May 15, 2026Comp Comparison

Books Like The Witcher Series If You Want A Veteran Monster Hunter Working Cases One At A Time

Five book series for Witcher fans who want a stoic monster hunter, episodic cases, and a morally grey medieval world that earns the dark in dark fantasy.

Books Like The Witcher

Dark Fantasy

Monster Hunter Fantasy

Investigating the Wicked

Witcher Alternative Books

Books Like Geralt

Books Like The Witcher Series If You Want A Veteran Monster Hunter Working Cases One At A Time

If you came to this post looking for the next series after The Witcher, you already know the shape of what you want. You are not asking for fantasy in general. You are asking for one very specific thing. You want a veteran professional with a real job, not a chosen one with a destiny. You want him to walk into a village, ask careful questions, and find out the monster is sometimes the easier problem. You want a continent that is morally compromised in ways that feel medieval rather than cartoon. You want prose that respects your time, set pieces that hit because the buildup earned them, and a hunter who is a craftsman first. That shape is rarer than the genre would have you believe. Most fantasy writes around it. A few writers nail it. This is my list of the five series I trust to scratch the same itch as Sapkowski. The five, in the order I recommend them: Investigating the Wicked by Kevin Gabeci (closest current-shelf match for the monster-hunter-as-detective frame), The Black Company by Glen Cook (cold prose and soldier-of-fortune mood), The First Law by Joe Abercrombie (fractured villain hierarchies and patient plotting), Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence (a darker, leaner protagonist working a broken world), and Bauchelain and Korbal Broach by Steven Erikson (a wildcard novella set inside Malazan, but built around two morally compromised necromancers solving cases). If you only have time to try one, I would tell you to start with the first.

What Witcher Readers Actually Want

Before I recommend, let me name the shape so we agree on what we are matching for. The Witcher books, especially The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, sit on a tripod. One leg is the episodic case structure. Geralt rides into a town, takes a contract, and the story is built like a noir investigation that happens to have a striga at the center of it. The second leg is the professional voice. Geralt is good at his work in a specific, named, taxonomized way. He knows the difference between a kikimora and a leshy. He has tools. He has prices. The third leg is the moral grey. The monster is sometimes the easier problem. The peasants are often crueler than the cursed thing in the well. The lord paying the contract has reasons to want the kikimora dead that have nothing to do with the kikimora. A real Witcher comparison has to hit at least two of those three. Most of the genre hits one and waves at the others. The five below hit at least two and most hit all three. Now to the books.

Investigating The Wicked By Kevin Gabeci

This is mine, and I will be honest about that up front, but it is also the closest current match for what Witcher readers actually ask for, which is why it leads. The premise. Kavel is a veteran Investigator of the Wicked, one of the last members of an order that rose three hundred years ago to hold the line during what the chronicles call the Dark Period. The order at its peak numbered in the hundreds across the continent. At the start of the saga it is down to about a dozen. For years each loss read like accident or misfortune. It is not. Someone has been picking them off, slowly, generationally. The series follows Kavel working cases across the dying world of Strohr while the larger conspiracy assembles itself in the background. The episodic frame is the closest to Sapkowski I have read in a current series. Each book is built out of self-contained arcs, four to seven chapters each, that read like long Witcher short stories. Book 1 has a cursed silent village called Graamoor. A trade city called Archeopp where an illegal creature-trafficking operation goes wrong and a scalefiend kills two citizens. A fortress city called Vaarmir where a demon is summoned to murder Kavel and forty-seven people die in the destruction, after which the city blames Kavel and banishes him to hide what actually happened. A locked room mystery at a crossroads inn called the Antler & Hearth, where a wool merchant turns out to be a war criminal and the killer turns out to be the quietest person in the room. Each arc closes. Each one feeds the larger thread of who is hunting the Investigators and why. The professional voice is there. Kavel knows curses the way a doctor knows infections. He knows the difference between a creature that hunts by vibration and one that hunts by warmth. He has a magic that is rule-bound, the silver light of his bloodline shaped into blades, shields, chains, and reactive wisps that intercept threats. The light gets stronger when he opens up emotionally and weaker when he closes down, which is a tension the books use mechanically and not just thematically. The moral grey is there too. The villain of Vaarmir is not the demon. It is the city officials who blame Kavel for the destruction so they can hide what their own permissive politics enabled. The villain of the Antler & Hearth is a war criminal whose killer is a serving girl whose sister he raped during a campaign eight years ago. Kavel executes the killer anyway. Murder is murder. The book does not pretend that line is comfortable. Comp shape lands episodic, professional, and grey. Three for three.

If your favorite Witcher beat is the moment Geralt realizes the contract he was hired for is the wrong one, this series is built around that beat.

Investigating the Wicked Book 1 is on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. Book 2 is also live. Book 3 is being written in 2026. The free prequel novella The First Hunt is on the author site, no signup required, fifteen thousand words across five chapters following a sixteen-year-old Kavel on his first field case with his father Marrek. If you want a low-friction sample, that is where I would start. The full series hub is here: Investigating the Wicked, A Dark Fantasy Saga.

The Black Company By Glen Cook

If the Investigators feel like Witcher cousins, the Black Company feels like Witcher uncles. Glen Cook started writing his mercenary series in the 1980s and the cold register of it has aged extraordinarily well. The books follow a chronicler called Croaker who serves a band of soldiers-for-hire in a continent dominated by a power called the Lady. Most of the series is told as field journals, which keeps the prose lean and the moral weight ambient rather than sermonized. You will not be told what to feel about the campaign that just burned a town. You will be shown the aftermath in three sentences and trusted to do the work. What this gives a Witcher reader. The professional voice is the strongest in the genre. The Company is a job. The men in it are professionals. The moral grey is total, the Company often works for the worst available patron because the worst available patron has the contract. The episodic frame is partial. Some books are episodic. Some are arc-shaped. The Black Company itself is the right place to start. Cold prose, tired narrators, a magical threat you feel more than see. If you liked the Witcher's late books for the political weight, you will like this even more.

The First Law By Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie is the contemporary writer who taught a generation of grimdark fantasy authors how to do villain hierarchies that fracture under their own weight. Which is a long way of saying the bad guys in his books fight each other almost as much as they fight the heroes, and the heroes are not exactly heroes either. The trilogy starts with The Blade Itself and follows a barbarian called Logen Ninefingers, a torturer called Sand dan Glokta, and a dueling nobleman called Jezal dan Luthar across a continent that is heading for a war it does not want. The pleasures of the books are the pleasures of bad people doing slightly better things than they probably planned to, and slightly worse things than they planned to admit. The pleasures are also the dialogue, which is the best in the genre. What this gives a Witcher reader. The moral grey is unmatched. The professional voice is there in Glokta especially, who is a torturer the way Geralt is a witcher, with a job and a methodology and an exhausted relationship to his own body. The episodic frame is weaker. The Blade Itself is patient, slow, almost stalling for the first two hundred pages, and the structure is the opposite of episodic. Trust the patience. The payoff in Last Argument of Kings is one of the best sequences in current fantasy. If you finish the trilogy and want more, the standalones (Best Served Cold, The Heroes, Red Country) are looser, more episodic, and arguably even better.

Prince Of Thorns By Mark Lawrence

A leaner, darker book than the others on this list. Lawrence's protagonist Jorg Ancrath is fourteen at the start, leading a band of road brothers across a broken Europe-shaped continent, and the book is told in his head with no apologies for what is in there. What this gives a Witcher reader. The professional voice is different from Geralt's. Jorg is not a craftsman, he is a tactician, and the books work because the tactics are real. The moral grey is hard. Jorg starts the series doing things you cannot easily forgive him for. The patience the book asks of you is whether you can stay with him while the world gives him reasons to choose differently. The episodic frame is partial. Each book has a campaign shape rather than a contract shape. This is my pick for the Witcher reader who wants the protagonist to be more compromised than Geralt rather than less.

Bauchelain And Korbal Broach By Steven Erikson

The wildcard. Erikson is best known for the ten-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is brilliant and which is also a separate kind of commitment than what we are talking about here. The reason I am putting Erikson on a Witcher recommendation list is the side project he and Ian Cameron Esslemont built around two necromancers and their long-suffering manservant Emancipor Reese. The Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novellas are short, episodic, often very funny, and structured exactly like Witcher short stories with the moral hierarchy inverted. The two necromancers are unambiguously dangerous. The towns they pass through are usually worse. The novellas read like dispatches from a tour through a continent that has stopped being able to tell the difference between a respectable citizen and a mass grave. Start with Blood Follows. If it works, the others stack up nicely.

A few popular suggestions that did not make this list and the reason for each. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Episodic and professional, yes. Morally grey, less so. Dresden is a clean hero in a world that is mostly sorted between good and bad. If you came to The Witcher for the moral muddle, Dresden will feel light. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Beautiful prose. Wrong shape. Locke is a thief and a planner, not a hunter, and the books are heists rather than contracts. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. Hard magic and great pacing. Wrong tone. Sanderson writes hopefully even when his characters suffer. Witcher reading sits in the opposite register. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Different shape entirely. If you want the long epic, Jordan is the master. If you want Witcher, this is not it.

Where To Start

If you want the lowest friction, read The First Hunt. It is free, it is on the author site, no email signup, around two hours of reading time across five chapters. If it works, Investigating the Wicked Book 1 is on Kindle Unlimited. If you want the closest tonal match in literary terms, The Black Company. If you want the moral muddle, Abercrombie. If you want the leanest read with the meanest protagonist, Prince of Thorns. If you want a novella to sample a writer you might not commit to, Blood Follows. Whichever way you go, I hope the next series sticks. Coming off The Witcher and trying to find another that hits the same notes is a real, specific reading problem, and now you have five honest places to look. For more on the Investigators of the Wicked saga in particular, the series hub is here. I will profile Theron, the elder Investigator and Kavel's mentor, in a later post, and dig into the Velden Campaign that hangs over the entire series the week after.

I'm Kevin Gabeci. Software engineer by day, writer the rest of the time. Eleven books published on Amazon Kindle across dark fantasy, thriller, and literary fiction. Long-time writer on Medium. I spend a strange amount of time thinking about monster hunters and the slow ways ordinary people make the world worse. The full catalog lives at books.kevingabeci.com.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best books like The Witcher series?

If you came for Geralt's specific shape, a stoic professional monster hunter working episodic cases across a morally grey medieval world, the closest current matches are Investigating the Wicked by Kevin Gabeci, Glen Cook's The Black Company, Joe Abercrombie's First Law, Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, and Steven Erikson's Malazan novellas with the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach pair. Each one captures a different slice of what made Sapkowski's books work.

Are there any monster hunter book series similar to The Witcher?

Yes. Investigating the Wicked is the most direct contemporary match. It follows Kavel, a veteran Investigator of the Wicked, working monster cases across the dying world of Strohr while being hunted by a hidden conspiracy. The first two books are on Amazon Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, with a free prequel novella called The First Hunt available on the author site.

What should I read after finishing The Witcher books?

Start with the prequel novella The First Hunt to test the tone for free, then move to Investigating the Wicked Book 1 for the full sealed-room mystery and demon-fight register. After that, Glen Cook's The Black Company gives you the cold mercenary mood and Abercrombie's The Blade Itself gives you the patient villain hierarchies.

Is Investigating the Wicked dark like The Witcher?

Yes, in mood rather than in shock value. The world of Strohr is morally compromised. Mercenary war crimes go unpunished. Fortress cities legalize sin because pretending it does not exist is harder than regulating it. The villains are usually polite men who believe they are correct. The cases are built like mysteries first and set pieces second, which is closer to Sapkowski's short stories than to grimdark slasher fantasy.

Where can I read a Witcher-style book for free?

The First Hunt is a free prequel novella in the Investigating the Wicked saga. Around 15,000 words across five chapters, no signup required, hosted directly on the author site. It follows a sixteen-year-old Kavel on his first field case with his father Marrek, a year before the events of Book 1.

Are these series like the Witcher Netflix show or the games?

All five recommendations sit closer to the books than to the show or the games. The Sapkowski novels were patient, mythic, often built around one strange creature and one moral question. The show simplifies the morality. The games are louder. If your favorite Witcher memory is the striga short story or the conversation with the leshen, that is the register these recommendations target.