8 books like Fourth Wing, from A Court of Thorns and Roses to The Priory of the Orange Tree: romantasy, dragons, and brutal fantasy schools.
Updated June 10, 2026
Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing (2023) is the book that turned romantasy from a niche into a publishing category. Violet Sorrengail, physically fragile in a world that kills the weak, is forced into Basgiath War College to become a dragon rider, where cadets die on the parapet before classes even start and her most dangerous classmate is Xaden Riorson, the son of a executed rebel with every reason to want her dead. The formula is potent: a deadly military school, dragons with attitude, an enemies-to-lovers romance that actually delivers on the tension, and chapters paced like a thriller.
No single book does all of that at once, so this list is sorted by which ingredient you want more of. If it was the fae-adjacent romance with high stakes, go to A Court of Thorns and Roses, Serpent & Dove, or The Cruel Prince. If it was the brutal-training-ground setting, An Ember in the Ashes is the closest match. If it was the dragons and the scale of the world, The Priory of the Orange Tree delivers more of both than Fourth Wing itself does. Shadow and Bone, Graceling, and The Bone Season round out the list for readers who loved a powerful heroine finding her footing in a hostile system.
One expectation to set: Fourth Wing is steamier than most of what is here. The Cruel Prince, Shadow and Bone, and Graceling are young adult, so the romance simmers rather than ignites. A Court of Thorns and Roses (especially from book two on) is the pick if the open-door scenes were part of the appeal. Each entry below says where it sits.
Read this if Violet surviving among people who want her dead was the hook.
Holly Black's Jude Duarte is the closest thing on this list to Violet's situation: a mortal girl with no physical advantages clawing her way to power in Elfhame, a faerie court where everyone is stronger than she is and several people actively want her gone. The antagonist-love-interest dynamic with Prince Cardan runs on the same fuel as Violet and Xaden, mutual contempt curdling into obsession, and Black writes political scheming with a sharpness Fourth Wing only gestures at.
The differences matter. This is young adult, so the romance is all tension and no steam, and there are no dragons and no military structure; the danger here is courtly, made of bargains, poisons, and betrayals rather than combat trials. Jude is also a colder, more ruthless protagonist than Violet. Pick this if the scheming and the toxic chemistry were your favorite parts, and know the payoff builds across the full Folk of the Air trilogy.
Read this for enemies-to-lovers with the dial turned all the way up.
Shelby Mahurin's setup is the trope in its purest form: Lou is a witch, Reid is a witch hunter sworn to burn her kind, and circumstance forces them into a marriage neither wants. If the slow collapse of hostility between Violet and Xaden was what kept you turning pages, this delivers the same arc with even more friction, banter, and forced proximity. The French-flavored fantasy world of chapels and covens is vivid without demanding the homework of a big epic fantasy.
What it lacks is Fourth Wing's military spine. There is no war college, no trials, no dragons; the plot is a chase-and-hide story driven almost entirely by the central relationship. It is published as young adult but sits at the mature end of it, with more heat than The Cruel Prince though less than Yarros. Choose this when you want the romance to be the main course rather than one thread of a bigger war story.
Read this if Basgiath War College was your favorite character.
Sabaa Tahir's Blackcliff Academy is the truest sibling to Basgiath in fantasy: a military school in a Roman-inspired empire where cadets are brutalized into soldiers, failure means death, and the commandant is genuinely terrifying. Half the novel follows Elias, the academy's best soldier, who wants out; the other half follows Laia, a scholar spying inside it to save her brother. The trials Elias endures carry the same dread as the Threshing and the Gauntlet, and Tahir does not flinch from consequences.
It is grimmer than Fourth Wing and the romance is a slow burn spread across four books rather than a front-and-center engine, so do not come to it primarily for the love story. There are also no dragons; the supernatural element is jinn and prophetic visions. Pick this if you want the boots-and-blood military fantasy half of Fourth Wing executed with more weight, and you are willing to trade steam for stakes.
Read this if you want the book most Fourth Wing readers pick up next.
Sarah J. Maas is the author Yarros is most often compared to, and for good reason: the blend of a hardened heroine, a dangerous brooding love interest, deadly trials, and increasingly explicit romance is the shared playbook. Feyre, a mortal huntress dragged into the faerie lands of Prythian after killing a wolf, starts in a Beauty and the Beast frame and ends somewhere far darker and more political. The series scales the way The Empyrean does, each book widening the war and raising the body count.
The first book is the slowest; the consensus among readers is that A Court of Mist and Fury, the sequel, is where the series becomes the phenomenon, so commit to two books before judging. Differences from Fourth Wing: faeries instead of dragons, no military school structure, and a romance that takes a major turn many readers do not see coming. If you want adult-level heat and a long series to live in, this is the obvious next read.
Read this if you loved an unremarkable soldier discovering she matters most.
Leigh Bardugo's Alina Starkov starts almost exactly where Violet does: a frail, overlooked member of an army, certain she will not survive what is coming, until a hidden power surfaces and makes her the most important person in the war. The Grishaverse's military structure, with its ranked magic users and palace politics, scratches the same itch as Basgiath's hierarchy, and the Darkling is one of fantasy's great seductive-and-dangerous figures, a clear ancestor of the shadow-wielding Xaden type.
This is young adult from 2012, so the prose is leaner, the heat is minimal, and the love triangle structure feels more traditional than Fourth Wing's. The real payoff of the Grishaverse arrives with Six of Crows, the heist duology set in the same world, which many readers rank above the original trilogy. Pick this if the chosen-soldier arc and the dangerous mentor dynamic were what gripped you, and treat it as the gateway to a bigger universe.
Read this if you wanted more dragons and a much bigger world.
If Tairn and Andarna were your favorite part of Fourth Wing, Samantha Shannon's standalone epic is the upgrade. Dragons here come in two distinct traditions, the feared fire-breathers of the West and the revered water dragons of the East, and the dragon-rider bond on the Eastern side, through the rider Tané, carries real emotional weight. The world-building is vastly deeper than Yarros's, with centuries of religious history, queendoms, and a genuinely epic final confrontation.
Be honest with yourself about the pace, though. This is an 800-page, four-viewpoint epic that takes a couple hundred pages to gather speed, and the central romance (a quiet sapphic court romance between a queen and her secret mage protector) is a subplot, not an engine. There is no snark, no war college, and little steam. Choose it when you want to graduate from romantasy pacing to full epic fantasy without giving up dragons.
Read this for a heroine whose body is the weapon Violet's never could be.
Kristin Cashore's Katsa is an inversion of Violet that fans tend to love: where Violet survives on wit and fragility, Katsa is Graced with killing, lethal since childhood and used as a king's enforcer. The core arc is the same, a young woman wresting control of her own power from the people exploiting it, and her partnership with Po builds on sparring, mutual respect, and slowly dropped guards in a way that recalls the better Violet-and-Xaden training scenes.
This is the quietest book on the list. Published in 2008 as young adult, it is more an intimate journey-and-survival story than a war epic, with no dragons, no school, and a romance that is tender rather than combustible (though notably frank for YA of its era). Katsa's firm refusals of marriage and motherhood made the book a touchstone. Pick it when you want character over spectacle and a heroine with total agency.
Read this if you want the dangerous-captor dynamic in a darker, stranger world.
Samantha Shannon's other series swaps epic fantasy for dystopia: Paige Mahoney is a clairvoyant criminal in a totalitarian future London, captured and handed to Warden, an otherworldly Rephaite who becomes her keeper and trainer. The slow, charged evolution of that relationship, hostility and dependence shading into something else while Paige trains her powers under threat of death, maps closely onto the Xaden dynamic, and the penal colony of Sheol I has Basgiath's survive-or-die atmosphere.
It is the furthest from Fourth Wing in setting: no dragons, no medieval war, but psychic warfare, seances, and crime syndicates in an alternate 2059. The first book front-loads a lot of invented terminology, so expect to work for the first hundred pages. The series is planned at seven books and Shannon has revised the early ones, so there is a long runway. Choose it if you want romantasy chemistry inside something more original than another faerie court.
What should I read after finishing the Fourth Wing series?
The most common next stop is Sarah J. Maas, either A Court of Thorns and Roses for the romance-forward route or Throne of Glass for a longer epic arc. If the dragon-rider element mattered most, The Priory of the Orange Tree is the strongest dragon book here. If it was the deadly military school, go straight to An Ember in the Ashes.
Is A Court of Thorns and Roses similar to Fourth Wing?
Yes, it is the most frequently recommended readalike. Both are adult romantasy with a tough heroine, a dangerous love interest, deadly trials, and explicit romance. The main differences are setting (faerie courts instead of a dragon-rider war college) and pacing: ACOTAR's first book is slower, and most readers say the series takes off with book two, A Court of Mist and Fury.
Which books like Fourth Wing have dragons?
On this list, The Priory of the Orange Tree is the major dragon book, with both Western fire-breathers and Eastern water dragons and a genuine rider bond. Beyond this list, readers often pair Fourth Wing with Naomi Novik's Temeraire series or Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, the classic ancestors of the dragon-rider bond Yarros uses.
Are these books as steamy as Fourth Wing?
Mostly no. A Court of Thorns and Roses matches or exceeds it, especially from the second book onward. Serpent & Dove and The Bone Season have real heat but less of it. The Cruel Prince, Shadow and Bone, An Ember in the Ashes, and Graceling are young adult, so the romance there is tension and slow burn rather than open-door scenes.
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