What to read after “The Talisman” by Stephen King & Peter Straub: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
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.
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.
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.
Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, follows the man in black across a vast, dying desert. His pursuit leads him through ruined towns and old memories, and forces him to weigh his obsession with the Dark Tower against the life of a boy he meets on the road.
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.
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.
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.
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 Bethel, a settlement ruled by a prophet's strict laws, Immanuelle Moore is an outcast because of her mother's forbidden union. A trip into the Darkwood where four witches were killed leaves her with her mother's diary and a growing sense of the lies at the heart of the town. To survive, she must confront what the Darkwood wants from her.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thomas Covenant, a leper shunned by everyone, is struck down and wakes in the Land, a place where his white gold wedding ring carries power. He refuses to believe any of it is real, even as its people hail him as a saviour.
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.
By day the world belongs to people; at night, demons rise from the ground. Three children, Arlen, Leesha and Rojer, grow up in the shadow of the wards that keep the corelings out, and each finds a different way to fight back.
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.
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.
For nearly thirty years the sun has not risen, and vampires have built an empire on the ruins of humanity. Gabriel de León, last of a holy brotherhood sworn to hunt them, is imprisoned and forced to tell the story of his life and the secret he has guarded.
Born with a scarlet mote in one eye, Phedre is sold into servitude and raised as a spy and courtesan. When she uncovers a plot against her home, she is captured in a barbarian land and must endure pain, betrayal and exile to warn her people and stop an invasion.
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.
In the city of Tova a solar eclipse is coming, and with it an old prophecy of a god reborn. Xiala, a disgraced sea captain, is ordered to carry a strange young man to the city, while Serapio has been shaped since childhood for a ceremony he does not fully understand.
Start with “A Darker Shade of Magic”, “The Blacktongue Thief”, “The Shadow of the Torturer”: they are the closest to “The Talisman” 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 Talisman” these are Parallel Worlds, Portal Fantasy, Quest), 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 “A Darker Shade of Magic”, “The Blacktongue Thief”, “The Traitor Baru Cormorant”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
