7 Books to Read After The Old Kingdom
The Old Kingdom works because Nix's magic is genuinely strange and internally consistent, and because Sabriel is exactly as capable and frightened as a real person in her situation would be. These 7 books take their systems and their heroines equally seriously.
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Lyra Belacqua lives in a world where every person has a daemon, travels to the Arctic, and discovers a secret that threatens the multiverse.
The same quality of a world built from original premises, explored by a young woman who is genuinely capable and genuinely afraid. Pullman's trilogy is more philosophically ambitious; the world is equally original.
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Ancient evils are returning. A handful of people are slowly rediscovering powers that were thought lost forever.
The same meticulous magic system design as Old Kingdom — Sanderson's Laws of Magic are the closest analogue to Nix's Charter/Free Magic distinction. The scale is much larger; the internal consistency is equal.
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In a world of ash and darkness, a crew of criminals plans the impossible: overthrow a tyrant who has ruled for a thousand years.
The most accessible Sanderson entry point if Old Kingdom's magic system was what you loved. Allomancy (swallowing metals to gain powers) has the same sense of rules that can be learned and mastered.
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Agnieszka's village gives a young woman to the Dragon — a powerful wizard — every ten years. She is taken, and she is not what anyone expected.
The closest tonal match to Old Kingdom: a young woman discovering power she didn't expect, a magic that is deeply rooted in a specific place and tradition, and a world where the forest is genuinely dangerous.
Elisabeth was raised among the magical books in one of the kingdom's Great Libraries. When a catastrophe is blamed on her, she must work with a sorcerer she doesn't trust to find the truth.
The library-as-magic-system has the same inventiveness as Nix's bells, and the heroine-who-discovers-her-own-power arc mirrors Sabriel's.
Kvothe tells his own story from the beginning — the most brilliant student the Arcanum ever produced, now hiding from his own legend.
The Coming of Age at a magical institution with a rigorous and internally consistent magic system. Sympathy (Rothfuss's magic) has the same sense of rules that reward careful thinking.
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Galadrielle Higgins attends a magical school called the Scholomance, which is trying to kill all its students. She has the power to destroy it — she just can't use it without destroying herself.
The dark-school-with-lethal-magic setting of Old Kingdom pushed to its logical extreme. Novik's protagonist is one of fantasy's great dry voices.