“Books like The Lord of the Rings” is a slightly impossible request. Nothing else was written by a philologist who spent decades inventing languages and then a mythology for them to belong to. But readers rarely want the whole of Tolkien again. They want one part of the experience. So this list is grouped by what you might have loved most.
If you loved the journey
The walk from the Shire to Mordor is the spine of the book: a small group, a long road, the landscape changing under their feet.
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)
If you came to the trilogy first, go back. It is a lighter, shorter road with the same sense of a comfortable person being pulled into a very large world.
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (1990)
The first book of The Wheel of Time opens with young villagers fleeing their home pursued by dark riders, a beginning that openly nods to Tolkien before the series goes its own way. It is a very long series, so treat the first book as a trial.
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams (1988)
A kitchen boy in a great castle is swept into a war against an ancient enemy. Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn shares Tolkien’s slow, immersive pace and his feeling that the past is never quite finished.
Watership Down by Richard Adams (1972)
Not a fantasy of kingdoms but of rabbits, leaving a doomed warren to find a new home. It is one of the great quest stories, with its own folklore and even scraps of its own language.
If you loved the languages and the deep history
For many readers the appendices are the best part: the sense that every name has a root and every ruin had a story.
The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien (1977)
The history behind the history, from the creation of the world to the end of the First Age. It was edited after Tolkien’s death by his son Christopher, with help from a young Guy Gavriel Kay. Read it as mythology rather than a novel.
The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (1922)
A grand, archaic heroic fantasy written before Tolkien’s own. Tolkien read it and praised Eddison as a maker of invented worlds, though he had reservations about its names and its view of war. The prose is deliberately antique, so sample a chapter first.
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)
In Earthsea, to know something’s true name is to have power over it, which makes language the very heart of the magic. Our guide to beginning Earthsea gives the reading order.
The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay (1984)
Kay’s first novel, the start of The Fionavar Tapestry, written after his work on The Silmarillion. Five students are drawn into the first of all worlds, and the trilogy is steeped in myth and old stories retold.
Babel by R. F. Kuang (2022)
Very different in tone, but built on a fascination Tolkien would have recognised: in this Oxford, magic works through what is lost in translation between two words. It is a novel about language, empire and who profits from both.
If you loved the war
Helm’s Deep, the Pelennor Fields, the cost of victory: these books take the conflict seriously.
The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay (1995)
A single-volume novel set in a world closely modelled on medieval Spain, where friendship survives across faiths until war makes it impossible. It is one of the most moving books on this list.
The Black Company by Glen Cook (1984)
The war seen by the soldiers, through the annals of a mercenary company serving a dark lord. Spare, grim and often funny, it is the opposite of Tolkien’s high style but shares his interest in what war does to ordinary people.
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (1996)
Martin has often cited Tolkien as a major influence while asking harder questions about how kings actually govern. Be aware that the series is unfinished.
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (2010)
The first volume of The Stormlight Archive is a vast war epic with a slave-turned-soldier at its centre, a storm-wracked world and a strong sense of oaths and honour. It is long, and the series continues.
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (2019)
A standalone epic in which East and West must put aside old enmities to face a great evil and its dragons. A good choice if you want the scale of a war without committing to many volumes.
A note on where to start
If you want one book, start with The Lions of Al-Rassan or The Priory of the Orange Tree, both complete in a single volume. Our standalone fantasy list has more. If what you missed most was the fellowship around the fire, our cozy fantasy books may suit you better than another war.