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Books like Paladin of Souls

Lois McMaster Bujold · 2003 · US · fantasy
Book 2 of 3 in World of the Five Gods
★ 4.19 Goodreads · 28,224 ratings

Ista, the dowager royina of Chalion, long thought mad, slips away from her keepers on a pilgrimage and is drawn into a border war with demons and into the gods' own business.

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12 books for readers of Paladin of Souls

Nettle & Bone

T. Kingfisher · 2022 · US 98% match ★ 4.06 Goodreads · 161,217 ratings
shares: fantasy, quest, female perspective · speculative, earnest

Marra, the quiet, overlooked third princess, decides to kill the prince who has married her sisters, and sets out with a dust-wife, a disgraced knight and a dog made of bones.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In

John Wiswell · 2024 · US 96% match ★ 3.85 Goodreads · 26,587 ratings
shares: fantasy, witty, romantic · speculative, conventional

Shesheshen, a shapeshifting monster hibernating under a manor, is hunted by a family of monster-hunters, and falls for Homily, one of them.

Eragon

Christopher Paolini · 2002 · US 95% match ★ 3.97 Goodreads · 1,993,222 ratings
Book 1 of 5 in The Inheritance Cycle
shares: quest · speculative, earnest

Eragon, a farm boy in the remote land of Alagaësia, finds a polished blue stone in the mountains that hatches into a dragon, and finds himself heir to the Dragon Riders, the order destroyed by the tyrant king Galbatorix.

Rites of the Starling

Devney Perry · 2026 · US 95% match ★ 4.42 Goodreads · 225,154 ratings
shares: series middle, quest, religious · speculative, earnest

The second Shield of Sparrows novel: as the Crux migration descends on the five kingdoms of Calandra, Odessa, running through a cursed realm with a young girl in her care, must decide what she is willing to become to survive.

The Knight and the Moth

Rachel Gillig · 2025 · US 95% match ★ 4.22 Goodreads · 315,961 ratings
shares: quest, religious, romantic · speculative, earnest

Sybil Delling is one of six Diviners raised in the cathedral of Aisling to prophesy for the kingdom, and when her sisters begin to disappear, she sets out with a surly knight, Rodrick Rook, to find them.

One Dark Window

Rachel Gillig · 2022 · US 92% match ★ 4.25 Goodreads · 785,659 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in The Shepherd King
shares: quest, female perspective · speculative, interior

In Blunder, a kingdom shut in by a magic-sickened mist, Elspeth Spindle hides an ancient spirit in her head that she calls the Nightmare, and joins a treasonous highwayman, the king's own nephew, on a quest to gather the twelve Providence Cards that could cure the land before Solstice.

We Hunt the Flame

Hafsah Faizal · 2019 · US 92% match ★ 3.86 Goodreads · 112,102 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Sands of Arawiya
shares: quest · speculative, earnest

Zafira, who disguises herself as a man to hunt in the cursed Arz forest, and Nasir, the Prince of Death and the sultan's assassin, are sent after the same lost relic that could bring magic back to their kingdom.

Moon Called

Patricia Briggs · 2006 · US 92% match ★ 4.14 Goodreads · 222,391 ratings
Book 1 of 14 in Mercy Thompson
shares: female perspective, witty, romantic · speculative, earnest

Mercedes Thompson, a Volkswagen mechanic in Washington's Tri-Cities who can turn into a coyote, takes in a young werewolf on the run, and his trouble pulls her into the politics of the local pack, led by her alpha neighbour, Adam Hauptman.

Graceling

Kristin Cashore · 2008 · US 92% match ★ 4.06 Goodreads · 485,160 ratings
Book 1 of 4 in Graceling Realm
shares: quest, romantic · earnest, speculative

Katsa was born with a Grace for killing, and her uncle the king uses her to frighten his enemies, until she meets Po, a foreign prince searching for his kidnapped grandfather, and begins to choose her own fights.

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin · 1968 · US 92% match ★ 4.01 Goodreads · 378,902 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in Earthsea
shares: quest · speculative, earnest

A young wizard on an island archipelago unleashes a shadow from the land of the dead and must chase it across the world to make himself whole.

Assassin's Apprentice

Robin Hobb · 1995 · US 92% match ★ 4.20 Goodreads · 453,796 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Farseer Trilogy
shares: speculative, earnest

A six-year-old royal bastard left at Buckkeep Castle is raised in the stables and secretly trained by the king's assassin while he discovers two forbidden magics, the Skill and the Wit.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

N. K. Jemisin · 2010 · US 92% match ★ 3.89 Goodreads · 83,875 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Inheritance Trilogy
shares: religious, female perspective, romantic · speculative, interior

Yeine Darr, chieftain of a small northern people, is summoned to the floating palace of Sky after her mother's death and named one of three heirs to the world's throne, in a court that keeps enslaved gods as weapons.