Shadow and Bone is an urban fantasy TV series based on a novel trilogy by Leigh Bardugo, which is primarily geared toward young adult audiences. Unlike many other fantasy stories, which feature worlds more akin to Medieval Times, Shadow and Bone is a little different in that it feels more like a parallel to the Victorian Era. This means that, on top of there being magic, there are various aspects of steampunk included, too.
Unfortunately, the TV show was canceled after just two seasons, disappointing legions of fans who admired the show for its inherent quality. If you’re a fan of the books or the TV show, you might be wondering what to check out next, curious if something can scratch the itch in the same way. While these aren’t always exact matches, these are some great novels to read if you’re missing Shadow and Bone, or just want to extend your horizons a little bit.
10
‘Ninth House’ (2019)
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Image via Flatiron Books</figure>
Ninth House is a great place to start for fans of Shadow and Bone because both books were written by the same author. While Shadow and Bone is more of a YA novel series, Ninth House and its sequel are distinctly adult books, meant for a more mature audience. That said, it still maintains author Leigh Bardugo’s specialty of urban fantasy, the difference being that Ninth House takes place an alternate version of the real world.
The story itself is about a college dropout who is a survivor of attempted murder who is abruptly offered a full scholarship to a prestigious, yet secretive university. Upon arriving there, she discovers hidden cults, political conspiracies, and a little bit of magic, too. Other authors have praised Ninth House for its seamless blend of urban fantasy and horror, with horror maestro Stephen King calling the book “the best fantasy novel I’ve read in years,” commending it for its character development and twisting narrative. For adult fans of Shadow and Bone, this is a brilliant reading choice.
9
‘Incarceron’ (2007)
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Image via Dial Books</figure>
Incarceron follows two viewpoints to tell its story. The first viewpoint is Finn, a young man who was born in the sprawling mega-prison known as Incarceron. Incarceron isn’t just a prison—it’s basically its own world, with its own cities, mountains, and even forests. On the flip side, there’s Claudia, the daughter of Incarceron’s warden. After finding a crystalline key in her father’s study, Claudia is able to develop a telepathic connection to Finn, with the two intending to help each other liberate the prisoners.
Incarceron is a really unique urban fantasy. There were supposedly plans for a movie, with Taylor Lautner rumored to be playing Finn, but for whatever reason, the fantasy adaptation appears to have been canceled. In any event, Incarceron is a nice, easy read that isn’t too complicated, and that contains many aesthetic and thematic aspects that will surely be appreciated by fans of Shadow and Bone, especially with how it emphasizes the divide between the rich and the poor.
8
‘Mistborn: The Final Empire’ (2006)
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Image via Tor Fantasy</figure>
Brandon Sanderson is one of the most popular fantasy authors of the 21st Century, especially considering the nearly inhuman speed at which he churns out his critically acclaimed novels. Mistborn: The Final Empire is the first in a trilogy, and one of several different books set in the shared universe known as the Cosmere. Each series or book of the Cosmere takes place on its own planet with its own magic system. The planet in Mistborn is Scadrial, which is primarily an urban hellscape dominated by The Final Empire.
Amongst oppressive regimes, rampant slavery, and political corruption, a crew of thieves devises a plan to overthrow The Final Empire and liberate the impoverished skaa people. While the second era of Mistborn is more in line with Shadow and Bone‘s aesthetic, it would be silly to recommend it without first recommending the first book of the first era. With magic, shadowy streets, and the politics of the nobility, Mistborn: The Final Empire is a favourite amongst fantasy fans.
7
‘City of Bones’ (2007)
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Image via Simon & Schuster</figure>
City of Bones is a massively popular urban fantasy story that likely doesn’t need a whole lot of introduction. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, these books were extremely big in the YA community. Sure, it might not be a total cultural phenomenon, but millions upon millions of people have read, and continue to re-read these books. Unlike Shadow and Bone, though, City of Bones is a low fantasy, meaning it’s got magic that interacts with the real world, as opposed to it being its own distinct universe.
Set in New York City, the plot revolves around a teenager who witnesses a murder in a nightclub. Nobody else has seen the murder, as the event is only visible to her. This is her first encounter with the cabal known as the Shadowhunters, who protect the world from demons. Before long, she is thrust into their world, as the Shadowhunters seek to find out how she can see what they’re doing and why. With it being an urban fantasy covered in mystery, Shadow and Bone fans are going to absolutely love City of Bones, assuming they haven’t already read it, at least.
6
‘Northern Lights’ (1995)
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Northern Lights is perhaps more commonly known as The Golden Compass thanks to a 2000s film adaptation which failed to impress fans. If the movie isn’t your cup of tea, you may be more familiar with the HBO original series His Dark Materials, which is an adaptation of Northern Lights and its two sequels, all of which were written by Philip Pullman. The story is once again an urban fantasy, taking place on a different version of Earth.
Aside from magic, this book features a lot of interesting creatures and places. From talking polar bears to seafaring adventurers to massive airships, Northern Lights isn’t just aesthetically similar to Shadow and Bone, but narratively, too. Though not every single bit of this book takes place in an urban environment, it’s still a fantasy that mirrors the Victorian Era, containing steamships, guns, and strange devices. It’s a pretty interesting ride, one that is an essential piece of the urban fantasy subgenre.
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
- This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends. - You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line. - The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight. - You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
- One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together. - You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea. - The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it. - You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
- Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept. - You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer. - The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people. - You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
- Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse. - You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for. - The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way. - Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
5
‘The Golden Door’ (2011)
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Image via Omnibus Books</figure>
Australian author Jennifer Rowe typically writes thrillers for adults, but when she writes young adult fantasy, she goes by the pen name Emily Rodda. Most of her fantasy novels take place in the same universe, including The Three Doors trilogy, beginning with The Golden Door. The story is set in the industrial city of Weld, which sits in the center of the island of Dorne. Weld is completely cut off from the outside world, surrounded by enormous walls, but this doesn’t stop them from being attacked by bat-like monstrosities known as Skimmers once a year.
Determined to stop the threat, the mayor of Weld sends out expeditions beyond the wall to find the source of the Skimmer attacks. However, there are only three ways out of the city, those being the eponymous three doors. Full of magic, industry, city politics, and conspiracies, The Golden Door might be for younger audiences, but it’s still a super fun read with an immersive and captivating world.
4
‘Speak of the Devil: A Shatterverse Novel’ (2025)
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Time for this author to get a little bit personal. Speak of the Devil: A Shatterverse Novel is written by Mason Choffe, whom I went to school with at York University in Toronto, Ontario. He’s a very driven and dedicated author, and definitely showed promise in the creative writing department. So far, he’s published a couple of ebooks on Kindle, with the most recent being Speak of the Devil, an urban fantasy of approximately 470 pages.
The story follows Fiero, a detective living in the dystopian city of Pheria, which is run by an oppressive oligarchy. Mysterious murders begin occurring, affecting everyone from the nobles to a group of people called the cursed, who are born with their afflictions, making them social outcasts. Among the murders, Fiero begins to unravel conspiracies that could change the political climate of Pheria. Sure, the book might not be as popular as some of the other heavy-hitters on this list, but I felt it necessary to give a quick shout-out to a fellow alumnus, as well as to make a good recommendation to fans of urban fantasy stories like Shadow and Bone.
3
‘The Anvil of the World’ (2003)
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Image via Tor Fantasy</figure>
The Anvil of the World forgoes the typical chapter format, instead featuring three distinct parts. Each part of the book follows a smaller story that makes up the larger narrative, with each taking place in a different location. The main character is a smuggler named Smith, who has been hired to escort a mage named Lord Ermenwyr from one city to another via train. The second part of the book, in particular, is more of an urban fantasy, focusing heavily on city life.
As implied by the title, there are various steampunk aspects in this book, along with magic and immersive environments to get lost in. This book is criminally underrated, featuring not just a good story with some genuine emotional value but also some truly hilarious punchlines that will make anyone laugh out loud. The Anvil of the World is sure to be a hit with fans of Shadow and Bone, as a lot of the themes and plot points are very similar.
2
‘Throne of Glass’ (2012)
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Image via Bloomsbury Publishing</figure>
Throne of Glass is set in a smoke-filled dystopian cityscape, where trained killers and assassins are routinely forced into gladiatorial combat to entertain the rich. Professional assassin Celaena has been imprisoned, but is promised by the Prince that she can earn her freedom by fighting and surviving in the arena. But before she even has that chance, other contestants start showing up dead, before they can even start to fight each other.
Rife with conspiracy, political intrigue, and an authoritarian empire, Throne of Glass earned impressive reviews from critics, many of whom fell in love with its worldbuilding and fleshed-out characters. With its themes of oppressive kingdoms, mystery, and a major divide between social classes, this is a fantastic pick if you’re looking for something to fill the void that Shadow and Bone left behind.
1
‘Jade City’ (2017)
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Image via Orbit</figure>
Jade City reads like a pseudo-mobster flick, only in a totally fantastical world. Centering heavily on themes of family ties, backstabbing, blood feuds, magic, and even a little bit of martial arts, Jade City certainly delivers in the urban fantasy subgenre. The main characters are the Kaul family, a crime syndicate that produces jade, a mineral that gives the people of Keklon magical and unexplained powers.
Before long, the political tensions between warring factions explode into open conflict, throwing Keklon into chaos. Critics adored the novel for the way it mixed goofy kung fu movies with mobster flicks and fantasy, all supplemented by impeccable worldbuilding, including many tiny nuances and subtleties about the culture contained within. Whilst not a direct match, fans of Shadow and Bone should most certainly give this one a try.
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