If you want an intense enemies-to-lovers romantasy
How’s this for a meet-cute? In Milla Vane’s A Heart of Blood and Ashes, barbarian warrior Maddek fully intends to kill Princess Yvenne to avenge his parents’ death. But he changes his mind after she kills her own brother in front of Maddek and proposes marriage to him so that they can team up to kill her father and win back her kingdom.
If you want a story with an epic scale
If what you love about the Empyrean series is having a whole lot to dig in to—lots of pages, lots of characters, lots of drama and a vast world—pick up Samantha Shannon’s A Day of Fallen Night. It’s not only 880 pages, but also the prequel to Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree. You’ll find exquisite dragons and angsty enemies-to-lovers subplots, too.
If you want to read one of the OG dragon fantasy series
Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight kicks off her iconic Dragonriders of Pern series. Be warned: Some of the aspects of this series, particularly in regard to sexuality, have not aged well, but there’s no denying that modern science fiction and fantasy takes on dragons owe a huge debt to McCaffrey.
If you want even more dragons
Naomi Novik‘s is the start of a nine-book series that boasts one of the most lovable and complex dragons in fantasy. A polymath with a heart of gold and an increasingly radical social consciousness, Temeraire completely upends the life of stalwart naval captain William Lawrence when he chooses him as his rider.
If you want to be a dragon
If reading Fourth Wing and Onyx Storm left you wanting to be a dragon yourself, pick up Kelly Barnhill’s fiery and subversive adult debut, When Women Were Dragons. Part Lessons in Chemistry, part Left Behind, the novel stars a young heroine who’s trying (along with the rest of the world) to understand the Mass Dragoning of 1955, during which thousands of ordinary women grew scales, talons and wings and launched into the sky, never to be seen again.
