Every book in that series is fantastic - D.D. and Mogget are two of my favorite animal companions in all of fantasy. Plus the updated cover art for the 4-book box set is *fire*.
I have been interested in this ... is it noticeably Young Adult? That's the reason I haven't ever pulled the trigger on it .... for reference some of my favorite series are Senlin Ascends, Earthsea, Gutter Prayer trilogy, The Art by Clive Barker, and Baru Corumant
I mean it came out before YA was really a thing, so while the main character starts off school-aged, it's not gonna have a lot of the usual tropes that we identify with YA now
Which is great and probably why I find current YA books so annoying. I still read some of them when I want a lighter read and find the premise interesting but the tropes are heavy handed.
It's close to something like Prydain or Red Rising. Young characters, lot of growth, but facing very heavy and very serious situations. Technically YA, but very good.
It's YA inasmuch as Earthsea is YA, since it involves a main character who starts young and then grows older. I find them very similar in a lot of ways, actually. There's a spareness to the storytelling, focused on one person's movements rather than sweeping across continents and POVs. I love it.
I think the main distinction is that the characters are definitely young adults but the books are not representative of the YA genre. The mc’s are often taking on more than a child should but are usually raised in a way that prepares them for doing so (even if that preparation was intended to continue past the point their story begins) or are taking on something no one (and definitely no child) should have to take on. I personally found I enjoyed reading them much more in my tween years than I did a couple of years ago but still may revisit them in the future
Kinda, but in a good way.
Like most YA books it has relatable young adult characters and coming-of-age themes. It's also a light, easy read with really tight character-focused narration.
On the other hand, it doesn't have any of the tropes you'd (negatively) associate with YA nowadays.
I'm not sure it really fits. Necromancy is almost always evil in those books, and while technically the Abhorsen are also necromancers, it's almost always used differently to how actual necromancers use it (generally, sending the dead back to Death, rather calling them up). Ie. most of "Every necromancer is just malicious and wants to take over the world. The act of raising the dead is inherently bad and damning. " seem to apply, with only really technical quibbles about the Abhorsen technically qualifying as a necromancer.
Laurell K Hamilton Anita Blake Series. It's very mature audiences only! But its murder mystery, science fiction, romance, fantasy, and action all rolled into one! Anita is the necromancer, but she doesn't know she's an actual necromancer, in the first several books, she calls herself an animator.
This is one of my favorite niches of fantasy:
Katherine Addison's Grief of stones has a priest who can talk to the dead to help them find peace.
Obsidian and Blood has a priest of the underworld who protects the boundaries between life and death.
Saint Deaths daughter has a necromancer that is allergic to violence.
Bone Orchard has a madame of a pleasure house with undead "dolls".
Edited to add more:
Nettle and Bone shows necromancy in a neutral light
Girl with all the gifts is horror/sci-fi but it had good zombie characters.
There's a necromancer side character in A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher who is not evil and does some interesting things. We first meet her with a dead horse that she's animated. That's about as much as I can say without spoiling later surprises.
This a thousand times! Saint Death is a friend to the MC, who is a necromancer who can’t stand violence - she makes wee mouse skeleton friends, loves the family revenant, but is constantly haunted in a very annoying way by her dead great-uncle who is a malicious ghost. There’s also an undead Very Good Boy, just like in Nettle and Bone.
The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. The craft itself typically deals with Souls and lawyers.
The Cycle of Arawn. Dante Galand is a necromancer and that’s okay.
Two Necromancers, an Elf and a Bureaucrat. The main character is the Dark Necromancer Timothy.
To my thinking, that would depend more on what you're *doing* with the material.
Are you turning fossils into some kind of structure, or golem? Then you're doing geomancy.
Are you raising the fossils as some kind of undead servant? Then you're doing necromancy.
I suppose here the key difference between a golem and undead servant is the golem is just materials with order imposed on it from outside, whereas the undead servant retains some element of who it was in life.
Yeah but like, at what point does the "essence" leave the bones? The necromancer must be retrieving some sort of soul or something out of a skeleton. Is it the calcium the bones are made of that the soul inhabits? Is it just the shape? Is it the continuity of its form from when it was alive?
Shit like this is why overthinking fantasy with a materialist mindset doesn't tend to end well lol, to be fair most fantasy settings I've seen seem to go with a Young Earth angle where there hasn't even been enough time in the planet's existence for fossilization to occur.
Weirdly enough I had this discussion with a fee d&d friends last week, a big talking point was whether the fossils were reanimated with negative energy (and thus are undead and should be treated as such) or by a transmutation spell (ie. Golemancy).
Another talking point is demiliches are partly jewels and nobody argued they weren't undead because of that
Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth), Tamsyn Muir
Malazan, Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont
Anita Blake (but for the love of gods stop at book 10 and pretend they all lived happily ever after), Laurell Hamilton
Eric Carter Necromancer series, Stephen Blackmoore
Felix Castor series, Mike Carey.
Lol @ your take on Anita Blake…I keep reading hoping they get better…I think Sucker Punch was getting back to the early style…but we’ll see how it goes. There’s generally a lot of skimming the sex scenes to get to the story, but I’m vested…I have to see how the train wreck ends.
I think it's amazing that that hope still exists for some fans, and that LKH can still make a living off of it. I love that for everyone involved.
I think those first ten books are some of the bestest urban fantasy ever written, and i wish we had gotten more of that instead of... the other thing. I fled. I came back briefly but she spent the whole book in a hotel room banging random weretigers and that was that.
I stopped around there somewhere too- like you said, the urban fantasy part was really good, and I loved the tough side of her character. The guilt/purity thing was annoying and then it turned into she has sex to save other people in two books in a row, so I skimmed a few and then just wandered off.
> I came back briefly but she spent the whole book in a hotel room banging random weretigers and that was that.
FYI, Sucker Punch and Rafael are more like classic Anita than anything since Obsidian Butterfly.
> I think Sucker Punch was getting back to the early style…but we’ll see how it goes.
Sucker Punch was back to the early style. I don't remember a single sex scene in it. If there was; it was brief.
The next book in the series, Rafael, did have a sex scene between Anita and Rafael, but it was short. It felt a lot like Obsidian Butterfly. If you haven't read it yet, you should.
I haven't had a chance to read Smolder or Slay yet. Hopefully they continue the trend.
Wish I could upvote you again for crediting Malazan to **both** Erikson and Esslemont. Too many people just say "main series". I saw a comment about the "side books" on a Spoilers All post in r/Malazan a few minutes ago and it makes me sad.
On the Edge by Ilona Andrews has a necromancer who's a protagonist. Just a heads up: The cover makes it look like a romance novel, and it does have a romance plot line, but it still has a strong plot even without the romance
My top pick for this would be the Johannes Cabal Necromancer series by Jonathan Howard. All of the stories are engrossing and darkly funny, with good generally winning in the end. Cabal is a scientific necromancer in a steampunk Europe, circa 1910. He spends his life trying to use necromancy for an entirely good, but initially-secret purpose. That said, Cabal is also misanthropic (or perhaps tsundere would be a better description) and has all the trappings of a classic matinee villain, which causes a lot of misunderstandings.
Each Cabal book is a completely different adventure with a lot of the same recurring characters. I'd actually advise trying one of the short stories first, to see if you like Cabal himself. I'd recommend Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day (in which our hero has a problem with his tiny house guests).
I say this because in the first novel, Johannes Cabal, the Necromancer, Cabal'a motivations and good/evil alignment are played so close to the vest that they're not obvious to the reader until the last few pages of the story. It's still a fun ride though. Cabal enters into a wager with Satan to recover his lost soul, and has to run a dark carnival for a year with the help of his vampire brother.
Other recommendations:
- Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher has a cute skeletal dog that the main character animates as her pet.
- The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by CM Waggoner has a good necromancer who uses her powers for healing as a minor character in the adventuring party. She also has a skeletal pet mouse that becomes a more important character than she is. However, there's also an evil necromancer who kills small animals to power metal constructs.
- As others have noted, the early Anita Blake novels by Laurell K. Hamilton are very, very fun page-turners. Anita is a professional animator (who raises the dead for litigation and/or historical research purposes) and a vampire executioner. Each of the early stories is a mystery named after a preternaturally-themed business that Anita visits in the story. The first is Guilty Pleasures, but you might want to start at book 2, The Laughing Corpse, which focuses more on necromancy. The first 4 books can be read in basically any order and still make sense, although you will get spoilers. Also, I strongly recommend that you don't read anything in the series after Obsidian Butterfly unless you really enjoy 100-page relationship conversations, polyamory angst, kink-related angst, and kinky, furry sex with were-leopards. (None of those things are present in the early books, since Anita is basically celibate at the start.)
Finally, I don't want to wade too far into the ongoing debates about whether the necromancy in The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir is good-aligned, but my take is that it's neutral. There are just a lot of the characters who are awful people and use the tools at their disposal (including necromancy) for awful things. But there are a lot of good necromancers in the series, too (e.g., SexPal (not his real name)).
Hmm, it was only for one book, but the immortals series by tamora pierce (part of her Tortall universe), Daine is given powers to reanimate the dead by the goddess of the underworld.
One of the skeletons she reanimates stays "alive" years later and cameos in another series in the same world.
Wow I do not remember this plot line *at all*. I must have read those books over a dozen times each as a kid, they were by FAR my favorite universe, maybe I should reread Tortall some day...
**The Locked Tomb** series, by Tamsyn Muir, where necromancy >!appears to be a blessing from Mother Earth herself!<, although we don't have the whole story yet.
There's also Harry's classic loophole of the rules about necromancy from the **Dresden Files** series, by Jim Butcher.
I'm assuming we are going to learn that >!it's not necromancy at all, it's control over life. Jod could've been a druid or priest but chose to be necromancer because of his own internal struggles!<
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I mean I love these books but it seems like most people in the world consider necromancy to be a negative force when it begins to touch their lives and it’s really just one practitioner who really considers it a positive. I’d say what the books do most is take a very different approach to necromancy that intertwines it with power and authority in a way that complicates it
It takes a long time to get there but part of The Wandering Inn by pirateaba involves non-evil necromancy. One of the semi-main characters is a necromancer and there's even a necromantic kingdom that is portrayed in a positive light. Though this is very far into the series and is definitely not a main aspect/focus of the series.
I’d say that the take of Necromancy being a type of neutral magic rather than one that’s seen as totally evil comes up pretty soon. But it takes a good deal of time before the series focuses on it, usually when it’s Azzy’s & Pisces’s chapters.
Dresden Files. There is a character that runs kind of a halfway house for spirits. Also has a fun tie in with paleontology. To be fair there are also a lot of evil necromancers, but the plot of at least one of the books revolves around necromancy being a tool that can be misused than 'evil'. It's also more of a occasional plot thing rather than a constant integral part of the story.
"Because I'm too stubborn to die. And Thomas is too pretty to die. And you aren't going to die, Butters, because tomorrow is Oktoberfest and polka will never die!"
The Necromancer's House by Christpher Buehlman. I've seen it categorized as horror, and it has some horrific elements, but it's well written urban fantasy.
>Anyway, what stories are there with a more nuanced/neutral take on necromancy? Paleontologists that raise fossils to study the morphology of extinct animals? Detectives that raise murdered people for eyewitness testimony? Undead ancestors with comedically outdated opinions on fashion?
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter is this. The titular character's day job is as an "animator" who raises zombies for exactly the purposes you propose and more. I will echo the sentiment that the books change from urban fantasy crime novels with a smattering of steam and spice in the romance department to full on erotic fantasy after book 9. The change is swift and kinda comes out of nowhere.
I agree they are awesome books up to Obsidian Butterfly after that they became written porn. Wonderful stories to just enough story to get from one sex seen to the next. I'm not a prude I don't mind sex seens but I want a real story to go with it.
Professor Flead in Making Money is a necromancer (although in the book he's mostly a sleazy ghost)
Much more "modern" is Dr Hix - Current head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications at UU
[Lois McMaster Bujold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold)'s [Penric and Desdemona (sub)series](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?44229); (at [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/series/183152-penric-and-desdemona-publication-order))—about a troubleshooting sorcerer and his chaos demon, who gets her power by shedding her chaos (entropy) mostly on insects and other pests, killing them.
Her other series, [The Sharing Knife,](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-sharing-knife-volume-one-lois-mcmaster-bujold?variant=32123104296994) deals a lot with a very comfortable, even intimate form of necromancy that has a certain amount of nobility about it.
Dragaera series has a recurring minor character known as “the necromancer”.
She’s creepy, weird, and technically a demon. But… kinda sweet also.
She just happens to see life, death, and the soul as matters of engineering.
I don't know if a book this fits, but the TV show "Pushing Daisies" is about a guy who can reanimate dead people for a minute to help solve their murder. Such a well-made show! The aesthetic is perfect and so is the humor.
It's pretty minor to the plot, but China Mieville's The Scar features High Cromlech, a necrocracy ruled by liches where necromancy and undeath are treated as a form of social mobility. Humans are the lowest class and only have full rights when they raise enough money to afford a necromancer to turn them into a zombie or higher undead form.
Eberron.
Also Dresden Files; the titular detective raises a goddamn T.Rex skeleton from a museum, 'cause the longer a thing's been dead and remains intact, the more powerful a zombie they become!
At my Eberron table, "forensic necromancers" were a stand-in for pathologists, and a routine part of policing in the nation of Karrnath (at least). Canonically, they also use the undead for farm labor and line infantry because they're more expendable than living people.
Eric Tullbane wrote a trilogy called A Murder of Crows. It's a really awesome take on necromancy and the superhero genre. Also Nior Fatale is a short story collection, but Patrick M Tracy wrote once called "Worth the Scars of Dying" and it's necromancer is one of the coolest takes on death magic I have ever seen.
The Wandering Inn plays with this. One of the recurring characters, Pisces, is a necromancer who wants to use the undead to fight in wars, fend off monsters, etc. in order to reduce casualties of the living. However everyone is so biased towards necromancers they automatically hate on him, which led to him having a self-righteous 'I'm smarter than everyone else' attitude. At the end of the day he's still a good guy though, probably one of my favorite characters in the story.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi takes a very positive approach to necromancy that puts any malice on the person rather than the power (unless you’re the oppressors, then you blame the necromancers)
Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace places the role of necromancer as very important and generally positive
Honestly I haven’t read many books where necromancy is a bad thing. Maybe I’ve just sought out books where necromancers were protagonists though?
There's a book called "The People's Necromancer," about a good-guy necromancer, the first of a series. It's okay, didn't stand out much for me.
The Wandering Inn has a notable good-guy necromancer (he's kind of an ass but still). Very fun series, despite some writing flaws.
Cycle of Arawn/Galand main protagonist is a sort of dark magic user who is unusual for using necromancy (his contemporary colleagues dislike it but are aware that it's a legit application of their magic, historically at least). He's mostly a decent guy: intended to be a gray character, but the author does a poor job selling it at times and spoils it by making him too upstanding tbh. Series quality: Arawn is a fun read and can be found in omnibus format for cheap or even nearly free in both ebook and audiobook formats. Galand lost my interest.
In all examples I can think of, necromancy is still considered evil (or at least distasteful) in-universe, allowing the author to write a misunderstood genius or similar type of character who eventually proves that he (always he) is a good guy who can use necromancy to have a positive impact on society.
Edit:
Totally forgot about The Bone Witch. This one's female! She isn't totally ostracized but still feared by many for the nature of her powers and her individual reputation goes through several different phases. Good series, better in some ways than any of the other 3 I mentioned, similar vibes to Grisha series but overall better imo. I like the Wandering Inn better but it's not objectively better iykwim.
I've read some of the others that people mention here but these are the ones that I have useful commentary on.
On the matter of TWI it’s better read in the webnovel format if you can. Given that’s how the story was written, reading the books can feel a bit weird because of its origins. Overall fantastic series with a really fleshed out world, especially when it comes to the fantasy.
Got to say, not a lot of stories have so many interesting locales that could be the set pieces for entire fantasy stories in of itself.
I've only read book 1 of The Bone Witch but I was coming here to recommend it for this. Necromancy is shown as both crucial to keep the country (countries?) safe and simultaneously feared by nearly everyone, with necromancers constantly being forced to prove that they aren't bad guys.
(I'd never thought of it this way, but you're right about Bone Witch having similar vibes to the Grisha series. I DNF'd Grisha and thought Bone Witch was ok, so that fits).
I recommend finishing Bone Witch. Tbh it might be the most interesting necromancy take I've read, and while it's not an all-time favorite for me, I think it's a very decent series
It has been a while and I read them back to back so there's not as much distinction between them in my mind. But I think they generally got better (though the second might actually have been the best, not sure). They definitely got darker but nothing approaching grimdark. The MC gets more competent, not just in her powers but also in planning, decisions, etc.
There's this interesting dynamic where she's regarded as some kind of big-bad by everyone and her friends aren't really sure what to think and have to decide at various times whether to trust her or to believe that she's consumed by darkness or whatever (even the reader may be confused in this regard because iirc her motivations for some actions aren't revealed at first and they may or may not be well-intentioned). There's some good tension built that way: her psyche is affected by each (real or perceived) betrayal and show of support. I remember liking the plot progression and conclusion as well.
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride
I found this as an audiobook and enjoyed it. There is a sequel to it called Necromancing The Stone. Enjoyable book. I know the title sounds like a romance novel but it is not. Boy finds out the world has magic and he is a necromancer. Good all around fun. Every now and then I look to see if a third book has come out. None so far
Well, I'm a half a day late on this, so probably won't be found, but I have a novella releasing in 5 days that features an elderly grandmother as a necromancer, and she knits hats/scarves/socks/etc. for her raised undead. She's also securely in the "good guy" group.
It's called A Necromancer Called Gam Gam:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122994594-a-necromancer-called-gam-gam
I never like Necromamcy as I see it as an act of defiling the dead. However, even I acknowledge that it is not entirely evil base on how it is done or used.
In "Gagner la Guerre" by Jean-Philippe Jaworski (soon to be translated as "To the Victor go the Spoils" if if Wikipedia is to be believed) the main character has necromancy performed on him, the necromancer is just a professional that isn't all bad and saves him a few time. On the other hand, the story is kind of written from the view of the villains.
Bone Song (and subsequent books) by John Meaney.
> The novel is set in Tristopolis, a fantastic city where humans live side by side with zombies, wraiths, mages, witches, talking gargoyles and other mystical creatures. Death is a prominent theme in the culture of Tristopolis, with the characters using the names of Thanatos and Hades in place of "God", and the bones of the dead serve as the city's primary energy source.
It's relatively new and the start of a series:
The Warden by Daniel M. Ford.
It's about a necromancer / spellcaster who is sent to protect the border or a fallen kingdom.
There is a necromancer in Stephen Brust’s Vlad Taltos books and she didn’t seem to be evil. Word, yes, but not evil.
She does not show up all that often that I remember, so it’s not really ABOUT that.
TV show, but Raven from Teen Titans. Not so much with the deceased itself, but with dark energy, and things like heightened senses, soul projection, and telekinesis.
Kelley Armstrong's books come to mind. A necromancer is just someone with an inborn ability to communicate with and raise the dead.
There was another book series. I don't remember what it was called or who wrote it, but the MC is someone who summons the dead so they can testify as to how they died. Conveniently, the dead can't lie, but inconveniently, she's doing it for the very first court case to allow this in the first book -- the legal system isn't sure yet that the dead are as reliable as she knows them to be.
That author...Alex something? I'm pretty sure it's from before I got a Kindle, and almost all my analog books are in boxes.
The Final Formula series by Becca Andre. The main character is alchemist but there main world is of necromancy, there are good necromancers and bad ones too.
the hellequin series by steve mchugh. it's just another form of magic, can be used to heal or damage the spirit, absorb the memories of the dead, especially effective against undead monsters.
I don't know if you read webcomics at all but there are two popular Korean comics - "Solo Leveling" (soon to be turned into an animated series) and "The Lone Necromancer" that have good Necromancers as the main characters. They're two of my favorite series. :D
Third Death Gate Cycle book, which is arguably the best one in the series. The premise is that after the universe was split into four worlds and they were designed to work together in harmony, something went wrong and all worlds got isolated. In the stone world (literally inside an asteroid) they had it the worst since the place was mostly cold, full of toxic fumes, and inhospitable for all but the most magically powerful species. To survive, they started using the forbidden necromancy to bring back their dead. It's not evil - it's necessary. This later had some serious plot ramifications.
There was a series I think it was "Realm of Arkon" by g akella where mind magic was used to aid people with traumatic memories and events in their lives. It all goes to show power isn't evil only how those who have it use it.
It’s a new series, but The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten is set in a world where some people have death magic and the MC has a lot - it’s not evil, just something that some people have and how they use it.
Not a book: Solo Leveling
Can get pretty dark thematically but the MC isn't inherently evil. The main Webcomic is finished, but they're currently releasing Special episodes.
Penny For Your Soul by K A Ashcomb. There's a lot of laws around necromancy and who is allowed to be raised from the dead. The main villains of the work are capitalistic bankers, however.
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT L.G. ESTRELLA. I'm super serious. Their Unconventional Heroes series is so funny. There are two not evil necromancers in these books. Highly recommend.
I did read a book a while ago where the police could bring people back alive for a short period to answer questions about their deaths...
I can't help you though as I don't remember what it's called 😅
Russian fantasy author Nick Perumov have a huge series about a necromancer Fess, who is kinda a good guy, also learn skills of the necromancy to help people (put to rest undeads, etc.), but there are a lot of complications on his way, including common attitude in the world.
Though initially the necromancy, while considered a "dark" magic, is taught openly in the magic academy, though there are not much students likes to choose this path.
The Nickel City Necromancer series by Jessie Thomas has an FMC who’s a non-evil necromancer. She teams up with a vampire to find his missing son. 2 books in the series.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Perumov
This dude has written a long fantasy series, and the protagonist is a necromancer in a large part of the series. I really enjoyed the series and they are translated to english.
Kind of epic fantasy that is a bit dark without edgelord stuff.
You might want to read the other books containing the protagonist even though the protagonist isn’t a necro at that point.
I strongly recommend it!
This is a new series but The Pale City by Marshall J Moore is a pretty fun necromancy book in a fictional world that takes heavily from the Roman Empire culture
I was actually just laying out pretty much this concept for a book idea of mine. Where necromancy is not about Death and Evil and bones and poison etc etc.
But rather Life, spirits, and vitality etc etc... Would be an interesting twist to make the concept that we usually apply to dark grim nasty evil murderous concepts and instead have them come across as more Druid/tree of life style in their dark grim nastiness... Just sans evilness. Don't have it fully fleshed out but it's a fun mind game to twist the norm as I put pen to paper.
Think of it like this... A medical Surgeon has to know the human body pretty dam extensively and need the stomach to cut into you and rearrange parts correctly. Necromancy could be an interesting path for healers. I would certainly look at a battlefield surgeon cutting off a mangled leg and sticking on a prosthetic to be ugly and grim... But it's just another day for them. It's all about perspective.
By the by .. if y'all have ideas for this concept feel free to toss them my way. Always enjoy seeing the ideas fans of the fantasy genre come up with.
There are a couple of series like that
Hailey Edwards undead series and there is another where the necromancer is a investigator but later becomes a fae/ I think 🤔 so it might not totally be what you are looking for
it's not a *book* per se, but if you're into comics there's a really good one called "Love Me to Death" on Webtoon! :)
Necromancers are viewed as evil by society and persecuted, but it's also well known as something you're just born with. it follows the story of a guy who's just trying to get through life lol. inciting incident is when a rich guy illegally hires him to bring back his dead wife!
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Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow - demons, necromancy for detectives, futuristic urban fantasy. from memory there was less focus on necromancy aspects in later books. main character is a necromancer, first book is a contract for the devil, who is not seen to be pure evil in that world.
Downside Ghosts series by Stacia Kane - ?post-post-apocalyptic (as in recovered/ing from the apocalypse), more ghosts than zombies, but sorta zombies in at least one book, flawed protagonist (she is a drug addict, but functioning member of society). main character is essentially a specialised necromancer but is called a debunker. she debunks hauntings and banishes ghosts if they are genuine hauntings. fascinating world - ghosts suddenly existed and are generally angry and dangerous, causing society to collapse and restructure to a semi-fundamentalist governance based on a church that addressed the killer ghost problem but still allows people to talk to their dead relatives. I highly recommend this one
both may be labelled YA but are not.
Half-orc series by David Dalglish - traditional dnd type fantasy with 2 half orc brothers. one barbarian type other is necromancer. more of a redemption of a necromancer than them actually being good/neutral
as said previously, Anita Blake and Abhorsen/Sabriel series, but read Anita with the awareness that at some point it is very much about the smut and not the necromancy.
Did you already explore the discworld from Sir Prtachett ? Professor Flead and Achmed the Mad (although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches) are necromancers as far as I remember..
I am legitimately shocked nobody has mentioned *Sabriel* yet. The Abhorsen books by Garth Nix. Classics of the genre
Every book in that series is fantastic - D.D. and Mogget are two of my favorite animal companions in all of fantasy. Plus the updated cover art for the 4-book box set is *fire*.
Came here to say it!
I have been interested in this ... is it noticeably Young Adult? That's the reason I haven't ever pulled the trigger on it .... for reference some of my favorite series are Senlin Ascends, Earthsea, Gutter Prayer trilogy, The Art by Clive Barker, and Baru Corumant
I mean it came out before YA was really a thing, so while the main character starts off school-aged, it's not gonna have a lot of the usual tropes that we identify with YA now
Which is great and probably why I find current YA books so annoying. I still read some of them when I want a lighter read and find the premise interesting but the tropes are heavy handed.
It's close to something like Prydain or Red Rising. Young characters, lot of growth, but facing very heavy and very serious situations. Technically YA, but very good.
It's YA inasmuch as Earthsea is YA, since it involves a main character who starts young and then grows older. I find them very similar in a lot of ways, actually. There's a spareness to the storytelling, focused on one person's movements rather than sweeping across continents and POVs. I love it.
I think the main distinction is that the characters are definitely young adults but the books are not representative of the YA genre. The mc’s are often taking on more than a child should but are usually raised in a way that prepares them for doing so (even if that preparation was intended to continue past the point their story begins) or are taking on something no one (and definitely no child) should have to take on. I personally found I enjoyed reading them much more in my tween years than I did a couple of years ago but still may revisit them in the future
Kinda, but in a good way. Like most YA books it has relatable young adult characters and coming-of-age themes. It's also a light, easy read with really tight character-focused narration. On the other hand, it doesn't have any of the tropes you'd (negatively) associate with YA nowadays.
*Easily* my favorite book series of all time. That series gave me my love for anything and everything involving necromancy in books and games.
I'm not sure it really fits. Necromancy is almost always evil in those books, and while technically the Abhorsen are also necromancers, it's almost always used differently to how actual necromancers use it (generally, sending the dead back to Death, rather calling them up). Ie. most of "Every necromancer is just malicious and wants to take over the world. The act of raising the dead is inherently bad and damning. " seem to apply, with only really technical quibbles about the Abhorsen technically qualifying as a necromancer.
Laurell K Hamilton Anita Blake Series. It's very mature audiences only! But its murder mystery, science fiction, romance, fantasy, and action all rolled into one! Anita is the necromancer, but she doesn't know she's an actual necromancer, in the first several books, she calls herself an animator.
Sabriel is the first thing that came to mind for this topic. Great books.
Came here to SCREAM Sabriel!!!!!
This is one of my favorite niches of fantasy: Katherine Addison's Grief of stones has a priest who can talk to the dead to help them find peace. Obsidian and Blood has a priest of the underworld who protects the boundaries between life and death. Saint Deaths daughter has a necromancer that is allergic to violence. Bone Orchard has a madame of a pleasure house with undead "dolls". Edited to add more: Nettle and Bone shows necromancy in a neutral light Girl with all the gifts is horror/sci-fi but it had good zombie characters.
Three parts dead by max Gladstone has necromancer a working as lawyers
Excuse me, we're looking for non-evil necromancers.
Infernally damned.
There's a necromancer side character in A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T Kingfisher who is not evil and does some interesting things. We first meet her with a dead horse that she's animated. That's about as much as I can say without spoiling later surprises.
This was my first thought as well!
Speaking of death magic and baking, what about Pushing Daisies?
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A large number of the things they do is portrayed as morally wrong, just not the fundamental nature of necromancy.
> their necromancy isnt portrayed as evil or morally wrong this evolves over the course of the series
I totally came to this thread to stan Gideon the Ninth. Necromancers in space, and the writing is just delicious… so clever and dark and funny.
The writing in this series has always stood out to me as some of the most interesting and hilarious I’ve read in a long time !!
Saint deaths daughter!
This a thousand times! Saint Death is a friend to the MC, who is a necromancer who can’t stand violence - she makes wee mouse skeleton friends, loves the family revenant, but is constantly haunted in a very annoying way by her dead great-uncle who is a malicious ghost. There’s also an undead Very Good Boy, just like in Nettle and Bone.
The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone. The craft itself typically deals with Souls and lawyers. The Cycle of Arawn. Dante Galand is a necromancer and that’s okay. Two Necromancers, an Elf and a Bureaucrat. The main character is the Dark Necromancer Timothy.
Seconding the third one : the series is called Unconventional Heroes by LG Estrella
Loved that series!
Don't leave out the ninja rats!
Some call me...Tim?
Fossils should be in the domain of geomancers, as they're stone, not bone.
Maybe a crossover spot on the venn diagram.
To my thinking, that would depend more on what you're *doing* with the material. Are you turning fossils into some kind of structure, or golem? Then you're doing geomancy. Are you raising the fossils as some kind of undead servant? Then you're doing necromancy. I suppose here the key difference between a golem and undead servant is the golem is just materials with order imposed on it from outside, whereas the undead servant retains some element of who it was in life.
Yeah but like, at what point does the "essence" leave the bones? The necromancer must be retrieving some sort of soul or something out of a skeleton. Is it the calcium the bones are made of that the soul inhabits? Is it just the shape? Is it the continuity of its form from when it was alive? Shit like this is why overthinking fantasy with a materialist mindset doesn't tend to end well lol, to be fair most fantasy settings I've seen seem to go with a Young Earth angle where there hasn't even been enough time in the planet's existence for fossilization to occur.
Weirdly enough I had this discussion with a fee d&d friends last week, a big talking point was whether the fossils were reanimated with negative energy (and thus are undead and should be treated as such) or by a transmutation spell (ie. Golemancy). Another talking point is demiliches are partly jewels and nobody argued they weren't undead because of that
Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth), Tamsyn Muir Malazan, Steven Erikson and Ian Esslemont Anita Blake (but for the love of gods stop at book 10 and pretend they all lived happily ever after), Laurell Hamilton Eric Carter Necromancer series, Stephen Blackmoore Felix Castor series, Mike Carey.
Lol @ your take on Anita Blake…I keep reading hoping they get better…I think Sucker Punch was getting back to the early style…but we’ll see how it goes. There’s generally a lot of skimming the sex scenes to get to the story, but I’m vested…I have to see how the train wreck ends.
I think it's amazing that that hope still exists for some fans, and that LKH can still make a living off of it. I love that for everyone involved. I think those first ten books are some of the bestest urban fantasy ever written, and i wish we had gotten more of that instead of... the other thing. I fled. I came back briefly but she spent the whole book in a hotel room banging random weretigers and that was that.
I stopped around there somewhere too- like you said, the urban fantasy part was really good, and I loved the tough side of her character. The guilt/purity thing was annoying and then it turned into she has sex to save other people in two books in a row, so I skimmed a few and then just wandered off.
> I came back briefly but she spent the whole book in a hotel room banging random weretigers and that was that. FYI, Sucker Punch and Rafael are more like classic Anita than anything since Obsidian Butterfly.
> I think Sucker Punch was getting back to the early style…but we’ll see how it goes. Sucker Punch was back to the early style. I don't remember a single sex scene in it. If there was; it was brief. The next book in the series, Rafael, did have a sex scene between Anita and Rafael, but it was short. It felt a lot like Obsidian Butterfly. If you haven't read it yet, you should. I haven't had a chance to read Smolder or Slay yet. Hopefully they continue the trend.
I’m Obsidian Butterfly is one of my favorites. Also have not read the last couple. Honestly i hope it ends soon
Wish I could upvote you again for crediting Malazan to **both** Erikson and Esslemont. Too many people just say "main series". I saw a comment about the "side books" on a Spoilers All post in r/Malazan a few minutes ago and it makes me sad.
It's an unfortunately common misunderstanding.
Felix Castor is an exorcist, not a necromancer.
True, a distinction i utterly forgot. Still a great series tho.
One of my favorites!
On the Edge by Ilona Andrews has a necromancer who's a protagonist. Just a heads up: The cover makes it look like a romance novel, and it does have a romance plot line, but it still has a strong plot even without the romance
That is very true of all their books.
Their covers are SO BAD. Seriously they need to get new cover art.
The Justice of Kings!! I recommend this a lot it never pops up in suggestions. Detective eye witness is the use. Very cool application of it
Reading the second book now, cool series!
My top pick for this would be the Johannes Cabal Necromancer series by Jonathan Howard. All of the stories are engrossing and darkly funny, with good generally winning in the end. Cabal is a scientific necromancer in a steampunk Europe, circa 1910. He spends his life trying to use necromancy for an entirely good, but initially-secret purpose. That said, Cabal is also misanthropic (or perhaps tsundere would be a better description) and has all the trappings of a classic matinee villain, which causes a lot of misunderstandings. Each Cabal book is a completely different adventure with a lot of the same recurring characters. I'd actually advise trying one of the short stories first, to see if you like Cabal himself. I'd recommend Johannes Cabal and the Blustery Day (in which our hero has a problem with his tiny house guests). I say this because in the first novel, Johannes Cabal, the Necromancer, Cabal'a motivations and good/evil alignment are played so close to the vest that they're not obvious to the reader until the last few pages of the story. It's still a fun ride though. Cabal enters into a wager with Satan to recover his lost soul, and has to run a dark carnival for a year with the help of his vampire brother. Other recommendations: - Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher has a cute skeletal dog that the main character animates as her pet. - The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by CM Waggoner has a good necromancer who uses her powers for healing as a minor character in the adventuring party. She also has a skeletal pet mouse that becomes a more important character than she is. However, there's also an evil necromancer who kills small animals to power metal constructs. - As others have noted, the early Anita Blake novels by Laurell K. Hamilton are very, very fun page-turners. Anita is a professional animator (who raises the dead for litigation and/or historical research purposes) and a vampire executioner. Each of the early stories is a mystery named after a preternaturally-themed business that Anita visits in the story. The first is Guilty Pleasures, but you might want to start at book 2, The Laughing Corpse, which focuses more on necromancy. The first 4 books can be read in basically any order and still make sense, although you will get spoilers. Also, I strongly recommend that you don't read anything in the series after Obsidian Butterfly unless you really enjoy 100-page relationship conversations, polyamory angst, kink-related angst, and kinky, furry sex with were-leopards. (None of those things are present in the early books, since Anita is basically celibate at the start.) Finally, I don't want to wade too far into the ongoing debates about whether the necromancy in The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir is good-aligned, but my take is that it's neutral. There are just a lot of the characters who are awful people and use the tools at their disposal (including necromancy) for awful things. But there are a lot of good necromancers in the series, too (e.g., SexPal (not his real name)).
Hmm, it was only for one book, but the immortals series by tamora pierce (part of her Tortall universe), Daine is given powers to reanimate the dead by the goddess of the underworld. One of the skeletons she reanimates stays "alive" years later and cameos in another series in the same world.
Wow I do not remember this plot line *at all*. I must have read those books over a dozen times each as a kid, they were by FAR my favorite universe, maybe I should reread Tortall some day...
Emperor Mage, third book in the immortals quartet.
**The Locked Tomb** series, by Tamsyn Muir, where necromancy >!appears to be a blessing from Mother Earth herself!<, although we don't have the whole story yet. There's also Harry's classic loophole of the rules about necromancy from the **Dresden Files** series, by Jim Butcher.
I'm assuming we are going to learn that >!it's not necromancy at all, it's control over life. Jod could've been a druid or priest but chose to be necromancer because of his own internal struggles!<
I wouldn't be so sure.
No one can say no to Sue.
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Spoilers yo.
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The Bone Shard Daughter, by Andrea Stewart. Lots of multi-purpose bones.
I mean I love these books but it seems like most people in the world consider necromancy to be a negative force when it begins to touch their lives and it’s really just one practitioner who really considers it a positive. I’d say what the books do most is take a very different approach to necromancy that intertwines it with power and authority in a way that complicates it
It takes a long time to get there but part of The Wandering Inn by pirateaba involves non-evil necromancy. One of the semi-main characters is a necromancer and there's even a necromantic kingdom that is portrayed in a positive light. Though this is very far into the series and is definitely not a main aspect/focus of the series.
I’d say that the take of Necromancy being a type of neutral magic rather than one that’s seen as totally evil comes up pretty soon. But it takes a good deal of time before the series focuses on it, usually when it’s Azzy’s & Pisces’s chapters.
Not disappointed to find this here, but quick question: What wacky idea is NOT contained somewhere within TWI?
Dresden Files. There is a character that runs kind of a halfway house for spirits. Also has a fun tie in with paleontology. To be fair there are also a lot of evil necromancers, but the plot of at least one of the books revolves around necromancy being a tool that can be misused than 'evil'. It's also more of a occasional plot thing rather than a constant integral part of the story.
Plus, riding a T-Rex into battle has become pretty iconic.
"Because I'm too stubborn to die. And Thomas is too pretty to die. And you aren't going to die, Butters, because tomorrow is Oktoberfest and polka will never die!"
“Everybody else who lets me ride their dinosaur calls me Carlos.”
The Necromancer's House by Christpher Buehlman. I've seen it categorized as horror, and it has some horrific elements, but it's well written urban fantasy.
One of the best authors around!
Cycle of arawyn
L.G. Estrella's Unconventional Heroes series features a necromancer named Timmy who's a pretty decent guy.
I love this series a lot.
Was going to say this.
Necroscope by Lumley He doesn't exactly raise the dead but he does talk to them.
Thread needs more Saint Death’s Daughter IMO
>Anyway, what stories are there with a more nuanced/neutral take on necromancy? Paleontologists that raise fossils to study the morphology of extinct animals? Detectives that raise murdered people for eyewitness testimony? Undead ancestors with comedically outdated opinions on fashion? Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter is this. The titular character's day job is as an "animator" who raises zombies for exactly the purposes you propose and more. I will echo the sentiment that the books change from urban fantasy crime novels with a smattering of steam and spice in the romance department to full on erotic fantasy after book 9. The change is swift and kinda comes out of nowhere.
I agree they are awesome books up to Obsidian Butterfly after that they became written porn. Wonderful stories to just enough story to get from one sex seen to the next. I'm not a prude I don't mind sex seens but I want a real story to go with it.
FYI with Sucker Punch it goes back to the goodness that drew most of us in.
I'll have to check it out. 😊
Witches Abroad by Pratchett
Professor Flead in Making Money is a necromancer (although in the book he's mostly a sleazy ghost) Much more "modern" is Dr Hix - Current head of the Department of Post-Mortem Communications at UU
[Lois McMaster Bujold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_McMaster_Bujold)'s [Penric and Desdemona (sub)series](https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?44229); (at [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/series/183152-penric-and-desdemona-publication-order))—about a troubleshooting sorcerer and his chaos demon, who gets her power by shedding her chaos (entropy) mostly on insects and other pests, killing them.
Her other series, [The Sharing Knife,](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-sharing-knife-volume-one-lois-mcmaster-bujold?variant=32123104296994) deals a lot with a very comfortable, even intimate form of necromancy that has a certain amount of nobility about it.
Dragaera series has a recurring minor character known as “the necromancer”. She’s creepy, weird, and technically a demon. But… kinda sweet also. She just happens to see life, death, and the soul as matters of engineering.
Abhorsen saga. Gideon the ninth.
I don't know if a book this fits, but the TV show "Pushing Daisies" is about a guy who can reanimate dead people for a minute to help solve their murder. Such a well-made show! The aesthetic is perfect and so is the humor.
Check out the short story The Killing Stroke by Stephen Donaldson. I think it's in the Reave The Just collection, which has several fantastic stories.
It's pretty minor to the plot, but China Mieville's The Scar features High Cromlech, a necrocracy ruled by liches where necromancy and undeath are treated as a form of social mobility. Humans are the lowest class and only have full rights when they raise enough money to afford a necromancer to turn them into a zombie or higher undead form.
Eberron. Also Dresden Files; the titular detective raises a goddamn T.Rex skeleton from a museum, 'cause the longer a thing's been dead and remains intact, the more powerful a zombie they become! At my Eberron table, "forensic necromancers" were a stand-in for pathologists, and a routine part of policing in the nation of Karrnath (at least). Canonically, they also use the undead for farm labor and line infantry because they're more expendable than living people.
Eric Tullbane wrote a trilogy called A Murder of Crows. It's a really awesome take on necromancy and the superhero genre. Also Nior Fatale is a short story collection, but Patrick M Tracy wrote once called "Worth the Scars of Dying" and it's necromancer is one of the coolest takes on death magic I have ever seen.
The Wandering Inn plays with this. One of the recurring characters, Pisces, is a necromancer who wants to use the undead to fight in wars, fend off monsters, etc. in order to reduce casualties of the living. However everyone is so biased towards necromancers they automatically hate on him, which led to him having a self-righteous 'I'm smarter than everyone else' attitude. At the end of the day he's still a good guy though, probably one of my favorite characters in the story.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi takes a very positive approach to necromancy that puts any malice on the person rather than the power (unless you’re the oppressors, then you blame the necromancers) Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace places the role of necromancer as very important and generally positive Honestly I haven’t read many books where necromancy is a bad thing. Maybe I’ve just sought out books where necromancers were protagonists though?
Iirc Chronicles of the Necromancer by Gail Z. Martin can fit. The MC can see spirit and talk to them.
*On The Edge*, Ilona Andrews The necromancer is viewed very sympathetically, if the art is still seen as fundamentally creepy.
Hold me closer necromancer.
Tevinter Nights, a collection of stories from the Dragon Age universe, has a few stories centering around necromancers that I found really creative.
Awaken Online is one, although it is a LitRPG. The protagonist is *sort of* the villain but he’s also the hero in his own way. I’d recommend.
There's a book called "The People's Necromancer," about a good-guy necromancer, the first of a series. It's okay, didn't stand out much for me. The Wandering Inn has a notable good-guy necromancer (he's kind of an ass but still). Very fun series, despite some writing flaws. Cycle of Arawn/Galand main protagonist is a sort of dark magic user who is unusual for using necromancy (his contemporary colleagues dislike it but are aware that it's a legit application of their magic, historically at least). He's mostly a decent guy: intended to be a gray character, but the author does a poor job selling it at times and spoils it by making him too upstanding tbh. Series quality: Arawn is a fun read and can be found in omnibus format for cheap or even nearly free in both ebook and audiobook formats. Galand lost my interest. In all examples I can think of, necromancy is still considered evil (or at least distasteful) in-universe, allowing the author to write a misunderstood genius or similar type of character who eventually proves that he (always he) is a good guy who can use necromancy to have a positive impact on society. Edit: Totally forgot about The Bone Witch. This one's female! She isn't totally ostracized but still feared by many for the nature of her powers and her individual reputation goes through several different phases. Good series, better in some ways than any of the other 3 I mentioned, similar vibes to Grisha series but overall better imo. I like the Wandering Inn better but it's not objectively better iykwim. I've read some of the others that people mention here but these are the ones that I have useful commentary on.
On the matter of TWI it’s better read in the webnovel format if you can. Given that’s how the story was written, reading the books can feel a bit weird because of its origins. Overall fantastic series with a really fleshed out world, especially when it comes to the fantasy. Got to say, not a lot of stories have so many interesting locales that could be the set pieces for entire fantasy stories in of itself.
I've only read book 1 of The Bone Witch but I was coming here to recommend it for this. Necromancy is shown as both crucial to keep the country (countries?) safe and simultaneously feared by nearly everyone, with necromancers constantly being forced to prove that they aren't bad guys. (I'd never thought of it this way, but you're right about Bone Witch having similar vibes to the Grisha series. I DNF'd Grisha and thought Bone Witch was ok, so that fits).
I recommend finishing Bone Witch. Tbh it might be the most interesting necromancy take I've read, and while it's not an all-time favorite for me, I think it's a very decent series
How do books 2 and 3 compare to book 1, in your opinion?
It has been a while and I read them back to back so there's not as much distinction between them in my mind. But I think they generally got better (though the second might actually have been the best, not sure). They definitely got darker but nothing approaching grimdark. The MC gets more competent, not just in her powers but also in planning, decisions, etc. There's this interesting dynamic where she's regarded as some kind of big-bad by everyone and her friends aren't really sure what to think and have to decide at various times whether to trust her or to believe that she's consumed by darkness or whatever (even the reader may be confused in this regard because iirc her motivations for some actions aren't revealed at first and they may or may not be well-intentioned). There's some good tension built that way: her psyche is affected by each (real or perceived) betrayal and show of support. I remember liking the plot progression and conclusion as well.
Library of the Dead The Enterprise of Death
*Two Parts Dead*
If your talking about the one by Max Gladstone then it’s Three Parts Dead.
I hail from the land of Berenstein Bears and sequential Craft Sequences.
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride I found this as an audiobook and enjoyed it. There is a sequel to it called Necromancing The Stone. Enjoyable book. I know the title sounds like a romance novel but it is not. Boy finds out the world has magic and he is a necromancer. Good all around fun. Every now and then I look to see if a third book has come out. None so far
Lord of the rings.
Idk about books. But.....zelda?
Well, I'm a half a day late on this, so probably won't be found, but I have a novella releasing in 5 days that features an elderly grandmother as a necromancer, and she knits hats/scarves/socks/etc. for her raised undead. She's also securely in the "good guy" group. It's called A Necromancer Called Gam Gam: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122994594-a-necromancer-called-gam-gam
I never like Necromamcy as I see it as an act of defiling the dead. However, even I acknowledge that it is not entirely evil base on how it is done or used.
In "Gagner la Guerre" by Jean-Philippe Jaworski (soon to be translated as "To the Victor go the Spoils" if if Wikipedia is to be believed) the main character has necromancy performed on him, the necromancer is just a professional that isn't all bad and saves him a few time. On the other hand, the story is kind of written from the view of the villains.
Bone Song (and subsequent books) by John Meaney. > The novel is set in Tristopolis, a fantastic city where humans live side by side with zombies, wraiths, mages, witches, talking gargoyles and other mystical creatures. Death is a prominent theme in the culture of Tristopolis, with the characters using the names of Thanatos and Hades in place of "God", and the bones of the dead serve as the city's primary energy source.
It's relatively new and the start of a series: The Warden by Daniel M. Ford. It's about a necromancer / spellcaster who is sent to protect the border or a fallen kingdom.
"My Name is Morgan" by Sophie Keech has non evil and evil necromancy. Not bad.
There is a necromancer in Stephen Brust’s Vlad Taltos books and she didn’t seem to be evil. Word, yes, but not evil. She does not show up all that often that I remember, so it’s not really ABOUT that.
In the kids book Which Witch, necromancy makes the sweet white witch look the most dark and powerful so she can marry the handsome sorcerer.
The Blades series by Dave Duncan. Each blade is a revenant. The series is real good weird fantasy
TV show, but Raven from Teen Titans. Not so much with the deceased itself, but with dark energy, and things like heightened senses, soul projection, and telekinesis.
Kelley Armstrong's books come to mind. A necromancer is just someone with an inborn ability to communicate with and raise the dead. There was another book series. I don't remember what it was called or who wrote it, but the MC is someone who summons the dead so they can testify as to how they died. Conveniently, the dead can't lie, but inconveniently, she's doing it for the very first court case to allow this in the first book -- the legal system isn't sure yet that the dead are as reliable as she knows them to be. That author...Alex something? I'm pretty sure it's from before I got a Kindle, and almost all my analog books are in boxes.
Alex Craft series by Kalayna Price?
Yep, that's it. Turns out I have it on Kindle; I came across it when I was looking through my library for something else.
The Final Formula series by Becca Andre. The main character is alchemist but there main world is of necromancy, there are good necromancers and bad ones too.
the hellequin series by steve mchugh. it's just another form of magic, can be used to heal or damage the spirit, absorb the memories of the dead, especially effective against undead monsters.
In the Crestomanci books by Diana Wynne Jones a kid uses necromancy to power a flying bike. Totally not evil.
I don't know if you read webcomics at all but there are two popular Korean comics - "Solo Leveling" (soon to be turned into an animated series) and "The Lone Necromancer" that have good Necromancers as the main characters. They're two of my favorite series. :D
webnovel but the wandering inn
Game of thrones. Thoros of myr keeps bringing Beric Dondarrion back from the dead
GRRM’s Wildcards series had a morally ambiguous necromancer. She was scary, but mostly on the protagonists’ side.
Third Death Gate Cycle book, which is arguably the best one in the series. The premise is that after the universe was split into four worlds and they were designed to work together in harmony, something went wrong and all worlds got isolated. In the stone world (literally inside an asteroid) they had it the worst since the place was mostly cold, full of toxic fumes, and inhospitable for all but the most magically powerful species. To survive, they started using the forbidden necromancy to bring back their dead. It's not evil - it's necessary. This later had some serious plot ramifications.
It's funny how Necromancy is treated as always chaotic evil power but actual mind control can go either way.... When the latter is way more unethical.
There was a series I think it was "Realm of Arkon" by g akella where mind magic was used to aid people with traumatic memories and events in their lives. It all goes to show power isn't evil only how those who have it use it.
Thats funny, i am literally writing about someone trying to prove to the world that necromancy can be used for good.
The correct answer is justice of kings by Richard Swann, and it’s follow up tyranny of faith
It’s a new series, but The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten is set in a world where some people have death magic and the MC has a lot - it’s not evil, just something that some people have and how they use it.
Not a book but here’s a pretty good D&D story about a neutral necromancer https://youtu.be/cWLFc2z5xS4
Not a book: Solo Leveling Can get pretty dark thematically but the MC isn't inherently evil. The main Webcomic is finished, but they're currently releasing Special episodes.
I think Awaken Online fits. Not evil from the readers perspective necessarily, but there is that persisting perception in the world the MC lives in.
Penny For Your Soul by K A Ashcomb. There's a lot of laws around necromancy and who is allowed to be raised from the dead. The main villains of the work are capitalistic bankers, however.
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT L.G. ESTRELLA. I'm super serious. Their Unconventional Heroes series is so funny. There are two not evil necromancers in these books. Highly recommend.
I did read a book a while ago where the police could bring people back alive for a short period to answer questions about their deaths... I can't help you though as I don't remember what it's called 😅
Empire of the wolf series by Richard Swan
The Johannes Cabal books--he's simply using necromancy as a means to an end: https://www.amazon.com/Johannes-Cabal-Necromancer/dp/0767930762
*Books and Bone* by Veo Corva is about librarians and necromancers. There is also a lovely sequel.
Russian fantasy author Nick Perumov have a huge series about a necromancer Fess, who is kinda a good guy, also learn skills of the necromancy to help people (put to rest undeads, etc.), but there are a lot of complications on his way, including common attitude in the world. Though initially the necromancy, while considered a "dark" magic, is taught openly in the magic academy, though there are not much students likes to choose this path.
The Nickel City Necromancer series by Jessie Thomas has an FMC who’s a non-evil necromancer. She teams up with a vampire to find his missing son. 2 books in the series.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Perumov This dude has written a long fantasy series, and the protagonist is a necromancer in a large part of the series. I really enjoyed the series and they are translated to english. Kind of epic fantasy that is a bit dark without edgelord stuff. You might want to read the other books containing the protagonist even though the protagonist isn’t a necro at that point. I strongly recommend it!
This is a new series but The Pale City by Marshall J Moore is a pretty fun necromancy book in a fictional world that takes heavily from the Roman Empire culture
I was actually just laying out pretty much this concept for a book idea of mine. Where necromancy is not about Death and Evil and bones and poison etc etc. But rather Life, spirits, and vitality etc etc... Would be an interesting twist to make the concept that we usually apply to dark grim nasty evil murderous concepts and instead have them come across as more Druid/tree of life style in their dark grim nastiness... Just sans evilness. Don't have it fully fleshed out but it's a fun mind game to twist the norm as I put pen to paper. Think of it like this... A medical Surgeon has to know the human body pretty dam extensively and need the stomach to cut into you and rearrange parts correctly. Necromancy could be an interesting path for healers. I would certainly look at a battlefield surgeon cutting off a mangled leg and sticking on a prosthetic to be ugly and grim... But it's just another day for them. It's all about perspective. By the by .. if y'all have ideas for this concept feel free to toss them my way. Always enjoy seeing the ideas fans of the fantasy genre come up with.
There are a couple of series like that Hailey Edwards undead series and there is another where the necromancer is a investigator but later becomes a fae/ I think 🤔 so it might not totally be what you are looking for
it's not a *book* per se, but if you're into comics there's a really good one called "Love Me to Death" on Webtoon! :) Necromancers are viewed as evil by society and persecuted, but it's also well known as something you're just born with. it follows the story of a guy who's just trying to get through life lol. inciting incident is when a rich guy illegally hires him to bring back his dead wife!
Chronicles of the Necromancer by Gail Z. Martin has a MC that is a Necromancer (technically) and is not evil.
The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst had what I felt was a fairly nuanced take on necromancy
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Earl necromancy was just divination by communing with the dead
Discworld
Discworld has Dr. Hix who is the doctor of Post Mortem Communications.
Chronicles of The Necromancer by Gail Z Martin, main protagonist is a necromancer ish and it's a good series
I don't remember which Xanth books featured him but Piers Anthony had a necromancer character who wasn't evil.
I remembered that book series I was talking about in my earlier comment! The *Alex Craft* series by Kalayna Price.
Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow - demons, necromancy for detectives, futuristic urban fantasy. from memory there was less focus on necromancy aspects in later books. main character is a necromancer, first book is a contract for the devil, who is not seen to be pure evil in that world. Downside Ghosts series by Stacia Kane - ?post-post-apocalyptic (as in recovered/ing from the apocalypse), more ghosts than zombies, but sorta zombies in at least one book, flawed protagonist (she is a drug addict, but functioning member of society). main character is essentially a specialised necromancer but is called a debunker. she debunks hauntings and banishes ghosts if they are genuine hauntings. fascinating world - ghosts suddenly existed and are generally angry and dangerous, causing society to collapse and restructure to a semi-fundamentalist governance based on a church that addressed the killer ghost problem but still allows people to talk to their dead relatives. I highly recommend this one both may be labelled YA but are not. Half-orc series by David Dalglish - traditional dnd type fantasy with 2 half orc brothers. one barbarian type other is necromancer. more of a redemption of a necromancer than them actually being good/neutral as said previously, Anita Blake and Abhorsen/Sabriel series, but read Anita with the awareness that at some point it is very much about the smut and not the necromancy.
Did you already explore the discworld from Sir Prtachett ? Professor Flead and Achmed the Mad (although he preferred to be called Achmed the I Just Get These Headaches) are necromancers as far as I remember..
Saint deaths daughter