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Prince of Thorns

Mark Lawrence · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Before They Are Hanged

Joe Abercrombie · 543 pages

Superior Glokta has a problem. How do you defend a city surrounded by enemies and riddled with traitors, when your allies can by no means be trusted, and your predecessor vanished without a trace? It’s enough to make a torturer want to run – if he could even walk without a stick. Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country. Crown P

GrimdarkDark FantasyMorally Gray CharacterAnti-Hero
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A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold

George R.R. Martin · 656 pages

Fear cuts deeper than swords The Starks are scattered. Robb Stark may be King in the North, but he must bend to the will of the old tyrant Walder Frey if he is to hold his crown. And while his youngest sister, Arya, has escaped the clutches of the depraved Cersei Lannister and her son, the capricious boy-king Joffrey, Sansa Stark remains their captive, trapped in marriage with Joffrey's deformed

GrimdarkDark FantasyMorally Gray CharacterTorture
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The Black Company

Glen Cook · 319 pages

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead. Until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her... So begins one

Dark FantasyGrimdarkMorally Gray CharacterMercenaries
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Blackwing

Ed McDonald · 360 pages

"Set on a postapocalyptic frontier, Blackwing is a gritty fantasy debut about a man's desperate battle to survive his own dark destiny ... Hope, reason, humanity: the Misery breaks them all. Under its cracked and wailing sky, the Misery is a vast and blighted expanse, the arcane remnant of a devastating war with the immortals known as the Deep Kings. The war ended nearly a century ago, and the ene

GrimdarkDark FantasyMercenariesAnti-Hero
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The Young Elites

Marie Lu · 392 pages

I am tired of being used, hurt, and cast aside. Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel fat

Dark FantasyMorally Gray CharacterVillain ProtagonistRevenge Plot
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Shadow's Edge

Brent Weeks · 656 pages

Kylar Stern has rejected the assassin's life. In the wake of the Godking's violent coup, both his master and his closest friend are dead. His friend was Logan Gyre, heir to Cenaria's throne, but few of the ruling class survive to mourn his loss. So Kylar is starting over: new city, new companions, and new profession. But when he learns that Logan might be alive, trapped and in hiding, Kylar faces

Dark FantasyGrimdarkIntenseAnti-Hero
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The Burning God

R.F. Kuang · 622 pages

The exciting end to The Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect. After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead. Des

GrimdarkDark FantasyMorally Gray CharacterVillain Protagonist
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Gardens of the Moon

Steven Erikson · 544 pages

The opening chapter in an epic fantasy masterpiece....Bled dry by interminable warfare, infighting and bloody confrontations with Lord Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, the vast, sprawling Malazan empire simmers with discontent.Even its imperial legions yearn for some respite. For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his Bridgeburners and for Tattersail, sole surviving sorceress of the Second Legion, the af

MercenariesDark FantasyGrimdarkMorally Gray Character
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Blade of Tyshalle

Matthew Woodring Stover · 725 pages

Twenty-seven years ago, they said Hari Michaelson didn't have a chance. He was just a loser, a street criminal from a disgraced family. He'd never make anything of himself. They were wrong. He made himself into Caine: Killer. Superstar. Hero . . .THE BLADE OF TYSHALLESix years ago, Ma'elkoth--a god of Overworld--held Pallas Ril in his merciless grip. Earth's ruling elite wanted her dead. Caine swo

GrimdarkDark FantasyAnti-HeroTorture
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Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Jeff Lindsay · 304 pages

Kriminalroman. Miamipolitiet og politiofficer Deborah Morgan prøver at finde en seriemorder. Deborah håber sagen vil fremme hendes karrieremuligheder, og hun får hjælp af sin bror Dexter, der arbejder for politiet. Han er også seriemorder - men det er ikke ham, sagen drejer sig om

Villain ProtagonistMorally Gray CharacterAnti-HeroTorture
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Berserk, Vol. 16

Kentaro Miura · 240 pages

Berserk volume 16 features story and art by Kentaro Miura. Warrior supreme Guts has been marked for sacrifice to the armies of the damned, and now he has the blood of a village of possessed children on his hands, a horde of elf-demons straight out of a fairy-tale fever dream. But now Guts must deal with the Queen of the Elves herself, and though she may be cute as a button, she has hideous power a

GrimdarkDark FantasyAnti-HeroIntense
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The Warded Man

Peter V. Brett · 416 pages

The time has come to stand against the night.As darkness falls each night, the corelings rise--demons who well up from the ground like hellish steam, taking on fearsome form and substance. Sand demons. Wood demons. Wind demons. Flame demons. And gigantic rock demons, the deadliest of all. They possess supernatural strength and powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of ye

Dark FantasyIntenseRevenge PlotSexual Assault Content
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Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Cormac McCarthy · 337 pages

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indi

MercenariesVillain ProtagonistIntenseTorture
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The Children of Húrin

J.R.R. Tolkien · 320 pages

The ‘Great Tale’ of The Children of Húrin, set during the legendary time before The Lord of the Rings. Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwells in the vast fortress of Angband in the North; and within the shadow of the fear of Angband, and the war waged by Morgoth against the Elves, the fates of Turin and his sister Nienor will be tragically entwined. Their brief and passionate lives are dominated by

Dark FantasyGrimdarkRevenge PlotTorture
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A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

Villain ProtagonistAnti-HeroTortureSexual Assault Content
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Altered Carbon

Richard K. Morgan · 480 pages

Mankind is strung out across interstellar space, and human consciousness is digitally freighted between the stars and downloaded into bodies, but some things never change, so when Takeshi is downloaded into the body of a ex-thug and presented with a catch-22 offer he shouldn't be surprised.

TortureAnti-HeroSexual Assault ContentMercenaries
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Savage Son: A Thriller

Jack Carr · 432 pages

IntenseRevenge PlotMercenariesAnti-Hero
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Death Note, Vol. 1: Boredom

Tsugumi Ohba · 200 pages

Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects - and he's bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami, a death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. But when criminals begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legen

Villain ProtagonistMorally Gray CharacterIntenseAnti-Hero
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Empire of the Dawn

Jay Kristoff · 800 pages

GrimdarkMorally Gray CharacterAnti-HeroIntense
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IntenseTortureMorally Gray CharacterBleak
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Shadowfever

Karen Marie Moning · 594 pages

Alina is dead and her sister Mac has returned to Ireland, the country that expelled them, to hunt her sister's murderer. But after discovering that she descends from a bloodline both gifted and cursed, she descends into an epic battle between humans and Fae immortals as the Sinsar Dubh turns on her, and begins mowing a deadly path through those she loves. Mac's journey will force her to face the t

IntenseRevenge PlotDark FantasyMorally Gray Character
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Dark FantasyRevenge PlotMorally Gray CharacterAnti-Hero
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Vicious

V.E. Schwab, Victoria Schwab · 367 pages

**A masterful tale of ambition, jealousy, desire, and superpowers.** Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditi

Morally Gray CharacterVillain ProtagonistRevenge PlotAnti-Hero
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The Lies of Locke Lamora

Scott Lynch · 512 pages

"HIGH-OCTANE FANTASY...A CREAT SWASHBUCKLING YARN OF A NOVEL." -Richard Morgan In this stunning debut, Scott Lynch delivers the thrilling tale of an audacious criminal and his tightly knit band of tricksters. Set in a fantastic city pulsing with the lives of decadent nobles and daring thieves, here is a story of adventure, loyalty, and survival that is one part "Robin Hood," one part Ocean's El

Morally Gray CharacterRevenge PlotTortureAnti-Hero
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