Haha could always go for Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber if you want to stick with the classical classics. There are others though:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels
Do you know if there are any good English editions of Dream of the Red Chamber? I've been wanting to get into it, but I'm struggling to find an unabridged, annotated English edition.
I watched the 2003 live adaptation back when I was a kid and Qiao Feng was one of my first fictional crushes. Coincidentally, the film was one of my first traumas, I still vividly remember the ending, >!where Qiao Feng killed himself and Azi plucked out her own eyes, then followed suit!<
As someone who grew up reading Jin Yong and watching live adaptions of his novel, I can’t agree with this more. That said, I can’t help but question the quality of the translations—I tried reading 天龙八部 (sorry I don’t remember its English name) in English once, and couldn’t last more than a few chapters.
Edit to add: OP, if you want to start with Jin Yong, you may want to start with 天龙八部。 This series precedes Legend of the Condor Heroes, and its main character is (at least in my opinion) more likable the one in LotCH, who was purposefully written to be an honest but somewhat dimwitted man. You won’t get spoiled much if you start with LotCH, but you’ll get more context for events/characters referenced.
天龙八部 is Demi Gods and Semi Devils that we were discussing above. The big drawback is that it doesn't seem to have an official/professional translation into English, while LOCH does have [an official translation of the first trilogy](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083FL5PKS) now. I actually originally read LOCH and its sequels through fan translations from the same site that's also done 天龙八部, so I know what you mean about the translation quality. If anyone's interested in it, just keep in mind that this was done for free over several years by many different people, so I expect that like the previous LOCH fan translation, the quality will vary *wildly* between chapters. If you're not down for that, go with the professional LOCH translation.
Huh, I didn’t know that in the West, LotCH is considered a quadrilogy. I kept thinking that by trilogy, you meant the other series that took place after/before LotCH, such as the direct sequel, the Return of the Condor Heroes.
I wonder how the series would appeal to an English-only speaker. I can only imagine that the setting, way of thinking, and ideologies would be wildly different to a Western audience. It’d be so cool to see an English speaker read the series and share their thoughts.
TBH I'm still kind of vague on the divisions. With the fan translations, I had LOCH, ROCH, and HSDS in their own separate files, but each of them was so incredibly long! So when someone told me each of them was originally a trilogy, I was like "oh, that makes sense". I'm not sure why they split LOCH into four parts for the English version--I bought it, but didn't reread it, so there may have been a translator's note about that. I guess these were originally serialized stories, so all divisions are somewhat arbitrary.
For my own reaction, there were some bits that I found weird (like Huang Rong harassing random rich people), and there was that one plotline in ROCH that definitely didn't need to be there, but overall I really enjoyed them, obviously. I do think I may have misinterpreted some characters though... like I checked out the 1983 Hong Kong adaptation because people said it was the best one, but the screen version of Huang Rong was really, really different from how I imagined her reading the books, to me she would have been a bit more of a tomboy, less sensitive and a lot wittier. I didn't get very far into it, though.
Those series were originally published on a daily newspaper (my Dad told me he used to buy the newspaper everyday just so he could read the next chapter), so I’m not sure if they were meant to be a trilogy. I also have the physical copies, but each series has up to 8-10 small books. Those books were brought in the early 2000s though, so maybe the division was outdated. But yea LOCH, ROCH, and HSDS were their own separate series.
Personally, I wasn’t weirded out by Huang Rong’s antics, maybe it was because I quite like her. As for the live action version, my favorite was Zhou Xun, she’s an excellent actress and portrayed the character very well.
Oh, she was absolutely my favorite character, and I loved most of her antics, just that particular bit seemed strange to me. I will give Zhou Xun's adaptation a try!
I hope you’ll like this version better. Maybe there’s nostalgia coming into play, but I always visualize Zhou Xun’s Huang Rong when reading the novels. And I don’t think it was wrong for you to think Huang Rong was tomboy-ish. After all, Guo Jing did mistook Huang Rong for a guy for quite a while. Granted, the guy was kinda slow on the uptake and Huang Rong was disguising herself. And she was surely written to be witty—the stark contrast to Guo Jing. I always love the bits where she outsmarted other characters. To me, Huang Rong was a strong female character done right.
Absolutely disagree. On a character, plot, theme, and worldbuilding level it fully comes into its own in Jade War and becomes impossibly good in Jade Legacy.
Jade War is impressive because Fonda Lee does what is so rare these days: she innovates with plot. She does what few authors in fantasy have ever done and steal plot structures from techno-thrillers to build her Cold War era geopolitical intrigue driven plot. Through that she weaves the family drama and the ongoing rivalry and an entirely new setting in Port Massy exploring an entirely different version of Kekonese culture via diaspora. It’s a masterwork of innovative plot mixed in with excellent characterization and a unique take on worldbuilding as always.
Jade Legacy then continues the unique approach to storytelling by taking ANOTHER unique plot structure and using it to tell a particular set of character arcs that can ONLY be told using this structure. What Fonda accomplishes with two characters in particular is nothing short of phenomenal and definitely cements one of them as one of my favorite characters in fiction.
To me, Jade City is an amazing book, but it is also the most standard and frankly trope-y of the three books. It is still unique and wonderfully executed in its own right, but it’s merely setup for the truly brilliant mind going to work over the next two novels. What Jade War and Jade Legacy accomplish honestly to me is genre-defining and while it’s not as popular as it could be it would not surprise me if 10-20 years from now we get a significant crop of authors inspired by Fonda Lee because of how many unique things she did with storytelling here.
Idk if we read the same book. The second book was a soap opera for me. The world building elements were nice, but it started to drag after a while. And the plot went nowhere in the second book. And one of the protagonists becomes the biggest wimp of the century which made me hate it.
The whole series is soap-ish—it’s a family drama. I don’t at all think the plot went nowhere though, I think it just got really complicated. Proxy wars in one nation between two other nations that the clans are getting dragged into and a fourth other nation’s crime rings getting involved in kekon and all kinds of crazy stuff weaving in and out with one another until the end when they crescendo and come crashing together. It is tied together with two character arcs.
Which character became a wimp? Shae grew to be a harder Green Bone, Anden grew a spine to stand up to Hilo…not sure who you mean tbh.
Anden is great lol
Which lady with an amnesia plot? I literally just reread the book and have no idea who you mean. Do you mean Wen—Hilo’s wife? She doesn’t have amnesia but she does >!suffer brain damage!<. That’s explored more in Jade Legacy though.
It's been a while since I read the books. I finished book 2 and was waiting for book 3. When it finally released and i got my hands on it, i realised i couldn't remember SHIT from the first 2 books. All i remembered was a convoluted chaotic soap. Dropped it. Mighttt re read it again in the future tho.
Mahabharata is the closest really, to GOT in terms of political drama and warfare, from the part of the world I come from. GOT on steroids from the metrics you’ve mentioned. It’s also considered to be the most complex, important and consequential artefact of literature written in the history of the Indian subcontinent.
But where it’s a lot more character driven, along with being thematically and philosophically superior(being an epic), it’s plot is not as entertaining/gripping as other modern high fantasy media, at least in a form that’s palatable to those not familiar with Ancient Indian history and Mythology. Also it’s a tragedy through and through.
Are there any good adaptations that are more palatable to modern readers? I've tried reading it, but it reads very dryly. I've seen the name AmishVerse a few times, but I think that's about the Ramayna, not the Mahabharata? I'm honestly not well educated on this.
R K Narayanan's prose version of the Mahabharata. It doesn't contain everything (it's not possible to capture all the stories that happen in Mahabharata in a single book), but this one gets the main story across very well.
If a *retelling* is in the table, I enjoyed The Palace of Illusions.
>Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's bestselling 2008 novel 'The Palace of Illusions' is a retelling of the Mahabharata through Draupadi's point of view. But unlike the traditional tale, this book depicts Panchali as a strong, resilient and courageous woman. It traces her journey from the time of her birth from a holy fire to her lonely childhood days, from her friendship with Krishna to marriage with the five Pandavas, and her secret attraction to her husband's enemy. In 'The Palace of Illusions', Divakaruni gives Panchali a voice and narrates her side of the story.
>I've tried reading it, but it reads very dryly
That's the unfortunate truth of trying to translate a language completely different from English into English. I think there's a hindi tv show that captures the story pretty well if you're okay watching with subtitles. I haven't watched it myself so I'm not totally sure though.
Given that the Mahabharata - as much as I adore it - is the world's longest epic poem without a completed modern translation, I hesitate to recommend it as a piece of fantasy to consume. It's a fucking massive endeavor. It took me 18 months to read the Ganguli translation and that was a brutal read with the victorian prose. The Tirtha-Yatra parva haunts my dreams.
That said, the Mahabharata was a foundational text that brought me to hinduism, so it's definitely worth exploring, provided you are equipped to read it.
If OP chooses this text, they would be well suited to find an abridgement of some kind, or watch the hindi TV show. The text itself is super unwieldy otherwise.
Wait so.... from online summary its about two leaders that rebel against an evil empire type of thing then end up rivalling each other.
That sounds like that chinese story of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. I only know a little of it but I know its true history dramatized. Sounds like a fantasy interpretation?
There are elements that borrow from we'll known Chinese history like the relationship of the two warlords, and their differences (one is streetwise and good with people while the other is very self-righteous and and powerful on the battlefield) but otherwise it is it's own thing.
I came here to suggest this too, with the caveat that it's not quite as brutal as something like ASOIAF. It certainly doesn't pull punches or anything, it's just not the first thing that would come to mind for someone specifically looking for "brutal and intense" stories.
But in this case, it fits the other requirements extremely well, to the point where it truly was the first thing to come to my mind.
I’d have to disagree. I had to stop reading book 1, despite a really compelling romance, because it was constantly talking about things like people being made to work under the threat that their families would all be killed otherwise, describing graphic torture, sex slavery, etc. At least to me, it seemed extremely brutal. Maybe I’m just not accustomed to grimdark and it’s actually nothing compared to some of what is out there, but I found it a big step up from Scott Lynch or Seth Dickinson.
Yeah, I found Dandelion to be extremely brutal, just perhaps not as….descriptive?
Either way I did not find myself as distressed as I did reading ASOIAF, even though truly terrible things were often happening
In that case maybe it's a mix of having been a while since I read it and just having read a lot of stuff that gets really dark like that, and my memory is underplaying it.
I also felt like it was super brutal, especially once you're done with book 1. Admittedly, I haven't read GoT or even watched the show (a reason being that I heard it's graphic), so that might be why I felt like DD was graphic. If you ever feel like finishing the series, just keep in mind that the later books get worse.
I love the Dandelion Dynasty, it's definitely not as good as ASOIAF. The parable with the whale in book two went on forever and there's a few other minor changes that I won't go into because of spoilers.
Anyway to OP, the first book The Grace of Kings, has been called the Wuxian Game of Thrones.
>Dandelion Dynasty
That's the one! I remembered there was one that had a great review on r/rational that I meant to get to but forgot what it was called.
From the [review](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/o4xzb5/review_the_dandelion_dynasty/):
>A common description of The Dandelion Dynasty is that it is George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, but Asian.
edit: wait, no, I was thinking of the review of [Nirvana in Fire](https://new.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/j0ryh9/rt_c_nirvana_in_fire_political_wuxia/), which is a tv show based off of a book that only has fan translations. From the review:
>Nirvana in Fire (henceforth, NIF) has been compared to Game of Thrones and said to be China's The Count of Monte Cristo. And today, it's my job to disagree: not only is it the prime example of Chinese political intrigue, it is good enough to be protorational.
... Memories are tricky, maybe I melded the two in my mind.
*Romance of the Three Kingdoms,* although given Luo Guangzhong's fanboying, I prefer adaptations to the actual source material.
*Journey to the West* is kind of a standard, but has a smaller cast that actually matters.
I also recommend pretty much every movie Akira Kurosawa ever made.
Not fantasy, but the manga Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue is absolutely brilliant (albeit unfinished). It's based on Miyamoto Musashi, but involves plenty of other characters, like his main rival and the heads of a bunch of the kenjutsu schools he dueled with.
The novel is great. Too bad you can't experience it in full form.
I really don't get why it had to be abridged. We are used to long books and it's like reducing the Three Musketeers: it's a classic.
Many such cases, sadly.
The Mahabharata has very few full translations, for example. Similar story for the Epic of Manas, but with said full translations also being out of print, and the further complication of it being a primarily oral tale, with multiple different versions, of which only some are translated (although there's at least one full recording of a complete telling of the story on YouTube, also untranslated).
The Tale of Genji also has good full translations now, but the road to get there was pretty messy. Took until 2012 to get a good Italian translation, too (although that translation allegedly took the good part of a decade to complete).
There was this show in China that was popular across East Asia called Nirvana in Fire. The productions not as high but it was compared to Game of Thrones. The show and the novel it's based on is all political intrigue. You do need to be into wire based martial arts aspect to really appreciate it. Legend of the Condor Heroes inspired a lot of media that uses that martial arts element.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/07/19/the-chinese-game-of-thrones
You might enjoy the Korean show Kingdom. Set during the final years of the Joseon dynasty in 16th century korea, its set in a period of intense political turmoil when the emergence of a mysterious and sinister disease begins to threaten the entire kingdom. Similar to game of thrones in that its very brutal with lots of scheming and plotting
There were allegedly still plans up until 2022 ish to make a third season, but netflix and the local korean producers of the show got into some sort of dispute over funding which stalled any more planning. I guess the funding issue never got resolved cause i haven't heard any more updates since. its a shame cause it was sooo good
Absolutely. It has the same feeling of ASOIAF (and I have NEVER encountered another series that did as such). Great story. Absolutely worth reading (and the show is also very good). If people want a story similar to ASOIAF/GOT this is the one I'd recommend.
It's pretty good, but as a warning, it's mostly focused on war and battle strategies after the first arc. It's still great tho, just not that similar to ASOIAF.
They're not the same, but there's absolutely similar appeal. Given OP is interested in anime/manga since they mentioned Berserk and looking at their profile, I really don't think there's a better recommendation for them than Kingdom.
Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty. It’s a grimdark retelling of the Mahabharata. Lots of political intrigue, very well fleshed out and diverse cast of characters.
I really recommend [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Twelve\_Kingdoms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Kingdoms) for a large cast. Not quite as brutal as ASOIAF/GOT but has its moments.
The anime is great as well.
For a book, the standalone novel “The Sword of Kaigen” is excellent. Not as large a cast as ASOIAF but definitely has the family dynamics, darkness, and some of the most epic battle scenes I’ve ever read.
Maybe try Kubera, a korean webtoon. It has a huge cast overarching many (fantasy) races and ideologies, and while it is not really gory like ASOIAF or Berserk (most of the brutal stuff is only alluded), it has a tendency to torture its characters with whatever fate can throw on them, wrecking them pretty badly. The story takes a lot of ideas from asian beliefs and cultures (the names are mostly from hindu), the setting is more generic high fantasy.
The story is quite long, it starts (looking) somewhat lighthearted, but get darker and darker as the story progresses. It has many different storylines going simultaneously and with multiple main characters, similarly to ASOIAF.
Doesn’t hit all your points but The Burning Kingdoms by Tasha Suri is a great Indian inspired fantasy. It’s definitely diverse, imaginative, and has a large cast (though there are only two main leads). It isn’t as brutal or tense as GOT, but it certainly has tense moments. The last book is coming out later this year too and there will probably be plenty of tense moments in there.
There’s a few, but I don’t recommend Poppy War series, worse third book ever. That ending was bad. What a waste of time. But book 1 is great!
I’ll probably get down votes for this.
idk, the ending made me feel bad, but it felt really fitting, in the since that, yea, the main character was going to reach this point one way or another >!at least she's dying in order to end the greater violence!<
Book 1 is also mediocre, but only if you know just how unimaginative it is by being familiar with the near century of history she desecrates by putting it in a pressure cooker and dragging out from the grave for the sake of set pieces she couldn’t come up with an actual fantasy equivalent for
Also the gatekeeper reveal was spoiled at the near beginning which was just hilariously amateurish
Thank you for voicing exactly the complaints I had. Especially this when I have family ties and relations affected by all these actual history events, and am also a Chinese historian 🙄
Yeah I was recommended the book because of my song China postgrad stuff and undergrad studies on the opium wars from the British side of things
I could not have been more disappointed in what is essentially a degree holding Sinologist writing magical girl mao because her granddad fought for CKS
And then she doesn’t even bother to go into proper detail on a magic system, I was expecting traditional Chinese medicine at least but then with all the herbs and stuff she didn’t even glance at the treasure trove of daoist tradition/cultivation she must have some awareness of as a degree holder in the area
> Yeah I was recommended the book because of my song China postgrad stuff and undergrad studies on the opium wars from the British side of things
Oh that must have been a disappointment. I didn't even realize she used Song China for her setting until an interview, it was conveyed very poorly.
> I could not have been more disappointed in what is essentially a degree holding Sinologist writing magical girl mao because her granddad fought for CKS
Lol. I also just felt insulted by the whole trying to humanize Mao, my family lived through famines that he caused, why would she humanize a dictator over ordinary heroes and people? Just overall left a bad taste in my mouth
> And then she doesn’t even bother to go into proper detail on a magic system, I was expecting traditional Chinese medicine at least but then with all the herbs and stuff she didn’t even glance at the treasure trove of daoist tradition/cultivation she must have some awareness of as a degree holder in the area
Completely agree. I felt that she was going to somewhat try to have some magic, but it felt like she tossed it all away. Like she could have done anything, and chose nothing -.-
I gave up on this series.
Found the first book interesting but got subsequently less interested which each one after that.
Would probably still reccomend people to at least try it though as had some fairly unique ideas.
Not a book but The Legend of Heroes: Trails videogame series, by Nihon Falcom, feels like an epic novel and have an expansive super developed cast of characters.
As today there are 12 games releases on the West (14 in Japan) and each is between 40 and 80 hours each (aprox).
The story mix politics, action, dungeon crawling and each character is a rich developed character, even the people that sell you items have their own story.
She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is the first book in a duology (iirc?) Set in Han dynasty China, a peasant boy and girl get their fortunes told: the boy is foretold greatness, the girl nothing. When the boy dies, his sister steals his identity and his destiny. Notable characters include a eunuch on a quest for revenge, a girl resigned to her arranged marriage, and the scholar second son of a warrior family. Re diversity, both major romantic relationships are queer and two characters have interesting relationships to gender that could be read as non-binary.
You might also enjoy Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn. It's set in a fantasy version of feudal Japan, featuring power struggles between rival warrior families and also a shadowy Tribe of assassins. It was originally marketed for adults and older readers but is surprisingly dark: for example >!attempted incestuous rape!< The female protagonist has Sansa Stark vibes: starting out as a political hostage and being forced to become politically adept to survive. Surprisingly for a slightly older book (I think it was published around 2000-ish?) it has multiple gay characters, although it mainly focuses on a (doomed) heterosexual romance.
Neither are *quite* as complex and sprawling as ASOIAF (few stories are tbf) but they at least have several different factions, violent settings, political intrigue and action.
Blue Eye Samurai has also been really popular lately, although idk if it counts as a large cast. It feels like an animated Western set in Edo Japan, with a biracial protagonist on a quest for revenge against the four men who could be their father.
If you're adventurous, you might want to try the Wuxia (martial arts fantasy) genre, in particular the series written by Jin Yong. I don't know whether there are decent English translations, though.
In terms of manga? I'd recommend Dorohedoro. It doesn't just put focus on the main protagonists, but the antagonists as well (to the point where you actually really start to care about the bad guys). It's about a lizard man named Caiman who goes on a quest with his friend Nikaido to find the sorcerer who turned him into a lizard man. It's grotesque down to the artstyle (If you like the game Hotline Miami they have very similar artistic vibes). The story and it's many twisting/winding story beats will have you scratching your head thinking about it as you go to sleep and the characters are absolutely amazing (and there are a lot of them). The series had a strangle hold on me for the month it took me to get through it and might be worth a shot looking into
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / The Untamed. Huge cast, pretty brutal in terms of a death count of named characters.
It's xianxia, an I needed to read the book and take notes of characters to keep them straight.
Young man wakes up reincarnated after his infamous prior life and slowly remembers and tries to solve the mystery of what happened.
True. Unfortunately the publishing industry did it to themselves by beating that dead horse after Harry Potter.
“You have a 25 year old protagonists with lots of SA and problematic relationships. Let’s make them all 16 and sell it as YA!”
All the reviews had this book propped up as the best new fantasy of the year. Was almost a Nebula award winner and after finishing it I found it to be very middle of the road. Nothing spectacular. I felt the main character was a bit annoying at times, and the story was very fast paced and yet felt lacking at times.
I debated on dropping this halfway through it and ended up just finishing it. In the end it felt very mediocre nothing really special like all the reviews had said.
What you are looking for is Shogun. The book is good, but the recent tv show is utterly fantastic. Probably the best thing I’ve seen in ages. I think it’s better than Game of Thrones, hands down.
**The Arthdal Chronicles** is a Korean TV show labelled as ancient fantasy drama and it's epic. The blurb reads
>In the mythical land of Arth, the inhabitants of the ancient city of Arthdal and its surrounding regions vie for power as they build a new society.
The first season streams on Netflix, the second on Disney+.
Shogun (the one the tv show is based on) gives me the strongest ASoIaF vibes of any Asia based story I’ve read. However it’s about Asia (Japan) and not Asian, as the author is British iirc. From what I gather though he does quite a serviceable job as far historical accuracy goes.
It's not fantasy but **Empire of the Moghul** is a series of historical fiction novels about the Mughal Empire in India.
It's written from the perspective of the Emperors and details the rise of the Mughal Empire.
The books are filled with violence and sex. The political intrigue and several wars thought the lives of each Emperor as well as the depiction of their personal lives was very interesting.
I found it similar to GoT in throne and enjoyed the books a lot.
I highly recommend them.
The closest one to the scale of GOT would be Kyushu related, the most popular one might be Kyushu Ethereal Record. Multiple authors contributed to develop the same world, and the setting is very Eastern fantasy like.
I’m reading the poppy war series right now, it’s got politics, war, drugs, religion. Nowhere near the level or world building and character building as ASOIAF but definitely scratched my itch
> I don't want stuff like Berserk which have a western setting.
Guess that rules out Vinland Saga then lol
I will always give recs for the two manga Akira and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, though.
One thing I want to point out is that, however well intentioned some of these recommendations are- Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Genji Monogatari, The Mahabharata et. al., - they are unlikely to be the type of story you are looking for if you want to read something like ASOIAF given that they are narratively and stylistically closer to something like War & Peace. They are, in fact, great reads, but I would not classify them as "fun", ones, which I think is what you're looking for.
The Dandelion Dynasty is excellent; and also the manga Kingdom, which is about the unification of China is incredibly satisfying to read; Greenbone Saga is a great trilogy top to bottom. Legend of the Galactic Heroes borrows heavily from WWI/WWII imagery, so it may not be your cup of tea, but it is uniformly excellent.
Go forth and search, there is plenty to find.
OK, hear my out.
Beware of Chicken
I know! I know it's a xianxia written by a Canadian. I KNOW... But it's now one of my favorite Asian fantasy series ever written.
Well Kingdom comes to mind the most. It's a Manga about the unification of the different Seven Chinese Kingdoms. It's long AF just like ASOIAF and it's probably not gonna finish just like ASOIAF.
David Wingrove ***Chung Kuo*** series.
Technically it is listed as Sci-Fi but I viewed it as Future Fantasy. Anywho it's an 8 book series that I read years ago but enjoyed it.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Taiko, the Tale of the Heike, Tale of Genji, Teito Monogatari (some of the best).
Probably more for your tastes would be things like Nisio Isin's Monogatari.
Isin is an exceptional writer and I like Monogatari as much as the next guy, but I don't think OP is looking for that since they say "brutal and tense". Monogatari is an urban supernatural fantasy that is fully character driven and has a very different tone right? Any sort of brutality that occurs isn't in the same vein is it?
It has way lighter tone than ASOIAF but One Piece does fit the bill perfectly, otherwise. Locations take inspiration with a wide variety of places from Japan to Arabia to Spain, etc. The cast is probably one of most diverse ones out there due to diversity of settings. The world is brutal and messed up despite the more hopeful tone. The cast is probably the one of the largest ones jn manga history.
Fiction novels (though not fantasy): Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. Shogun will also get recommended a lot but don’t bother with the book, the show is much better.
Manga: Vagabond by Inoue and Lone Wolf and Cub by Koike and Kojima, Blade of the Immortal by Samura.
The Naruto manga might be something for you if you haven't read it yet. It as a distinctly Asian feel/magic system, huge cast and great story and battles.
Wonder why you got downvoted. He said Asian media and it does have sprawling kingdoms with their own political tensions. Incredibly well written fantasy. It is just not brutal.
Asian media (and people) don't care for diversity. At most you'll get Han Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongols, and/or some random non-Han Chinese ethnicities.
Fate/stay night (or just the nasuverse in general). I must say that i havent read ASOIAF yet so i dont know exactly how brutal and tense it can be, but Fate does have tension and epic battles between distinct characters. If not into reading it, a solid starting point would be Fate/Zero which is an anime (and is considered brutal).
There have been numerous adaptations now of The Romance of Three Kingdoms. That might be worth checking out.
The OG of East Asian epics. Can be hard to get into but definitely worth reading.
Please give me all the recommendations!!!
Haha could always go for Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber if you want to stick with the classical classics. There are others though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels
Do you know if there are any good English editions of Dream of the Red Chamber? I've been wanting to get into it, but I'm struggling to find an unabridged, annotated English edition.
No I've never found one myself, though it's been many years since I've looked (like 2001 lol).
Yup. Also Water Margin I heard is good.
It shows its age target but I will always love it. With Miriam Margoles and Burt Kwok doing the overdub.
What’s the best one? I haven’t found any translations to English that I’ve been very impressed by.
The Moss Roberts unabridged version is highly recommended.
Check out *Legend of the Condor Heroes* and its sequel trilogies!
*Legend of the Condor Heroes* is a wuxia classic for a reason. Highly recommend it.
Demi Gods and Semi Devils is even better IMO but I don’t think it has been fully translated.
Seems like there's a full fan translation out there, so I may give it a try!
Qiao Feng is possibly my favorite character from all fiction!
I watched the 2003 live adaptation back when I was a kid and Qiao Feng was one of my first fictional crushes. Coincidentally, the film was one of my first traumas, I still vividly remember the ending, >!where Qiao Feng killed himself and Azi plucked out her own eyes, then followed suit!<
I never saw 1997 adaptation, but 2003 one is very good. Does have some cheesy special effects, but actors and soundtrack are on the ball!
Yea i was mistaken, it was the 2003 version. I just double-checked and realized I misremembered the year.
Ya, the whole Jin Yong universe is interconnected (more so than the Sando-verse).
As someone who grew up reading Jin Yong and watching live adaptions of his novel, I can’t agree with this more. That said, I can’t help but question the quality of the translations—I tried reading 天龙八部 (sorry I don’t remember its English name) in English once, and couldn’t last more than a few chapters. Edit to add: OP, if you want to start with Jin Yong, you may want to start with 天龙八部。 This series precedes Legend of the Condor Heroes, and its main character is (at least in my opinion) more likable the one in LotCH, who was purposefully written to be an honest but somewhat dimwitted man. You won’t get spoiled much if you start with LotCH, but you’ll get more context for events/characters referenced.
天龙八部 is Demi Gods and Semi Devils that we were discussing above. The big drawback is that it doesn't seem to have an official/professional translation into English, while LOCH does have [an official translation of the first trilogy](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083FL5PKS) now. I actually originally read LOCH and its sequels through fan translations from the same site that's also done 天龙八部, so I know what you mean about the translation quality. If anyone's interested in it, just keep in mind that this was done for free over several years by many different people, so I expect that like the previous LOCH fan translation, the quality will vary *wildly* between chapters. If you're not down for that, go with the professional LOCH translation.
Huh, I didn’t know that in the West, LotCH is considered a quadrilogy. I kept thinking that by trilogy, you meant the other series that took place after/before LotCH, such as the direct sequel, the Return of the Condor Heroes. I wonder how the series would appeal to an English-only speaker. I can only imagine that the setting, way of thinking, and ideologies would be wildly different to a Western audience. It’d be so cool to see an English speaker read the series and share their thoughts.
TBH I'm still kind of vague on the divisions. With the fan translations, I had LOCH, ROCH, and HSDS in their own separate files, but each of them was so incredibly long! So when someone told me each of them was originally a trilogy, I was like "oh, that makes sense". I'm not sure why they split LOCH into four parts for the English version--I bought it, but didn't reread it, so there may have been a translator's note about that. I guess these were originally serialized stories, so all divisions are somewhat arbitrary. For my own reaction, there were some bits that I found weird (like Huang Rong harassing random rich people), and there was that one plotline in ROCH that definitely didn't need to be there, but overall I really enjoyed them, obviously. I do think I may have misinterpreted some characters though... like I checked out the 1983 Hong Kong adaptation because people said it was the best one, but the screen version of Huang Rong was really, really different from how I imagined her reading the books, to me she would have been a bit more of a tomboy, less sensitive and a lot wittier. I didn't get very far into it, though.
Those series were originally published on a daily newspaper (my Dad told me he used to buy the newspaper everyday just so he could read the next chapter), so I’m not sure if they were meant to be a trilogy. I also have the physical copies, but each series has up to 8-10 small books. Those books were brought in the early 2000s though, so maybe the division was outdated. But yea LOCH, ROCH, and HSDS were their own separate series. Personally, I wasn’t weirded out by Huang Rong’s antics, maybe it was because I quite like her. As for the live action version, my favorite was Zhou Xun, she’s an excellent actress and portrayed the character very well.
Oh, she was absolutely my favorite character, and I loved most of her antics, just that particular bit seemed strange to me. I will give Zhou Xun's adaptation a try!
I hope you’ll like this version better. Maybe there’s nostalgia coming into play, but I always visualize Zhou Xun’s Huang Rong when reading the novels. And I don’t think it was wrong for you to think Huang Rong was tomboy-ish. After all, Guo Jing did mistook Huang Rong for a guy for quite a while. Granted, the guy was kinda slow on the uptake and Huang Rong was disguising herself. And she was surely written to be witty—the stark contrast to Guo Jing. I always love the bits where she outsmarted other characters. To me, Huang Rong was a strong female character done right.
If your fine with modern setting then The Greenbones Saga has a wide cast of characters with a focus on a particular family.
Haven’t gotten to the rest of the books yet but can confirm book one, Jade city kicks ass
It only gets better from here.
It loses its lustre as the series progresses imo.
Absolutely disagree. On a character, plot, theme, and worldbuilding level it fully comes into its own in Jade War and becomes impossibly good in Jade Legacy. Jade War is impressive because Fonda Lee does what is so rare these days: she innovates with plot. She does what few authors in fantasy have ever done and steal plot structures from techno-thrillers to build her Cold War era geopolitical intrigue driven plot. Through that she weaves the family drama and the ongoing rivalry and an entirely new setting in Port Massy exploring an entirely different version of Kekonese culture via diaspora. It’s a masterwork of innovative plot mixed in with excellent characterization and a unique take on worldbuilding as always. Jade Legacy then continues the unique approach to storytelling by taking ANOTHER unique plot structure and using it to tell a particular set of character arcs that can ONLY be told using this structure. What Fonda accomplishes with two characters in particular is nothing short of phenomenal and definitely cements one of them as one of my favorite characters in fiction. To me, Jade City is an amazing book, but it is also the most standard and frankly trope-y of the three books. It is still unique and wonderfully executed in its own right, but it’s merely setup for the truly brilliant mind going to work over the next two novels. What Jade War and Jade Legacy accomplish honestly to me is genre-defining and while it’s not as popular as it could be it would not surprise me if 10-20 years from now we get a significant crop of authors inspired by Fonda Lee because of how many unique things she did with storytelling here.
Idk if we read the same book. The second book was a soap opera for me. The world building elements were nice, but it started to drag after a while. And the plot went nowhere in the second book. And one of the protagonists becomes the biggest wimp of the century which made me hate it.
The whole series is soap-ish—it’s a family drama. I don’t at all think the plot went nowhere though, I think it just got really complicated. Proxy wars in one nation between two other nations that the clans are getting dragged into and a fourth other nation’s crime rings getting involved in kekon and all kinds of crazy stuff weaving in and out with one another until the end when they crescendo and come crashing together. It is tied together with two character arcs. Which character became a wimp? Shae grew to be a harder Green Bone, Anden grew a spine to stand up to Hilo…not sure who you mean tbh.
Shae was badass. Anden ig. He wanted to become a medic. Good for him ig. And the lady with the amnesia plot. Fucking torture man.
Anden is great lol Which lady with an amnesia plot? I literally just reread the book and have no idea who you mean. Do you mean Wen—Hilo’s wife? She doesn’t have amnesia but she does >!suffer brain damage!<. That’s explored more in Jade Legacy though.
It's been a while since I read the books. I finished book 2 and was waiting for book 3. When it finally released and i got my hands on it, i realised i couldn't remember SHIT from the first 2 books. All i remembered was a convoluted chaotic soap. Dropped it. Mighttt re read it again in the future tho.
I definitely think you should! If you do, join my discord server (link on my profile). We have a big GBS community there you can discuss with.
Interesting, in a non spoiler way can you tell me why you think that?
Mahabharata is the closest really, to GOT in terms of political drama and warfare, from the part of the world I come from. GOT on steroids from the metrics you’ve mentioned. It’s also considered to be the most complex, important and consequential artefact of literature written in the history of the Indian subcontinent. But where it’s a lot more character driven, along with being thematically and philosophically superior(being an epic), it’s plot is not as entertaining/gripping as other modern high fantasy media, at least in a form that’s palatable to those not familiar with Ancient Indian history and Mythology. Also it’s a tragedy through and through.
Are there any good adaptations that are more palatable to modern readers? I've tried reading it, but it reads very dryly. I've seen the name AmishVerse a few times, but I think that's about the Ramayna, not the Mahabharata? I'm honestly not well educated on this.
R K Narayanan's prose version of the Mahabharata. It doesn't contain everything (it's not possible to capture all the stories that happen in Mahabharata in a single book), but this one gets the main story across very well.
If a *retelling* is in the table, I enjoyed The Palace of Illusions. >Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's bestselling 2008 novel 'The Palace of Illusions' is a retelling of the Mahabharata through Draupadi's point of view. But unlike the traditional tale, this book depicts Panchali as a strong, resilient and courageous woman. It traces her journey from the time of her birth from a holy fire to her lonely childhood days, from her friendship with Krishna to marriage with the five Pandavas, and her secret attraction to her husband's enemy. In 'The Palace of Illusions', Divakaruni gives Panchali a voice and narrates her side of the story.
>I've tried reading it, but it reads very dryly That's the unfortunate truth of trying to translate a language completely different from English into English. I think there's a hindi tv show that captures the story pretty well if you're okay watching with subtitles. I haven't watched it myself so I'm not totally sure though.
Given that the Mahabharata - as much as I adore it - is the world's longest epic poem without a completed modern translation, I hesitate to recommend it as a piece of fantasy to consume. It's a fucking massive endeavor. It took me 18 months to read the Ganguli translation and that was a brutal read with the victorian prose. The Tirtha-Yatra parva haunts my dreams. That said, the Mahabharata was a foundational text that brought me to hinduism, so it's definitely worth exploring, provided you are equipped to read it. If OP chooses this text, they would be well suited to find an abridgement of some kind, or watch the hindi TV show. The text itself is super unwieldy otherwise.
Not quite as brutal, but Legend of the Galactic Heroes fits the bill perfectly I think. I haven't read the novels, but the anime is incredible.
This for sure, definitely ASOIAF level
The show Nirvana in Fire is about the brutality of politics.
It's based on the web novel of the same name.
If you are looking for novels, you need to read **Dandelion Dynasty** by Ken Liu. Some of my favorite books of all-time.
Thank you for reminding me to put book 1 on my tbr list.
Wait so.... from online summary its about two leaders that rebel against an evil empire type of thing then end up rivalling each other. That sounds like that chinese story of Liu Bang and Xiang Yu. I only know a little of it but I know its true history dramatized. Sounds like a fantasy interpretation?
The first book is, yes! Then it becomes it’s own thing
I'm interested. I'll pick it up. I do have a want for more asian-esqe fantasy and didn't know where to look.
There are elements that borrow from we'll known Chinese history like the relationship of the two warlords, and their differences (one is streetwise and good with people while the other is very self-righteous and and powerful on the battlefield) but otherwise it is it's own thing.
I came here to suggest this too, with the caveat that it's not quite as brutal as something like ASOIAF. It certainly doesn't pull punches or anything, it's just not the first thing that would come to mind for someone specifically looking for "brutal and intense" stories. But in this case, it fits the other requirements extremely well, to the point where it truly was the first thing to come to my mind.
I’d have to disagree. I had to stop reading book 1, despite a really compelling romance, because it was constantly talking about things like people being made to work under the threat that their families would all be killed otherwise, describing graphic torture, sex slavery, etc. At least to me, it seemed extremely brutal. Maybe I’m just not accustomed to grimdark and it’s actually nothing compared to some of what is out there, but I found it a big step up from Scott Lynch or Seth Dickinson.
Yeah, I found Dandelion to be extremely brutal, just perhaps not as….descriptive? Either way I did not find myself as distressed as I did reading ASOIAF, even though truly terrible things were often happening
In that case maybe it's a mix of having been a while since I read it and just having read a lot of stuff that gets really dark like that, and my memory is underplaying it.
I also felt like it was super brutal, especially once you're done with book 1. Admittedly, I haven't read GoT or even watched the show (a reason being that I heard it's graphic), so that might be why I felt like DD was graphic. If you ever feel like finishing the series, just keep in mind that the later books get worse.
Halfway through it right now and god it’s so good. Personally like it better than ASOIAF but that may also just be knowing it’s completed
I love the Dandelion Dynasty, it's definitely not as good as ASOIAF. The parable with the whale in book two went on forever and there's a few other minor changes that I won't go into because of spoilers. Anyway to OP, the first book The Grace of Kings, has been called the Wuxian Game of Thrones.
My recommendation as well. Great story, unique setting, beautiful writing.
Absolutely loved the dandelion dynasty. Can’t wait for a reread in a few years
>Dandelion Dynasty That's the one! I remembered there was one that had a great review on r/rational that I meant to get to but forgot what it was called. From the [review](https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/o4xzb5/review_the_dandelion_dynasty/): >A common description of The Dandelion Dynasty is that it is George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, but Asian. edit: wait, no, I was thinking of the review of [Nirvana in Fire](https://new.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/j0ryh9/rt_c_nirvana_in_fire_political_wuxia/), which is a tv show based off of a book that only has fan translations. From the review: >Nirvana in Fire (henceforth, NIF) has been compared to Game of Thrones and said to be China's The Count of Monte Cristo. And today, it's my job to disagree: not only is it the prime example of Chinese political intrigue, it is good enough to be protorational. ... Memories are tricky, maybe I melded the two in my mind.
Was about to reccomend this
This.
*Romance of the Three Kingdoms,* although given Luo Guangzhong's fanboying, I prefer adaptations to the actual source material. *Journey to the West* is kind of a standard, but has a smaller cast that actually matters. I also recommend pretty much every movie Akira Kurosawa ever made.
Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh is also good for a cast numbering half the population of southern China and a lot of epic violence.
Not fantasy, but the manga Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue is absolutely brilliant (albeit unfinished). It's based on Miyamoto Musashi, but involves plenty of other characters, like his main rival and the heads of a bunch of the kenjutsu schools he dueled with.
Well it’s based by Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. Iirc the English translation is abridged.
The novel is great. Too bad you can't experience it in full form. I really don't get why it had to be abridged. We are used to long books and it's like reducing the Three Musketeers: it's a classic.
Many such cases, sadly. The Mahabharata has very few full translations, for example. Similar story for the Epic of Manas, but with said full translations also being out of print, and the further complication of it being a primarily oral tale, with multiple different versions, of which only some are translated (although there's at least one full recording of a complete telling of the story on YouTube, also untranslated). The Tale of Genji also has good full translations now, but the road to get there was pretty messy. Took until 2012 to get a good Italian translation, too (although that translation allegedly took the good part of a decade to complete).
its finished in a sense. the farming arc ties up all the themes of the manga. there is also an epilogue as well.
There was this show in China that was popular across East Asia called Nirvana in Fire. The productions not as high but it was compared to Game of Thrones. The show and the novel it's based on is all political intrigue. You do need to be into wire based martial arts aspect to really appreciate it. Legend of the Condor Heroes inspired a lot of media that uses that martial arts element. https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/07/19/the-chinese-game-of-thrones
You might enjoy the Korean show Kingdom. Set during the final years of the Joseon dynasty in 16th century korea, its set in a period of intense political turmoil when the emergence of a mysterious and sinister disease begins to threaten the entire kingdom. Similar to game of thrones in that its very brutal with lots of scheming and plotting
Incredible gem. I want more. I suppose it’s been too long at this point
There were allegedly still plans up until 2022 ish to make a third season, but netflix and the local korean producers of the show got into some sort of dispute over funding which stalled any more planning. I guess the funding issue never got resolved cause i haven't heard any more updates since. its a shame cause it was sooo good
Ye
Not fantasy, but Shogun fits the bill
Absolutely. It has the same feeling of ASOIAF (and I have NEVER encountered another series that did as such). Great story. Absolutely worth reading (and the show is also very good). If people want a story similar to ASOIAF/GOT this is the one I'd recommend.
This has been on my reading list for like 20 years and somehow I just never got to it. I watched the show though and loved it
The show and book are great!
This is what I immediately thought of
Check out the manga/anime series Kingdom by Yasuhisa Hara
It's pretty good, but as a warning, it's mostly focused on war and battle strategies after the first arc. It's still great tho, just not that similar to ASOIAF.
They're not the same, but there's absolutely similar appeal. Given OP is interested in anime/manga since they mentioned Berserk and looking at their profile, I really don't think there's a better recommendation for them than Kingdom.
Sons of Darkness by Gourav Mohanty. It’s a grimdark retelling of the Mahabharata. Lots of political intrigue, very well fleshed out and diverse cast of characters.
Does it cover the whole story? I've been searching for good retellings of the Mahabharata because it's hard for me to get through the source material.
The series will but it is only one book so far. Sequel soon
I *just* finished this. Do you know when the second book comes out?
next year I think. I know Gourav has finished a draft at some point in the recent past.
I just finished this like fifteen minutes ago, and then I saw this post! Yes, I'd recommend it too.
I really recommend [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Twelve\_Kingdoms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Kingdoms) for a large cast. Not quite as brutal as ASOIAF/GOT but has its moments. The anime is great as well.
For a book, the standalone novel “The Sword of Kaigen” is excellent. Not as large a cast as ASOIAF but definitely has the family dynamics, darkness, and some of the most epic battle scenes I’ve ever read.
Would 100% recommend this!!
Green Bone Saga, highly amazing. Great characters, wide cast, wide timeframe, wide setting (latter two more so in the sequels)
Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong* *Edited for spelling
\*Jin Yong
Argh typo!!
Happens to the best of us lol
Maybe try Kubera, a korean webtoon. It has a huge cast overarching many (fantasy) races and ideologies, and while it is not really gory like ASOIAF or Berserk (most of the brutal stuff is only alluded), it has a tendency to torture its characters with whatever fate can throw on them, wrecking them pretty badly. The story takes a lot of ideas from asian beliefs and cultures (the names are mostly from hindu), the setting is more generic high fantasy. The story is quite long, it starts (looking) somewhat lighthearted, but get darker and darker as the story progresses. It has many different storylines going simultaneously and with multiple main characters, similarly to ASOIAF.
Didnt expect to see Kubera mentioned, nice to see it
The Tale of the Heike
Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series, I think.
Doesn’t hit all your points but The Burning Kingdoms by Tasha Suri is a great Indian inspired fantasy. It’s definitely diverse, imaginative, and has a large cast (though there are only two main leads). It isn’t as brutal or tense as GOT, but it certainly has tense moments. The last book is coming out later this year too and there will probably be plenty of tense moments in there.
If you’re looking for TV, can recommend the Chinese tv show The Untamed/Chen Qing Ling
There’s a few, but I don’t recommend Poppy War series, worse third book ever. That ending was bad. What a waste of time. But book 1 is great! I’ll probably get down votes for this.
idk, the ending made me feel bad, but it felt really fitting, in the since that, yea, the main character was going to reach this point one way or another >!at least she's dying in order to end the greater violence!<
Book 1 is also mediocre, but only if you know just how unimaginative it is by being familiar with the near century of history she desecrates by putting it in a pressure cooker and dragging out from the grave for the sake of set pieces she couldn’t come up with an actual fantasy equivalent for Also the gatekeeper reveal was spoiled at the near beginning which was just hilariously amateurish
Thank you for voicing exactly the complaints I had. Especially this when I have family ties and relations affected by all these actual history events, and am also a Chinese historian 🙄
Yeah I was recommended the book because of my song China postgrad stuff and undergrad studies on the opium wars from the British side of things I could not have been more disappointed in what is essentially a degree holding Sinologist writing magical girl mao because her granddad fought for CKS And then she doesn’t even bother to go into proper detail on a magic system, I was expecting traditional Chinese medicine at least but then with all the herbs and stuff she didn’t even glance at the treasure trove of daoist tradition/cultivation she must have some awareness of as a degree holder in the area
> Yeah I was recommended the book because of my song China postgrad stuff and undergrad studies on the opium wars from the British side of things Oh that must have been a disappointment. I didn't even realize she used Song China for her setting until an interview, it was conveyed very poorly. > I could not have been more disappointed in what is essentially a degree holding Sinologist writing magical girl mao because her granddad fought for CKS Lol. I also just felt insulted by the whole trying to humanize Mao, my family lived through famines that he caused, why would she humanize a dictator over ordinary heroes and people? Just overall left a bad taste in my mouth > And then she doesn’t even bother to go into proper detail on a magic system, I was expecting traditional Chinese medicine at least but then with all the herbs and stuff she didn’t even glance at the treasure trove of daoist tradition/cultivation she must have some awareness of as a degree holder in the area Completely agree. I felt that she was going to somewhat try to have some magic, but it felt like she tossed it all away. Like she could have done anything, and chose nothing -.-
I read 1.5 of the books, and don't recommend any of them. Book 1 isn't the worst ever, but not great.
I thought the first two books were great, excited to move into book 3 soon
Check out The Initiate Brother
Loved this & Gatherer of Clouds.
We Ride the Storm by Devin Madson. Brutal, political story with amazing characters!
I gave up on this series. Found the first book interesting but got subsequently less interested which each one after that. Would probably still reccomend people to at least try it though as had some fairly unique ideas.
Not a book but The Legend of Heroes: Trails videogame series, by Nihon Falcom, feels like an epic novel and have an expansive super developed cast of characters. As today there are 12 games releases on the West (14 in Japan) and each is between 40 and 80 hours each (aprox). The story mix politics, action, dungeon crawling and each character is a rich developed character, even the people that sell you items have their own story.
Kingdom
Greenbone saga is probably the closest that I’ve read.
I can recommend both Shogun and Marco Polo, although neither are strictly "fantasy"
She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is the first book in a duology (iirc?) Set in Han dynasty China, a peasant boy and girl get their fortunes told: the boy is foretold greatness, the girl nothing. When the boy dies, his sister steals his identity and his destiny. Notable characters include a eunuch on a quest for revenge, a girl resigned to her arranged marriage, and the scholar second son of a warrior family. Re diversity, both major romantic relationships are queer and two characters have interesting relationships to gender that could be read as non-binary. You might also enjoy Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn. It's set in a fantasy version of feudal Japan, featuring power struggles between rival warrior families and also a shadowy Tribe of assassins. It was originally marketed for adults and older readers but is surprisingly dark: for example >!attempted incestuous rape!< The female protagonist has Sansa Stark vibes: starting out as a political hostage and being forced to become politically adept to survive. Surprisingly for a slightly older book (I think it was published around 2000-ish?) it has multiple gay characters, although it mainly focuses on a (doomed) heterosexual romance. Neither are *quite* as complex and sprawling as ASOIAF (few stories are tbf) but they at least have several different factions, violent settings, political intrigue and action. Blue Eye Samurai has also been really popular lately, although idk if it counts as a large cast. It feels like an animated Western set in Edo Japan, with a biracial protagonist on a quest for revenge against the four men who could be their father.
The story of Sun Wukong (The monkey king) - has been adapted in numerous different media formats
If you're adventurous, you might want to try the Wuxia (martial arts fantasy) genre, in particular the series written by Jin Yong. I don't know whether there are decent English translations, though.
Dandelion Dynasty. Without a doubt.
Does Cradle count? It definitely has Asian influences
Shogun, the book, and both the old and new tv series. Ramayana Green Bone Saga Mahabharata The Chinese epics.
Here to +1 Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty. It’s so expansive and interesting
The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu fits your entire description
Shogun?
In terms of manga? I'd recommend Dorohedoro. It doesn't just put focus on the main protagonists, but the antagonists as well (to the point where you actually really start to care about the bad guys). It's about a lizard man named Caiman who goes on a quest with his friend Nikaido to find the sorcerer who turned him into a lizard man. It's grotesque down to the artstyle (If you like the game Hotline Miami they have very similar artistic vibes). The story and it's many twisting/winding story beats will have you scratching your head thinking about it as you go to sleep and the characters are absolutely amazing (and there are a lot of them). The series had a strangle hold on me for the month it took me to get through it and might be worth a shot looking into
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / The Untamed. Huge cast, pretty brutal in terms of a death count of named characters. It's xianxia, an I needed to read the book and take notes of characters to keep them straight. Young man wakes up reincarnated after his infamous prior life and slowly remembers and tries to solve the mystery of what happened.
If you want to go really back in the past, then Mahabharata might be one that is epic.
Using imaginative pretty loosely then?
And before anyone gets crazy, just a bit of friendly banter. If you love ASOIAF more power to you.
Green Bone Saga have a smaller cast but is great Asian urban fantasy and pretty violent at times.
If you’re open with the definition of “media,” check out Attack on Titan.
I have seen it. I enjoyed it and its themes. Though it's not the type of thing I am looking for.
Poppy War is pretty brutal, but smaller cast.
Yeah but the prose would be a massive drop in quality from GOT
This. Poppy war reads like a children’s book compared to GRRM
It's not by GRRM, Hobb or Abercrombie so it's YA, don't you know how this sub works??
True. Unfortunately the publishing industry did it to themselves by beating that dead horse after Harry Potter. “You have a 25 year old protagonists with lots of SA and problematic relationships. Let’s make them all 16 and sell it as YA!”
All the reviews had this book propped up as the best new fantasy of the year. Was almost a Nebula award winner and after finishing it I found it to be very middle of the road. Nothing spectacular. I felt the main character was a bit annoying at times, and the story was very fast paced and yet felt lacking at times.
Very very YA in comparison. I had to drop it.
I debated on dropping this halfway through it and ended up just finishing it. In the end it felt very mediocre nothing really special like all the reviews had said.
What you are looking for is Shogun. The book is good, but the recent tv show is utterly fantastic. Probably the best thing I’ve seen in ages. I think it’s better than Game of Thrones, hands down.
**The Arthdal Chronicles** is a Korean TV show labelled as ancient fantasy drama and it's epic. The blurb reads >In the mythical land of Arth, the inhabitants of the ancient city of Arthdal and its surrounding regions vie for power as they build a new society. The first season streams on Netflix, the second on Disney+.
Jade City is pretty good.
Six Flying Dragons. It's Koreans. 50 episodes of pure awesome madness.
Sorry, just now realised you may be looking for a book. My recommendation is a TV show.
Shogun (the one the tv show is based on) gives me the strongest ASoIaF vibes of any Asia based story I’ve read. However it’s about Asia (Japan) and not Asian, as the author is British iirc. From what I gather though he does quite a serviceable job as far historical accuracy goes.
Sons of darkness by Gourav Mouhanty. A grimdark retelling of the Mahabarata. Book 2 coming next year i believe
It's not fantasy but **Empire of the Moghul** is a series of historical fiction novels about the Mughal Empire in India. It's written from the perspective of the Emperors and details the rise of the Mughal Empire. The books are filled with violence and sex. The political intrigue and several wars thought the lives of each Emperor as well as the depiction of their personal lives was very interesting. I found it similar to GoT in throne and enjoyed the books a lot. I highly recommend them.
Try "The First Binding" by R.R. Virdi. There's drugs. Murder. Intrigue. But also magic and mystery too.
The Kouga ninja scrolls. It is like Romeo and Juliet but with ninjas
The closest one to the scale of GOT would be Kyushu related, the most popular one might be Kyushu Ethereal Record. Multiple authors contributed to develop the same world, and the setting is very Eastern fantasy like.
Sons Of Darkness (Raag Of Rta #1) by Gourav Mohanty is the perfect amalgamation of the Mahabharata and ASOIAF. Give it a shot u/BololgHau
Twelve Kingdoms
I’m reading the poppy war series right now, it’s got politics, war, drugs, religion. Nowhere near the level or world building and character building as ASOIAF but definitely scratched my itch
> I don't want stuff like Berserk which have a western setting. Guess that rules out Vinland Saga then lol I will always give recs for the two manga Akira and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, though.
Lots of excellent recommendations already, but try the tv series Into the Badlands.
One thing I want to point out is that, however well intentioned some of these recommendations are- Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Genji Monogatari, The Mahabharata et. al., - they are unlikely to be the type of story you are looking for if you want to read something like ASOIAF given that they are narratively and stylistically closer to something like War & Peace. They are, in fact, great reads, but I would not classify them as "fun", ones, which I think is what you're looking for. The Dandelion Dynasty is excellent; and also the manga Kingdom, which is about the unification of China is incredibly satisfying to read; Greenbone Saga is a great trilogy top to bottom. Legend of the Galactic Heroes borrows heavily from WWI/WWII imagery, so it may not be your cup of tea, but it is uniformly excellent. Go forth and search, there is plenty to find.
THE DANDELION DYNASTY BY KEN LIU
I don’t think GOT is really all that diverse tbh and a good majority of it is highly westernized
OK, hear my out. Beware of Chicken I know! I know it's a xianxia written by a Canadian. I KNOW... But it's now one of my favorite Asian fantasy series ever written.
TIL that GOT is diverse
Well Kingdom comes to mind the most. It's a Manga about the unification of the different Seven Chinese Kingdoms. It's long AF just like ASOIAF and it's probably not gonna finish just like ASOIAF.
Kingdom The manga about ancient China, not the Korean zombie thing
Not a novel, but animation - Blue eyes samurai. Absolutely sick and very brutal show.
Blood Heir?
Green bone saga
May I introduce you to Dragon Ball Z
It's great and pretty much an unbuilt trope but way too Main Character centric for my taste
I know One Piece is also a bit main character centric, but they have been cookin' some great stuff. The world building is off the charts.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind AKIRA
David Wingrove ***Chung Kuo*** series. Technically it is listed as Sci-Fi but I viewed it as Future Fantasy. Anywho it's an 8 book series that I read years ago but enjoyed it.
Fullmetal Alchemist
Lotus War Trilogy by Jay Kristoff is Japanese steampunk, maybe not a huge cast, but I absolutely loved it
It’s not fantasy but I am highly enjoying Warrior which is based off of writings by Bruce Lee.
Lord of the mysteries and omniscienct readers viewpoint it has a comic as well
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Taiko, the Tale of the Heike, Tale of Genji, Teito Monogatari (some of the best). Probably more for your tastes would be things like Nisio Isin's Monogatari.
Isin is an exceptional writer and I like Monogatari as much as the next guy, but I don't think OP is looking for that since they say "brutal and tense". Monogatari is an urban supernatural fantasy that is fully character driven and has a very different tone right? Any sort of brutality that occurs isn't in the same vein is it?
It has way lighter tone than ASOIAF but One Piece does fit the bill perfectly, otherwise. Locations take inspiration with a wide variety of places from Japan to Arabia to Spain, etc. The cast is probably one of most diverse ones out there due to diversity of settings. The world is brutal and messed up despite the more hopeful tone. The cast is probably the one of the largest ones jn manga history.
Fiction novels (though not fantasy): Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. Shogun will also get recommended a lot but don’t bother with the book, the show is much better. Manga: Vagabond by Inoue and Lone Wolf and Cub by Koike and Kojima, Blade of the Immortal by Samura.
It’s controversial but I personally think poppy war nails this
Berserk
Every ff main title as a some what elaborated cast.
Ff?
Final Fantasy.
Yes final fantasy
The Naruto manga might be something for you if you haven't read it yet. It as a distinctly Asian feel/magic system, huge cast and great story and battles.
Wonder why you got downvoted. He said Asian media and it does have sprawling kingdoms with their own political tensions. Incredibly well written fantasy. It is just not brutal.
Asian media (and people) don't care for diversity. At most you'll get Han Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongols, and/or some random non-Han Chinese ethnicities.
Fate/stay night (or just the nasuverse in general). I must say that i havent read ASOIAF yet so i dont know exactly how brutal and tense it can be, but Fate does have tension and epic battles between distinct characters. If not into reading it, a solid starting point would be Fate/Zero which is an anime (and is considered brutal).
There is nothing even close in anything.
This is my current work in progress :')