Whereas many seek out stories of human triumph and heroic deeds, I have always been captivated by stories that show humanity for what it is–a bastion of innovation and wonder but also a complex and ethically questionable force of nature. I began writing my book when I was twelve years old, and I immediately knew that my characters would not be one-sided, cast in light or shadow. Instead, they would love at times and hate others, try their hardest to do what is right, but sometimes end up doing more harm than good. Remember that a ‘hero’ is a product of perspective when reading these books.
The painful realism of this book puts a refreshing spin on climate fiction. I love how it accurately conveys the logical chain of events that would occur if the world were found to be dying–figuring out what’s causing it, making difficult and morally questionable decisions to stop it, and accepting that things will get a lot worse before they get better.
In addition, the idea of humanity having one shot to fix things, one shot to save humanity, sets the stage for an incredible story destined to leave me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I also love using a flashback timeline to weave needed information throughout the plot in an interesting, mysterious, and not overwhelming way.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through…
This book takes everything amazing about the mystery genre and transposes it into an endlessly fascinating, well-developed sci-fi world. I was captivated by the web of interconnected plot lines, told from the perspectives of rich and multi-faceted characters throughout the entire story.
Specifically, the fact that all of their seemingly disconnected backstories converge to form the real picture of the story was masterfully done. Furthermore, the final reveal of the story was quite literally the only plot twist in fiction that has given me a verbal “oh my god” moment.
It was a massive inspiration for me and led to my love of a combination of morally gray mystery, sci-fi, and action adventure.
In this Hugo nominated science fiction thriller by Mur Lafferty, a crew of clones awakens aboard a space ship to find they're being hunted-and any one of them could be the killer.
Maria Arena awakens in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. She has no memory of how she died. This is new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.
Maria's vat is one of seven, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so…
Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo — magical, absurd, and humorous.
The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad…
Since I was young, I have been fascinated by morally questionable characters framed as the hero. In this book, Suzanne Collins captures this interest perfectly. With her careful description of a flawed, scarred character forced into darkness by the cruel world he lives in, Collins shows that none of us are truly safe from evil.
In addition, telling the story from this character’s perspective really drives home the idea for me that everyone is the hero of their own story. Authors can attempt to mold readers’ opinions one way or the other, but there is often more happening under the surface that we cannot readily see. That is the kind of story I love.
Ambition will fuel him.Competition will drive him.But power has its price.
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District…
This book takes what would seem–on the surface–to be an incredibly grim and morally gray story and frames it such that it can be read by younger audiences. I read this book when I was eleven years old, and it truly laid the groundwork for my current love of dystopian sci-fi.
The premise is unique, the characters have complex motivations, and the stakes are endlessly high–after all, humanity was in a bad enough position that it was willing to drop a hundred teenagers on an irradiated planet. In my opinion, such a difficult decision casts a very realistic light on the characters, as their actions could very well happen in the material world. It’s just a matter of how desperate mankind gets.
The Hunger Games meets Lost in this spectacular new series. Now a major TV series on E4.
No one has set foot on Earth in centuries - until now.
Ever since a devastating nuclear war, humanity has lived on spaceships far above Earth's radioactive surface. Now, one hundred juvenile delinquents - considered expendable by society - are being sent on a dangerous mission: to re-colonize the planet. It could be their second chance at life...or it could be a suicide mission.
CLARKE was arrested for treason, though she's haunted by the memory of what she really did. WELLS, the chancellor's…
Constance is a wild, stubborn young girl growing up poor in a small industrial town in the late 1800's. Beneath her thread-worn exterior beats the heart of a dreamer and a wordsmith. But at age twelve, she’s orphaned. Running away to join the circus—like kids do in adventure books—seems like…
Like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Frank Herbert’s book tells the story of a man who could be the villain or the hero, depending on who you ask. I love watching how an intelligent yet malleable person can be swept up in feelings of duty, responsibility, and leadership only to make highly questionable decisions.
Paul Atreides’ moral ambiguity is undeniably engineered by the shifting and slimy political landscape of the Dune universe, driving home the idea in my mind that good worldbuilding can set the stage for truly complicated characters.
Before The Matrix, before Star Wars, before Ender's Game and Neuromancer, there was Dune: winner of the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and widely considered one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written.
Melange, or 'spice', is the most valuable - and rarest - element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a person's lifespan to making interstellar travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world of Arrakis.
Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe.
This book tells the story of a man–long ago orphaned by a colonial disaster on Mars–forced to face his demons head-on as he battles to save the human race from extinction. To do so, he must call into question everything he thinks he knows about who he is, who he trusts, and what he has done.
Born the half-breed, bastard son of an orc chieftain, Wrank tries to survive life in OrcHome among ignorance and spite aimed at his human heritage even as he develops a Talent for folding shadow. When life is no longer viable among the clans, he escapes into the world of humans…
Nine Stories Told Completely in Dialogue is a unique collection of narratives, each unfolding entirely through conversations between its characters. The book opens with "God on a Budget," a tale of a man's surreal nighttime visitation that offers a blend of the mundane and the mystical. In "Doctor in the…
