I have always been fascinated with morally grey or complex characters. For me, the sign of a great novel is one where you find yourself talking about the characters as if they were real people you know. I want to experience something when I read, and characters that are flawed, imperfect, or morally grey have always intrigued me because they can take me to places I haven’t (or wouldn’t!) go myself. And, of course, they provide ample grounds for fun discussions with my friends! Sci-fi apocalyptic fiction is fertile ground for such characters, so I’ve tried to pick books you may not have heard of. I hope you like them!
A friend recommended this book to me, and I’m so grateful! The story unfolds through letters between Red and Blue, mortal enemies who slowly realize they have more in common with each other than their respective sides, even as they murder their way through history. As we come to know them and they learn about each other, we realize the truth about the war and the creature pursuing them through history.
Neither Red nor Blue are perfect people, but you can see why and how they are the way they are, and their love story feels natural and well-earned because of their flaws. I was so sad when I finished listening to it that I bought the book so I could read it, too!
WINNER OF The Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, the Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella AND The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella
SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The Ray Bradbury Prize Kitschies Red Tentacle Award Kitschies Inky Tentacle Brave New Words Award
'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It…
This story is set in an Arabic cyberpunk future in which the rest of the world has splintered into warring factions. Where you traditionally find the cityscapes of Gibson, here you have the Budayeen, with its narrow streets and souks, its bars and strip clubs abutting mosques, and the daily calls to prayer cutting through the cries of hawkers, gangsters, and unfortunate tourists.
Audran is the classic flawed detective: drug-addled and morally grey but with a cynicism that I can’t help but love. He is cowardly at times, brave at others, self-serving, and selfless—a character to get your teeth into! However, like many books written forty years ago, many female characters are unalived, and it’s gory in places, so be warned if that isn’t your taste.
In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hardway. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he's available…for a price.
For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can't refuse.
The 200-year-old "godfather" of the Budayeen's underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares…
This a beautifully lyrical book. The first chapter winds and twists through different scenes and places, like a gentle lake through a peaceful forest. Emily St John Mantel leads you through the past, present, and future so softly that it takes you a moment to realize the bleakness and horror of the post-pandemic world she’s describing.
I love a story told from multiple points of view, and this one is a masterclass. It weaves different events and characters so precisely that when everything comes to a head in the final chapters, it feels inevitable and natural. I also love a nuanced villain, and (without giving away who) this one is fantastic! I understood their motivation and logic, even as I desperately wanted them to lose.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
I downloaded the audiobook because Cara Gee reads it, and I am so glad I did! This military sci-fi novel completely undermines any sense of triumph or jingoism and will leave you thinking about it for a long time.
Dietz is fresh out of the academy and ready to fight in the war against Mars. As Dietz breaks through their conditioning and supposed insanity to uncover the truth, the ‘triumph’ of the war is undermined as the brutal reality becomes clear. Dietz is a fascinating character.
They sign up desperate for revenge, but things start unraveling from their first mission. This book is seriously mind-bending; like Dietz, I was unsure what was real and what wasn’t, and I fully empathized with them even if their actions weren’t always the most… er… well-advised.
“Passionately brutal, fierce, and furious in voice and pace. It’s a particularly cinematic experience of war, Full Metal Jacket meets Edge of Tomorrow.” —The New York Times
From the Hugo Award–winning author of The Stars Are Legion comes a science fiction thriller about a futuristic war during which soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars.
They said the war would turn us into light. I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.
This was a book club choice, and as soon as I finished it, I bought the other two books in the trilogy. I literally couldn’t put them down! Another post-apocalypse for this list, this time, the story is told through the memories of Jimmy/Snowman. But make no mistake, the novel is about Crake, a brilliant, lonely, and terrifying young man.
As Jimmy tries to recover his past, shadowed by the gentle, green-skinned ‘children of Crake,’ he recalls the events leading up to the end of humanity. This is very much a mystery, so I must be careful what I reveal, but if you are all about misguided genius and hubris, you will adore this novel. Needless to say, with an author like Atwood, the writing is superb.
By the author of THE HANDMAID'S TALE and ALIAS GRACE
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Pigs might not fly but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and racoons. A man, once named Jimmy, lives in a tree, wrapped in old bedsheets, now calls himself Snowman. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. And the green-eyed Children of Crake are, for some reason, his responsibility.
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Praise for Oryx and Crake:
'In Jimmy, Atwood has created a great character: a tragic-comic artist of the future, part buffoon, part Orpheus. An adman who's a sad man; a jealous…
If time travel was real, what would you do? Invent Apple? Invest in Amazon? Meet Kong, a trans-temporal copyright protection officer who ensures the timeline remains intact. After all, the world is a desolate wasteland, and the only thing keeping the last remnants of humanity alive is the delicate balance maintained by the powerful corporations.
And Kong is the best at what he does. Unswaying, unswerving, unstoppable. Until he encounters a mysterious stranger who promises Kong a world unlike anything he has ever known. A world where the future can change and the present is worth fighting for. Now, Kong is faced with a choice that could alter everything he knows about time, fate, and the very essence of his existence.
I always want to be where I am not. This was why I read sci-fi and fantasy as a child. This was why I left the country of my birth and became a professional nomad. This is why I am spellbound by mountains I will never climb and oceans I will never dive into. Imagination can take you everywhere. It took me to the academy, where speculative literature became my scholarly field, and to the publishing world, where I am now getting ready for the launch of my eighth novel. When you are at home nowhere, you are at home everywhere–including on the summits of impossible mountains.
In Svetlana's country, it’s a felony to break a mirror. Mirrors are conduits of the Voice, the deity worshiped by all who follow Light. The Voice protects humans of MotherLand from the dangers that beset them on all sides: an invading army of wolf-headed men on their borders and the infectious, ever-evolving, zombie-like Enemy that plagues them at home. When Svetlana meets Andrei, a traumatized and amnesiac soldier from another war, she embarks on a harrowing journey of adventure and self-discovery that leads her to question everything she was taught to…
A voice through Svetlana's mirror guides her beloved MotherLand from behind its' electric tower. The war with Wulfstan is not going as well as Sveta and her parents hope, but Sveta trusts the Voice. When her best friend Tattie goes missing, and Sveta saves Andrei, a soldier in summer uniform in the dead of winter, it takes Sveta through a crucible of Light, doubt, and back to the altar of true belief. Girl of Light unravels Sveta's beloved MotherLand in a war-torn adventure through monsters, missing eyes and broken mirrors.
