Books Like Fourth Wing: 11 Romantasy Reads for Dragon-Rider Fans

Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing arrived in 2023 and did something remarkable: it became a cultural moment rather than just a genre hit. Violet Sorrengail is small, physically fragile by the standards of Basgiath War College’s dragon riders, and forced into the program by a mother who commands the entire military institution. She is supposed to die. Instead she bonds a dragon, falls into an enemies-to-lovers relationship with Xaden Riorson — the son of rebels her mother executed — and discovers that the war she has been trained to fight is built on a lie. The combination of high-stakes military fantasy, meticulous dragon-bonding lore, and explicit romance at the level of heat that adult readers had been asking genre fantasy to provide made Fourth Wing the breakout book of its year.

What separates Fourth Wing from the broader romantasy field is the specificity of its world. Basgiath War College has rules, hierarchies, and a brutal logic of its own. The dragon-bonding system creates genuine stakes — unbonded riders die, and the dragons choose for reasons that are never fully transparent. The enemies-to-lovers arc earns its resolution because Yarros makes the enmity feel real: Xaden has reasons not to trust Violet, and she has reasons not to trust him, and the tension between those reasons and the pull between them is the engine of the book. The books below share some piece of that formula — the morally complicated love interest, the dangerous school or military setting, the magic that costs something, the romance that refuses to be tidy.

Continue the Empyrean Series

#1 — Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

The direct sequel picks up immediately after Fourth Wing’s cliffhanger and does not slow down. Violet and Xaden are no longer just navigating Basgiath — the war they have been trained for is unfolding in ways that contradict everything they were taught, and the relationship between them is tested by secrets Xaden has kept and the increasingly impossible position Violet occupies between loyalty to the Riders Quadrant and the truth she now knows. Iron Flame is longer and darker than the first book, and the romantic tension evolves rather than simply continuing. It is essential reading for anyone who finished Fourth Wing wanting more.

#2 — Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros

The third book in the Empyrean series, published in 2025, takes Violet and Xaden beyond Basgiath into territory that expands the world considerably. The scope is larger, the stakes are higher, and Yarros continues to develop the magical system and the consequences of the war’s hidden history. Readers who found the world-building in the first two books compelling will find Onyx Storm the most ambitious entry in the series so far.

Adult Romantasy at the Same Heat Level

#3 — A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Feyre Archeron kills a wolf in the woods and is taken to the fae realm as punishment — where she discovers that the creature she killed was a fae in disguise, that the realm she has entered is under a curse, and that the High Lord who holds her captive, Tamlin, is not the straightforward enemy she assumed. Maas’s series is the other pillar of contemporary adult romantasy, and the comparison to Fourth Wing is not merely commercial: both deliver hostile-to-intimate arcs with genuine emotional development, fantasy worlds with internal logic, and explicit romance that the story earns. The series runs through multiple books and becomes increasingly complex in its politics and character relationships. Readers who come to it from Fourth Wing typically find the full backlist absorbs them for months.

#4 — From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Poppy has been raised as the Maiden, a sacred figure whose destiny is tied to the kingdom’s survival — forbidden from being touched, forbidden from having a life, guarded by a man named Hawke who is not what he appears. Armentrout’s series is the closest structural analogue to the Empyrean books on this list: the same heat level, the same pattern of a woman discovering that the world she was raised to accept is built on concealed truths, and the same morally complex male lead whose secrets are central to the plot. The Blood and Ash series runs to multiple volumes with the same compulsive readability as Fourth Wing.

#5 — The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen

Lara is sent to the Bridge Kingdom as a political bride with orders to spy on her new husband, the king, and discover the kingdom’s military secrets so her own kingdom can destroy it. The premise is pure enemies-to-lovers scaffolding, but Jensen executes it with more sophistication than the setup suggests: both Lara and Aren are positioned as each other’s antagonists with legitimate grievances, the world-building is specific and interesting, and the romance develops through a genuine shift in understanding rather than just proximity. Jensen writes with a directness similar to Yarros, and readers who love the enemies-to-lovers arc in Fourth Wing tend to devour this series.

Fantasy with Military Academy Settings

#6 — An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

Laia’s brother is arrested by the Martial Empire’s brutal enforcers, and to free him she must spy on the Commandant of Blackcliff — the empire’s military academy, where the ruling Scholar class is enslaved and the students are trained through systematic brutality. Elias is one of those students, the best fighter in his class, and is looking for a way out of a system he despises. Tahir’s dual-perspective structure — Laia inside the academy as a spy, Elias inside it as a student — creates the same atmosphere of institutional danger that defines Basgiath. The romance is present but operates at a lower heat level than Fourth Wing; the world-building and the moral stakes of a society built on violence are equally developed.

#7 — Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Alina Starkov is a mapmaker’s assistant in an army beset by an impenetrable darkness called the Fold — until a crisis reveals a power she didn’t know she had and she is taken from her unit to train with the Grisha, the empire’s magical elite, under the commanding presence of the Darkling. Bardugo’s Grishaverse began here, and the combination of military setting, a protagonist discovering she is more powerful than anyone assumed, and a magnetic morally ambiguous antagonist-love-interest maps cleanly onto what Fourth Wing readers responded to. The heat level is lower, but the Darkling remains one of the most discussed morally complex love interests in fantasy.

Morally Complex Love Interests and Dark Fantasy

#8 — Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Set in the same Grishaverse as Shadow and Bone but requiring no prior knowledge, Six of Crows follows Kaz Brekker — criminal prodigy, morally flexible, deeply scarred in ways both literal and otherwise — as he assembles a crew to pull off an impossible heist. The ensemble includes Inej, his best asset and the person he cannot allow himself to want; Jesper, a sharpshooter with a gambling problem; and three others with their own histories and agendas. The romance in Six of Crows is slow and restrained by romantasy standards, but Kaz and Inej’s dynamic is one of the best-written slow-burn relationships in fantasy. Readers who loved the complexity of Xaden as a love interest tend to love Kaz.

#9 — The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

Jude Duarte is a mortal living in the High Court of Faerie, raised there after her parents were killed by her stepfather — a fae general — who took her and her sisters into his household. Prince Cardan is beautiful, cruel, and the object of Jude’s complicated feelings from the moment she decides to seize power in the fae court rather than accept her powerlessness. Black’s novel is sharp-edged and fast, the court politics are genuinely interesting, and the Jude-Cardan dynamic — mutual antagonism, mutual fascination, both of them unwilling to admit what is actually happening — is the closest thing in YA fantasy to the Violet-Xaden arc in tone. The heat level is lower, but the push-pull is the same.

#10 — A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Kell is one of the last Antari — magicians who can travel between parallel Londons — and his forbidden sideline in illegal artifact smuggling lands him in possession of a stone from a dead world that everyone wants. Lila Bard is a thief from Grey London who sees Kell’s ability as a way out of a life she has outgrown. Schwab’s trilogy is less explicitly romantic than the other books on this list but shares the morally complicated characters and high-stakes magic of Fourth Wing, and the Kell-Lila dynamic has the same antagonistic-to-allied energy. For readers who want the world-building and character complexity without the explicit romance, this is the recommendation.

How to Choose Your Next Read

If you want the direct continuation: Iron Flame and then Onyx Storm — neither is optional if you want to know what happens to Violet and Xaden.

If you want the same heat level in a different world: From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout or A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas.

If you want the enemies-to-lovers arc at maximum intensity: The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen.

If you want the military academy setting with more literary ambition: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir.

If you want the morally complex love interest as the main draw: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo or The Cruel Prince by Holly Black.

For the Best Fantasy Books

For the definitive guide to fantasy fiction — from Tolkien and Le Guin to Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin — see our Best Fantasy Books of All Time list.

More Fantasy Reading Guides

• Leigh Bardugo Books in Order: Complete Grishaverse Guide
• Cassandra Clare Books in Order

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