The wait to return to Westeros is almost over, with Season 8 returning on April 15. Here’s our favourite Game-of-Thrones (ish) books to read while you wait the final few weeks until the season finally arrives…
Daughters of the Storm by Kim Wilkins
Read this if you need some dragonfire to enliven your reading! A sweeping fantasy epic about five sisters: queens, warriors, priestesses, and heroes who change the shape of kingdoms. The world of this high fantasy epic is rich in Anglo-Saxon details, and the proud main characters are all captivating—especially Bluebell, the eldest daughter, peerless warrior and future king.
Daughters of the Storm is a richly drawn historical fantasy full of passion, magic and fire, an intimate epic that traces the lives of five complex women as they pursue a quest upon which the fate of a kingdom — as well as their own destinies — rests.
Pack Bound by Leisl Leighton
The first book in the Pack Bound series, a gripping fantasy romance series about the legacy of a powerful coven and a Were pack bound together by a fight to expel an ancient evil.
One pack, one coven, a destiny intertwined…
Five hundred years ago, facing extinction, a group of powerful witches united to create a pact with the Were to save witch–kind. The pact expelled an ancient evil, known only as the Darkness, that was blocking the Were from their wolves. With the Darkness destroyed, the Packs and their Covens grew strong as they thrived beside each other in their brand–new world.
But the Darkness was not destroyed.
Awakening by Lara Morgan
The first book in Lara Morgan’s Twins of Saranthium series, an engrossing mix of fantasy, adventure, and romance.
For two thousand years, the serpents of Salmut and their riders have kept the people of Saranthium safe – but the pact between human and serpent is failing…
Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is the same vintage as George R. R. Martin’s early books in A Song of Ice and Fire, appearing alongside A GAME OF THRONES and A CLASH OF KINGS in the mid-1990s and continuing through linked trilogies all the way through to the final Fitz book, Assassin’s Fate, in 2017. The narration of the prince’s bastard and king’s assassin, FitzChivalry Farseer, unfurls the fate of kings and chandler’s daughters, dealing with high and low magics, political intrigue, and the moral ambiguity that surrounds both loyalty and betrayal in royal houses. This book and the continuing series is remarkable for its characters who you form passionate attachments to even as you rage at their choices and the bad luck fate serves them.
‘Fantasy as it ought to be written’ George R.R. Martin
The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang
R.F. Kuang’s 2018 masterful The Poppy War draws you in with the traditional fantasy trope of a driven and desperate heroine rising out of poverty through her dedication to martial training in a prestigious warrior school. The book then takes a major swerve as Rin and her friends are enveloped by war. In The Poppy War, the high fantasy magic is heartbreakingly woven into the grim realities and totalities of conflict. As in Game of Thrones, we see the young characters grow up suddenly into warriors with terrible decisions to make in order to survive.
The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
If you love the many-layered, shifting, and tantalising prophecies seeded all throughout the Game of Thrones storylines, you might also love Patrick Rothfuss’s landmark Kingkiller Chronicles, which starts with The Name of the Wind. Told by Kote, a red-haired innkeeper in a backwater town, about Kvothe, a musician, student, and hero-in-the-making (who may just have done something that set in motion the end of the world) the series is a masterpiece of storytelling that is both intricate and breathlessly paced.