What to read after “Mother of Learning: Arc 1” by Domagoj Kurmaić: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Sold and condemned, the girl Nona Grey is saved from the gallows by the Convent of Sweet Mercy, where young women are trained as warriors and killers. Between lessons in blade and poison she makes friends and enemies and a promise, while the past that marked her comes looking.
Barrett Bloom hopes her first day at college will be a fresh start, but everything goes wrong. She wakes up to the same 21 September again, and discovers that Miles, the know-it-all from physics class, is stuck in the loop with her.
Jack meets Kate at a party and falls for her, but months later she dies of sickle cell disease. He wakes up back at the party where they met and gets another chance to save her, then another, each choice changing the lives around him.
Kvothe, once a renowned magician and musician, tells a scribe the truth behind his own reputation. His story moves from a travelling troupe to a brutal city and the magic school where he learned far too much.
Sasha Samokhina fails her exams and is told to attend a remote institute instead. There the lessons are strange and punishing, and students are asked to do things that break the usual rules of the world. Obedience may unlock a terrifying kind of power.
Emilie Hornby plans a perfect Valentine's Day, but it falls apart: she crashes into her annoying chemistry partner's truck, loses a journalism fellowship and catches her boyfriend cheating. Then she wakes up and the same day starts again, and again.
Davian is an Augur, born with powers forbidden since the old war. When the laws of the Venerate turn against him, he flees with his friends in search of the man who might explain why the Augurs fell. What he finds tests everything he was taught to believe.
Popular high-school senior Samantha Kingston dies in a car crash on 12 February and wakes up to the same day again. She relives it seven times, changing small choices each time and learning how her actions affect the people around her.
Rin, a war orphan from the impoverished south, tests into Sinegard, the empire's elite military academy, and discovers a shamanic power tied to the gods. When war with the Federation erupts she is forced to use it, and the cost turns out to be monstrous.
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.
A young soldier is thrown into a war against alien Mimics and killed on his first day of battle, then wakes on the morning before, again and again. Each death teaches him something, and he must relive the same fight until he can survive long enough to find a way out.
A year after her boyfriend Jim's death, Beatrice joins four old friends at an isolated mansion. After a strange visitor tells them time is stuck, they relive the same day again and again and must agree on who among them will live.
At Blackheath, Evelyn Hardcastle is shot dead at a party every night, and Aidan Bishop wakes each morning in a different guest's body with no memory of who he is. To escape, he must use each host to find the killer, while other players want the same thing.
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.
Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies, then is born again in the same English house. Over many lives she survives accidents, war and bad choices, and begins to sense that her repetitions might be leading somewhere.
Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and wakes in 1963 in his eighteen-year-old body, with every memory of the years ahead intact. He lives that span over and over, each replay starting later, and slowly realises he is not the only one caught in the loop.
Harry August dies and is born again in the same English country house in 1919, remembering everything. Each life draws him into a hidden network of people who live their years over and over, until another of their kind begins to unravel time itself and asks him to stop it.
On his eleventh birthday, an orphan named Harry learns he is a wizard and is sent to Hogwarts, a castle school where houses compete and the corridors hold secrets. He makes his first friends, studies magic, and finds that someone at the school is after a hidden object.
Morrigan Crow is blamed for every misfortune and is marked to die on her eleventh birthday. Instead she is spirited away to the secret city of Nevermoor to compete for a place in an exclusive society, against rivals and a curse that still hunts her.
Violet has survived her first year at Basgiath War College, but the answers she sought only revealed a larger lie. As war closes in, she must decide whom to trust, including a man she loves and cannot fully believe, while the school hides truths even its riders are forbidden to know.
Violet Sorrengail expected a quiet life among books, not the deadly rider quadrant where cadets die and dragons choose their own riders. Thin and untrained, she survives on wit alone. Her greatest threat is Xaden Riorson, a ruthless wing leader whose attention she never wanted.
Every year two children are taken to the School for Good and Evil, one to train as a hero and one as a villain. Best friends Sophie and Agatha are sure they know which is which, but the school has its own plans for them.
Ged, a gifted goatherd, is sent to the school for wizards on Roke to learn magic. A spell of vanity releases a shadow he cannot name, and he must travel across Earthsea to face it and become whole.
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.
What should I read after “Mother of Learning: Arc 1”?
Start with “Red Sister”, “See You Yesterday”, “Opposite of Always”: they are the closest to “Mother of Learning: Arc 1” 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 “Mother of Learning: Arc 1” these are Time Loop, Magic Academy, Coming of Age), 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 “Red Sister”, “See You Yesterday”, “Opposite of Always”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
