If The Cruel Prince made you fall for treacherous fae courts and morally questionable heroines, these 13 authors like Holly Black write fantasy with the same dark edge and political intrigue.
Holly Black has been writing about faeries since before it was trendy. Her Modern Faerie Tales trilogy (2002-2005) brought fae mythology into contemporary urban settings, and she’s been building on that foundation ever since. But it was The Cruel Prince (2018) and its sequels The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing that turned her into one of the biggest names in fantasy. The Folk of the Air trilogy follows Jude Duarte, a mortal girl raised in the faerie court who schemes, fights, and manipulates her way to power alongside the cruel Prince Cardan.
Black’s faeries aren’t the sparkling, benevolent creatures of children’s stories. They’re dangerous, deceptive, and bound by rules that make them both powerful and vulnerable. Her 2022 adult novel Book of Night proved she could write for older audiences too, exploring a world of shadow magic and heist fiction. What makes Black essential reading is her refusal to soften her characters — Jude isn’t a nice person, and neither is Cardan, and that’s exactly what makes them compelling.
For more recommendations, explore our guides to best fantasy authors, authors like Sarah J. Maas, and authors like Neil Gaiman.
Authors Like Holly Black
1. Sarah J. Maas
Sarah J. Maas and Holly Black are frequently recommended alongside each other, and for good reason. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses features fae courts, political intrigue, and a heroine who starts as a captive and ends as a force of nature. The ACOTAR series leans more heavily into romance than Black’s work, but the fae world-building and power dynamics share the same DNA.
Maas’ Throne of Glass series is her YA entry point, while ACOTAR and Crescent City target adult readers. All three series feature heroines who refuse to be passive, surrounded by morally complex love interests. If you like Cardan, you’ll probably fall for Rhysand.
“Don’t let the hard days win.”
Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
2. Leigh Bardugo
Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows is a fantasy heist novel with an ensemble cast of morally gray criminals, and it’s one of the best YA fantasy novels ever written. Bardugo’s Grishaverse spans multiple series, from the chosen-one narrative of Shadow and Bone to the dark academia of Ninth House (her first adult novel, set at Yale).
Bardugo shares Black’s talent for writing characters who do terrible things for understandable reasons. Kaz Brekker from Six of Crows is as calculating and ruthless as any of Black’s fae, but he’s also fiercely loyal to his crew. The political maneuvering in the Grishaverse mirrors the court politics of Elfhame.
“When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.”
Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
3. Cassandra Clare
Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter Chronicles — starting with City of Bones — have sold over 50 million copies worldwide. Clare and Black are close friends and have co-written the Magisterium series together. The Shadowhunter world features Nephilim warriors, demons, warlocks, vampires, and fae, with the kind of complicated relationships and moral ambiguity that Black fans expect.
Clare’s output is staggering — she’s published over 20 books in the Shadowhunter universe across multiple time periods. The Infernal Devices (set in Victorian London) is often considered her best work, with a love triangle that’s genuinely heartbreaking rather than formulaic. Her world-building is encyclopedic and rewards dedicated readers.
“One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
4. V.E. Schwab
V.E. Schwab writes genre-crossing fantasy with the literary sensibility that Black brings to fae fiction. A Darker Shade of Magic imagines four parallel Londons connected by rare magic users, and the political intrigue between these worlds echoes the court dynamics in Black’s faerie stories. Vicious is a deconstruction of superhero narratives with no clear heroes.
Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue became her breakout hit — a woman cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets, spanning 300 years. She shares Black’s interest in curses, bargains, and the price of power. Both writers refuse to make things easy for their protagonists. If you’re inspired by these authors to write your own fantasy, Grammarly is worth trying for catching the kind of small errors that pull readers out of otherwise strong prose.
“I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”
V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic
5. Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik’s Uprooted won the Nebula Award and draws on Polish folklore to tell the story of a girl chosen by a cold sorcerer called the Dragon to serve in his tower. Spinning Silver, based on the Rumpelstiltskin tale, is equally good — both books take fairy tale structures and fill them with genuine darkness and complexity.
Novik’s Scholomance trilogy (A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, The Golden Enclaves) is a dark academia fantasy about a school for wizards where the school itself is trying to kill you. The protagonist, El, is as sharp-tongued and strategically minded as Black’s Jude. Novik writes magic systems that feel dangerous and unpredictable, which is essential for readers who hate sanitized fantasy.
“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley.”
Naomi Novik, Uprooted
6. T. Kingfisher
T. Kingfisher is the pen name of Ursula Vernon, and she writes fantasy that’s darkly funny, genuinely scary, and deeply humane. Nettle & Bone won the Hugo and Nebula Awards — a fairy tale about a princess who builds a dog out of bones to kill her sister’s abusive husband. That sentence alone should tell you whether this is your kind of book.
Kingfisher shares Black’s understanding that fairy tales are dark at their core. Her protagonists are often middle-aged, practical women who deal with terrifying situations through competence and dry humor. The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places are horror novels rooted in folklore, while her Saint of Steel series combines romance and fantasy. She’s wildly prolific and consistently excellent.
“It was a very good dog, even though it was made of bones.”
T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone
7. Laini Taylor
Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone is about a blue-haired art student in Prague who was raised by chimera — monsters with animal and human features. The trilogy combines urban fantasy, angel-demon mythology, and a star-crossed romance with some of the most imaginative world-building in the genre.
Taylor’s prose is more lyrical than Black’s, but both writers create fantasy worlds with real teeth. The chimera and seraphim in Taylor’s trilogy are morally complex, and the love story is genuinely tragic. Strange the Dreamer and its sequel Muse of Nightmares are equally stunning. Taylor writes the kind of fantasy where every page contains an image you haven’t seen before.
“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well.”
Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
8. Maggie Stiefvater
Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys introduces Blue Sargent, the only non-psychic in a family of clairvoyants, and four boys from a private school searching for the grave of a lost Welsh king in Virginia. The Raven Cycle is atmospheric, strange, and deeply character-driven, with a magic system rooted in ley lines and dreams.
Stiefvater writes with the same intuitive understanding of power and desire that Black brings to fae politics. Her characters are teenagers navigating forces much larger than themselves, and the relationships between them — romantic, platonic, adversarial — are drawn with real psychological insight. The Scorpio Races, about man-eating water horses, is a standalone that deserves more attention.
“If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.”
Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys
9. Marissa Meyer
Marissa Meyer’s Cinder kicks off the Lunar Chronicles, a sci-fi fairy tale retelling series where Cinderella is a cyborg mechanic in futuristic Beijing. Meyer takes familiar stories and reimagines them in ways that feel genuinely fresh, with diverse casts and clever plotting across four interconnected novels.
Meyer later wrote Heartless (a Wonderland origin story) and Gilded (a Rumpelstiltskin retelling), continuing her fairy tale focus. She shares Black’s love of reimagining old stories through a modern lens. Where Black darkens the faerie tales, Meyer reinvents their settings and structures entirely. Both approaches honour the source material while making it new.
“Even in the future, the story begins with once upon a time.”
Marissa Meyer, Cinder
10. Shelby Mahurin
Shelby Mahurin’s Serpent & Dove is set in a French-inspired fantasy world where witches are hunted by the church, and a witch ends up married to a witch hunter. The enemies-to-lovers setup is pure catnip for Black fans, and Mahurin writes banter as sharp as anything in the Folk of the Air trilogy.
The Serpent & Dove trilogy balances humor with genuinely dark subject matter — religious persecution, betrayal, and the cost of power. Mahurin’s debut was one of the biggest YA fantasy launches of 2019, and she shares Black’s gift for creating heroines who survive through cunning rather than brute force.
“I am no one’s prey.”
Shelby Mahurin, Serpent & Dove
11. Brigid Kemmerer
Brigid Kemmerer’s A Curse So Dark and Lonely is a Beauty and the Beast retelling where the heroine has cerebral palsy and the beast is a cursed prince caught in a political war. Kemmerer writes fairy tale retellings with disability representation and genuine stakes — the curse isn’t metaphorical, and the war isn’t just backdrop.
Kemmerer shares Black’s willingness to put her characters through real danger. The Cursebreakers series gets progressively darker, and the moral dilemmas are genuinely difficult. She also writes contemporary YA (Letters to the Lost, More Than We Can Tell), proving she can handle emotional realism as well as fantasy.
“I don’t need someone to save me. I need someone to stand beside me.”
Brigid Kemmerer, A Curse So Dark and Lonely
12. R.F. Kuang
R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War starts as a military academy fantasy and becomes one of the darkest, most politically sophisticated fantasy novels of the decade. Inspired by Chinese history (specifically the Second Sino-Japanese War), the trilogy follows Rin from student to soldier to something much more dangerous.
Kuang’s Babel (2022) and Yellowface (2023) showed her range beyond epic fantasy, but The Poppy War is where the connection to Black is strongest. Both writers create protagonists who gain power through morally questionable means and must decide how far they’re willing to go. Neither writer flinches from showing the consequences.
“War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”
R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War
13. Juliet Marillier
Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest is a retelling of the fairy tale The Six Swans, set in early medieval Ireland. Marillier writes Celtic-inspired fantasy with the patience and atmosphere of literary fiction — her books are slower than Black’s, but the emotional payoff is extraordinary.
Marillier has been writing since 1999, and her Sevenwaters series remains one of the finest fairy tale retelling sequences in fantasy. She shares Black’s love of folklore as raw material, but where Black sharpens her stories into weapons, Marillier lets them breathe. For readers who want the fae elements of Black’s work in a more contemplative, romantic framework, Marillier is the answer.
“Perhaps our wounds would teach us to be wise.”
Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest