What to read after “The Year of the Witching” by Alexis Henderson: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Each year the people of a village leave a baby in the forest for the witch they fear, and each year the witch Xan carries the child to a safe home. When she accidentally gives one baby moonlight instead of starlight, the girl gains dangerous magic, and Xan decides to raise her. Luna grows up among a swamp monster and a dragon, unaware of the mother who still mourns her.
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.
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.
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.
Every ten years the wizard known as the Dragon takes one girl from Agnieszka's valley. When he chooses her instead of her best friend, she is carried to his tower, where she discovers a talent for magic, a growing bond with her cold teacher and the corrupted Wood that threatens them all.
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.
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 a northern village at the edge of the Russian wilderness, Vasya grows up hearing the old house spirits and fairy tales her stepmother forbids. When new winters bring a creeping evil, only Vasya, who can still see the spirits, can bargain with the forces threatening her home.
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.
In the town of Black Spring, a seventeenth-century witch walks the streets with her eyes and mouth sewn shut. The elders hide the curse from outsiders, but bored teenagers who want to broadcast her presence set off events that no one can undo.
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.
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.
Fitz is the unacknowledged bastard son of a prince, raised in the shadows of the royal court. Trained secretly as an assassin and bonded to a wolf through the forbidden Wit, he must decide where his loyalty lies as the kingdom's politics turn treacherous.
Witch sisters Emilia and Vittoria live secretly among humans, hiding from those who would kill them. When Vittoria is found murdered, Emilia swears to hunt down the killer, even using forbidden magic. Her search brings her to Wrath, a prince of Hell she cannot trust and cannot look away from.
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.
The Omehi have fought an unwinnable war for generations, where a rare few can call dragons or transform into killing giants. Giftless Tau plans to escape, until betrayal murders those he loves. To avenge them he trains to become the greatest swordsman alive, whatever it costs.
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.
With the witch hunts still burning, Lou and Reid flee and try to gather allies against the church. They bargain with people they do not trust and hide a bond more dangerous than any enemy. As the threat grows, Lou senses that the darkness inside her is not as harmless as she believed.
Lou is a witch hiding in a city where the church hunts her kind. Reid is a captain of the witch hunters and a devoted servant of that church. When a reckless act binds them in a union neither wanted, both must choose between faith, duty and a feeling they were raised to despise.
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.
Diana Bishop, a historian and reluctant witch, calls up an enchanted manuscript that every creature in Oxford wants. When the vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont offers his help, their alliance defies the laws that keep witches, vampires, and daemons apart.
Angrboda is a witch burned three times for refusing to reveal the future. She hides in a forest and builds a quiet life until Loki finds her, and their children draw the eyes of the gods. A prophecy turns every small happiness into a countdown.
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.
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.
What should I read after “The Year of the Witching”?
Start with “The Girl Who Drank the Moon”, “The Ninth Rain”, “The Library at Mount Char”: they are the closest to “The Year of the Witching” 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 Year of the Witching” these are Cursed Village, Witches, Dark Fantasy), 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 Girl Who Drank the Moon”, “The Ninth Rain”, “The Library at Mount Char”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
