8 Ridiculously-Good Fantasy Books Like Baldur’s Gate

Try to imagine if adventuring was an actual industry with corporate interests, including contracts and shareholders. Yes, it’s Baldur’s Gate + Capitalism. But what happens if you aren’t considered hero material? Or more specifically, what if you are limited to what roles you can play? Orcs, goblins, and other “evil” creatures can really only become Noncombatant Paper Carriers (NPCs), never heroes. So what happens if a former hero becomes an NPC? This is the first of the Dark Profit Saga trilogy, which also has two bonus stories.

Amina Al-Sarafi had thought she had left pirating life behind her and was enjoying her retirement. But when she’s offered a job that seems straightforward — rescuing a former crew mate for a nice sum of money — she finds herself mixed up with a lot more than a rescue mission. The book is a fun read about what happens after you’ve retired from the adventuring life and what comes next.

So many fantasy books focus on the one special human or creature who is destined to save the world. What if you weren’t The Chosen One? Not even close? That’s the premise of the six book Spellslinger series. Kellen may come from a powerful, magic-wielding family, but it’s clear that he doesn’t have much magic. Not only is that not a great look, it’s worse in a culture that only values magic ability. So Kellen uses trickery to fake magic, which has many unintended consequences. Facing a life of being a second-class citizen, Kellen takes up a stranger’s offer of a different sort of life out in the wider world. Along the way, Kellen and his mentor Ferius Parfax find themselves tracking across the wider world, getting into adventures and scrapes in different towns. It has the feel of a larger campaign of adventurers discovering the world.

In this fantasy novel drawing on African mythology and oral tradition, a loner joins up with a band of adventurers. Tracker is known for his incredible skill: he can find anyone based on their scent. But when he’s given the task of finding a child who’s been missing for three years, Tracker falls into a band of adventurers, including a mysterious shapeshifter named Leopard. Tracking a person from their scent is one thing; surviving the adventure is another. Told as a series of flashbacks from Tracker, who is in prison, this trilogy gives new life to the adventuring party.

Evie Sage is out of options. After a dispute with her latest boss, she’s not sure how she’s going to support her sister and her disabled father. A literal run-in with the Villain, a man whose violence is legendary, results in a job offer to be his assistant, and Evie decides to take it. While she is surrounded by severed heads and screams from prisoners, Evie realizes that there is much more to the Villain than everyone imagined. Plus, she’s finding herself attracted to the man. When the threat against the Villain becomes stronger, Evie decides she must get to the bottom of it. It’s a fun reversal on the trope of adventurers having to take out the local baddie, where the baddie may not be as nefarious as he seems. This is the first of a trilogy, with book two coming out later this year.

Here’s one for fans of monks in Baldur’s Gate. What if you were given a destiny of nothingness while your younger brother is destined for greatness? What if he dies? If you’re Zhu, you decide to assume your brother’s identity and enter a monastery to learn how to be a monk and escape your fate. But can Zhu assume more than her late brother’s identity? Can she make her own destiny? This is the first book of the Radiant Emperor duology series, drawing on Chinese history and mythology.

Here’s another series playing with fantasy and The Chosen One trope. When a pixie appears and tells Worstley, a farm boy, that he is The Chosen One, he has no idea what to do with that information. So Worstley decides that he must go save a princess from a tower, accompanied by his talking goat, Gustave. Along the way, they meet some unusual characters, like a scaredy cat assassin and a vegetarian fighter. It’s the first of three books in the Tales of Pell series.