10 Great Books To Read if You Love 'Game of Thrones'
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Game of Thrones is a fantasy TV series that is arguably one of the most successful shows of all time. The series follows nine royal families in the high fantasy world of Westeros, who constantly squabble over the throne that rules the realm while, unbeknownst to them, an even greater, more supernatural threat is gathering forces far to the north, preparing to destroy the world itself. The show is based on the currently unfinished A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels by George R. R. Martin.
The series of novels belongs to a subgenre of high fantasy known as "grimdark." Grimdark fantasy specifically refers to works of fantasy in which the tone is extremely dark, featuring graphic violence, political corruption, and in some cases, a lot of sex. Grimdark fantasy is also very cynical, as there is often no clearly defined good or evil, usually because everyone in the story is awful in one way or another. For those who have been looking for a similar story to Game of Thrones in literary form (aside from reading the actual novels, of course), fear not, because there are plenty of stories out there that offer the same tone, and some of the same narrative beats as this hit television series.
10 'Prince of Thorns' (2011)
Prince of Thorns is set in the distant future, long after a nuclear war decimated the Earth. From the ashes of humanity rises the Broken Empire, a wide-reaching realm encapsulating Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Southern Asia, and is divided into roughly a hundred smaller kingdoms. Each of these kingdoms has spent the last several decades fighting over the Throne of the Empire, with some showing more promise than others. In what used to be France and Germany, a prince named Jorg Ancrath leads a warband, sacking and pillaging his way across the kingdom, at the young age of only 14.
Jorg is a self-described sociopath and spends much of his time killing innocent people just for the heck of it, finding ways to undermine his foes, and removing the obstacles in his way. You see, he doesn't just want to rule over his estranged father's kingdom — he wants to rule the whole of the Empire. But while Jorg goes on with his conquest, a dangerous and magical threat begins to pursue him. Prince of Thorns is the first in a thrilling trilogy, and, as is to be expected from the genre, has some really messed-up content in it. However, the theme of royals squabbling over a throne mixed with there being no real good vs. evil dynamic (since pretty much everybody sucks) makes it a perfect pick for any fan of Game of Thrones.
9 'Blood of Elves' (1994)
Blood of Elves is the very first novel of the hugely popular The Witcher series, written by Andrzej Sapkowski. There are previous installments in the series, but these are collections of short stories — Blood of Elves is the first fully-fledged novel. Famously, the books have been adapted into a hit role-playing video game series, followed by a Netflix series in 2019. The Netflix series started out strong, but has unfortunately taken a bit of a dive in recent years.
But the books, fortunately, stay consistent in quality. The overall story is about Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster hunter known as a Witcher, who travels across the land, taking contract work to kill various monsters for distressed townsfolk. These range from common creatures of folklore to some truly terrifying monsters. While the story differs greatly from that of Game of Thrones, the overall somber tone, combined with the cynical nature of the characters and the non-existent good and evil dynamic, makes this a pretty good fit for fans of George R. R. Martin.
8 'The Grim Company' (2013)
The Grim Company certainly lives up to its name, fitting perfectly within the grimdark genre with its gruesome violence and overall brutality. The first in its series, The Grim Company is set five centuries after the legendary Godswar ravaged the landscape and nearly destroyed the world. The war was initiated by a group of mages who felt that the gods had bound them in chains, and thus waged war against the powers that be in order to seek personal freedom.
Still reeling from the cataclysmic event, the mages who once freed the world live on, but have turned to a new foe: each other. The various city-states run by the mages are now waging a whole new war in a world that is barely holding on. With its themes of various political factions fighting each other for personal gain, combined with its grimdark tones and overall aura, The Grim Company is a book that any Game of Thrones fan should absolutely pick up.
7 'Best Served Cold' (2009)
Joe Abercrombie is an author who has mastered the grimdark genre and is known for publishing novel after novel, all utilizing this subgenre of epic fantasy. Best Served Cold is just one of his many forays into the genre, but it is widely considered to be one of his best. The stage is set, dropping readers right into the middle of a near two-decade-long war, with the Grand Duke finding himself at odds with an organization known as the League of Eight.
Meanwhile, the powerful elite, consisting of bankers, priests, politicians, and powers unknown, are all conspiring to determine that their candidate of choice becomes king when the dust settles. A tale of vengeance, violence, and political instability, Best Served Cold is great for any viewer of Game of Thrones who loved the Braavosi assassin plotline, but also the political maneuvers executed by the nobles in the shows and novels.
6 'The Rage of Dragons' (2017)
The Rage of Dragons started as Canadian author Evan Winter's own personal project, with him detailing his writing process on Reddit. Eventually, his book was released, smashing its way into the mainstream and really making waves in the fantasy community. The book was good — very good, in fact — and shocked everyone with its quality, because it initially seemed to be an amateur's project, yet it oozed quality and had a very unique world.
The world in question is sort of like Earth's equivalent to the Bronze Age, with the Omehi people being locked in conflict for over 200 years. Very few of the Omehi are born with special talents: some women can summon dragons, while some men can magically transform into a more improved version of themselves, one that is much better at killing. With the existence of dragons, a general story about revenge, and a surprising amount of perfection, The Rage of Dragons is something that deserves the praise that it gets. It's actually been described by some as "Game of Thrones meets Gladiator," so you know it's an ideal pick for fans of the former.
Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality Quiz Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To? Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell
Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie.
🐺Stark
🦁Lannister
🐉Targaryen
🦌Baratheon
🌹Tyrell
01
Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do? In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house.
02
What is the source of your power? Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours?
03
Who do you truly fight for? Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything.
04
How do you deal with your enemies? A house's method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could.
05
What kind of ruler do you believe in? Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly.
06
You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond? How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory.
07
Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe? Every house has a philosophy. This is yours.
08
The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do? The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character.
The Maester Has Spoken Your House Is…
Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don't. That's very much up to you.
🐺 House Stark
Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.
- You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having.
- Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn't bend when things get difficult.
- The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold.
- You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are.
🦁 House Lannister
You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.
- You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage.
- A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order.
- You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway.
- The lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you.
🐉 House Targaryen
You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.
- You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality.
- Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs.
- The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible.
- At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them.
🦌 House Baratheon
You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.
- Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what's behind it.
- You value strength and straight dealing. You'd rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers.
- The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after.
- The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too.
🌹 House Tyrell
You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes.
- Growing strong is your house's motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts.
- You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter.
- The Tyrells fed King's Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it.
- You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is.
5 'The Way of Kings' (2010)
The Way of Kings is set in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, an expansive universe of multiple fantasy novel series, each taking place on its own unique planet, which possesses its own unique magic systems. The Way of Kings is book one of The Stormlight Archive, which is consistently ranked among Sanderson's finest works. This monster of a novel is set on the remote world of Roshar, a world plagued by regular superstorms that sweep across the planet, uprooting any fauna that exists. As a result, the planet has a mostly rocky surface, and any animals that exist are crustaceans in nature, so that they can hide in their shells when the storms hit.
In the far reaches of the Shattered Plains, the warmongering Alethi people are fighting a retaliatory conflict against the crustaceous Parshendi people, as revenge for the Alethi king's assassination. Whilst the Alethi are locked in a stalemate with the Parshendi, a primeval shadow is stirring, threatening to engulf the entirety of Roshar unless an ancient order of magical knights is resurrected. On top of fighting the Parshendi, the Alethi also commonly fight amongst themselves, with ten major clans fighting for control of their entire nation. Though The Way of Kings is noticeably lighter than Game of Thrones, the storylines are very similar, with the former bringing a new, alien world unlike anything ever seen before in fantasy.
4 'Gardens of the Moon' (1999)
Gardens of the Moon is the first book in the Malazan series, written by Canadian author Steven Erikson. The grimdark fantasy novel was a huge success, and rapidly grew to spawn multiple different series and subseries, all set in the same expansive world. The world in question is the Malazan Empire, which wages war across the continent, capturing any city or kingdom that it deems to be a threat to the Empire's existence.
The Empire isn't just fighting other nations, but also itself, as it is rife with infighting and political uprisings, most of which are quickly squashed. But everything that has happened until now has only been a test, because the gods themselves are scheming against the Empire, and they're preparing their final offensive. Like Game of Thrones, the basic story is that there's a wide-reaching kingdom that is at war with itself, completely unaware of the fact that the biggest threat to their way of life is slowly building up strength. While the finer details are obviously very different, it still maintains the same atmosphere and overall broad strokes.
3 'Age of Assassins' (2017)
Age of Assassins is, believe it or not, about an assassin, albeit one who is kind of inexperienced and still has a long way to go to be a well-respected killer-for-hire. Since this assassin isn't always very good at taking lives, he is given a different assignment: to save a life and to prevent that life from being taken by various political conspirators, all while the kingdom cries for civil war, and while shadowy figures move about behind the scenes, plotting the downfall of the realm.
This is a great pick for anyone who loved the assassin plotline of Game of Thrones, along with the political conspiracies and backstabbing that take place in the earlier seasons. Age of Assassins might not be the most popular book on this list, but it earned rave reviews and established its own series. It's also not a super-long read, in comparison to many other fantasy books, so if one doesn't like it so much, at least it won't feel like too much time was wasted.
2 'The White Queen' (2009)
The White Queen is the only non-fantasy novel to make this list. The story is a heavily fictionalized retelling of actual events, taking place during the Wars of the Roses, a time in English history when various families were warring over who would control the throne. Sound familiar? That's because George R. R. Martin actually based A Song of Ice and Fire on this very real Medieval conflict, and he hasn't exactly been very shy about it.
The White Queen is less about the conflict itself and more about the politics going on behind the scenes, specifically about the noblewomen of the Royal House of Tudor. As their subjects fight against the enemy forces, these women pull numerous strings behind the scenes to shape the outcome of the war in their favor. Famously, this book was also adapted for television, taking the form of a critically acclaimed 2013 miniseries which went on to score four Emmy nominations. Obviously, any fans of Game of Thrones will love The White Queen, because it's a fictional story about the events that inspired Game of Thrones in the first place.
1 'The Emperor's Blades' (2014)
The Emperor's Blades is another novel set in a country in chaos, filled to the brim with political turmoil. Right at the start, the novel opens on the Emperor's assassination, leaving a gaping power vacuum, with various factions all competing to win the throne of the Annurian Empire. This is in spite of the Emperor having living heirs, who are caught in the middle of it all. Now, it's up to them to uncover a political conspiracy and save their kingdom from falling into pieces.
There are quite a few parallels here with Game of Thrones: namely, in the fact that it opens up on the assassination of an important political figure, along with the fact that there are loads of conspiracies and plots going on behind the scenes, and, of course, with a strong sense of family being central to the plot. It might not be anything revolutionary, but The Emperor's Blades earned brilliant reviews and is worth picking up.
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