What to read after “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Severian is raised in the guild of torturers and exiled from his city after an act of mercy. He narrates his own travels across a dying world, but his perfect memory is perfect only in his own account, and the past conceals far more than he admits.
John Carter, a former Confederate soldier, wakes on Mars and finds a dying world of red deserts, warring tribes and thin air. Taken in by the green Martians, he learns their customs and their languages, and sets out to protect Dejah Thoris, a princess of the red Martians.
Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer sets out from New Hampshire to California to find a talisman that may save his dying mother. His road runs through the Territories, a parallel world where many people have counterparts, and where the same journey carries dangers he could never face in his own world.
In a land torn by earthquakes and ash, orogenes can still the earth but are enslaved for it. Three women, a mother, a daughter and a student, move through a broken world as a new catastrophe begins, and their stories converge on what caused it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When the Empire of Masks conquers her island home, Baru Cormorant hides her hatred and joins the imperial civil service. Sent to a restless province as an accountant, she works to rise high enough to free her people, even as her choices cost her the woman she loves.
A street criminal offers six dangerous outcasts a fortune to break into an impregnable fortress and rescue a captive inventor. The heist needs a plan no one has tried before, and none of the crew trusts the others.
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.
Yeine Darr is summoned from her northern homeland to the city of Sky, where she is named an heir to the Arameri throne after her mother's death. As she learns the rules of a court that keeps gods as servants, she finds that the contest for the succession is also a trap.
The Black Company is a band of mercenaries who once served the light and now fight for one side in a war of dark powers. Croaker, the company's physician and annalist, records their grudging days, where the line between good and evil has blurred and surviving matters more than any truth.
Csorwe was raised to be a sacrifice to the Unspoken One, until the wizard Belthandros offers her another life. Trained as his assassin and servant, she is sent to find a lost city and a door between worlds, and begins to wonder whether her second life is any freer than her first.
Zafira is the Hunter, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to enter the cursed Arz and bring food to her starving people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, sent by his father to kill her. Both are drawn into a desert quest for an artifact that could restore magic, and neither expects what they find.
Azoth survives as a guild rat in the slums of Cenaria, where life is cheap. To escape he apprentices himself to Durzo Blint, the city's most feared assassin, and must abandon his old name and life to become Kylar Stern, a killer schooled in dangerous magic and politics.
In an ash-covered empire, a street thief is trained in allomancy, the magic of burning metals. She joins a crew planning to overthrow the immortal Lord Ruler, though the prophecy around her may be a lie.
Amani Al'Hiza lives in Dustwalk, a dead-end desert town, and hides two things: she can shoot like a legend, and she is half djinn. Refusing a blackmail marriage and a future in Dustwalk, she disguises herself and joins a stranger heading into the desert, where a rebellion is gathering.
Shasta has grown up poor in Calormen and dreams of escape. When he meets a talking horse who longs for Narnia, the two flee north together, joined by a runaway noble girl and her horse. Their road lies across a burning desert, with pursuers close behind and a secret about Shasta's past waiting at the end.
Carolyn and a dozen other orphans were raised by a man they call Father, who taught them strange arts from a library that may hold the secrets of creation. When Father vanishes, the siblings turn on one another for his power, and Carolyn must decide what she will trade to win.
In the city of Vienne, the aristocrat Nicholas Valiarde plays the careless nobleman while secretly running a network of thieves. He is funding a long revenge against the man who ruined his family through a series of elegant heists. Then eerie deaths and a forbidden necromantic power interrupt his carefully built scheme, and Nicholas has to decide how far his deception and his private code will carry him.
Mia Corvere survives the murder of her family and is taken in by the Red Church, a hidden order of assassins. To earn her place she must pass brutal trials, while her shadow companion and her hunger for revenge push her toward a choice she may not survive.
On the desert planet Arrakis, young Paul Atreides survives the destruction of his family and is taken in by the Fremen. As he learns their ways and the spice trade that powers an empire, he becomes the centre of a prophecy, a rebellion and a war for control of the known universe.
For years the invading Jure'lia have been beaten back, but the cost has drained the empire. Tormalin, an exiled Eboran, and Vintage, a scholar, are hunting the truth about the fell-witches when they find Noon, a woman carrying a power the Jure'lia have waited centuries to claim.
Start with “The Shadow of the Torturer”, “A Princess of Mars”, “The Talisman”: they are the closest to “The Gunslinger” 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 “The Gunslinger” these are Desert World, Quest, Post-Apocalyptic World), 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 Fifth Season”, “A Darker Shade of Magic”, “The Blacktongue Thief”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
