Books Like Percy Jackson

An eleven-year-old boy discovers he is a wizard, is invited to attend a school of magic, and finds out that his parents' deaths were not an accident.

The closest structural match: a young person who grew up not knowing what they are, transported to a world where they turn out to be special, and surrounded by a core group of friends who matter as much as the plot. The magic school in both series is the found family.

Siblings Carter and Sadie Kane discover they are descended from Egyptian pharaohs and can channel the power of the gods. The Egyptian magical world is as alive and dangerous as Olympus.

Same author, same DNA. The Kane Chronicles is Egyptian mythology done with the same irreverent humour and same structure as Percy Jackson. If you haven't read it, read it next — it's set in the same world and the characters eventually cross over.

A direct sequel series to Percy Jackson: seven demigods from both the Greek and Roman camps must unite to prevent the earth goddess Gaea from waking.

The continuation of Percy's story, with a larger cast and higher stakes. The Heroes of Olympus is where the world Riordan built in Percy Jackson fully opens up — more gods, more mythology, more demigods, all of it.

Magnus Chase dies in chapter one. He wakes up in Valhalla, a hotel for fallen Norse warriors, and has to prevent Ragnarok — the end of the world — with a shape-shifting dwarf, a Muslim Valkyrie, and a deaf elf.

Riordan's Norse mythology series — the same formula applied to a completely different pantheon. Magnus Chase has more darkness than Percy (it begins with a death) but the same humour and the same gift for making mythology feel like it lives next door.

Aru Shah accidentally releases a demon who is trying to awaken the Sleeper and destroy the world. She's a demigod of the Pandava lineage — and she's twelve and not very prepared.

Part of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint — mythology-based middle-grade fantasy with the same tone and structure as Percy Jackson, but drawing from Hindu mythology. The series is smart, funny, and takes its source material seriously.

Twins Sophie and Josh Newman discover that their employer is the immortal Nicholas Flamel, that the world is full of immortals and ancient beings, and that they are the ones mentioned in a prophecy older than time.

The mythology-kitchen-sink approach: Flamel encounters figures from Celtic, Egyptian, Norse, Arthurian, and Greco-Roman mythology across six books. The fun is identical to Percy Jackson — real historical figures reimagined as characters in a contemporary magical world.

Shadow Moon is released from prison and hired by a man who calls himself Wednesday. He turns out to be Odin, and he's trying to raise an army of old gods for a war against the new gods of technology, media, and globalisation.

The adult version of the idea that the gods of human mythology are still alive and walking among us. Gaiman's America is as mythologically loaded as Riordan's — every immigrant who came to America brought their gods with them. Darker, stranger, and literary.