If you were hooked by Calen Bryer being torn from quiet beginnings into a clash of empires and waking legends, you’ll feel right at home with Corban in Malice. Giants, draigs, and long-buried prophecies rise as friendships harden into warbands, much like Calen’s found comrades rallying after tragedy. The same blend of earnest coming-of-age courage and brutal battlefield stakes drives the story forward, with loyalties tested and ancient powers returning to tip the fate of the world.

Loved how Of Blood and Fire unfurls a deep history—ancient orders, dragon-lore, and long shadows that catch up to Calen the moment he leaves home? The Shadow of What Was Lost channels that same itch to peel back the world’s secrets. Davian’s flight from a failing school for the Gifted into a web of fallen Augurs, forbidden magic, and shifting alliances mirrors that sense of hidden scaffolding beneath every ruin, map-edge, and campfire tale that colored Calen’s journey.

If Calen’s transformation—from a sheltered youth to someone tempered by loss, training, and the pull of old powers—was what gripped you, Kvothe’s path in The Name of the Wind will resonate. From penniless beginnings to the University’s arcane arts, Kvothe chases truths buried in song and rumor, much like Calen chasing the true stakes behind the ancient conflicts he stumbles into. It’s intimate, driven, and steeped in the cost of growing into who the world suddenly needs you to be.

If the wide horizons of Of Blood and Fire—treks across war-torn lands, mounting stakes, and the sense that ancient forces are reentering the fray around Calen—pulled you in, The Way of Kings delivers that scale in spades. Kaladin’s rise from slave to spearleader on the Shattered Plains, Dalinar’s visions of a forgotten past, and the return of long-dormant powers mirror that same epic drumbeat toward a larger, world-shaping storm.

If the pull of Of Blood and Fire was watching new abilities surface—rules to learn, limits to fear, and powers that tip wars—then chromaturgy in The Black Prism will scratch that itch. Drafters bend light into tangible power, and every hue has costs. Gavin Guile’s political tightrope and Kip’s crash course in a dangerous, rule-bound art echo that thrill of discovery and consequence you felt as Calen brushed up against older, stricter magics shaping the battlefield.