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.
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.
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.
Jason, an office supplies manager, is pulled from Earth into a world of magic and monsters. There he gains a strange essence that grows stronger with every fight, gathers a circle of companions, and learns that power, friendship and morality do not always agree.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Under the Martial Empire, Laia's brother is arrested as a traitor, so she goes undercover as a slave in a brutal military academy to spy for the rebels. There she meets Elias, a reluctant soldier whose future is bound to the regime she works against.
William Marshal, a landless younger son, wins renown on the tournament circuit of twelfth-century Europe. Sworn to kings and queens, he serves through rebellion and shifting alliances, and his loyalty is tested as often as his skill at arms.
In a future kingdom divided into castes, thirty-five girls are chosen to compete for the crown. America Singer enters only for the money, torn between a secret love back home and the young prince she is slowly getting to know.
Oraya is a human adopted by the vampire king and has always been an outsider at his court. To win protection she enters the Kejari, a tournament that kills most of its competitors, and forms an uneasy alliance with Raihn, a rival vampire she cannot trust and should not love.
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.
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.
Eli Monpress is a wizard and a thief who would rather have a larger bounty than a heavier purse. To raise it he kidnaps a king, which brings the Spirit Court's envoy Miranda Lyonette after him. Eli's easy charm hides a plan that puts more than his own bounty at stake.
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.
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.
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.
A boy lies awake on Christmas Eve when a steam train stops outside his house. The conductor invites him aboard, and the train carries a crowd of children through the night toward the North Pole, where a special gift awaits the one who still believes.
On a future Mars, a miner from the lowest caste learns that the paradise he was promised does not exist and that his people are slaves. He is remade as a member of the ruling class and sent into a brutal contest where he plans to bring the whole system down.
Six talented magicians are invited to the Alexandrian Society, a secret fellowship that guards lost knowledge. Only five can be initiated at the end of the year, and the recruits must decide how far they will go to keep their places, and whom they are willing to betray.
Start with “Sufficiently Advanced Magic”, “Ritualist”, “The Land: Founding”: they are the closest to “Unsouled” 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 “Unsouled” these are LitRPG, Outcast Hero, 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 “Sufficiently Advanced Magic”, “Ritualist”, “The Land: Founding”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
