32 books like And I Darken

I loved a number of things about Pennyblade. For starters, the main character’s (Kyra’s) race, the Commrach, who are like elves, are ruthless libertines and hedonists. 

The Pennyblade world is a fascinating and grim place where same sex relationships are punishable by death and the action, which is visceral and very explicit, just keeps coming.

I really liked that this is a novel about prejudices, it appealed to me as someone from an ethnic minority group who grew up in London in the late 1970s / early 80s and experienced racism.

Fortunately, Pennyblade has plenty of humour which makes the grimdark nature of the book more palatable.

The first big draw of this novel is the characterisation.

The protagonists and antagonists are all wonderfully sketched, giving them depth and life, especially Tormalin the Oathless, of a vampire-like race, and Lady Vincenza de Grazon – eccentric old scholar and wine fiend. The book is full of humour and the plot is well drawn with perfect pacing. 

At the heart of the novel is a mystery – where are the Jurelia – the fearsome race that invaded millennia ago, and are they going to return? What will happen when they do?

Finally, Williams has created an intriguing world full of powerful oppressed witches alongside steam trains and the remnants of the previous Jurelia invasion.

Y takes place on 20th-century Earth, but with a twist: all men have been exterminated by a mysterious virus except one. You’d think setting the story on Earth in the current time period would be easy, but I think that kind of setting is even harder because we know what that world should feel like and if things deviate, we’ll be quick to notice. And yet, although the premise of Y has not happened on Earth, the worldbuilding makes it plausible that it could. Y dives into the past and jumps into the future, it travels from one end of the U.S. to the other, it tangles international conspiracies with a lovelorn hero and a monkey that won’t stop flinging its poop—and you accept it because the foundation—the worldbuilding—is secure.

If you’ve ever wondered what life was like for the people living in the Americas after the last ice age, then read this book. Through the eyes of Young Hunter, we explore what we now call New England thousands of years before the first Europeans crossed the Atlantic. And through Young Hunter, we learn to use weapons, how to survive in the wild, Native American folktales and names, and we learn why Young Hunter’s people fear beings called the Ancient Ones. All of these worldbuilding layers are revealed as Young Hunter embarks on a dangerous journey tracking the creatures that attacked his people, with each layer drawing you in until you are as fearful of the Ancient Ones as Young Hunter and just as determined to face them.

I’m not the biggest Sanderson fan. I like his books, but I don’t have a wing of my library dedicated to him. But Skyward in particular stands out to me. It’s a much more personal story.

Spensa is socially inept, misunderstood, and hot-headed. I loved that because I got to see her grow through struggle and failure like a regular person.

I’m not usually a fan of stories told in the first person either, but seeing the world through her eyes as she learned what courage actually means made the story impossible to put down. It reminded me that growth doesn’t come from destiny; it comes from persistence and the willingness to change, often at great cost.

This book made me cheer for someone who felt real in all the best and most frustrating ways.

Karou is caught in a war between angels and demons (the ultimate simplified description). And Karou is a main character I love to cheer for. She's just so witty and full of angst on a totally relatable level. She's having the mother of all identity crises and feeling the ultimate tug of war between the human world and a dimension inhabited by the strange creatures that raised her.

Pair that awesome premise with Laini Taylor's incredibly lush writing, and the story is just fantastic. I kept turning page after page not only to immerse myself in Taylor's beautiful prose but also because this story is just compelling. I've reread this entire series, and I loved it even more the second time through.

I picked this up expecting a revenge fantasy story based on what I’d heard, but what I got was something far more brutal.

Much like my #3 pick, this story doesn’t flinch. It dissects power, identity, and the cost of survival with narrative precision. Watching Rin’s descent was nearly voyeuristic; it felt wrong, but you couldn’t help but watch.

This book is an excellent example of fantasy that doesn’t need to pull its punches. It can confront uncomfortable topics head-on and still leaves room for humanity and consequences.

This post-apocalyptic novel features Cassie as our flawed female main character. She is in pure survival mode, and I love the way Yancey shows the uncertainty of living in a world where you don’t know who to trust. Cassie is your typical girl next door, and while she’s trying to survive an alien invasion, I easily asked myself, What would I have done?

I love books that make you ask that. She has such a hard time trusting anyone, and given the fact that aliens are taking over people’s bodies, yeah, it’s understandable. And the five waves of the alien invasion are totally terrifying and also totally believable.

This is the first in a series of alternate history stories, set in 1888 (later volumes run right through the 20th century), in a world in which Count Dracula triumphed over his arch-enemy Professor Van Helsing. He’s now married to Queen Victoria and ruling over a London full of bloodsuckers!

A very clever idea which neatly ties in all sorts of vampire-related fictional strands.

I love all of Sarah Waters’ works, but Fingersmith ranks among my most obsessively adored books of all time. I find it a near-perfect interweaving of meticulously researched historical fiction—penned with Dickensian flair and grace—and compulsively page-turning thriller, marked by brilliant and utterly unforeseeable plot twists that will leave you slack-jawed.

It somehow manages to be wickedly funny, poignantly tragic, powerfully feminist, and gratifyingly steamy all at once. I also loved the Korean film adaptation of it, The Handmaiden, which not only embraces Fingersmith’s anti-patriarchal themes but ingeniously weaves anti-colonialist elements into the by setting it in Japan-occupied Korea in the 1930s.