Here are 15 books that Hierarchy fans have personally recommended once you finish the Hierarchy series.
Book DNA is a community of authors and super-readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I have always been obsessed with stories where underdogs must enter elite institutions carrying heavy secrets and impossible odds. Growing up, I devoured military academy fantasy because I loved watching flawed characters tested to their absolute limits, where survival demanded tactical cleverness rather than brute force. As an author, I am endlessly fascinated by morally grey antiheroes who must balance internal trauma against uncompromising goals. Sharing these five masterclasses in tension, magic, and academy trials is a joy because they represent the exact books that inspired me to pick up a pen and write.
I was deeply moved by Rin's relentless struggle to earn a spot at Sinegard, the elite military academy.
I loved how the story started with rigorous academic and martial testing before plunging into the grim realities of war. The shamanic magic system felt wild, dangerous, and atmospheric. I resonated with Rin's fierce determination as an outsider forced to prove herself among privilege and political intrigue.
R. F. Kuang created an uncompromising, emotionally heavy narrative that shows the true, brutal cost of power and vengeance.
Winner of the Reddit Fantasy Award for Best Debut 2018
'The best fantasy debut of 2018' - WIRED
A brilliantly imaginative epic fantasy debut, inspired by the bloody history of China's twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic.
When Rin aced the Keju - the test to find the most talented students in the Empire - it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn't believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin's guardians, who had hoped to get rich by marrying her off; and to Rin herself,…
Telescopes, microscopes, computer modeling–these exist because some things are easier to study when you change their shape. That’s how we learned about planets, germs, and the economy. Enlarging, shrinking, and filling in details lets us examine and understand. I think literature can do the same thing with ideas. Asking ‘what if?’ lets us probe things we can’t with our gadgets. Concepts. Hypotheticals. A story that pulls a big idea like taffy? That is a treat. I’ve got five in this dish.
What if elevator inspectors had their own influential guild? Not science fiction, not fantasy, and not even alternative history. Just a riveting, delightful, challenging ‘what if’ that does not fit in a box. In a shaft. In a skyscraper. When I first heard about this book, I thought elevator inspection might be, let’s say, resistant to novel-sized interrogation.
To this, I now say, behold the umbrella that fits in the purse or the king-sized mattress that arrives in a toddler-sized box. This book unfolds and puffs up deliberately and warmly, and eventually, you find yourself curled up, reading about the very nature of thought. In a person. In a society. You don’t want to turn out the light and stop.
'A thrilling blend of noir and fantasy.'Guardian. In an unnamed city - a hardboiled pre-Civil Rights New York sort of city -heroine Lila Mae has succeeded in becoming the very first Black female elevator inspector. In Whitehead's darkly comic otherworld, this is a job imbued with an almost mystical significance. But the illustrious Department of Elevator Inspectors is in crisis, bitterly divided between the Empiricists (check the machinery) and the Intuitionists (tune in to the vibes). Lila is an Intuitionist and so much better at her job than anyone else that surely it must be those 'good-old-boy' Empiricists who have…
Telescopes, microscopes, computer modeling–these exist because some things are easier to study when you change their shape. That’s how we learned about planets, germs, and the economy. Enlarging, shrinking, and filling in details lets us examine and understand. I think literature can do the same thing with ideas. Asking ‘what if?’ lets us probe things we can’t with our gadgets. Concepts. Hypotheticals. A story that pulls a big idea like taffy? That is a treat. I’ve got five in this dish.
What if extinctions could be traded like carbon? There’s an idea that doesn’t come up too often over dinner. It’s odd, awful, and yet somewhat plausible, as our hyper-capitalistic world keeps thinking it can buy its way out of physics.
Beauman chooses not to hash out the details in the Journal of Political Economy. He chooses to have it read instead. As you should, because I found the novel that fully examines this terrible concept to be terribly interesting, terribly inventive, and terribly funny. Not in a LOL kind of funny (though there are moments) but in the smirking, wry, ‘of course’ realm of humor ruled by the line of succession that runs from Jonathan Swift to George Carlin.
I love jokes that last long enough for you to realize they were so much more than whimsy.
A dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never…
I have always been obsessed with stories where underdogs must enter elite institutions carrying heavy secrets and impossible odds. Growing up, I devoured military academy fantasy because I loved watching flawed characters tested to their absolute limits, where survival demanded tactical cleverness rather than brute force. As an author, I am endlessly fascinated by morally grey antiheroes who must balance internal trauma against uncompromising goals. Sharing these five masterclasses in tension, magic, and academy trials is a joy because they represent the exact books that inspired me to pick up a pen and write.
I was blown away by the scale, intensity, and singular obsession of Tau's journey.
I loved that the protagonist is not naturally gifted with magic or combat divinity; instead, he earns every single drop of his lethal skill through agonizing, repetitive sacrifice. The military training sequences felt raw, exhausting, and fiercely authentic.
I found myself cheering out loud during the sparring trials because the stakes felt so intimately personal. It is one of the most visceral, adrenaline-fueled military fantasy novels I have ever experienced.
Game of Thrones meets Gladiator in this blockbuster debut epic fantasy about a world caught in an eternal war, and the young man who will become his people's only hope for survival.
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S TOP 100 FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME Winner of the Reddit/Fantasy Award for Best Debut Fantasy Novel
The Omehi people have been fighting an unwinnable war for almost two hundred years. The lucky ones are born gifted. One in every two thousand women has the power to call down dragons. One in every hundred men is able to magically transform himself into a bigger,…
Telescopes, microscopes, computer modeling–these exist because some things are easier to study when you change their shape. That’s how we learned about planets, germs, and the economy. Enlarging, shrinking, and filling in details lets us examine and understand. I think literature can do the same thing with ideas. Asking ‘what if?’ lets us probe things we can’t with our gadgets. Concepts. Hypotheticals. A story that pulls a big idea like taffy? That is a treat. I’ve got five in this dish.
What if we could detect psychopaths? Like many of Sawyer’s novels (and there are a bunch I could’ve selected for this list), there is a question and then a lightning strike of answers. Not a single bolt, but many, branching off, colliding, bleaching the night. There is plenty of scientific realism here–a personal must for Sawyer–resulting in a far-reaching yet intimate story.
The title is not ‘Night of the Psychopaths’ because the book’s many forks take us deeper into the nature of the human mind and the quantum arena we all play in, whether we know it or not. Oh, and it is still fun, adventuresome, and easier to read than I may have made it sound with all that deep, introspective stuff.
With such compelling and provocative novels as Red Planet Blues, FlashForward and The WWW Trilogy, Robert J. Sawyer has proven himself to be “a writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation” (New York Times). Now, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author explores the thin line between good and evil that every human being is capable of crossing…
Experimental psychologist Jim Marchuk has developed a flawless technique for identifying the previously undetected psychopaths lurking everywhere in society. But while being cross-examined about his breakthrough in court, Jim is shocked to discover that he has lost his memories of six months…
I love reading mysteries, ever since I started back in junior high with Hercule Poirot, I have loved an atmospheric murder and ensuing investigation. As I’ve gotten older and started writing my own books, though, I’ve gotten pickier about what kinds of detective novels I can stick with—I now require that they also be excellent on the sentence level, which isn’t always easy to find. I also find that I gravitate towards books that have pockets of dry humor from time to time and a unique investigator.
I am in awe of this book! I think it’s close to perfect, if not perfect. The detective here is Meyer Landsman, who “only has two moods: working and dead.” The novel is set in an alternate history that imagines Sitka, Alaska as a sprawling, Yiddish-speaking metropolis where all the Jews have fled after World War II.
The dead body is a mysterious young drug addict with connections to Sitka’s seedy underbelly. The story is a page-turner, but the sentences are truly incredible. It’s also very funny. I keep returning to this book year after year and every time it blows me away.
The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS.
What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska - and not Israel - had become the homeland for the Jews after the Second World War? In Michael Chabon's Yiddish-speaking 'Alyeska', Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee breeches roam the streets of Sitka, where Detective Meyer Landsman discovers the corpse of a heroin-addled chess prodigy in the flophouse Meyer calls home. Marionette strings stretch back to the hands of charismatic Rebbe Gold, leader of a sect that seems to have drawn…
I have always been obsessed with stories where underdogs must enter elite institutions carrying heavy secrets and impossible odds. Growing up, I devoured military academy fantasy because I loved watching flawed characters tested to their absolute limits, where survival demanded tactical cleverness rather than brute force. As an author, I am endlessly fascinated by morally grey antiheroes who must balance internal trauma against uncompromising goals. Sharing these five masterclasses in tension, magic, and academy trials is a joy because they represent the exact books that inspired me to pick up a pen and write.
I lost sleep listening to this book because the narrative momentum is an absolute freight train.
Darrow's journey of infiltrating the Institute under an assumed identity pulled me in instantly, and his relentless grief and fury felt remarkably grounded. I loved the ruthless tactical games, the shifting house alliances, and the constant threat of betrayal around every corner.
Pierce Brown created a brutal pressure cooker where survival requires intellect as much as martial prowess. It remains one of my favorite stories about a protagonist driven by vengeance against an oppressive empire.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, BUZZFEED, GOODREADS AND SHELF AWARENESS
Pierce Brown's heart-pounding debut is the first book in a spectacular series that combines the drama of Game of Thrones with the epic scope of Star Wars.
**********
'Pierce Brown's empire-crushing debut is a sprawling vision . . . Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow' - Scott Sigler, New York Times bestselling author of Pandemic
'[A] top-notch debut novel . . . Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field' - USA Today
I have always been obsessed with stories where underdogs must enter elite institutions carrying heavy secrets and impossible odds. Growing up, I devoured military academy fantasy because I loved watching flawed characters tested to their absolute limits, where survival demanded tactical cleverness rather than brute force. As an author, I am endlessly fascinated by morally grey antiheroes who must balance internal trauma against uncompromising goals. Sharing these five masterclasses in tension, magic, and academy trials is a joy because they represent the exact books that inspired me to pick up a pen and write.
I fell in love with epic fantasy because of this book's incredible magic system and heist structure.
I was captivated by Kelsier and Vin, two deeply flawed survivors using stealth, strategy, and street smarts to challenge an immortal god king. I loved how Allomancy felt like a physical science, where push-and-pull forces dictated every combat encounter.
The academy of thief crews and rebellion planning kept me hooked on every page. It taught me how powerful a story can be when magic has strict rules and real physical consequences.
Brandon Sanderson - the international phenomenon who finished the Wheel of Time sequence - introduces a fantasy trilogy which overturns the expectations of readers and goes on to tell the epic story of evil overturned in a richly imagined world.
A thousand years ago evil came to the land and has ruled with an iron hand ever since. The sun shines fitfully under clouds of ash that float down endlessly from the constant eruption of volcanoes. A dark lord rules through the aristocratic families and ordinary folk are condemned to lives in servitude, sold as goods, labouring in the ash…
I write stories where consequence comes first. I grew up immersed in Greek/Egyptian mythology and fairy tales, but I was always more drawn to the parts they left out. I wanted to know what daily life looked like for someone like Hercules, not just the story beats. Or what happens when the moral of the story isn’t learned. My passion lies in exploring the cost of power, the wounds we carry (that are often excluded from stories), and the myths we create to justify them. I believe the best fantasy doesn’t just help us escape the world, it helps us to look at ours differently.
This one is the lighter of the bunch. It felt like stepping into familiar territory: A classic fantasy trilogy with echoes of Sanderson, and maybe even a serving of Orson Scott Card(?).
The magic system is layered, but nowhere near as intricate as something Sanderson would write, and that’s okay. What stood out to me was how it handled memory and moral complexity without leaning into grimdark or soul-crushing despair.
It struck a good middle ground. Not too light. Not too bleak. Just a well-written, accessible epic that still has emotional weight without overwhelming you.
A young man with forbidden magic finds himself drawn into an ancient war against a dangerous enemy in book one of the Licanius Trilogy, the series that fans are heralding as the next Wheel of Time.
As destiny calls, a journey begins.
It has been twenty years since the godlike Augurs were overthrown and killed. Now, those who once served them -- the Gifted -- are spared only because they have accepted the rebellion's Four Tenets, vastly limiting their powers.
As a Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war lost before he was even born. He and others like…
Like many people of my generation, I first discovered fantasy worlds through morning cartoons. Then came comics, but The Lord of the Rings changed everything for me, followed by Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and many more. I was an introverted child, often bored with ordinary life, and these worlds gave me somewhere to escape. Most importantly, I loved journeys that transformed characters, because they gave me hope that people could change too. I created fantasy realms in my head for years, but it took reaching my 40s to finally start putting them on paper. Today, I write and publish my own stories, including Chronicles of Ankhara, through AltWorld Comics.
Everybody talks about the shock value of this series, but they forget that these books have the greatest and most realistic character developments of all time.
Sansa, Daenerys, and Jon Snow are the most obvious ones, but I chose Jaime because I can relate to him the most. Sometimes everything goes your way, and you feel invincible. But remembering the fall of Jaime keeps my feet on the ground.
I had similar experiences several times when I acted like a jerk because of my job titles before reading his story. Now I never get ahead of myself.
HBO's hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R R Martin's internationally bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A GAME OF THRONES is the first volume in the series.
'Completely immersive' Guardian
'When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground'
Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
From the fertile south, where heat breeds conspiracy, to the vast and savage eastern lands, all the…
