What to read after “He Who Fights with Monsters” by Shirtaloon: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Richter expects a new virtual world to be a game, then wakes trapped inside it. Alone in a monster-filled forest, he learns its rules, gathers resources and experience, and begins building a settlement, while the world's other powers take notice of the newcomer.
After a catastrophic injury leaves him paralyzed, former combat medic Joe transfers his consciousness permanently into a new full-immersion game. There he chooses the ritualist class, a secretive path most players ignore, and studies obscure lore, follows hidden quests and bends the game's rules in pursuit of real power.
Corin Cadence enters the Serpent Spire to earn a magical attunement and learn what happened to his missing brother. He leaves with an unusual power, then studies at Lorian Heights Academy, chasing forbidden knowledge and building a team around his strange abilities.
When a system integrates Earth, Jake Thayne is pulled into the Tutorial along with everyone else. Forced to hunt monsters and absorb their power, he grows far faster than most, while the world he returns to is no longer the one he left.
In Sacred Valley children advance through ranks of sacred power, but Lindon is born Unsouled and left behind. Refusing his place, he trains in secret and enters the valley's tournament, hoping to earn a path out before his weakness costs him everything.
Bullied at school and ignored at home, Jason escapes into Awaken Online, a full-immersion game, and chooses the path of the necromancer. His growing power and undead army make him the game's villain, and his choices there begin to change his real life.
Betrayed by his guild, Oren wakes trapped inside the game New Era Online as a low-level goblin. Cut off from his old character and hunted by players and monsters alike, he must rebuild from nothing, grow his settlement, and find a way back to his human life.
Diving into the new VR game Ascend Online, Marcus logs in expecting adventure but is separated from his friends and dropped into a remote frontier village under goblin attack. He rallies the villagers to drive the raiders off, then helps them rebuild their ruined homes while learning how real the game world can feel.
When an alien corporation turns Earth into a lethal dungeon for an intergalactic reality show, Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, enter the levels. Carl's only plan is to survive the cameras, the monsters and the audience.
Reidon Ward is a sickly orphan with almost no chance of reaching the military academy, until he is fitted with a rare CAD. Admitted to Galens Institute, he must climb its brutal rankings and prove that his weak body can survive the training meant to break him.
Kell is one of the last Antari, magicians who can travel between four parallel Londons: Red, Grey, White and the lost Black. After a smuggling exchange goes wrong, he flees into Grey London and meets Lila Bard, a thief who talks her way into his journey. Together they must keep a dangerous object from falling into the wrong hands.
In a city of canals and thieves, Locke Lamora leads a small band of con artists who rob the nobility. A hidden power turns the tables, and the crew find themselves caught in a scheme far larger than any of their own.
Sancia Grado is a thief in Tevanne, a city where scribing commands objects to obey written orders. Hired to steal a key, she finds it holds power that could break the four merchant houses' grip on magic, and the houses will kill to keep that power buried.
Tress lives on an island where the seas are made of deadly spores. When the man she loves is taken by the Sorceress, she leaves her ordinary life, gathers an unlikely crew and sails toward the midnight sea to bring him home.
Nahri has survived in eighteenth-century Cairo by faking healings and stealing what she can. A careless summoning calls a djinn warrior to her side and drags her to Daevabad, a city of magic and old feuds, where her true blood makes her a threat to everyone around her.
Will Parry, a boy on the run after a violent encounter, crosses through a window into another world and meets Lyra Silvertongue. Together they search for Will's missing father and for the source of the mysterious Dust, while a knife that can cut openings between universes draws them into a war far larger than either of them.
Clay Cooper left his days as a mercenary behind for a quiet life. Then an old bandmate arrives to say his daughter is trapped in a besieged city, and Clay must round up the ageing, out-of-shape heroes of Saga for one more job.
Loulie al-Nazari, the Midnight Merchant, trades in jinn relics with her jinn bodyguard Qadir. When the sultan forces her into a search for a lost lamp, she must cross a desert of jinn, thieves and old stories, where the line between merchant and prey keeps shifting.
Doctor Adoulla Makhslood is the last real ghul hunter in the desert city of Dhamsawaat, and he wants only to retire. When a series of murders points to a powerful supernatural enemy, he takes up his sword again with his young apprentice and a fierce tribeswoman, and the three pursue the danger beyond the city walls.
Kinch Na Shannack owes his guild of thieves more than he can ever pay. To settle the debt he tags along with a scarred knight on a journey to find women taken by goblins, through a world of old wars, hungry gods and creatures that would happily eat a thief.
Sabriel has grown up safely across the Wall, far from the Old Kingdom and its dead. When her father, the Abhorsen, vanishes, she crosses into a land where the dead walk and takes up his bells and his duty. With a free magic creature and a trapped soldier, she sets out to find him.
Eelyn is a warrior of the Aska clan, raised to fight the rival Riki in a war older than anyone remembers. Captured and forced to live among her enemies, she begins to see them as people, and finds herself drawn to a young man she was always taught to kill.
Moist von Lipwig is a con man offered a choice: be hanged, or revive Ankh-Morpork's ruined post office. With the city's mail piled up undelivered in the crumbling post office and a rival message company sabotaging him, he sets out to make the letters move and stay ahead of his own past.
Quentin Coldwater is recruited to a hidden college of magic in upstate New York, where years of study leave him restless and still searching for meaning. When he and his friends find a way into Fillory, the enchanted land from his childhood books, its dangers turn out to be very real.
What should I read after “He Who Fights with Monsters”?
Start with “The Land: Founding”, “Ritualist”, “Sufficiently Advanced Magic”: they are the closest to “He Who Fights with Monsters” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “He Who Fights with Monsters” these are LitRPG, Portal Fantasy, Found Family), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The Land: Founding”, “Ritualist”, “Sufficiently Advanced Magic”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
