Books like Graceling
What should you read after Kristin Cashore’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Kristin Cashore
- 2008
- Young adult fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Graceling
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchRed Queen
Victoria Aveyard
A girl whose unexplained ability makes her valuable to a court that wants to point her at people. Katsa's predicament with more palaces and worse intentions.
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- A king who uses her as a thug
- Seven kingdoms and their politics
- Love triangle takes up room
Great matchAn Ember in the Ashes
Sabaa Tahir
For the harder end of what Cashore does: someone raised to be violence for other people's purposes, trying to work out whether refusing is even possible.
- A king who uses her as a thug
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- Considerably more brutal
Worth a look — with a warningThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
Shares the survival-under-pressure spine and the sense of being used by people who will not explain why, but almost none of Katsa's interior life.
- A survival trek over the mountains
- A king who uses her as a thug
- No romance, no character depth
Great matchShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
A girl discovers a power she never asked for and is immediately claimed by the man who intends to aim it. Bardugo's court runs on the same logic as Randa's.
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- A villain whose power is persuasion
- Eyes of two different colours
- Chosen-one framing throughout
Great matchThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Katniss and Katsa are the same argument: a young woman who is unusually good at violence, deployed by adults, and clear-eyed about not wanting to be married off.
- A heroine who refuses to marry
- A survival trek over the mountains
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- Dystopia rather than fantasy
Worth a look — with a warningThe Selection
Kiera Cass
Included because the reading lists pair them constantly, and because it is the exact opposite book: a heroine whose plot is entirely about whether she will marry a prince.
- Seven kingdoms and their politics
- A heroine who refuses to marry
- Everything Katsa refuses is the plot
Best for the court politicsThe Cruel Prince
Holly Black
Black's mortal girl also survives by being the most dangerous thing in a court that despises her, and the antagonism with her opposite number is glorious.
- Seven kingdoms and their politics
- Sparring as courtship
- A villain whose power is persuasion
- Much crueller and colder
Great matchDivergent
Veronica Roth
Training, sparring, and a slow-burn with the person teaching her to fight — the Katsa-and-Po dynamic transplanted into a faction-sorted Chicago.
- Sparring as courtship
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- Dystopian setting, not fantasy
Great matchLegend
Marie Lu
Two exceptionally capable young people on opposite sides of a state that has decided what they are for, circling and testing each other. Cashore's shape, faster.
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- Sparring as courtship
- A king who uses her as a thug
- Dual narration, short chapters
Best for the deadly heroineThrone of Glass
Sarah J. Maas
An assassin pulled out of a prison camp to compete as a king's champion. If what you loved was Katsa being simply the best in the room, this is that on repeat.
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- A king who uses her as a thug
- Sparring as courtship
- Romance escalates across the series
Worth a look — with a warningThe Giver
Lois Lowry
Shares the idea of a young person assigned an ability by adults who intend to use it, but Lowry is quiet, short, and interested in ethics rather than swordplay.
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- A villain whose power is persuasion
- No action, no romance
Best for the trekThe Knife of Never Letting Go
Patrick Ness
Two young people running across hostile country with someone relentless behind them, told at a sprint. The Katsa-and-Bitterblue mountain crossing, book-length.
- A survival trek over the mountains
- A villain whose power is persuasion
- Brutal, and it hurts
Worth a look — with a warningRed Rising
Pierce Brown
Physical transformation into a weapon, then a war fought among people trained to rule. Everything Cashore keeps restrained, Brown turns up as far as it goes.
- A Grace that makes you a weapon
- Seven kingdoms and their politics
- Eyes of two different colours
- Graphically violent throughout
What should you read after Graceling?
Graceling by Kristin Cashore works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard — a girl whose unexplained ability makes her valuable to a court that wants to point her at people. Katsa's predicament with more palaces and worse intentions.
If what stayed with you was a king who uses her as a thug, read An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir instead: for the harder end of what Cashore does: someone raised to be violence for other people's purposes, trying to work out whether refusing is even possible. The Maze Runner by James Dashner is the other strong option — shares the survival-under-pressure spine and the sense of being used by people who will not explain why, but almost none of Katsa's interior life.
Loved something else?
Start from any book and we’ll build the list around your reasons.
Find my next book →NextBook is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. We earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. It doesn’t affect which books we recommend or how we rank them.
More “what to read next” lists
- Books like 1984
- Books like 2312
- Books like A Clockwork Orange
- Books like A Darker Shade of Magic
- Books like A Gentleman in Moscow
- Books like A Little Life
- Books like A Man Called Ove
- Books like A Memory Called Empire
- Books like A Wrinkle in Time
- Books like All Systems Red
- Books like All the Bright Places
- Books like Altered Carbon