5 Epic Fantasy Series to Read If You Love Game of Thrones

You finished A Song of Ice and Fire — or at least as much as George R.R. Martin has written — and now there's a void. You want the sprawling politics, the morally grey characters who betray each other over dinner, the sense that any character could die at any moment. You want fantasy that treats power as something dangerous and fascinating, not a reward for being the chosen one.

Good news: the genre has delivered. Here are five epic fantasy series that capture what makes Game of Thrones so addictive — and each brings something Martin's series doesn't.

1. The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie

If you think Tyrion Lannister is cynical, wait until you meet Sand dan Glokta — a torturer who was once tortured himself, dragging his broken body through palace corridors while dismantling conspiracies with a smile. The Blade Itself kicks off a trilogy that takes every heroic fantasy trope and guts it like a fish.

Abercrombie writes dialogue that crackles with dark humor, and his battle scenes are visceral without being gratuitous. The world feels lived-in and cynical in the same way Westeros does — every noble house has an agenda, every alliance has an expiration date. But where Martin sometimes sprawls, Abercrombie keeps things razor-tight. The original trilogy is complete, and the follow-up Age of Madness trilogy adds an industrial revolution twist that makes the political dynamics even more compelling.

Start with: The Blade Itself

Best for: Readers who love Tyrion's chapters and wish the whole series had that energy.

2. Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb's masterwork begins with Assassin's Apprentice, and from the first chapter you understand something important: this is fantasy that cares about the emotional cost of power. FitzChivalry Farseer is a royal bastard trained as an assassin — a premise that sounds like a dozen other books until Hobb makes you feel every knife-twist of loneliness, duty, and sacrifice that comes with it.

The series spans sixteen books across multiple trilogies, each exploring different corners of a richly drawn world. The political intrigue is quieter than Martin's — more whispered conversations in cold hallways than Red Wedding spectacles — but it cuts deeper because Hobb makes you love these characters so completely that their betrayals feel personal. If you cried during Ned Stark's death, Robin Hobb will destroy you in ways you didn't know were possible.

Start with: Assassin's Apprentice

Best for: Readers who want the political complexity of GoT with the deepest character writing in the genre.

3. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

Rin is a war orphan who tests into the most elite military academy in the Nikara Empire — and that's just the first act. The Poppy War starts as a dark academia fantasy and then swerves into a brutal war epic inspired by the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Rape of Nanjing. It's the kind of fantasy that makes you deeply uncomfortable, and that's exactly the point.

Like Game of Thrones, this trilogy refuses to look away from the human cost of war and power. Rin makes increasingly terrible decisions, each one understandable in context, each one pushing her further from the person she wanted to be. The political machinations between the Empire's factions are complex and ruthless, and Kuang's willingness to let her protagonist become a monster gives the series a moral weight that lingers long after you finish.

Start with: The Poppy War

Best for: Readers who appreciate Game of Thrones' unflinching take on war and want a non-European fantasy setting.

4. The Kingdom of Valdrath by Eva Noir

Seven brothers. A dying king. A murdered heir. And a kingdom that's been cracking at the seams for generations. The Exile's Return opens with Prince Kael returning from years of exile to find his family tearing the kingdom apart from the inside. If you love the Lannister family dynamics — the toxic loyalty, the power grabs masked as duty, the sibling rivalries that reshape nations — Valdrath delivers that energy across an eight-book saga.

What sets this series apart is the depth of its world-building. Author Eva Noir built an entire cultural database — religions, economic systems, social hierarchies — before writing a single chapter. The result is a world that feels as layered as Westeros, where political decisions have consequences that ripple across books. The “Seven Scars” — seven cataclysmic events that shaped the continent — give the history real weight and make the current power struggles feel like the latest chapter in a much longer story.

Start with: The Exile's Return — and it's free on Kindle February 25 – March 1.

Best for: Readers obsessed with family dynasty drama, succession crises, and world-building that rewards deep dives.

5. The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Imagine if Littlefinger were the protagonist. Now imagine you had to watch every sacrifice, every manipulation, every betrayal from inside his head — and somehow still root for him. That's Baru Cormorant, an accountant from a colonized island who infiltrates the empire that conquered her homeland with the goal of destroying it from within.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is political fantasy at its most intellectually rigorous. Dickinson understands economics, colonial governance, and the machinery of empire in ways that make the political intrigue feel genuinely sophisticated rather than hand-wavy. Every chapter forces Baru to choose between her mission and the people she loves, and the book's final twist is one of the most devastating in modern fantasy. The four-book Masquerade series is complete, so you can experience the full arc without waiting.

Start with: The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Best for: Readers who wish Game of Thrones had more economic intrigue and smarter political scheming.

What Makes These Series “Like Game of Thrones”?

It's not just the violence or the medieval settings — plenty of fantasy books have those. What made Game of Thrones special was the feeling that the rules of storytelling didn't apply. Characters you loved could die. Villains could win. The “right thing” could get you killed. Every series on this list captures that unpredictability while adding its own twist:

• Abercrombie adds sharp humor and asks whether heroism is even possible.
• Hobb makes the political personal and the personal devastating.
• Kuang expands the lens beyond medieval Europe and confronts real historical atrocities.
• Noir builds a dynasty saga where family is both weapon and weakness.
• Dickinson weaponizes economics and colonial policy as tools of intrigue.

Whichever you pick, you're in for the kind of reading experience that makes you cancel plans and stay up past midnight. And if you want to start with something free, The Exile's Return is available at no cost on Kindle from February 25 to March 1. No strings attached — just a chance to fall into a new world.