More like Demon Queen
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- Winterlands
series7 books1986
similar bydemonsfantasysecondary world+2 more
Winterlands follows John Aversin, a practical, unglamorous dragon-slayer, and Jenny Waynest, the self-taught village witch he loves, as their small corner of a forgotten kingdom keeps getting dragged into magic far bigger than either of them wanted. Barbara Hambly's series opens with Dragonsbane (1985), which deliberately undercuts the 'brave knight slays dragon' story it seems to promise, and continues across Dragonshadow, Knight of the Demon Queen, and Dragonstar as Jenny pursues real magical training. It favors domestic detail and moral complexity over conventional high-fantasy grandeur.
- Darwath
series7 books1982
similar bydarkfantasysecondary world+1 more
Darwath begins with two modern-day Californians pulled through a portal into a dying medieval world under siege from the Dark, shape-shifting monsters that hunt by night and are driving civilization underground. The Time of the Dark, The Walls of Air, and The Armies of Daylight make up the original trilogy; Barbara Hambly returned to the same characters decades later in Mother of Winter and Icefalcon's Quest. It's portal fantasy built around practical, unglamorous survival rather than chosen-one heroics.
- Tales of the Flat Earth
series14 books1978
completed
similar bydemonsdarkfantasysecondary world+1 more
Tales from the Flat Earth is a fantasy series by British writer Tanith Lee. The novels take inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights and are similarly structured as interconnected stories. The series has been well received, and Death's Master, the second book in the series, won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1980.
- The Nikolai Duology
series2 books2019
part of Grishaverse
similar bydarkfantasysecondary world+1 more
Leigh Bardugo's Nikolai Duology picks up Nikolai Lantsov and Zoya Nazyalensky from her earlier Grishaverse trilogy set in Ravka, now dealing with the kingdom's fallout as king and general, and adds Nina Zenik from the Six of Crows spin-off working a mission out of Ketterdam. King of Scars and its sequel Rule of Wolves tie together threads from across the wider Grishaverse rather than starting fresh, raising the stakes to a hidden threat inside Nikolai himself. It functions as the convergence point for Bardugo's separate Grishaverse story lines.
- Nightseer
series5 books1989
similar bydarkfantasysecondary world+1 more
Laurell K. Hamilton's Nightseer (1992) follows Keleios, a half-elf seeking vengeance for her mother's murder, who is granted extraordinary powers along with a dangerous 'demonmark' that risks opening her to dark magic. A standalone fantasy adventure, it predates Hamilton's better-known Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series.
- Sun Wolf and Starhawk
series7 books1984
similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more
Barbara Hambly's series begins with the city of Mandrigyn conquered and its men enslaved in the mines of the wizard-king Altiokis, forcing surviving noblewoman Sheera Galernas to kidnap the mercenary captain Sun Wolf and press him into training the city's women as fighters. Sun Wolf's partnership with his lieutenant Starhawk carries across The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, and further volumes as both are drawn deeper into magic neither originally wanted.
- The Grisha
series9 books2012
part of Grishaverse
similar byfantasysecondary world+1 more
Leigh Bardugo is an American fantasy author. She is best known for her young adult Grishaverse novels, which include the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows and King of Scars duologies. She also received acclaim for her paranormal fantasy adult debut, Ninth House. The Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows series have been adapted into Shadow and Bone by Netflix, and Ninth House will be adapted by Amazon Studios; Bardugo is an executive producer on both works.
- Forest Kingdom
series11 books1990
similar byfantasysecondary world+1 more
Simon R. Green's Forest Kingdom opens with Blue Moon Rising, in which Prince Rupert rides out into the Tanglewood on his unicorn to face down the good-and-evil, dragons-and-princesses trappings of a fairy-tale kingdom that turns out to hide darker complications underneath. The following books widen the cast around Rupert and the kingdom's court while keeping the same fantasy-adventure register. It's traditional-fantasy-with-a-twist rather than grimdark, built on familiar fairy-tale furniture used against type.
- Shannara
universe50 books1977
Start hereWord and the Void · The very beginning of the timeline
similar bysecondary worldfantasy
Long after the world we know has burned itself to slag in the Great Wars, the Four Lands rise green over the bones of the old age. Science is a forbidden memory; magic has come back into the world, and with it the old divisions — Men, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, and Gnomes, each Race a splinter of what humanity became. This is the far-future Earth of Shannara, where the ruins buried beneath the soil are ours, and the only keepers of the vanished knowledge are the Druids of Paranor, who wake once a generation to meet the darkness rising again. Terry Brooks opened the Four Lands in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara and has charted its history for four decades since — a legendarium ordered not by throne but by a single bloodline, the Ohmsfords, each generation inheriting an Elfstone, a blade, or a wishsong when the age demands a hero. The original trilogy gives way to the Heritage of Shannara, the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, the High Druid, Dark Legacy, Defenders, and the concluding Fall of Shannara; the Genesis of Shannara books reach back to the apocalypse itself, and the Word and the Void trilogy back further still, into a demon-haunted version of our own present that is the root of everything after. In 2025 Brooks passed the histories to Delilah S. Dawson to carry forward. What sets these books apart is their long memory: a world where every triumph is provisional, where the same evil returns wearing a fresh shape each age, and magic always exacts its price. The reading is warm and headlong — questing companies, old talismans, journeys across a mapped and named wilderness — shadowed by the knowledge that all of it stands on the wreckage of a former world. Enter as readers first did: with The Sword of Shannara, then onward in publication order. The chronological path, beginning with Word and the Void, rewards a second journey, once the Four Lands already feel like home.
- Demon Wars
series4 books1997
part of Corona
similar bydemonsdarksecondary worldfantasy+1 more
The DemonWars Saga is a series of high fantasy novels by R. A. Salvatore. It is set in the world of Corona, primarily in the kingdoms of Honce-the-Bear and Behren, and amongst the nomadic To-gai-ru. The series is separated into two trilogies connected by a single book, Mortalis. The saga has an accompanying roleplaying game entitled Demon Wars.
- Brak the Barbarian
series16 books1963
completed
similar byfantasysecondary world+2 more
John Jakes's Brak the Barbarian follows his own wandering barbarian swordsman, Brak, through sword-and-sorcery adventures modeled on the pulp tradition of the 1930s and '40s but original to Jakes rather than adapted from an earlier author. The character's stories were published across several collections and short novels from the 1960s into 1980.
- Demon Cycle
series10 books2008
part of The Demon Cycle
similar bydemonssecondary worldfantasydark fantasy+1 more
Peter V. Brett's Demon Cycle is set in a world where nightly demon attacks have driven humanity behind protective magical wards, following several point-of-view characters, including Arlen Bales and Leesha Paper, who each search for ways to fight back after centuries of retreat. The core story runs across five novels plus companion novellas.
- Sage of Shadowdale / Elminster
series6 books1993
part of Forgotten Realms
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The Elminster Series is a series of fantasy novels by Ed Greenwood set in the Forgotten Realms setting, which was created by Greenwood for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The series focuses on the character Elminster, a powerful wizard who is a key figure in the setting. This series presents the character's backstory and provides readers with details of events in the setting's history.
- Starblade Chronicles
series3 books2014
completed
part of Spook's Universe
similar bydarkfantasysecondary worlddark fantasy+1 more
- The Demon Cycle
universe18 books2008
Start hereDemon Cycle · Start here
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When the sun goes down, the ground breathes out murder. Mist seeps up from the Core, hardens into flame and rock and wind given teeth, and the only thing between a sleeping family and the corelings is a ring of wards — glyphs scratched in the dust that hold as long as the lines stay unbroken. Miss one stroke and you are meat by morning. This is Peter V. Brett's world: a humanity three centuries into a losing siege, huddled in the dark, waiting on a Deliverer half of them no longer believe will come. The Demon Cycle runs five volumes — The Warded Man (published in Britain as The Painted Man), The Desert Spear, The Daylight War, The Skull Throne, and The Core — following a messenger who tattoos the lost combat-wards into his own skin, a healer, a fiddler whose music turns demons aside, and a desert warlord who claims the prophecy for himself. Around them sit shorter works (Brayan's Gold, Messenger's Legacy, Barren), and beyond them the ongoing Nightfall Saga — The Desert Prince, The Hidden Queen — carrying the next generation into a war their parents did not finish. At its heart is a quarrel over faith and fire: the mannered Free Cities against fanatic, sand-hard Krasia, two would-be saviors who cannot both be right, and a lost art of war-magic that could turn prey into hunters. Begin with The Warded Man and read straight through in publication order; the novellas keep, for later, once the dark is under your skin.
- Kingdom of the Wicked (Kerri Maniscalco)
series6 books2020
similar bydemonsfantasy+3 more
Kerri Maniscalco's trilogy follows Emilia, a Sicilian witch whose twin sister is murdered by a serial killer targeting witches, forcing her into an uneasy bargain with Wrath, one of the seven princes of Hell, to hunt the culprit. Kingdom of the Wicked and its sequels, Kingdom of the Cursed and Kingdom of the Feared, escalate from that investigation into a wider entanglement with the political rivalries of Hell itself. The series pairs a murder-mystery hook with a slow-burn romance between Emilia and Wrath.
- The Riftwar Universe
universe44 books1982
Start hereRiftwar Saga · Start here
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On the world of Midkemia a tear opens in the air itself, a rift hung between stars, and through it march the armies of an empire from another world entirely. So begins the chronicle Raymond E. Feist has kept for three decades: the tale of Pug, a castle kitchen boy apprenticed to a magician on the very day the invasion lands, and of Tomas, his friend, who inherits the armor and the ancient fury of a dead dragon-lord. Around these two the Riftwar Cycle turns, widening book by book from one besieged frontier keep into the whole history of a world of kingdoms, guilds, thieves' dens and mage-towers. The cycle runs to roughly thirty novels, gathered into arcs a newcomer can enter and finish on their own. The founding Riftwar Saga (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon) sets the board; the Serpentwar Saga, Krondor's Sons and the Conclave of Shadows carry the story down the generations; the Darkwar, Demonwar and Chaoswar sagas bring it toward its close. Crossing the rift to the rival world of Kelewan, Feist and Janny Wurts wrote the Empire trilogy, opening with Daughter of the Empire, a court intrigue told wholly from the invaders' side and for many the finest thing here. Shorter Legends of the Riftwar and the game-born Riftwar Legacy fill the corners; later still, Feist opens an altogether new world in the Firemane books. Feist writes fantasy in its most companionable key: apprentices who grow into archmages, tavern boys who become spies and dukes, a world you return to the way you return to an old inn. The mood is adventure before dread, friendship and rank and hard-won craft, wars that cost something, all of it rendered plainly and at a gallop. Begin where it began, with Magician, then follow the arcs in the order they were written, and the rift will carry you the rest of the way.
- Demon Wars Prequels / Saga of the First King
series4 books2004
part of Corona
similar bysecondary worldfantasy
Saga of the First King tells the origin story behind R.A. Salvatore's DemonWars setting, following a falsely accused highwayman drawn into the true history of the corrupt church ruling the land of Corona and the ancient evil it has long suppressed. The four-book prequel series precedes Salvatore's original DemonWars Saga, expanding on the world's founding conflicts.
