Books like The Bone Season
What should you read after Samantha Shannon’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Samantha Shannon
- 2013
- Dystopian fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Bone Season
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchNevernight
Jay Kristoff
An underworld with its own hierarchy, a heroine trained by people who may kill her, and a glossary's worth of invented slang. Shannon's readers tend to take to it fast.
- Criminal underworld hierarchy
- Dense invented terminology
- A heroine who will not submit
- Assassin school, not prison colony
Great matchShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
A girl whose power makes her state property, kept close by a beautiful, dangerous man who says he is protecting her. That relationship is the Warden dynamic exactly.
- Captor and captive tension
- Clairvoyance as a crime
- A heroine who will not submit
- Simpler worldbuilding
Great matchGraceling
Kristin Cashore
A young woman used as an instrument by the people who own her, who works out that she can simply stop. Shannon's central question, asked more quietly.
- A heroine who will not submit
- A prison colony with owners
- Clairvoyance as a crime
- Traditional fantasy setting
Great matchAn Ember in the Ashes
Sabaa Tahir
Told from inside an occupying empire and from beneath it at once, with the same charged, unequal bond between a captive and someone in the machine.
- Captor and captive tension
- A prison colony with owners
- A heroine who will not submit
- Desert empire, not London
Great matchRed Queen
Victoria Aveyard
Ability she must hide, a court that would execute her for it, and a rebellion she is pushed into. The Bone Season premise with the difficulty turned down.
- Clairvoyance as a crime
- A heroine who will not submit
- Captor and captive tension
- Thinner worldbuilding
Worth a look — with a warningThe Maze Runner
James Dashner
Young people held inside an experiment by observers who will not explain the rules. Structurally close to Sheol; nothing like it on the page.
- A prison colony with owners
- Dense invented terminology
- Characters barely exist
Great matchThe Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
The template for a state that harvests its own young in public and calls it order — and for the girl who becomes a symbol without ever agreeing to it.
- A heroine who will not submit
- A prison colony with owners
- No magic or clairvoyance
Best for the secret-society intrigueThe Gilded Wolves
Roshani Chokshi
A crew of specialists working the underside of 1889 Paris against secret orders with too much power. Shannon's syndicate world, in a different city.
- Criminal underworld hierarchy
- Dense invented terminology
- An alternate surveillance London
- Heist plot, not captivity
Best for the alternate LondonA Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab
Four versions of London, one of them under a tyrant's boot, with a thief who is nobody's servant. The most enjoyable book on this list.
- An alternate surveillance London
- A heroine who will not submit
- Criminal underworld hierarchy
- Adventure, not oppression
Great matchThe Cruel Prince
Holly Black
A mortal girl in a court of beings who consider her livestock, deciding to win anyway. If the Warden and Paige dynamic was the hook, Jude and Cardan will do it.
- Captor and captive tension
- A heroine who will not submit
- Criminal underworld hierarchy
- Faerie, not dystopia
Worth a look — with a warningCity of Bones
Cassandra Clare
A hidden supernatural order operating under a modern city, with its own laws and ranks. The furniture matches; the execution is a long way from Shannon's.
- Criminal underworld hierarchy
- An alternate surveillance London
- Derivative in places
Great matchThe Girl of Fire and Thorns
Rae Carson
A young woman carrying a power everyone wants to use, moved around as an object by other people's plans until she starts making her own.
- A heroine who will not submit
- Clairvoyance as a crime
- Captor and captive tension
- Religious framing throughout
Great matchThe Queen of the Tearling
Erika Johansen
A future that has slid back into feudalism, with a young woman handed a throne and a neighbouring queen who takes people as tribute.
- A prison colony with owners
- A heroine who will not submit
- A very long planned series
- Worldbuilding gets muddled
What should you read after The Bone Season?
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon 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 Nevernight by Jay Kristoff — an underworld with its own hierarchy, a heroine trained by people who may kill her, and a glossary's worth of invented slang. Shannon's readers tend to take to it fast.
If what stayed with you was captor and captive tension, read Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo instead: a girl whose power makes her state property, kept close by a beautiful, dangerous man who says he is protecting her. That relationship is the Warden dynamic exactly. Graceling by Kristin Cashore is the other strong option — a young woman used as an instrument by the people who own her, who works out that she can simply stop. Shannon's central question, asked more quietly.
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