Book Recommendations

[The Dark One]

Reply to this thread with your book recommendations!

[The Creator]

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher!
(First Book “Storm Front”)
1000% recommended these in AUDIO format. They are narrated by James Marsters (he was Spike on Buffy) and he is BY FAR the greatest narrator I have ever heard.

[The Lace of Ages]

Oooh boy.

Anything by Brandon Sanderson, but particularly his Stormlight Archive series (first book Way of Kings). He's got a lot of stuff and it tends to connect together, and almost all of it is worth it!

The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin (first book The Fifth Season). I haven't read anything else from her yet, but this series was heavy and excellent.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Not fantasy, it's historical fiction about building a cathedral and quite awesome.

Django Wexler The Shadow Campaigns series (first book The Thousand Names). Lovely, interesting characters and essentially Napoleonic era fantasy? It's a lot of fun.

Patrick Weekes The Rogues of the Republic series (first book The Palace Job). Recommended audio format because they're relatively short and excellently narrated. Basically Dungeons and Dragons meets Oceans 11.

Fonda Lee's Jade City (which is the first book of an in progress series!) Gangster fantasy with martial arts and some very interesting characters.

I'll leave it there for now, but I have plenty more!

[The Dark One]

My first recommendation is Repent Harlequin said the Ticktockman, a short story by Harlan Ellison. Say what you will about the cantankerous combative author, I love his work. This story in particular grabbed me and made me think. It is from 1965 and only 11 pages, so here is a link to the free pdf: Link

The Amber Chronicles were recommended to me in High school and I am so glad I picked them up. A family all plotting against each other to rule the land is a storyline I think we can all get behind. The main character has amnesia from an accident that he begins to suspect wasn’t an accident so you get to go through that mystery with him, which introduces the world, and then if you are like me, you just fall right into it and devour each book in the series.

The Coldfire Trilogy has been a long time favorite of mine. I am not sure how well it holds up since I haven’t read it in about ten years, but I remember not being able to put it down. It is Scifi, taking place in the future on another planet…but there are fantasy elements as well. The planet kind of has its own magical energy and things are greatly influenced by belief and sacrifice. For example, the original humans on the planet had to destroy their ship sacrificing their only way off the planet as well as a lot of history of Earth, before the planet would accept them. Creatures came into being that fed on their emotions and in the present time of the books, there is a sort of symbiotic relationship with most of these creatures and humans that plays on religion in a way I like. Guns won’t work because of the widespread fear of them, and will backfire on anyone trying to fire one that has any worry of that happening. It is a really interesting concept.

The Emily of New Moon trilogy is my comfort food in book form. By the same author as Anne of Green Gables, it is just as enchanting if not more so than it’s more famous counterpart. I related to Emily in ways I could not relate to Anne. Emily is flawed, beautifully so, and I have never seen more of myself in a character than in her. She is smart, and creative, with a good heart, but she is proud and unable to hide her true feelings. I really connected with her and can’t imagine anyone not.

Speaks the Nightbird and its sequel are great historical fiction pieces about the witch-hunt epidemic in puritan times. I have always been a sucker for that time period so those two books captivated me easily. This story takes place a few years after the Salem Witch trials and I cannot state strongly enough how perfectly Robert McCammon captures the irrational fear of these events. From the people living in abject terror, to those seeking to profit from the trial… it’s perfect. The issues of sexism, racism, and intolerance abound in this novel, and are handled with a deft hand. Love it! Earlier this month I saw it might be adapted for TV soon, so read it before it before you watch it!

The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the books that follow it are the only books about Sherlock Holmes not written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that I have enjoyed so far. A half American female sidekick made it almost too easy to put myself in the stories.

Philip K Dick is an amazing Scifi author, but his books can be total mindfucks so just prepare yourself. Movies based off of his books include: Minority Report, Blade Runner, and Total Recall. When I watched A Scanner Darkly, another movie based off one of his books - I was extremely glad I had read the book first. The animation they did in that movie is awe-inspiring, but the plot was something only someone on psychedelics could have concocted and I would have been completely lost if I didn't already know what was going on. 

The Man Who Was Thursday is sort of along the same lines since it is a a metaphysical thriller, or as I would say, a mindfuck. It is full of witty wordplay and clever aphorisms with a very dreamlike quality. In fact, the final chapter goes completely off the rails as far as any kind of normal storytelling logic is concerned. The book is subtitled “A Nightmare,” and G. K. Chesterton did a damn fine job, but it isn't something I can really explain, you just kind of have to read it. It is about the main character, a Scotland Yard detective, going undercover in an anarchist group (something that was a serious issue in 1908), but that isn't what it is about at all. On the surface, it is a detective story filled with poetry and politics, with deep biblical influences. Dig a little deeper and you will find that this is not a cop story. It’s a story of the world, and a story of the meaning of the world. Let's just say that there are some choice ironic twists in this story and the mystery only deepens as you read. I will leave you with this quote from the author, There is another class of people dedicated to a more deceitful destruction of society. They, too, think they can live outside the rules. They are the very rich. “The poor object to being governed badly. The rich object to being governed at all.”

My all-time favorite book has always been Watership Down and you are never too old to enjoy it. It was the first chapter book I read and until Sy was born, I used to re-read it every year. Richard Adams has other great books too, but this one is his best and most well-known. I am sure you have all heard of it, but might not have read it…so if you haven’t, you should, it’s worth picking up at any age.

Not so much for this group, since these books are a little too young, but anyone who has a sister or niece looking for young adult fantasies with a strong female protagonist should check out Vivian Vande Velde. Her stories usually have the same troupe. A young female goes on an adventure, falls for a dangerous rebel boy, and then when he offers to let her stay with him at the end, she always chooses to go her own way and do her own thing instead. I believe the only exception to this was that one where the boy wasn’t a rebel, and in the end he went with her, not the other way around. Loved these books as a teen…wish I had listened to their message a little better though.