Books Like Percy Jackson Series

The adult answer to Percy Jackson's love of Greek mythology — Miller retells the Iliad through the relationship between Patroclus and Achilles, and treats the gods as genuinely terrifying rather than comic. The writing is beautiful and precise, the mythology is accurate and resonant, and the ending is devastating in the way that only Greek tragedy can be. If Percy Jackson gave you a love of Greek myth and you want a book that honours that love with adult emotional weight, this is the direct line.

Miller again, this time through Circe — the witch of Aeaea, daughter of Helios, the woman Odysseus spent a year with. Where Percy Jackson treats the gods as fun antagonists, Circe examines what it means to be the least powerful member of an immortal family: the gods are vast, cruel, and indifferent, and power is something you have to build from scratch. The book covers enormous stretches of mythology — Daedalus, Medea, the Minotaur, Odysseus — and makes it feel coherent. A more patient book than Song of Achilles but equally rewarding.

The same core premise as Percy Jackson — the old gods are real and living in America — but taken to its darkest, most literary extreme. Shadow Moon is released from prison and recruited by Mr Wednesday (Odin) to fight a war between the old gods and new ones (Media, Technology, the Internet). The book is slow, strange, and melancholy in ways Percy Jackson never is, but it asks the same question: what happens to gods when people stop believing in them? If you loved the mythology but want it treated with full adult gravity, Gaiman's answer is unmatched.

Part of the Rick Riordan Presents imprint — Rick Riordan championing other-mythology books for exactly the Percy Jackson audience. Aru Shah accidentally frees a demon tied to the end of the universe and discovers she's a reincarnation of one of the Pandava brothers from the Mahabharata. Hindu mythology gets the same treatment Riordan gave Greek: vivid, fast, funny, reverent without being dry. Chokshi's prose is warmer and more poetic than Riordan's. The perfect next step for a Percy Jackson reader who wants the same energy with a different mythology.

If you loved Percy Jackson and want exactly that energy but with Norse mythology — this is the obvious next read. Same author, same formula, deliberately so. Magnus Chase is a Boston homeless teen who dies on page one and wakes up in Valhalla. Riordan applies his full Percy Jackson toolkit to the Norse pantheon: Odin as an eccentric manipulator, Thor as a red-headed thunderer with a weakness for flattery, Loki as the chaos agent. Funnier than the Norse myths deserve. The diversity of the cast (a Muslim Valkyrie, a deaf elf) is handled with more care than the Percy Jackson books managed.

Not mythology — but if what you loved about Percy Jackson was the puzzle-solving, the conspiracy layered under everyday life, and the fast-paced plot that keeps you reading past your bedtime, this delivers all of it in a contemporary YA setting. Avery Grambs is left a billion dollars by a dead billionaire she never met, and has to live in his mansion with his four grandsons to claim it. Fun, addictive, difficult to put down — the same brain-chemistry Percy Jackson triggers.

If you want to revisit the world rather than find something new — the graphic novel adaptation is genuinely excellent. Venditti condenses the book without losing its best moments and the art makes Camp Half-Blood feel real in a way the film adaptations never managed. Great for a reread, great for introducing the series to younger readers, and surprisingly moving for something that's also just very fun.

Riordan does Egyptian mythology with the same formula — and it works. Carter and Sadie Kane discover that their father has accidentally released Set, god of chaos, and that Egyptian gods have been living quietly in America for centuries. Narrated in alternating voices (brother and sister), which gives it slightly more dynamic character tension than Percy Jackson. Egyptian mythology is less familiar to most Western readers, which makes the reveals land harder. Best read directly after Percy Jackson.

Morrigan Crow is cursed to die on her eleventh birthday — then is rescued by a mysterious patron and brought to Nevermoor, a magical city, to compete for a spot in the Wundrous Society. The book has Percy Jackson's energy exactly: fast, funny, inventive, with a protagonist who is told she's worthless and proves everyone wrong through stubbornness and friends. Townsend's world-building is genuinely original — Nevermoor doesn't borrow from any existing mythology, it builds its own folklore. The series keeps getting better.