69 books like Fade

This novel features a strong protagonist, separated from his love by an evil emperor.

I love characters that aren’t just fighting for a good cause, but are fighting for love, and this series features a gripping love story. The characters find a way to beat impossible odds using wits, magic, and courage. It’s one of the few books I was excited to read more than once.

This is high-caliber space fantasy in the realm of Star Wars or Dune. It brings together a grizzled holy warrior having doubts about his faith with a naïve and sheltered princess in a brutal world ruled by absolutely vile overlords. The perspective switches between the two of them. The warrior – Drin – grapples with whether the church’s mission to fight evil brings it to use methods too similar to the evil it fights. Meanwhile the princess – Anais – has to come to terms very quickly with the reality of life outside the palace when slavers invade her home and abduct her off-world.

This book and the next on the list are interesting in that the setting becomes a character in and of itself. The town of Haven seems to have its own character arc, as a post-apocalyptic settlement that has gone from a watchful last outpost of mankind to a more complacent community where things that had once been necessities are now rituals. The human characters are fleshed out just as well, coming across as very much normal and well-realized people.

Altogether Stutznegger builds not only a cast but also a setting where you really care about their continued well-being; especially as threats from the outside world begin to sneak into the town. I would consider this possibly “soft fantasy”, with the semi-mystical mystery of the main character’s enhanced eyesight and a technically sci-fi explanation for the villainous Shadow Elves.

Superpowered people, living like the Amish, guarding the secret to eternal life. Like Blue Shadows Fall, this sets up a location so unique in the town of Edenia that it’s nearly a character by itself. Unlike that book, Edenia is less a place you’d want to live and more a mystery you want to unravel. This book really drills into the teenage frustration of having no control over your location or circumstances from some very different perspectives in the variety of POV characters. A lot of the story’s tension comes from the main cast’s refusal or inability to come clean with each other, but the underlying reasons for them to keep their secrets are very convincingly layered.

I love the film The Wicker Man (released in 1973) and was delighted to discover this novelisation from its director and screenwriter.

Full of pagan religion and ritual sacrifice on remote Summerisle, it is wonderfully creepy. Nor is it a flat retelling of the film but an expansion of the character of poor Sergeant Howie. Set up by Lord Summerisle to be the May sacrifice, he is tormented and abused as he searches for a missing child and on film is shown as priggish and cold.

Yet in the book, he is brave, vulnerable, doggedly trying to do the right thing in the face of adversity. He also performs a touchingly heroic act at the end of the book even as he suffered - I admit to shedding a tear. 

This Black sociologist demands that we take a deep look into the religious basis of American racism.

Of 5,000 cases of lynching reported between 1880 and 1930, at least 40% functioned as actual human sacrifices, very large communal rituals that identified certain individuals as the source of the community’s problems and eliminated them. The sacrifice created a compact between the people and their deities, expiating their sins and reinforcing their values.

"The victim mediated between the sacred and the profane...the burning cross distilled it all: sacrificed Negro joined by the torch with sacrificed Christ, burnt together and discarded...” Well into the 20th century, “The cross – Christianity’s central symbol of Christ’s sacrificial death – became identified with the crucifixion of the Negro.” Forced to carry all the projections of the white unconscious, the Black man became the American Dionysus.

Patterson observes that in recent generations the stereotype of America’s internal… show more.

Why have one world when you can have multiple? The Unspoken Name took me by surprise when our main character was taken from her death cult and whisked through a gateway that would lead her to many worlds all connected by a misty maze. Dead worlds and gods, flying ships, undead cities, and a revenge plot that twists into something far bigger, The Unspoken Name feels like three stories in one, but in the best way. The various worlds and their cultures are intricate and vibrant, brought to life by the lovely cast of characters the story is told through. From an orc mercenary outrunning a god, to a wizard with godlike ambitions, the cast is phenomenal and diverse in both race and sexuality, something I love reading in fantasy. 

Eventually, I recommend a work of fiction.

Micro-psychology by a brilliant storyteller, this was the first of Proulx’s books that I ever read, even though it was the last of the Wyoming trilogy. I went on to read the rest – and then more of her work.

Proulx draws me into the characters, their lives, the plot, setting, and atmosphere, using cleverly interpretative, and uniquely descriptive language. Just a few of her words and I am inside the story. I have been to Wyoming, taking the trilogy for company, although I had read them previously.

Some of her stories remain firmly fixed in my head, and I can re-read them without ever becoming bored. 

I love a noir detective story. Set that story in a fantastical, blood-drenched Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire, and I’m totally sold.

The story follows Acatl, who is a high priest of the dead, as he, I kid you not, tries to solve what appears to be a murder case. Except he’s not walking the streets of some modern city – his journey takes him through the fascinating world of a familiar yet unique Aztec empire where human sacrifice is the only thing keeping the world spinning in its proper order.

Having familiar conflicts, including family issues, makes this one a unique standout. Acatl sounds like people I know. Following his determined efforts to bring a specific evil to heel – all while in a society that seemingly glories in bloodshed – is awesome.

Another parable, another legend, another work of manual labour turned mystical. In this tale of a bridge-building gone wrong, Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare considers the harms and inevitabilities that come from spanning disparate cultures. This book features a human sacrifice at the altar of erection; it feels antique and yet timeless; it explores the boundaries of human endeavor. Notes the narrator, a silenced sceptic, “all great building works resemble crimes.” It is a recognisable concern from Kadare, an exile of Hoxha’s totalitarian regime.