10 books like Game of Thrones
If what hooked you on A Game of Thrones was the chapter-by-chapter switch between rival players, the sense that no one is safe, and the feeling of a whole continent's history pressing on the page, these are the books that deliver it. Some are finished series you can read to the last line; a couple swap dragons for documented medieval treachery.
Updated September 2026
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Multi-POV dynastic epics where the whole realm is in play
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams 1988
The sprawling succession crisis and slow-building doom that Martin has repeatedly credited as his model for A Song of Ice and Fire; the moral world here is warmer, with a clearer line between the good and the monstrous.
Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb 1995
Royal bastardy, poisonings and a court where every kindness has a price, all rendered with the same attention to who owes what to whom; you get one narrator's voice throughout instead of a rotating cast.
King's Dragon by Kate Elliott 1997
A contemporary of Martin's series and close in tone: civil war over a contested throne in a convincingly medieval Europe, complete with church politics and raiding northerners. Elliott gives more weight to ordinary people caught in it than to great houses.
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu 2015
Rebellion, empire-building and the question of what makes a ruler fit to rule, on a scale that dwarfs most fantasy maps; the telling is deliberately mythic and distanced, closer to a chronicle than to Martin's close third person.
Soldiers, mercenaries and battlefields with no clean victories
The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie 2006
The standard recommendation for a reason: torturers, self-serving nobles and a cynicism about heroism that will feel familiar from King's Landing. Abercrombie is much funnier, and the books are far shorter.
The Black Company by Glen Cook 1984
War told from inside the ranks by men who take the pay and don't ask whether their employer is evil, with the same refusal to let anyone be purely good. The prose is clipped and soldierly where Martin's is expansive.
Malice by John Gwynne 2012
Norse-flavoured feuding kingdoms, many viewpoints, and battle writing that hurts; Gwynne keeps a firmer moral centre and is building towards a prophesied clash rather than undercutting one.
The Red Knight by Miles Cameron 2012
Mercenary companies, siege warfare and the logistics of armour and horse-feed, researched to the buckle, with a wall between the settled lands and what lives beyond it. Magic operates openly and systematically here, not as rumour.
The real medieval treachery Martin drew on
The Iron King by Maurice Druon 1955
Martin called The Accursed Kings the original Game of Thrones, and the poisonings, forced marriages and ruined dynasties of 14th-century France need no invention; there is nothing supernatural beyond one curse.
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 1989
Anarchy-era England with bishops, barons and a genuinely loathsome villain fighting over who controls a town, at doorstop length; the stakes are a cathedral rather than a continent.
If you also liked…
- Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
- Red Rising by Pierce Brown
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Questions
- Which of these are actually finished, so I'm not left waiting again?
- The Dragonbone Chair begins a completed trilogy, Daughter of the Empire a completed one too, and The Iron King opens a series Druon finished decades ago. The Goblin Emperor and The Pillars of the Earth both stand alone.
- Are any of these as brutal as A Game of Thrones?
- The Blade Itself and The Black Company are bleaker about human nature, and Malice doesn't spare its cast either. The Goblin Emperor and Daughter of the Empire are tense but far less bloody.
- I want the politics without much magic — where should I start?
- The Iron King and The Pillars of the Earth are essentially magic-free, and Daughter of the Empire keeps the supernatural at the edges while the scheming carries the book.