no more than ten an hour. Heavy muskets fired from a rest were slower still. In formation and under fire, Clifford J. Rogers considers one shot every two or three minutes realistic for a common arquebusier. The flintlock and the paper cartridge sped all of this up considerably. Django Wexler, author of The Shadow Campaigns series, has said he researched exactly this kind of detail: tearing paper cartridges open with your teeth until your mouth is dry and coated with powder. On the parade ground, a highly trained soldier could fire every fifteen to twenty seconds until black-powder fouling slowed him down. In battle, two or three rounds a minute was good going for the best units; many soldiers managed less as the battle dragged on. Powder mages get to ignore most of these difficulties. They hit enemies thousands of meters away and fire and reload faster than everybody else. To my mind, that is what makes McClellan's magic interesting. A hero in a musket line is generally expected to do what everyone else is doing. Magic gives him permission to be a nuisance to the formation. ## Drill and volley fire In The Thousand Names, Django Wexler makes his new recruits learn how to function as a regiment before letting them fight as one. He doesn't make learning to form square or present muskets look easy. The drill also serves a distinct function in the story beyond showing off period knowledge: it helps build companionship within a military unit, where Sergeant Winter has to find creative ways to protect her men from the higher-ups' irrational demands. This is a common trope in military fantasy: the chain of command is both a necessity and an obstacle, especially if you have a lieutenant who is a nobleman on horseback with no experience of battle under his belt. Later in the story, Winter has her men form square and fend off an enemy cavalry attack with volley fire, so it all pays off nicely. Volley fire is the next aspect that makes Wexler's military feel realistic or immersive. Volley fire is quite a bit older than gunpowder, though. The crossbowmen of the Tang dynasty already fired in rotating groups. With firearms, the idea turns up in several places. The Ming general Qi Jiguang described volley fire for arquebusiers around 1560, and Ottoman Janissaries fired volleys during the long Ottoman–Habsburg war of 1593–1606. The Japanese under Oda Nobunaga are often said to have won at Nagashino in 1575 with three ranks of gunners firing in rotation. The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, translated into English in 2011, describes massed gunfire but does not describe this system of rotating ranks. In Europe, the Dutch made it standard. In December 1594, William Louis of Nassau wrote to his cousin Maurice describing what became known as the countermarch: each rank fired together and marched to the back to reload while the next rank fired, so that "before the last ranks have fired, the first will have reloaded." Geoffrey Parker called the result "a production line of death." According to Tonio Andrade, "it was that Dutch system that, once it proved its value, was then copied throughout Europe." Firing in turns was only part of the problem. Since muskets in the 16th and 17th centuries took a lot of time to reload, men fired and then stepped back to reload, making space for the next rank (the film Alatriste portrays that quite nicely). The men who had fired had to get out of everybody else's way without setting anyone's powder alight. According to the historian Olaf van Nimwegen, each musketeer needed at least about 0.9 meters of room on either side, while making sure his burning match did not ignite another soldier's gunpowder. The files also had to keep lanes free for the men marching back to reload, which made the formation wide and loose and poorly protected against cavalry. The Dutch kept tinkering with it. By the Jülich campaign of 1610, the musketeers stood behind the pikes and stepped forward together to fire, often with the front rank kneeling, so that 144 men could fire a single volley. The system only worked with drill. Thinner, wider formations put more men in the front rank, and Parker spells out the cost: "Changing a pike square perhaps fifty deep into a musketry line only ten deep inevitably exposed far more men to the challenge of face-to-face combat, calling for superior courage, proficiency and discipline in each individual soldier." Drill can also become a problem when it turns into habit. In Novik's Black Powder War, the Prussian army still fights the way Frederick the Great taught it, and at Jena it loses the way it lost in 1806. ## Squares and cavalry Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), Scotland Forever!, 1881: the charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo. Public domain. Source Fantasy loves a cavalry charge. The Rohirrim riding down into the hordes of orcs in front of Minas Tirith are the prime example. Many readers see in this siege and its relief an echo of a pike-and-shot-era siege: Vienna in 1683, where the Polish Winged Hussars famously charged into the Ottoman lines besieging the city, although the impact of the charge is historically overstated. Tolkien never said so, though, and Tolkien scholars point instead to the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451, where the Visigothic king Theodoric fell from his horse and was trampled, much as Théoden is. The early modern period as a whole was less kind to cavalry charges than Vienna in 1683 suggests. Infantry used long pikes, which made the horses' lives increasingly difficult from the late medieval period onwards. To make matters worse for horsemen, pike squares also sheltered musketeers, who fired from within the protection of the pikes. Again, the period's warfare is probably best illustrated by the film The Profession of Arms or, as mentioned before, Alatriste, if you want to see an example on the silver screen. Cavalry was still used, and still effective, all the way to the Napoleonic Wars, but it increasingly struggled to have the same impact as a knightly charge in, let's say, the 1100s. Even the Polish Winged Hussars found this out, more than half a century before Vienna. At Mewe in 1626, they swept the first Swedish line off the high ground, but a salvo from the Swedish second line halted the assault, and the hussars had to withdraw in disorder. Gustavus Adolphus had given his musketeers Dutch-made muskets of 18 to 22 mm caliber, heavy enough to pierce the hussars' armor, and deployed them to fire three ranks at once. William Garrard, writing in 1591, thought a pike square was "as hard to be pierced by a horse as an angry porcupine or hedgehog with the end of a bare finger", at least as long as the men in it stood their ground. When the bayonet replaced the pike around 1700, the square stayed and the pikemen went. Every soldier was now, so to speak, a musketeer and a pikeman at the same time. At Waterloo, Marshal Ney sent his cavalry against Wellington's squares with no infantry to follow up and no guns brought close enough to break them. The horsemen could only circle the squares looking for a weak spot while the infantry shot at them, and in the end they had to pull back. The bayonets kept the horses off and the muskets did the killing. A fantasy battle that gets this right, where the cavalry hesitates, circles and dies under musket fire unless something else breaks the square first, has an author who's read their history. Again, Django Wexler gets this exactly right in The Thousand Names. Musketeers even drill how to form a square, and don't do badly, given that this was a maneuver that required experience and well-trained officers. The fight against the Redeemers is the clearest example. Winter forms her square near a river, and her men hold their fire until the Redeemer horsemen are in range, which is what saves them. The volleys bring down the front riders, and the bodies pile up in front of the square and hem in the riders charging behind them. The horses won't charge home into the bayonets, so the square only has to stay where it is. It is a simple order to understand and a horrible one to obey: stand still while the horses come straight at you. A square that holds its ground is close to impenetrable for cavalry, and one that panics and breaks gives the horsemen exactly the gaps they were circling for. Temeraire hints at what a fantasy army might do about squares. Novik's dragons carry bombs and drop them on formations on the ground. A square concentrates men in a stationary formation, making it an inviting target for anything falling from above. Formations that could stand off cavalry had that problem with artillery long before anyone thought of dragons. At Rocroi in 1643, the last six Spanish tercios beat off several cavalry attacks but lost heavily to the French guns, and the French still never broke them. ## Nobody knows who's winning Django Wexler has said he writes battles in which the participants "may not even know whether they've won or lost" until the rout begins. In the same 2013 essay, written as advice for fantasy authors, he recommends Rory Muir's book, the one quoted above. The history supports him. Infantry fights were mostly decided by morale, and the bayonet charge shows it most clearly. Muir points out that bayonet wounds were rare: the charge worked by frightening the enemy, and usually one side gave way before the lines met. Sir John Stuart's report of the Battle of Maida in 1806 describes that moment as he wanted it remembered. After a few rounds of fire, the two lines "advanced towards each other, until their bayonets began to cross. At this momentous crisis the enemy became appalled. They broke, and endeavored to fly, but it was too late; they were overtaken with the most dreadful slaughter." In fact, the French ran before the bayonets crossed. A British officer at Barrosa in 1811 described the other side of it, after his regiment charged into a French unit that broke: "I could not, confused and flying as they were, cut down one, although I might have twenty, they seemed so confounded and so frightened. They made, while we were among them (about quarter of an hour), little or no opposition." When nobody gave way, the lines rarely met at all. They stopped and shot at each other, sometimes in firefights that lasted hours and settled very little. Sometimes nobody knew even after the battle. Swedish and Polish accounts of Dirschau in 1627 report everything from a Swedish victory to a draw to a Polish one, each side mostly writing its own story. Historians now judge by what happened next: the Swedes advanced and the Poles withdrew, so most give the Swedes the edge. The Thousand Names shows the defenders' side of this later in the book, when the Colonials face a Redeemer infantry line out in the desert. The ranks wait for Janus's command before they fire, and their superior fire halts the Redeemers and frightens them. Smoke covers everything. The cannon switch to canister, tin cans packed with musket balls that turn a field gun into an enormous shotgun at close range, and the shot tears through the ranks. Once the first few ranks of an army that size go down, the men behind them stop, and the charge loses the momentum it needs to reach the defenders. That momentum can give the attacker an advantage, but the balance is fragile: a well-timed volley can stop the onslaught and give the defenders their chance to countercharge. Wexler gets this right. A big army is not much use if its front ranks won't keep walking. ## Sieges Most wars of the period were fought as sieges rather than battles, but battles decided who got to besiege. John Bingham, an English officer who served in the Dutch army, said the master of the field "may lay siege to what Towne he is disposed, he may raise any siege that the Enemy hath layed against him. Nor can any Man be Master of field without Battaile." Sieges in this period followed a method. Vauban, Louis XIV's military engineer, worked out a system the French first used at Maastricht in 1673: the attackers dug trenches parallel to the walls, linked them with zigzag approach trenches so the defenders could not fire straight down them, and brought their batteries forward one parallel at a time until the guns could open a breach. Sappers also tunneled under the walls to blow them up from below. It was slow and it was mostly digging, but done properly it made a siege largely a question of how many days it would take. The fight at South Pike in Promise of Blood starts out looking like one of these. Shouldercrown, the Adran fortress guarding the mountain, is under attack from the Kez, and Taniel spends his time there killing Kez Privileged with redstripe bullets, rounds Ka-poel has charmed to get through their shields. The Kez have sappers too, but their tunnels don't go under the fortress. They go around it, bored through the mountain so that Julene and the Kez forces can reach Kresim Kurga, the ruined holy city at the summit, where she means to summon Kresimir. The Adrans are fighting to save a fortress the Kez don't need to take. That is a good twist on a period siege, and the sappers are the most period thing in it. The ending has nothing to do with Vauban: Kresimir arrives and Taniel shoots him in the eye. In my own novel, The Witch Field, I took the opposite route to McClellan. One of the main characters, Stepan, goes through the entire course of a siege at the fortress of Karnhelm: the arrival of the enemy army, a garrison sortie against the besiegers' first parallel, the battle for the covered way and the ditch, the fight for the wall, the breach, the retrenchment behind it, the final assault and, last of all, a defense in depth through the streets. The fortress loses its defenses one layer at a time, until the surviving garrison has to fight for the city street by street. Karnhelm follows Vauban's routine, only seen from inside the walls. His siege of Ath in 1697 was called "not so much a siege as an idealized version of one." Vauban promised "an infallible success without a day's extra delay if you will defer to my opinion and follow faithfully the rules I lay down." Following his rules, attackers could take a well-defended fortress in about forty-eight days. The garrison of Karnhelm hits back where that routine was weakest. The sortie strikes the first parallel before a single Khaskir gun has hit the wall. The fight for the covered way was usually the costliest phase of a siege, so costly that Vauban built raised firing platforms for infantry, the cavaliers de tranchée, to avoid a direct assault on it. Losing the glacis would let the attackers drag their breaching batteries up to the edge of the ditch, which is exactly where Vauban placed them, thirty to fifty meters from the wall. Behind the breach, the retrenchment answers a problem Vauban described himself: "In an ordinary fortress, when the bastions are breached the whole enceinte is breached." Where Karnhelm leaves the routine is at the end. At Ath, the garrison raised a white flag before the general assault had even begun, and that was usual: once the breaches were wide enough, a garrison often negotiated its surrender. Karnhelm fights on, through the retrenchment and into the streets. ## Bibliography Allent, Pierre-Alexandre-Joseph. Histoire du corps impérial du génie ... depuis l'origine de la fortification moderne jusqu'à la fin du règne de Louis XIV. Paris, 1805. Andrade, Tonio. "The Arquebus Volley Technique in China, c. 1560: Evidence from the Writings of Qi Jiguang." In The Maritime Defense of China: Ming General Qi Jiguang and Beyond, edited by Y. H. Teddy Sim, 73–92. Singapore: Springer, 2017. Andrade, Tonio. The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Barwick, Humfrey. A Breefe Discourse, Concerning the Force and Effect of All Manuall Weapons of Fire. London, [1592?]. Börekçi, Günhan. "A Contribution to the Military Revolution Debate: The Janissaries' Use of Volley Fire during the Long Ottoman–Habsburg War of 1593–1606 and the Problem of Origins." Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 59, no. 4 (2006): 407–38. "Brown Bess (UK), small arms of the Napoleonic Wars." History of War. https://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_brown_bess.html. Digges, Leonard, and Thomas Digges. An Arithmeticall Warlike Treatise Named Stratioticos. London, 1579; 2nd ed. 1590. Duffy, Christopher. Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Falkner, James. "Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban: Father of the Fortress." Military History, September 2012. https://historynet.com/sebastien-le-prestre-de-vauban-father-fortress/. Frost, Robert I. The Northern Wars: War, State and Society in Northeastern Europe, 1558–1721. Harlow: Longman, 2000. Garrard, William. The Arte of Warre. London, 1591. Gheyn, Jacob de. Wapenhandelinghe van roers, musquetten ende spiessen. The Hague, 1607. Kalaus, P. "Schiessversuche mit historischen Feuerwaffen." In Von alten Handfeuerwaffen, 51–92. Graz, 1989. McClellan, Brian. Promise of Blood. New York: Orbit, 2013. Muir, Rory. Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Nimwegen, Olaf van. The Dutch Army and the Military Revolutions, 1588–1688. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010. Novik, Naomi. Black Powder War. New York: Del Rey, 2006. Novik, Naomi. His Majesty's Dragon. New York: Del Rey, 2006. Ōta Gyūichi. The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga. Translated and edited by J. S. A. Elisonas and J. P. Lamers. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Parker, Geoffrey. "From the House of Orange to the House of Bush: 400 Years of Revolutions in Military Affairs." Militaire Spectator 172, no. 4 (2003): 177–93. Rambo, Cat. "An Interview with Django Wexler." SFWA, 12 September 2013. https://sfwa.org/2013/09/12/interview-django-wexler/. Rogers, Clifford J. "Tactics and the Face of Battle." In European Warfare, 1350–1750, edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim, 203–35. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Roberts, Keith. Pike and Shot Tactics 1590–1660. Elite 179. Oxford: Osprey, 2010. Ross, Steven T. From Flintlock to Rifle: Infantry Tactics, 1740–1866. London: Frank Cass, 1979. Strickland, Matthew, and Robert Hardy. The Great Warbow: From Hastings to the Mary Rose. Stroud: Sutton, 2005. Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre de. A Manual of Siegecraft and Fortification. Translated by George A. Rothrock. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968. Wexler, Django. "So You Want to Have a War?" A Dribble of Ink, April 2013. https://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/04/so-you-want-to-have-a-war-by-django-wexler/. Wexler, Django. The Thousand Names. New York: Roc, 2013. William Louis of Nassau to Maurice of Nassau, 8 December 1594. Koninklijk Huisarchief, The Hague, Ms. A22-1XE-79. --- # Matchlock vs Flintlock URL: https://thewarshelf.com/matchlock-vs-flintlock The short answer: a matchlock fires when a lever lowers a burning cord, the match, into a small pan of priming powder. A flintlock fires when a flint strikes a steel plate, the frizzen, and throws sparks into the pan. Getting rid of the burning match meant no glow at night, no fire next to the powder, fewer failures in wind and rain, and simpler, faster reloading. The flintlock was invented in France around 1610 and replaced the matchlock as Europe's standard infantry weapon in the second half of the 17th century. ## Side by side -—————————————————————————————————————————-- Matchlock Wheellock Flintlock -—————— — -————————- — ————————-- — ——————————————- Ignition Burning cord Steel wheel on pyrite Flint on steel In wind and rain Poor Better Better, but still misfires when damp At night Gives you away Hidden Hidden Cost Cheap Expensive More than a matchlock, less than a wheellock Who carried it Infantry, c. 1470s–1700 Cavalry, officers, the rich Infantry, c. 1640s–1840s -—————————————————————————————————————————-- ## How a matchlock works You are on a wall at night with a loaded musket. To fire it you need a lit cord, so you keep one smoldering in your hand until morning. The enemy can see its glow and smell its smoke, a shower can put it out, and you are holding it a few inches from your powder. That was the matchlock. A length of cord soaked to burn slowly, the match, sits in the jaws of a curved lever called the serpentine. Pull the trigger and the serpentine dips. The glowing tip touches the priming powder in a small pan beside the barrel, and the flash runs through the touch hole to fire the main charge. From the late 15th to the late 17th century, the matchlock was the battle-winning weapon of Europe's infantry. But its drawbacks were obvious, and gunsmiths spent the 16th century looking for a way to do without the match. ## The wheellock: the expensive answer The first answer, around 1500, was the wheellock. The shooter wound a spring with a key called a spanner. Pulling the trigger let the spring spin a steel wheel against a lump of pyrite held in a clamp called the dog. The sparks ignited the powder in the pan, much like a modern cigarette lighter. There was no glowing match and no smell, the pan cover stayed shut until the shot, and the gun coped far better with wet weather. It could be carried loaded and fired with one hand, which made the cavalry pistol possible. It was also expensive and delicate. A wheellock needed a skilled gunsmith to make it and a careful owner to keep it working, and most infantry never got one. Cavalry and officers did: wheellock pistols were common on both sides in the Thirty Years' War. ## From snaphance to flintlock A flintlock: the flint strikes the steel (the frizzen) and throws sparks into the pan. Pearson Scott Foresman, public domain. Source Flint offered a cheaper alternative. The snaphance, in use from the middle of the 16th century, struck a flint against a steel above the pan. Its name probably comes from the Dutch snaphaan, a pecking rooster. It worked, but its steel and pan cover were still separate parts. Joining them was the last step to the flintlock. The flintlock made one part do two jobs. Its steel, the frizzen, is also the lid of the pan. The cock holds a flint, and when it falls the flint scrapes the frizzen, knocks it open and throws sparks onto the priming powder in the same movement. Marin le Bourgeoys, a French court gunsmith, made one for Louis XIII shortly after the king came to the throne in 1610. At half-cock, a catch inside the lock, the sear, rests in a safety notch, and the gun can't go off by accident. ## What it meant for the musketeer For the man carrying it, the flintlock meant no match to keep alight, no glow at night and no fire in his hand next to the powder. It also made reloading simpler: there was no burning match to take off, tend and clamp back in place. A well-trained soldier with a flintlock musket could fire about three shots a minute, sometimes four, though keeping that pace in battle was another matter. The wheellock had most of these advantages, but armies still kept their matchlocks. Armies bought guns by the thousand, and a lock that needed a skilled gunsmith to make and a careful owner to maintain was difficult to supply on that scale. The matchlock held on because it was cheap. The flintlock took over because it did most of what the wheellock did at a price an army could pay. ## The end of the flintlock The flintlock lasted more than two centuries. Alexander Forsyth patented a percussion lock in 1807, but armies only began to switch in the 1830s. Britain started converting its Brown Bess muskets to percussion in 1839 and introduced a new percussion musket, the Pattern 1842. The US Model 1840 was the last American military flintlock. ## Lock, stock and barrel The musket also left phrases in the language. "Lock, stock and barrel" names its three main parts; the story about a shopkeeper's whole stock is invented. The phrase turns up literally in 1752, describing pistols, and figuratively in 1803, in a Fourth of July toast printed in the Connecticut Sentinel. "A flash in the pan" is priming that flares without firing the charge, and it was used figuratively by 1674. "Going off half-cocked" comes from the same lock. ## What fantasy gets right, and what it skips Most flintlock fantasy is set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, after the changes described here. Brian McClellan has said Powder Mage began when he watched Sharpe's Rifles and decided he wanted mages with muskets in a Napoleonic setting. Django Wexler drew on Napoleon's Egyptian campaign for The Thousand Names. The century before, when musketeers still needed pikemen, a burning match and a fair amount of luck, hardly appears in fiction. If that's the war you want to read about, my shortlist is on the Pike-and-Shot Fantasy page. For everything with flintlocks, start with my Flintlock Fantasy guide. Fantasy rarely asks which lock its soldiers carry, though the answer changes what can happen. A matchlock company can't make a quiet night attack, because every match glows and smells. Rain can put a whole firing line out of action. Troops with plug bayonets have to stop shooting to fix them: at Killiecrankie in 1689 the Highland charge reached the government line before most men had fixed theirs, and Mackay's army broke. For a writer, the lock makes darkness, weather and even the supply of rope matter. ## Sources Bailey, D. W., British Military Longarms 1715–1865, London 1986. Blair, Claude, European & American Arms, c. 1100–1850, London 1962. Chandler, David, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough, London 1976. The Connecticut Sentinel, July 1803 (Fourth of July toasts at Stratford). Dryden, John/Crowne, John/Shadwell, Thomas, Notes and Observations on the Empress of Morocco, London 1674. Flayderman, Norm, Flayderman's Guide to Antique American Firearms and Their Values, 9th ed., Iola 2007. Hall, Bert S., Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics, Baltimore 1997. Hill, James Michael, Celtic Warfare 1595–1763, Edinburgh 1986. Hughes, B. P., Firepower: Weapons Effectiveness on the Battlefield, 1630–1850, London 1974. Lenk, Torsten, The Flintlock: Its Origin and Development, ed. by J. F. Hayward, trans. by G. A. Urquhart, London 1965. Lynn, John A., Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715, Cambridge 1997. Mackay, Hugh, Memoirs of the War Carried on in Scotland and Ireland, 1689–1691, Edinburgh 1833. Neal, W. Keith/Back, D. H. L., Forsyth & Co.: Patent Gunmakers, London 1969. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "snaphance", "half-cock". Ray, James, A Compleat History of the Rebellion, 1752. McClellan, Brian, interview: "Mages with Muskets: A Conversation with Brian McClellan", Dragonsteel, 22 November 2024. Wexler, Django, interview, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), 12 September 2013. --- # Where Red Rising Comes From URL: https://thewarshelf.com/red-rising-history Spoilers: the opening of book one only. Red Rising is usually sold as The Hunger Games on Mars, and the comparison is fair. A short synopsis: a teenager from the bottom of a color-coded society takes part in a lethal survival-based contest run by the people on top. When Brown talks about where the books came from, though, he rarely mentions young adult fiction. He talks about Plato, about the Roman Republic, about a Greek tragedy he was rereading on a hike, and about a revenge novel from 1844. ## A hierarchy that Plato meant to be perfect The colors come from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. In the Republic, Plato argues that a perfect society would sort people into a natural hierarchy, and Brown has said that this is where the caste system of Golds, Reds and the rest began. What interested him was the question Plato did not ask: how a society built on that idea could be poisoned. Brown has described the Golds as his version of Plato's philosopher-king, a meritocracy in which "a golden man with a golden soul" rules. The trilogy takes the philosopher-kings at their word and shows what they do to keep their place. ## Rome, Republic and Empire The Golds' names, titles and Latin mottos are the obvious Roman-inspired layer, and Brown is precise about it. In 2018 he said that much of the "historical and event-driven inspiration" comes from the Roman Republic (509 BC to 27 BC), while the iconography and nomenclature come from the Empire (27 BC – AD 284). For the sequel series he went further, to the years between Julius Caesar's death and the rise of Octavian, with their "shifting alliances" and "the privatization of armies". He has also named the television series Rome, for its intrigue, and Machiavelli, whom he read as a boy, for his ideas about power. Elsewhere he lists Locke, Hobbes, Aristotle, Plato, Napoleon and Nietzsche among the thinkers he draws on. ## Mars, not Ares Setting the story on Mars was a thematic choice as well as a practical one. Brown has said the planet appealed to him because of the difference between the Roman god Mars and the Greek god Ares. The Romans used Mars as propaganda; the Greeks saw Ares as a bloody, rage-filled figure. A society that keeps order by violence plays out on the planet named for the Roman version of the war god. ## Antigone in the mines Frederic Leighton, Antigone, 1882. Public domain. Source The first spark, by Brown's account, came when he was hiking in the Cascades and rereading Antigone from Sophocles. What struck him was "a young disenfranchised girl who stands up to cold power". He said the same in other interviews: a 2,500-year-old play about a girl defying authority, a young woman who sacrifices herself to reveal a corrupt law. Red Rising opens with an act of defiance of that kind, and it costs the young woman who commits it her life. ## Slaves, immigrants and castes For the Reds, Brown looked at history rather than myth. He based much of their slang on posters put up in New York during the nineteenth-century Irish immigration, and he read anthropological studies of immigrant and slave groups. In 2018 he added post-Civil War Reconstruction, "particularly the pernicious difficulty former slaves faced in finding work and true liberty", and the caste system in India. He also drew on eras in which slavery was not defined by race: "The victims of Rome and the Mongols were not racially targeted." ## The revenge plot The story itself has older models. Brown has called Dune and Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo "the closest parallels" to Red Rising in tone and story, and he has said that good portions of the book come from Monte Cristo and that the feelings Ender's Game gave him shaped it too. Read with that in mind, Darrow's path follows Edmond Dantès: a man wronged by the powerful, remade into one of them, working his revenge from inside their world. ## A note for readers of this site Asked in 2014 for his favorite writers, Brown named Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, J. K. Rowling, Robert Heinlein and George R. R. Martin, and called Bernard Cornwell "my favorite writer of historical fiction". With the author of the Sharpe books on that list, it is less surprising that Red Rising's later wars are written with a historical novelist's interest in campaigns and politics. --- # The History Behind The Poppy War URL: https://thewarshelf.com/poppy-war-history Spoiler warning: this article discusses major events in The Poppy War, including the ending. R. F. Kuang seems to have taken “write what you know” as permission to make her history degree more useful than the reader would like. The twists in The Poppy War have sparked some anger, but she’s translating human horrors into fantasy and showing us what our ancestors—and likely many of us, given the same circumstances—are capable of. Just as Tolkien drew on Finnish, Norse and Old English languages and cultures, Kuang drew on Chinese history when writing The Poppy War. The plot, she has said, is “mirrored almost entirely on the Second Sino-Japanese War.” That war began in July 1937, when fighting near Beijing escalated into Japan’s full-scale invasion of China, and ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945. It became part of the wider Second World War, though the fighting in China began two years before the war in Europe. Book one draws directly on the Battle of Shanghai, the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese Army’s center for biological warfare and human experimentation. You don’t have to look very hard to find Japan and China here. The Federation of Mugen, a small, militarized island empire, basically Japan, invades the Nikara Empire, a vast neighbor whose provinces answer to rival warlords as much as to the throne, basically China. The novel depicts the atrocities directly, including massacre and human experimentation. Readers have criticized Kuang for her portrayal of the Nanjing Massacre, particularly because the story starts with a more traditional outsider-goes-to-a-magic-school arc that resembles Harry Potter. Readers and reviewers made that comparison, and it is easy to see why. It also leaves you rather poorly prepared for what follows. Just as war is sudden, disastrous and traumatic, so is Kuang’s turn in The Poppy War. The gruesome acts seem to come out of nowhere and, to my mind, that is exactly the point. It’s supposed to hit you and, judging from the comments I’ve read across the internet and the opinions I’ve heard in private, hit it did. Still, that explains the effect without changing the fact that the setup for both the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731 analogues could have been better. That is more a craft question. The ending brings in another historical parallel. Rin uses the Phoenix to trigger a volcanic eruption beneath Mugen, destroying its homeland and killing civilians as well as soldiers. The god supplies the power, but the decision is hers. The comparison is with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, though Kuang takes the destruction further, to the devastation of an entire island nation. By then, the reader has been given plenty of reasons to want Rin to win. Having to face what she does with that victory is rather less comfortable. Asked about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki comparison, Kuang pointed to the familiar justification that the bombings prevented even more deaths by ending the war. The trouble is that we cannot know how many people would have died otherwise. Her own answer leaves that uncertainty intact: “Rin’s action was horrific; was it the best action? I honestly have no idea.” She condemns the atrocity while remaining unsure whether another choice would have led to less suffering. She also says the book was meant to ask that question and present different viewpoints, rather than settle it. You can argue with how she handles the ending, but the lack of a comfortable answer is deliberate. Some of the craft problems might simply come down to this being a debut written at nineteen. Kuang graduated in history from Georgetown days after the novel came out. She wrote the first draft during a gap year in China while working as a debate coach. Without university homework waiting for her in the evenings, she found time to write a novel. Finishing one at nineteen is commendable enough; I’m not sure we need to pretend the rough edges aren’t there to give her credit. Her sources included Western historians such as Jonathan Spence, John King Fairbank and Frank Dikötter, and the Chinese historian Ray Huang. On Nanjing she read Iris Chang, though she notes that many historians have since challenged Chang’s analysis. She also drew on her grandparents’ stories of the war in China. So that covers the “war” in The Poppy War. What about the poppy? The poppy gives us opium, which takes us back another century. The First Opium War ran from 1839 to 1842, the Second from 1856 to 1860. Britain fought Qing China in the first, joined by France in the second, forcing concessions over trade, territory and foreign access. “I’ve been obsessed with the Opium Wars for a long time,” Kuang has said, and she imagined a world where the drug is a source of power rather than humiliation. She drafted book one after reading about Nanjing, “from a place of rage and anger.” Later she came to see the danger in revenge stories, noting that the Chinese Communist Party uses such traumas to stir nationalism. Fantasy, in her words, is “a distorted mirror” for working through personal and family trauma. She also describes the trilogy as “what if Mao Zedong was a teenage girl?” You can probably see why this belongs in a guide to military fantasy. --- # About the Author URL: https://thewarshelf.com/about This site is run by Sandro Andreatta. ## Sandro Andreatta Historian, storyteller, and co-creator of SandRhoman History. Based in Switzerland · History & English · Late medieval to early modern warfare Sandro Andreatta studied history and English and is fascinated by how stories hold civilizations together — and what happens when they stop working. He co-created SandRhoman History, a YouTube channel on military history from the late medieval to the early modern period, and lives in Switzerland. On YouTube: SandRhoman History (English) · SandRhoman Geschichte (Deutsch) ## The Witch Field — Acceptable Loss Book I of The Witch Field Trilogy · Coming 2027 "All things tend toward a center. History reveals where it was." — Cadrin Sol, The Architecture of Collapse Witch-Major Irena Vahn has failed as a mentor. She let her student die—the chosen one who was supposed to save the Covenant. The witch field collapsed above him, destroying the city, the enemy, and the surrounding countryside. Irena survived, scarred and unable to forgive herself. The Covenant rewrote the history, carved their names into stone, and called it victory. Four years later, Irena has become inconvenient evidence of a failure the Covenant wants erased. Exiled to a fort on the eastern frontier, she discovers the same magical pattern that killed her student. She recognizes the beginnings of another catastrophe. Her search for answers draws her into a military system prepared to sacrifice the people it exists to protect. Having spent her career deciding which battles are worth her soldiers' lives, she understands its reasoning all too well. Now Irena must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice for the next victory—and find a way to live with the loss she cannot undo. She counts her own life among the acceptable losses. Her friends, who have spent four years trying to keep her alive, do not. More about the book, the world and its magic: sandroandreatta.com ## Start with a free short story Join the mailing list and a free Witch Field story will arrive in your inbox. No spam, just fiction and updates on major releases. ### Only The Banners Change A Witch Field story To fight one empire, he marches beneath another's banner and swears the oath that will begin a rebellion. But some oaths survive victory worse than defeat. ### The Black Gloves A Witch Field story · Book cover by Guillermo Kelly Lysa Teren can keep soldiers standing after fear and pain should have broken them. The state calls it a gift. The men she saves learn to call it something else. Every battle gives her another reason to use it. Get the free story Your email address is processed through Brevo for subscription confirmation, fiction and release updates from Sandro Andreatta. For privacy questions, contact hello@thewarshelf.com. See the privacy policy. --- # Affiliate Disclosure URL: https://thewarshelf.com/affiliate-disclosure Links to Amazon on The War Shelf are affiliate links. If you buy a book after clicking one, the site earns a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It helps pay for the site. Affiliate links never decide what is recommended. Every card says who recommends the book: a book creator, a book site, readers, an award, or "My pick" for books the author has read and recommends himself. Books by the author of this site are always labeled "By the author of this site". As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Short line for pages with affiliate links (place it near the top or above the first card): Links to Amazon on this page are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Recommendations are never paid for. How this works. --- # For Authors URL: https://thewarshelf.com/for-authors The War Shelf recommends military fantasy, military science fiction, flintlock and pike-and-shot fantasy, grimdark and Warhammer. If you write any of these, there are two ways to get your book in front of readers here. ## Submit your book (free) Every book on this site has to earn its place. Each card says who backs it: a book creator, a book site, readers on Goodreads or Reddit, an award, or my own pick after reading it. Your book is judged the same way, whether it comes from a big publisher or you published it yourself. Indie books are welcome and labeled as such. What to send to hello@thewarshelf.com: Title, author and series (and which book to start with) A link to the book (Amazon or the publisher's page) A short description, two or three sentences Which page you think it fits, for example military fantasy, flintlock or Books Like Powder Mage Any reviews, creator recommendations or awards it already has, with links What happens next: I read every submission. If the book fits a page and meets the same standard as the other cards, it gets a card the next time that page is updated. If it doesn't fit yet, for example because nobody has reviewed it so far, I'll keep it on file and look again later. Submitting is free, and there's no guarantee of a listing. 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You can also complain to a data protection authority: in Switzerland the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), in the EU the authority of your country. --- # Books Like The First Law URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-first-law What to read after The First Law — original trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. ## If you loved: A standalone set after the trilogy - Best Served Cold (Joe Abercrombie). Betrayed, injured and with her brother murdered, Monza Murcatto sets out for revenge on Grand Duke Orso. Why it fits: The same world two years later. The difference: A single revenge story with a new lead. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More grit after First Law - Black Stone Heart (Michael R. Fletcher). Khraen, a man with a dark past spanning millennia. Why it fits: Recommended for First Law readers for its grittiness and 'unfiltered ridiculousness'. The difference: Sorcery-driven, not military. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Whispers of the Storm (Z. B. Steele). Redlin of the Wolves, called Vanguard, Assassin and Reaper, telling how a war began. Why it fits: Pitched to First Law readers as Abercrombie combined with Rothfuss. The difference: New indie title; creator-network evidence. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Prince of Thorns (Mark Lawrence). An embittered young prince leads a band of outlaws while pursuing revenge and power. Why it fits: Recommended to First Law readers wanting more grimdark. The difference: One teenage narrator instead of an ensemble. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Grimdark at its most extreme - The Darkness That Comes Before (R. Scott Bakker). Kellhus, a warrior-philosopher, enters an ensemble of competing interests. Eärwa and the Three Seas, overshadowed by a past apocalypse. Why it fits: Called 'the epitome of grimdark' for First Law readers. The difference: Dense and philosophical; far less humour. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Morally ambiguous war - The Poppy War (R. F. Kuang). Why it fits: Recommended for First Law readers: 'very morally ambiguous' and bleak. The difference: Single protagonist; Chinese-history-inspired war. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: A veteran's dark quest - Aching God (Mike Shel). Auric Manteo, a retired, traumatised adventurer called back to lead a young team into the Barrowlands. Why it fits: Listed as 'perfect for fans of The Blade Itself'. The difference: Adventuring-party quest, not politics or war. Backing: Recommended by a book creator. ## If you loved: Indie grimdark - The Price of Power (Michael Michel). Prince Barodane destroys an innocent city and is believed to have died a hero; highborn families scramble for the throne while, in the South, a mad prophet rallies monsters and cultists to break reality. Why it fits: Reviewers and creators compare its character work to Abercrombie. The difference: Slow-burning; evidence partly from partner promotion. Backing: Recommended by a book creator. ## If you loved: Abercrombie-style voice - The Price of Fear (Miles Lyon). Azreal the Wretched spends six hours before his execution telling his story to the investigator Anamira Lestrade. Why it fits: Reviewer compares the voice to Abercrombie and says it could fill the hole left by First Law. The difference: Framed confession; not military. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - A Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin). Large rotating cast: women and men, children and adults. Westeros and Essos; dynastic conflict and a supernatural northern threat. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Kings of the Wyld (Nicholas Eames). Retired mercenaries reunite when an old comrade asks for help on a dangerous mission. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Red Rising (Pierce Brown). Darrow, a low-caste miner. Mars and the elite Institute. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Traitor's Blade (Sebastien de Castell). Three disgraced travelling magistrates try to honour their murdered king's final orders. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Blackwing (Ed McDonald). Ryhalt Galharrow serves a powerful patron on a frontier threatened by hostile supernatural forces. Why it fits: Creator recommendation.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - The Pariah (Anthony Ryan). Outlaw Alwyn Scribe is drawn into royal military service under a visionary noblewoman. Why it fits: Creator recommendation.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - We Are the Dead (Mike Shackle). Five viewpoints, including a doubting Shulka initiate, a surviving officer and a mother behind enemy lines, resist the Egril occupation of Jia. Why it fits: Creator recommendation.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Godblind (Anna Stephens). Exiled worshippers of the Red Gods prepare invasion while Rilpor faces betrayal within its own ruling order. Why it fits: Creator recommendation.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like The Thousand Names URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-thousand-names What to read after The Thousand Names by Django Wexler. ## If you loved: More gunpowder and command - Promise of Blood (Brian McClellan). Ensemble includes Field Marshal Tamas, marksman Taniel and retired inspector Adamat. Adro after a coup against its monarchy. Why it fits: Both connect soldiers and command with magical stakes. The difference: Promise of Blood begins after a coup and includes investigation; it is not solely a campaign. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: The soldier’s personal experience - Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky). Emily Marshwic is drawn from civilian life into a musket war as the demands of recruitment grow. Why it fits: Military service changes how people understand the conflict. The difference: A more concentrated civilian-to-soldier arc, with important domestic material. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A wider early modern world - Hawkwood’s Voyage (Paul Kearney). Amid invasion and religious persecution, Hawkwood’s expedition carries refugees across an ocean toward unknown lands. Why it fits: War and supernatural danger intersect with political authority. The difference: Religious persecution and ocean exploration broaden the focus beyond a regiment. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Unit loyalty under dangerous employers - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: The military group provides a way into morally difficult service. The difference: Mercenaries and a compressed chronicle replace Napoleonic-style campaigning. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another military institution - His Majesty’s Dragon (Naomi Novik). Naval captain Will Laurence. An alternative Napoleonic world with military dragons. Why it fits: Service, duty and relationships shape a military fantasy. The difference: Alternate-history dragon aviation, centred on an officer–dragon bond. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Gender and military belonging - Monstrous Regiment (Terry Pratchett). Polly Perks, a female recruit searching for her brother; not an experienced veteran lead. Borogravia: a fictional country whose military and religious rules shape daily life. Why it fits: Recruitment and identity provide a way to examine an army. The difference: Discworld satire is a deliberate tonal shift, not a similar level of realism. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Earlier gunpowder armies with magic - The Witch Field: Acceptable Loss (Sandro Andreatta). Witch-Major Irena Vahn, scarred by the rupture of the city of Verenthal, investigates why identical anchor stones are being shipped to frontier fortresses, as a new doctrine that concentrates battlefield magic spreads. Why it fits: Gunpowder armies where magic shapes the fighting. The difference: Pike-and-shot fortresses and an investigation; not yet published. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More flintlock battlefield - God Slayer (Robert Jones). Described by a reader as 'flintlock low-fantasy'. Why it fits: Both are flintlock war stories built around battles. The difference: Self-published; readers flag editing and a crowded cast. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A soldier's view of a gunpowder war - Honor for the Dead (Connor Ludovissy). Ao, a soldier who 'has always tried to do the right thing', now hunted by his own comrades. Why it fits: Both follow soldiers in a company during a gunpowder war. The difference: Indie; one rifleman's story with runic magic rather than a whole campaign. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Shadow of the Gods URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-shadow-of-the-gods What to read after The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne. ## If you loved: Another Gwynne epic with an expanding conflict - Malice (John Gwynne). Aspiring warriors and competing rulers face a spreading conflict. Why it fits: Both connect warrior lives and an ensemble cast to a widening struggle. The difference: Malice begins a separate world and series; its coming-of-age route differs from the Bloodsworn mix of already burdened warriors. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More attachment to a rough warband - The Grey Bastards (Jonathan French). A half-orc rider defending the Lot Lands discovers interconnected threats and secrets surrounding his band. Why it fits: Both offer fighting groups whose internal relationships matter alongside violence. The difference: The Grey Bastards follows half-orc frontier riders with coarse humour, rather than a Norse-inspired world of dead gods. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Follow the appeal of battle-tested courage - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: Both offer warriors confronting danger with substantial personal stakes. The difference: Legend concentrates on an ageing hero and a fortress defence; expect a siege rather than several intersecting quests. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - The Rage of Dragons (Evan Winter). Tau, a young male fighter without the elite’s gifts. African-inspired fantasy with a Bronze Age framing. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - The Sword of Kaigen (M. L. Wang). Mother Misaki and her son Mamoru anchor the family conflict. A martial community on the edge of an empire. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Best Served Cold (Joe Abercrombie). Betrayed, injured and with her brother murdered, Monza Murcatto sets out for revenge on Grand Duke Orso. Why it fits: Revenge, unforgettable characters. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - The Bone Ships (RJ Barker). Rival seafaring nations hunt a newly sighted dragon whose bones could change their war. Why it fits: Unforgiving world, distinct lore. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - The Last Wish (Andrzej Sapkowski). Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster hunter. A folklore-inflected secondary world shaped by humans, monsters and political conflict. Why it fits: Monsters and folklore. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Of Blood and Fire (Ryan Cahill). Three young friends become wanted by the Empire after fighting an imperial patrol and join travellers carrying a dragon egg. Why it fits: Fast-paced epic, cinematic battles. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like The Dark Lands URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-dark-lands What to read after The Dark Lands by Markus Heitz. ## If you loved: A larger war and occult canvas - Grave Empire (Richard Swan). An imperial war intersects with a diplomat’s investigation of an apocalyptic prophecy and supernatural attacks on soldiers. Why it fits: War and supernatural uncertainty intersect. The difference: Secondary-world imperial scope replaces historical adventure. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More perilous covert assignments - Valnir’s Bane (Nathan Long). Condemned renegades are offered survival through secret, exceptionally dangerous missions. Why it fits: A dangerous mission holds the group together. The difference: Warhammer penal soldiers rather than the same historical or occult context. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Monster-facing companions - Trollslayer (William King). Gotrek, a dwarf Slayer, and his human companion Felix. Warhammer Fantasy’s Old World. Why it fits: Travel and dangerous supernatural encounters drive adventure. The difference: Warhammer setting and episodic exploits; not the Thirty Years’ War. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Religious conflict and wider journeys - Hawkwood’s Voyage (Paul Kearney). Amid invasion and religious persecution, Hawkwood’s expedition carries refugees across an ocean toward unknown lands. Why it fits: A world under pressure connects war with travel. The difference: Secondary-world ensemble and sea voyage, not a matching secret-mission plot. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More early modern warfare - Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky). Emily Marshwic is drawn from civilian life into a musket war as the demands of recruitment grow. Why it fits: Gunpowder war provides a useful setting connection. The difference: Conscript experience is the main draw; not an occult adventure substitute. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Prioritise supernatural investigation - The Justice of Kings (Richard Swan). Justice Konrad Vonvalt and scribe Helena. The Sovan Empire. Why it fits: Authority and hidden supernatural danger provide overlap. The difference: Legal and political inquiry takes precedence over an expedition. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another supernatural Thirty Years' War - Demon Summoner: Apprentice (Greg Walters). Military field surgeon Martin tells his apprentice Gustav that demons are real, and that battle victims are their reward for fighting for mankind. Why it fits: Supernatural threats in 17th-century Central Europe at war. The difference: A field surgeon and his apprentice, with more humour. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A mercenary in the same war - The War Hound and the World's Pain (Michael Moorcock). Ulrich von Bek, a mercenary in the Thirty Years' War, is sent by Lucifer to find the Holy Grail. Why it fits: The Thirty Years' War and dark supernatural powers. The difference: A shorter philosophical quest. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Stormlight Archive URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-stormlight-archive What to read after The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - Realm of the Elderlings — Farseer entry (Robin Hobb). Fitz, a royal bastard growing up within royal service. The Six Duchies and the royal court. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Malice (John Gwynne). Aspiring warriors and competing rulers face a spreading conflict. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Promise of Blood (Brian McClellan). Ensemble includes Field Marshal Tamas, marksman Taniel and retired inspector Adamat. Adro after a coup against its monarchy. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Age of Myth (Michael J. Sullivan). A human kills one of the supposedly invulnerable Fhrey, destabilising the relationship between their peoples. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Jade City (Fonda Lee). Family ensemble centred on the Kauls. East Asian-inspired secondary-world metropolis with modern technology. Why it fits: Recommended by the creator listed. Tradeoffs not yet written.. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Theft of Swords (Michael J. Sullivan). Royce, a thief, and Hadrian, a mercenary, are established partners. Elan; initially a kingdom-level conspiracy, expanding through Revelations. Why it fits: Found family, ancient secrets. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Red Rising (Pierce Brown). Darrow, a low-caste miner. Mars and the elite Institute. Why it fits: Large-scale rebellion led by an underdog, rigid social structure, trauma-laden protagonists. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - The Ninth Rain (Jen Williams). An explorer, a warrior and a fugitive form a team in a world scarred by repeated alien invasions. Why it fits: Shares Stormlight's innovative, genre-bending worldbuilding; she wishes it had Stormlight's readership. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like The Lies of Locke Lamora URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-lies-of-locke-lamora What to read after The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. ## If you loved: A specialist criminal crew - Six of Crows (Leigh Bardugo). Kaz Brekker assembles six outcasts with complementary skills. Ketterdam’s criminal world launches a dangerous heist. Why it fits: A crew’s complementary skills and fragile trust support a dangerous job. The difference: YA positioning and a different ensemble; not the same adult banter or Camorr setting. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Friendship and banter - Theft of Swords (Michael J. Sullivan). Royce, a thief, and Hadrian, a mercenary, are established partners. Elan; initially a kingdom-level conspiracy, expanding through Revelations. Why it fits: Established partners rely on one another while a criminal job becomes a larger problem. The difference: A central duo and royal conspiracy replace the elaborate confidence tricks. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A thief against powerful city interests - Foundryside (Robert Jackson Bennett). Sancia Grado, a thief with unusual sensory abilities. Tevanne, dominated by powerful merchant houses and industrial magic. Why it fits: A theft draws a vulnerable criminal into concealed struggles for power. The difference: Industrial magic is much more central to the premise. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Underworld power and loyalty - Priest of Bones (Peter McLean). Tomas Piety, male returning soldier, priest and gang leader; Bloody Anne is a female veteran lieutenant. A city and criminal businesses contested after wartime service; precise historical analogue unverified. Why it fits: A criminal leader must navigate coercion, allies and contested territory. The difference: A returning soldier rebuilding his organisation rather than a con artist performing elaborate scams. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: An irreverent thief’s voice - The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman). Kinch, a male thief; Galva is a prominent female veteran companion, not the narrator. Secondary-world journey through a landscape shaped by goblin wars. Why it fits: Verbal ingenuity and a thief’s perspective connect the reading experiences. The difference: A first-person journey through a war-scarred landscape replaces urban cons. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A criminal crew with bigger ambitions - Mistborn: The Final Empire (Brandon Sanderson). Vin, a young woman recruited by Kelsier into a criminal crew. An ash-covered empire ruled by a victorious dark lord. Why it fits: A crew’s plans connect personal survival to a powerful ruling order. The difference: Magic training and rebellion take greater prominence; the heist is not the whole story. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - Traitor's Blade (Sebastien de Castell). Three disgraced travelling magistrates try to honour their murdered king's final orders. Why it fits: Brotherhood like Locke and Jean. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like Guns of the Dawn URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-guns-of-the-dawn What to read after Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky. ## If you loved: More sustained campaigning - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Both make military service central to the reading experience. The difference: A broader military cast and a five-book series rather than one standalone arc. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Recruitment with sharper comedy - Monstrous Regiment (Terry Pratchett). Polly Perks, a female recruit searching for her brother; not an experienced veteran lead. Borogravia: a fictional country whose military and religious rules shape daily life. Why it fits: Both question military authority through a female recruit’s experience. The difference: Comic satire replaces much of the sober war narrative. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: The unit as a source of belonging - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Group survival and loyalty matter amid compromised service. The difference: Professional mercenaries and chronicle narration instead of a civilian conscript’s arc. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More command and magical action - Promise of Blood (Brian McClellan). Ensemble includes Field Marshal Tamas, marksman Taniel and retired inspector Adamat. Adro after a coup against its monarchy. Why it fits: Both connect warfare to political power. The difference: A coup, established leaders and an investigation broaden the action beyond rank-and-file experience. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Duty and bonds formed through service - His Majesty’s Dragon (Naomi Novik). Naval captain Will Laurence. An alternative Napoleonic world with military dragons. Why it fits: Military obligations shape close relationships. The difference: Historical dragon aviation and an adult male officer; not another female conscription story. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: War’s effects beyond the battlefield - Hawkwood’s Voyage (Paul Kearney). Amid invasion and religious persecution, Hawkwood’s expedition carries refugees across an ocean toward unknown lands. Why it fits: Both connect conflict with civilian lives and the claims of authority. The difference: A multi-strand epic with refugees, religion and exploration rather than one soldier’s central arc. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another war story about disillusionment - Of Bone and Thunder (Chris Evans). Soldiers and dragon crews fight a distant jungle war that tests their faith in their kingdom. Why it fits: Both examine how combat changes a soldier’s understanding of their country and comrades. The difference: Of Bone and Thunder shifts to an ensemble jungle-war allegory with dragon crews, rather than Emily’s musket-war experience. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Hawkwood’s Voyage URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-hawkwoods-voyage What to read after Hawkwood’s Voyage by Paul Kearney. ## If you loved: More concentrated military campaigning - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Both place organised warfare beside hidden supernatural stakes. The difference: A regimental campaign receives greater focus than ocean exploration. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A closer view of the human cost - Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky). Emily Marshwic is drawn from civilian life into a musket war as the demands of recruitment grow. Why it fits: War and authority are experienced through vulnerable people. The difference: A more concentrated character arc and standalone format. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Gunpowder politics and investigation - Promise of Blood (Brian McClellan). Ensemble includes Field Marshal Tamas, marksman Taniel and retired inspector Adamat. Adro after a coup against its monarchy. Why it fits: Political instability and military power create danger. The difference: Begins after a coup; not an exploration narrative. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Religion and larger philosophical conflict - The Darkness That Comes Before (R. Scott Bakker). Kellhus, a warrior-philosopher, enters an ensemble of competing interests. Eärwa and the Three Seas, overshadowed by a past apocalypse. Why it fits: Belief and political power shape a large fantasy conflict. The difference: A much harsher philosophical and sexual-content profile; not a gunpowder match. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Political survival - Daughter of the Empire (Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts). Mara, young Ruling Lady of House Acoma. Kelewan and Tsurani noble-house society. Why it fits: People must navigate institutions and dangerous rival powers. The difference: Household and court strategy dominate over military campaigns and exploration. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More competing powers - A Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin). Large rotating cast: women and men, children and adults. Westeros and Essos; dynastic conflict and a supernatural northern threat. Why it fits: Multiple perspectives connect personal loyalties with wider conflict. The difference: Medieval dynastic epic; no early modern gunpowder promise, and a larger commitment. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Early modern Europe and the Ottoman frontier - Children of Earth and Sky (Guy Gavriel Kay). As an Ottoman-like empire expands, an archer seeking vengeance, an artist sent to paint its ruler, a spy and a merchant travel east through a dangerous frontier. Why it fits: War, faith and an expanding empire in an early modern setting. The difference: A more intimate, literary book with little magic. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Red Knight URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-red-knight What to read after The Red Knight by Miles Cameron. ## If you loved: More mercenary service - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Both examine a fighting company employed by others. The difference: Cook’s compressed chronicle is less concerned with detailed medieval equipment. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another desperate defence - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: A defensive battle tests leadership and resolve. The difference: Gemmell’s heroic veteran story is more concentrated than Cameron’s ensemble. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Army survival under pressure - The Ten Thousand (Paul Kearney). A mercenary army hired to overthrow a ruler must fight for survival after its employer dies. Why it fits: Professional fighters must remain effective when the situation deteriorates. The difference: A retreat in an ancient-inspired world replaces fortress defence against monsters. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: How a soldier learns the profession - Sheepfarmer’s Daughter (Elizabeth Moon). Paks leaves an arranged future behind to join mercenaries and discovers the demands of army life. Why it fits: Mercenary service provides the centre of the story. The difference: Begins with a young recruit rather than an established commander. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Command with gunpowder - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Military leadership and supernatural danger intersect. The difference: Napoleonic-style campaigning replaces medieval warfare. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A much larger magical war - Malazan Book of the Fallen (Steven Erikson). Large ensemble across the series rather than one continuing central hero. Why it fits: Armies face supernatural forces within an expansive world. The difference: Far greater narrative scale and a demanding opening; not the same emphasis on historical martial detail. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Keep the commander and company at the centre - Stiger’s Tigers (Marc Alan Edelheit). Captain Ben Stiger inherits a poor company and a dangerous mission to resupply an isolated garrison. Why it fits: Both make leading a fighting unit a strong point of entry. The difference: Stiger’s Tigers uses a Roman-inspired legionary officer and a poorly performing company rather than a medieval siege against the Wild. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Deed of Paksenarrion URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-deed-of-paksenarrion What to read after Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon. ## If you loved: Another woman entering military service - Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky). Emily Marshwic is drawn from civilian life into a musket war as the demands of recruitment grow. Why it fits: Both follow women adapting to the demands of soldiering. The difference: A conscript in a gunpowder war rather than a volunteer’s heroic fantasy path. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Women and belonging in an army - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Military roles and identity shape the character experience. The difference: An ensemble campaign with concealed identity and gunpowder, rather than one recruit’s training arc. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More mercenary professionalism - The Red Knight (Miles Cameron). A mercenary commander accepts a contract to defend an abbey against creatures of the Wild. Why it fits: An organised fighting force anchors the fantasy. The difference: Leadership and defence take precedence over a single novice’s education. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A comic take on recruitment - Monstrous Regiment (Terry Pratchett). Polly Perks, a female recruit searching for her brother; not an experienced veteran lead. Borogravia: a fictional country whose military and religious rules shape daily life. Why it fits: A woman’s entry into an army reveals the institution’s assumptions. The difference: Satire is a substantial tone change, not a promise of similar moral or emotional treatment. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A darker view of the company - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Service and comradeship bind a military group. The difference: More compromised employers and chronicle narration; weaker fit for a reader seeking heroic moral clarity. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Duty and heroism - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: Courage and responsibility are central attractions. The difference: Veteran siege defence replaces a young soldier’s development. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another young soldier's schooling - Shaman's Crossing (Robin Hobb). Nevare Burvelle, a second son destined for soldiering, enters the King's Cavalla Academy while a frontier people's festival brings plague and visions draw him into a struggle over his fate. Why it fits: A young recruit learns what soldiering demands. The difference: A cavalry academy and a frontier destiny instead of mercenary service. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-sixteen-ways-to-defend-a-walled-city What to read after Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. J. Parker. ## If you loved: Another organised defence - The Red Knight (Miles Cameron). A mercenary commander accepts a contract to defend an abbey against creatures of the Wild. Why it fits: Leadership and practical preparation matter under siege. The difference: Mercenaries and overt supernatural enemies; more martial action. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Hold against overwhelming odds - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: A desperate defence tests resolve. The difference: Heroic veteran emphasis rather than an engineer’s problem-solving. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More flawed military institutions - The Heroes (Joe Abercrombie). Union and Northern armies fight a three-day battle while ambition, rivalry and exhausted veterans shape the outcome. Why it fits: Rivalry and imperfect decisions shape warfare. The difference: Multiple viewpoints across a field battle rather than an engineer’s siege account. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Military competence in a campaign - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Officers must make an army effective under pressure. The difference: Gunpowder campaigning and magic replace urban siege engineering. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More humour about military authority - Monstrous Regiment (Terry Pratchett). Polly Perks, a female recruit searching for her brother; not an experienced veteran lead. Borogravia: a fictional country whose military and religious rules shape daily life. Why it fits: Military institutions offer material for sceptical humour. The difference: Satirical recruit adventure; not a technical siege story. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A soldier’s account of compromised service - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: A military narrator provides proximity to difficult decisions. The difference: Sorcery and mercenary campaigns replace engineering. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Continue the siege - How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It (K. J. Parker). Notker, a playwright, actor and professional liar, is caught up in a city under siege and pressed into a dangerous role by the Empire. Why it fits: The next book of the same siege. The difference: A new narrator: a performer rather than an engineer. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Heroes URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-heroes What to read after The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie. ## If you loved: Read the earlier First Law story - The First Law — original trilogy (Joe Abercrombie). Ensemble, prominently male veterans/officers and an inquisitor; not a single-protagonist story. Secondary-world kingdoms, warfare and government intrigue; exact historical-period label not assigned. Why it fits: The earlier trilogy develops this world and returning characters. The difference: Same universe; broader plotting rather than another concentrated battle. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More soldiers and compromised employers - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Military service and survival complicate easy moral judgments. The difference: Chronicle narration and more sorcery. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Army survival and cohesion - The Ten Thousand (Paul Kearney). A mercenary army hired to overthrow a ruler must fight for survival after its employer dies. Why it fits: Professional soldiers confront the consequences of command. The difference: A retreat narrative in an ancient-inspired world. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: War through institutional improvisation - Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (K. J. Parker). Orhan, a colonel of engineers with little respect for authority, must organise the defence of an unprepared city. Why it fits: Flawed leaders and practical decisions matter. The difference: One engineer’s account and a siege replace the ensemble field battle. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A different perspective on costly war - Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky). Emily Marshwic is drawn from civilian life into a musket war as the demands of recruitment grow. Why it fits: Military service undermines comfortable assumptions. The difference: Female conscript and gunpowder war rather than veteran Northern fighters. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A more heroic defence - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: Veteran fighters carry the military story. The difference: A substantial tonal turn toward inspirational heroism rather than corrosive irony. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - War Song (Michael Michel). Admar, a miner under Scothean occupation who has lost his family. Why it fits: Creator comp: The Heroes + Ryse → War Song. The difference: A short prequel; best after The Price of Power. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like Temeraire URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-temeraire What to read after His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik. ## If you loved: Prioritise the dragon partnership - Dragonflight (Anne McCaffrey). Lessa bonds with a queen dragon as Pern must prepare for the return of destructive Thread. Why it fits: Human–dragon bonds and organised dragonriders are central attractions. The difference: Pern has a science-fiction foundation; not Napoleonic military history. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Dragonriders within a political institution - Fireborne (Rosaria Munda). Annie and Lee, friends with contrasting class backgrounds. A post-revolutionary society with a competitive dragon fleet. Why it fits: Dragon service intersects with status and political change. The difference: YA training and rivalry rather than an experienced adult officer’s service. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More gunpowder-era military fantasy - Promise of Blood (Brian McClellan). Ensemble includes Field Marshal Tamas, marksman Taniel and retired inspector Adamat. Adro after a coup against its monarchy. Why it fits: Military roles operate alongside extraordinary battlefield power. The difference: Secondary-world coup and investigation; no equivalent central dragon partnership. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Focus on the campaign - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Officers and soldiers face unfamiliar threats in a gunpowder army. The difference: Human military ensemble; the dragon companionship is absent. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Duty and changing loyalties - Guns of the Dawn (Adrian Tchaikovsky). Emily Marshwic is drawn from civilian life into a musket war as the demands of recruitment grow. Why it fits: Military service forces reconsideration of civilian assumptions. The difference: Female conscript and a grimmer war experience; no dragon bond. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Learning a new military life - Sheepfarmer’s Daughter (Elizabeth Moon). Paks leaves an arranged future behind to join mercenaries and discovers the demands of army life. Why it fits: Service, training and belonging structure the protagonist’s development. The difference: A young volunteer in a medieval-style company replaces a naval officer’s transfer. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More aerial command, with machinery instead of dragons - The Guns Above (Robyn Bennis). A newly appointed airship captain must earn her crew’s trust while confronting a dangerous enemy move. Why it fits: Both concern military service in the air and the responsibility of an officer for others. The difference: The Guns Above replaces a central dragon bond with an airship crew and a captain confronting institutional prejudice. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Orcs: First Blood URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-orcs-first-blood What to read after Orcs: First Blood by Stan Nicholls. ## If you loved: A warband’s loyalty and brutality - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Both centre military groups operating inside morally compromised wars. The difference: The Black Company is a human mercenary chronicle; Orcs reverses the usual monster viewpoint. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Violent fantasy from compromised viewpoints - The First Law — original trilogy (Joe Abercrombie). Ensemble, prominently male veterans/officers and an inquisitor; not a single-protagonist story. Secondary-world kingdoms, warfare and government intrigue; exact historical-period label not assigned. Why it fits: Cynicism, war and morally compromised characters offer a clear tonal bridge. The difference: Orcs uses a more conventional action-adventure structure and a nonhuman viewpoint. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A war-scarred world with irreverent voices - The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman). Kinch, a male thief; Galva is a prominent female veteran companion, not the narrator. Secondary-world journey through a landscape shaped by goblin wars. Why it fits: Travel, violence and dark humour connect the settings. The difference: Kinch is a thief on a journey; Orcs follows a disciplined warband. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Monster-facing fantasy adventure - Trollslayer (William King). Gotrek, a dwarf Slayer, and his human companion Felix. Warhammer Fantasy’s Old World. Why it fits: Warhammer’s orcs and monsters offer a direct adjacent route to brutal creature-centred adventure. The difference: Gotrek and Felix are episodic roaming heroes; Orcs gives the warband its own political identity. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Fantasy peoples in a threatened realm - The Dwarves (Markus Heitz). Tungdil, a dwarf blacksmith raised among humans. Girdlegard, protected by a dwarven gateway now threatened with breach. Why it fits: Dwarves, orcs and large-scale warfare make the species conflict legible from another angle. The difference: Heitz centres a dwarf hero and epic defence rather than an orc warband. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A soldier shaped by war - The Rage of Dragons (Evan Winter). Tau, a young male fighter without the elite’s gifts. African-inspired fantasy with a Bronze Age framing. Why it fits: Military action, revenge and a disciplined fighting culture make this the strongest human-led route. The difference: The protagonist is a human outsider and the setting’s magic and social structure differ. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Witcher URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-witcher What to read after The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. ## If you loved: Dark humour and dangerous fantasy travel - The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman). Kinch, a male thief; Galva is a prominent female veteran companion, not the narrator. Secondary-world journey through a landscape shaped by goblin wars. Why it fits: An irreverent voice moves through a violent secondary world filled with monsters and war. The difference: Kinch is a thief on a continuous journey; The Last Wish is episodic and centred on Geralt. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Cynical fantasy and moral compromise - The First Law — original trilogy (Joe Abercrombie). Ensemble, prominently male veterans/officers and an inquisitor; not a single-protagonist story. Secondary-world kingdoms, warfare and government intrigue; exact historical-period label not assigned. Why it fits: Both treat violence, power and compromised choices with dark humour. The difference: Abercrombie’s novel is a multi-character continuous plot rather than linked monster stories. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Soldiers and morally compromised worlds - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Supernatural conflict is filtered through people doing dangerous work for uncertain powers. The difference: Croaker’s mercenary chronicle is more military and less folkloric. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Fantasy from the supposed monsters’ perspective - Orcs: First Blood (Stan Nicholls). Stryke leads the Wolverines, an orc warband including Coilla, Haskeer, Jup and Alfray. Maras-Dantia, a secondary world populated by humans, orcs, elves, dwarves and other peoples. Why it fits: Both complicate familiar fantasy creatures and moral categories. The difference: Nicholls follows an orc warband; Sapkowski’s focus is one professional hunter. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Investigation in a world shaped by gods - City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett). Shara Thivani, a spy working under diplomatic cover. Bulikov, a city living under the power that defeated its gods. Why it fits: A protagonist confronts strange cases whose stakes reach into history and power. The difference: Political murder and divine aftermath replace monster contracts and folklore. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A fantastical investigation - The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett). Investigator Ana Dolabra and her assistant Din. An empire threatened by leviathans. Why it fits: Both can appeal to readers who want unusual threats investigated through a capable protagonist. The difference: The Tainted Cup is a secondary-world murder mystery with a detective partnership, not episodic folklore. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like Dragonflight URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-dragonflight What to read after Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. ## If you loved: Dragon and rider partnership - His Majesty’s Dragon (Naomi Novik). Naval captain Will Laurence. An alternative Napoleonic world with military dragons. Why it fits: The bond changes both personal identity and organised defence. The difference: Novik uses an alternate Napoleonic Earth and a military officer’s viewpoint. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Discovering a bond with a dragon - Eragon (Christopher Paolini). A fifteen-year-old farm boy discovers he is a Dragon Rider. An empire in which the new rider’s choices matter. Why it fits: A rider’s new relationship opens a larger world of danger. The difference: Paolini offers a younger hero and more conventional secondary-world magic. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Rider institutions and danger - Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros). Twenty-year-old Violet, intended for the scribes, is ordered into rider training. A dangerous dragonrider war college. Why it fits: Dragons and rider selection shape survival and status. The difference: Yarros puts adult romance and lethal college training at the centre. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Dragonriders and political legitimacy - Fireborne (Rosaria Munda). Annie and Lee, friends with contrasting class backgrounds. A post-revolutionary society with a competitive dragon fleet. Why it fits: Rider institutions are entangled with the social order. The difference: Revolutionary class politics and rival young riders replace Pern’s ecological threat. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A civilisation preparing for recurring disaster - The Fifth Season (N. K. Jemisin). Three women with connections to orogeny, a feared ability to manipulate earth and energy. The Stillness, a world repeatedly devastated by catastrophic seasons. Why it fits: Society’s institutions respond to a world that can become lethal. The difference: Jemisin uses geological power, severe oppression and a more fractured narrative. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Rebuilding a defence others neglect - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: A threatened society depends on people willing to prepare and fight. The difference: Gemmell offers a siege and human warriors rather than dragon partnership. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Ten Thousand URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-ten-thousand What to read after The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney. ## If you loved: Stay with mercenary soldiers - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: The fighting group must survive service to dangerous powers. The difference: A continuing chronicle with more overt sorcery rather than the same retreat plot. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More command and battlefield detail - The Red Knight (Miles Cameron). A mercenary commander accepts a contract to defend an abbey against creatures of the Wild. Why it fits: Military effectiveness depends on professional leadership. The difference: Medieval defence against supernatural enemies, not ancient-inspired withdrawal. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another army facing destruction - Legend (David Gemmell). Ageing warrior Druss joins the defence of Dros Delnoch against an overwhelming Nadir army. Why it fits: Collective resolve matters under overwhelming pressure. The difference: Holding a fortress and veteran heroism replace retreat. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Campaigns with muskets - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: An army’s decisions and leadership drive the action. The difference: Gunpowder and concealed magical stakes; not an Anabasis retelling. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More Paul Kearney - Hawkwood’s Voyage (Paul Kearney). Amid invasion and religious persecution, Hawkwood’s expedition carries refugees across an ocean toward unknown lands. Why it fits: War and imperilled people connect these separate settings. The difference: Same author, separate universe: religious conflict and ocean exploration broaden the focus. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: The soldier within the company - Sheepfarmer’s Daughter (Elizabeth Moon). Paks leaves an arranged future behind to join mercenaries and discovers the demands of army life. Why it fits: Mercenary life is a central point of interest. The difference: A recruit’s growth and heroic outlook replace a defeated army’s escape. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Grave Empire URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-grave-empire What to read after Grave Empire by Richard Swan. ## If you loved: Earlier history of this world - The Justice of Kings (Richard Swan). Justice Konrad Vonvalt and scribe Helena. The Sovan Empire. Why it fits: Imperial authority and supernatural investigation connect the books. The difference: Same world, earlier period; a legal investigation replaces the later military focus. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More gunpowder campaigns - The Thousand Names (Django Wexler). Soldiers of Vordan face a campaign in a setting inspired by Napoleonic Europe and North Africa, with supernatural stakes. Why it fits: Military institutions confront hidden supernatural stakes. The difference: Campaign focus rather than the same blend of diplomacy and horror. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: War with occult danger - The Dark Lands (Markus Heitz). In 1629, Aenlin Kane and Tahmina undertake a secret mission amid war and supernatural threats. Why it fits: Warfare creates the setting for supernatural threats. The difference: Historical Europe and a mission-sized adventure replace a secondary-world empire. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Soldiers serving dangerous powers - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Military service intersects with malign supernatural forces. The difference: A terse company chronicle replaces the broader institutional investigation. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Another investigation into power and gods - City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett). Shara Thivani, a spy working under diplomatic cover. Bulikov, a city living under the power that defeated its gods. Why it fits: Political institutions and supernatural mysteries overlap. The difference: More investigation and occupation politics; less conventional campaigning. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Smaller dangerous missions - Valnir’s Bane (Nathan Long). Condemned renegades are offered survival through secret, exceptionally dangerous missions. Why it fits: People inside violent institutions face lethal assignments. The difference: Warhammer penal-unit adventure; weaker fit for cosmic horror or diplomacy. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Blackhearts URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-blackhearts What to read after Valnir’s Bane by Nathan Long. ## If you loved: A fighting group under compromised authority - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Soldiers must survive service to dangerous employers. The difference: A mercenary chronicle rather than a penal-unit mission sequence. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Stay in Warhammer Fantasy - Trollslayer (William King). Gotrek, a dwarf Slayer, and his human companion Felix. Warhammer Fantasy’s Old World. Why it fits: The shared setting supports a natural reading route. The difference: Companion adventures replace an expendable military team. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Secret missions with supernatural danger - The Dark Lands (Markus Heitz). In 1629, Aenlin Kane and Tahmina undertake a secret mission amid war and supernatural threats. Why it fits: A perilous assignment anchors the story. The difference: Historical dark fantasy rather than Warhammer. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More military survival - The Ten Thousand (Paul Kearney). A mercenary army hired to overthrow a ruler must fight for survival after its employer dies. Why it fits: A fighting group must endure a lethal situation. The difference: Army-scale retreat rather than covert operations. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Veterans and organised crime - Priest of Bones (Peter McLean). Tomas Piety, male returning soldier, priest and gang leader; Bloody Anne is a female veteran lieutenant. A city and criminal businesses contested after wartime service; precise historical analogue unverified. Why it fits: Violence, group loyalty and compromised protagonists overlap. The difference: An urban gang struggle, not a battlefield or penal-unit narrative. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More compromised characters - The First Law — original trilogy (Joe Abercrombie). Ensemble, prominently male veterans/officers and an inquisitor; not a single-protagonist story. Secondary-world kingdoms, warfare and government intrigue; exact historical-period label not assigned. Why it fits: Readers interested in flawed people within violent power structures may cross over. The difference: Much broader political ensemble; not a close mission-structure match. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Kings of the Wyld URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-kings-of-the-wyld What to read after Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. ## If you loved: Keep mercenary banter and an adventure ensemble - The Black Hawks (David Wragg). An inexperienced knight escaping an invaded city with a prince becomes entangled with a mercenary band. Why it fits: Keep mercenary banter and an adventure ensemble. The difference: A less celebratory tone and a different group dynamic. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Keep enjoyable companions and adventurous plotting - Theft of Swords (Michael J. Sullivan). Royce, a thief, and Hadrian, a mercenary, are established partners. Elan; initially a kingdom-level conspiracy, expanding through Revelations. Why it fits: Keep enjoyable companions and adventurous plotting. The difference: The central partnership is smaller and less focused on ageing veterans. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Old mercenary band, darker - Snakewood (Adrian Selby). Former members of an elite mercenary band are hunted down; a scholar assembles accounts of their fate. Why it fits: A legendary mercenary band, long disbanded, is hunted down: listed for Kings of the Wyld fans. The difference: Far grimmer, fragmented narration. Backing: Recommended by a book creator. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman). Carl and Princess Donut. An alien-run dungeon game show. Why it fits: Absurd humour and emotional moments. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Traitor's Blade (Sebastien de Castell). Three disgraced travelling magistrates try to honour their murdered king's final orders. Why it fits: Adventure, lovable characters. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - The Last Wish (Andrzej Sapkowski). Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster hunter. A folklore-inflected secondary world shaped by humans, monsters and political conflict. Why it fits: Monster hunting. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like The Name of the Wind URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-name-of-the-wind What to read after The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. ## If you loved: Intimate personal growth - Realm of the Elderlings — Farseer entry (Robin Hobb). Fitz, a royal bastard growing up within royal service. The Six Duchies and the royal court. Why it fits: A closely followed young protagonist grows through service and painful relationships. The difference: Court service and emotional vulnerability rather than musician-scholar wish fulfilment. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Cleverness and a distinctive social world - The Lies of Locke Lamora (Scott Lynch). Locke, male con artist, with his criminal crew. Camorr, a secondary-world canal city with Venetian influences. Why it fits: An ingenious protagonist survives through skill, performance and deception. The difference: Crime and ensemble camaraderie rather than a university memoir. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Education amid hidden power - The Will of the Many (James Islington). Vis, a fugitive using a concealed identity. Elite Catenan Academy within an imperial hierarchy. Why it fits: An exceptional student navigates an elite institution and its secrets. The difference: Covert imperial infiltration rather than a retrospective musical life story. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A life recounted under the shadow of legend - Empire of Silence (Christopher Ruocchio). Hadrian Marlowe. An interstellar imperial society. Why it fits: A retrospective account invites comparison between a person and their reputation. The difference: Science-fiction setting and a different scale; not a fantasy university replacement. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Gradual growth in a richly developed world - The Dragonbone Chair (Tad Williams). Simon, a young male kitchen worker and apprentice, is the central entry character. Osten Ard: human kingdoms, ancient peoples and inherited conflicts. Why it fits: A young protagonist’s development unfolds within a larger history. The difference: An expansive epic and gradual opening, without the same first-person frame. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Gotrek and Felix URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-gotrek-and-felix What to read after Trollslayer by William King. ## If you loved: Dwarves at the centre - The Dwarves (Markus Heitz). Tungdil, a dwarf blacksmith raised among humans. Girdlegard, protected by a dwarven gateway now threatened with breach. Why it fits: Dwarven protagonists drive the adventure rather than remaining supporting figures. The difference: Tungdil’s wider epic differs from a Slayer and chronicler’s episodic travels. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A durable adventuring partnership - Theft of Swords (Michael J. Sullivan). Royce, a thief, and Hadrian, a mercenary, are established partners. Elan; initially a kingdom-level conspiracy, expanding through Revelations. Why it fits: A recurring pair face danger and larger conspiracies together. The difference: A thief and mercenary replace the Slayer and poet; no equivalent death-seeking premise. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Dangerous travel with contrasting companions - The Blacktongue Thief (Christopher Buehlman). Kinch, a male thief; Galva is a prominent female veteran companion, not the narrator. Secondary-world journey through a landscape shaped by goblin wars. Why it fits: Travel through a hostile fantasy landscape brings capable but different companions together. The difference: The thief narrates; it is not the same recurring duo or episodic structure. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Comrades surviving a brutal world - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Companionship persists amid violence and dangerous supernatural powers. The difference: A mercenary company and military chronicle replace two roaming adventurers. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Morally difficult violent fantasy - The First Law — original trilogy (Joe Abercrombie). Ensemble, prominently male veterans/officers and an inquisitor; not a single-protagonist story. Secondary-world kingdoms, warfare and government intrigue; exact historical-period label not assigned. Why it fits: Compromised characters and violence offer a darker adjacent route. The difference: An ensemble trilogy rather than episodic monster adventures; humour similarity is not guaranteed. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Elven URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-elven What to read after The Elven by Bernhard Hennen and James A. Sullivan. ## If you loved: An expansive historical-feeling epic - The Dragonbone Chair (Tad Williams). Simon, a young male kitchen worker and apprentice, is the central entry character. Osten Ard: human kingdoms, ancient peoples and inherited conflicts. Why it fits: A young protagonist becomes caught in a long conflict involving ancient peoples and powers. The difference: Slower court-and-history opening; elves are not the sole centre. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: An epic family and maritime world - The Curse of the Mistwraith (Janny Wurts). Half-brothers Lysaer and Arithon, raised differently and forced into a shared struggle. Exiles enter Athera, a world deprived of sunlight. Why it fits: Large-scale worldbuilding, inherited conflict and multiple peoples connect the reading experience. The difference: A different family saga and less direct elf-war premise. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A mythic world and hidden history - The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss). Kvothe recounts his childhood and education. Travel, poverty and education at the University. Why it fits: A personal story unfolds against old powers, legends and dangerous knowledge. The difference: First-person musical education is more intimate than an ensemble elven war. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A deeply followed character within a wider history - Realm of the Elderlings — Farseer entry (Robin Hobb). Fitz, a royal bastard growing up within royal service. The Six Duchies and the royal court. Why it fits: Personal loyalty and ancient supernatural forces matter within a large world. The difference: Much narrower viewpoint and court apprenticeship; not an ensemble quest. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Complex peoples and relentless war - Malazan Book of the Fallen (Steven Erikson). Large ensemble across the series rather than one continuing central hero. Why it fits: War, ancient powers and nonhuman cultures operate on a broad scale. The difference: Much denser, more fragmented and less accessible as a first entry. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like The Fifth Season URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-fifth-season What to read after The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin. ## If you loved: A world shaped by dangerous power - The Shadow of What Was Lost (James Islington). Davian and friends Wirr and Asha; another major figure has lost his memory. Andarra after the overthrow of the Augurs. Why it fits: Power systems, oppression and a threatened world connect the premises. The difference: James Islington’s epic follows younger protagonists and a more conventional quest opening; it is not Will Wight’s Cradle. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Large-scale catastrophe and ancient forces - Malazan Book of the Fallen (Steven Erikson). Large ensemble across the series rather than one continuing central hero. Why it fits: Both demand attention to a vast world, war and powers beyond ordinary people. The difference: Malazan is more fragmented and military; Jemisin’s central structure is tighter and more intimate. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Family, history and a threatened world - The Curse of the Mistwraith (Janny Wurts). Half-brothers Lysaer and Arithon, raised differently and forced into a shared struggle. Exiles enter Athera, a world deprived of sunlight. Why it fits: Inherited conflict and broad worldbuilding give a strong epic-fantasy connection. The difference: The Curse of the Mistwraith is a more traditional dynastic epic with a slower opening. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Oppression seen from inside a violent system - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: Both examine people surviving institutions and powers that treat them as instruments. The difference: Cook’s military chronicle is shorter and more compressed; it lacks Jemisin’s formal structure. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Power systems and oppressed city life - Foundryside (Robert Jackson Bennett). Sancia Grado, a thief with unusual sensory abilities. Tevanne, dominated by powerful merchant houses and industrial magic. Why it fits: A rule-based power system intersects with inequality and political control. The difference: Industrial city fantasy replaces geological catastrophe and multi-generational disaster. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Magician URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-magician What to read after Magician by Raymond E. Feist. ## If you loved: Ordinary youths drawn into an epic - The Eye of the World (Robert Jordan). Rand and his friends leave home with Moiraine. An imagined world shaped by recurring ages and prophecy. Why it fits: Young lives expand into a conflict far beyond their home. The difference: Jordan’s story has a stronger prophecy-and-pursuit framework. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Patient classic coming-of-age - The Dragonbone Chair (Tad Williams). Simon, a young male kitchen worker and apprentice, is the central entry character. Osten Ard: human kingdoms, ancient peoples and inherited conflicts. Why it fits: An initially inexperienced boy encounters a much older, larger struggle. The difference: Williams puts more emphasis on atmosphere and a slow court-centred opening. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: More of Kelewan - Daughter of the Empire (Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts). Mara, young Ruling Lady of House Acoma. Kelewan and Tsurani noble-house society. Why it fits: A different perspective on the world across the rift. The difference: Same universe: political survival replaces Pug’s magical apprenticeship. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Young hero and a society organised around power - Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher). Tavi, a fifteen-year-old who lacks the elemental abilities others possess. Calderon Valley in Alera. Why it fits: Local danger opens into a wider conflict involving magical institutions. The difference: Butcher offers a Roman-influenced setting and a different relationship to magic. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Modern epic with constrained magic - The Shadow of What Was Lost (James Islington). Davian and friends Wirr and Asha; another major figure has lost his memory. Andarra after the overthrow of the Augurs. Why it fits: Young people discover that inherited rules about power conceal more. The difference: Islington foregrounds intricate revelations rather than the Riftwar’s two-culture encounter. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Legend URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-legend What to read after Legend by David Gemmell. ## If you loved: Soldiers facing impossible powers - The Black Company (Glen Cook). Croaker, male physician and annalist of a mercenary company. Secondary-world conflict involving a mercenary company and powerful sorcerous rulers. Why it fits: War is experienced through the people required to fight it. The difference: Cook’s mercenaries are more morally compromised and his narration more compressed. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Defenders and the human cost of battle - The Sword of Kaigen (M. L. Wang). Mother Misaki and her son Mamoru anchor the family conflict. A martial community on the edge of an empire. Why it fits: A threatened community puts martial identity and sacrifice under pressure. The difference: Family, motherhood and elemental combat are more central. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Veterans with formidable reputations - The First Law — original trilogy (Joe Abercrombie). Ensemble, prominently male veterans/officers and an inquisitor; not a single-protagonist story. Secondary-world kingdoms, warfare and government intrigue; exact historical-period label not assigned. Why it fits: Experienced fighters carry histories that affect their present choices. The difference: Abercrombie is more cynical and disperses the story across several viewpoints. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: A dangerous warrior and a companion - Trollslayer (William King). Gotrek, a dwarf Slayer, and his human companion Felix. Warhammer Fantasy’s Old World. Why it fits: Martial prowess and mortality drive dangerous encounters. The difference: Gotrek’s adventures are episodic and bound to Warhammer’s setting. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Intense martial determination - The Rage of Dragons (Evan Winter). Tau, a young male fighter without the elite’s gifts. African-inspired fantasy with a Bronze Age framing. Why it fits: Fighting ability is built and tested under severe social pressure. The difference: Tau is a young revenge-driven fighter rather than an ageing defender. Backing: Editorial match. --- # Books Like Mistborn URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-mistborn What to read after Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. ## If you loved: Resistance to an oppressive order with a different epic approach - The Ember Blade (Chris Wooding). A young man loyal to the ruling order is imprisoned and becomes bound to a rebel’s dangerous mission. Why it fits: Both connect a young character’s changing perspective with a challenge to entrenched power. The difference: The Ember Blade moves toward occupation, flight and a rebel quest rather than Vin’s metal-based powers and heist-shaped rebellion. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Oppressed underclass, infiltrating the elite - Red Rising (Pierce Brown). Darrow, a low-caste miner. Mars and the elite Institute. Why it fits: Recommended to Mistborn readers: an oppressed underclass and a protagonist who infiltrates the ruling elite to burn it down. The difference: Science fiction; far more violent. Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. ## If you loved: Slow-burn epic - Empire of Silence (Christopher Ruocchio). Hadrian Marlowe. An interstellar imperial society. Why it fits: Suggested to Mistborn readers (better for Way of Kings fans): epic, slow-burn. The difference: Science fiction; long series. Backing: Recommended by a book creator. ## If you loved: What book creators recommend next - The Stormlight Archive (Brandon Sanderson). Ensemble includes soldier Kaladin, scholar-in-training Shallan and highprince Dalinar. Roshar, whose ecology and civilisation are shaped by storms. Why it fits: More Cosmere. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. - Theft of Swords (Michael J. Sullivan). Royce, a thief, and Hadrian, a mercenary, are established partners. Elan; initially a kingdom-level conspiracy, expanding through Revelations. Why it fits: Fast-paced action, characters, rich world. The difference: . Backing: Recommended by book creators or readers. --- # Books Like The Alchemist of Souls URL: https://thewarshelf.com/books-like-the-alchemist-of-souls What to read after The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle. ## If you loved: Early modern swordsmanship and political intrigue meet fantastic forces - The Cardinal's Blades (Pierre Pevel). An elite team serving Cardinal Richelieu operates in an alternative France where draconic forces complicate political intrigue. Why it fits: Early modern swordsmanship and political intrigue meet fantastic forces. The difference: A French elite-team adventure in a later period. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Political investigation crosses cultural and supernatural boundaries - City of Stairs (Robert Jackson Bennett). Shara Thivani, a spy working under diplomatic cover. Bulikov, a city living under the power that defeated its gods. Why it fits: Political investigation crosses cultural and supernatural boundaries. The difference: A secondary-world city and more explicit post-imperial tensions. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: A professional swordsman's loyalties become politically dangerous - Traitor's Blade (Sebastien de Castell). Three disgraced travelling magistrates try to honour their murdered king's final orders. Why it fits: A professional swordsman's loyalties become politically dangerous. The difference: More immediate action and a strongly personal narrator. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Elizabethan espionage - The Silver Skull (Mark Chadbourn). Elizabethan spy Will Swyfte works to stop faerie and their Spanish allies from gathering three magic items that could devastate the realm. Why it fits: Spies and swordsmen in Elizabethan England with otherworldly enemies. The difference: Faerie and the Armada instead of a New World people. Backing: Editorial match. ## If you loved: Historical England with uncanny magic - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke). Two English magicians revive practical magic during the Napoleonic era, amid social rivalry and faerie danger. Why it fits: An alternate English history with uncanny forces. The difference: Regency rather than Elizabethan; much longer. Backing: Editorial match.