49 books like Ciaphas Cain

Mass Effect was a very big sci-fi series for me growing up, the technology of which continues to influence my novels to this day. This novel serves as a prequel to the first game in the Mass Effect series, covering an event that was only briefly mentioned within the game itself, where Captain David Anderson works alongside the Spectre Saren, a Turian who despises humanity and believes them to be growing too quickly. Saren’s behavior and beliefs lead to him committing atrocities and then blaming Anderson to sabotage the whole reason why they were asked to team up in the first place, setting the stage for the first game.

The Halo Universe is a massive, sprawling sci-fi series that many assume to be just a random sci-fi shooter franchise. The Fall of Reach acts as a prequel to the first game and to the Halo series as a whole. Focusing on the initial creation of the Spartan-II Super Soldier program, the growth of Spartan John-117 into a super soldier, and culminating in the defense of the planet he’s grown up on, The Fall of Reach serves to set the stage for the Halo franchise. I recommend picking up the reprints from 2011 or later, as it fixes many continuity errors induced later on in the series.

The heroine in Legend & Lattes is a big orc lady, nothing like little Bilbo, but she’s done with violence.

She wants to build a settled business selling drinks and pastries. The giant heroine and the succubus behind the counter get constantly misjudged because of their appearances. As a woman carving her path in the tech industry, I know how that feels.

This book also taught me, right along with the heroine, that solving problems without violence can be even more heroic. A good story doesn’t require fight scenes. The wins were all kinds of satisfying, from the successful business to the happy gay romance.

Cozy fantasy is a sub-genre I love now. Characters and their relationships are the point, not just the hands to wield the magic swords.

Adventure Quest, and Artix Entertainment’s games as a whole, were a formative part of my childhood and play a big role in what I write now. When I found out that a novel was made in that series, I had to check it out. Set in Adventure Quest, this novel follows the tale of a character who loses his home to a dragon attack, and sets out on a quest to find the dragon in question, while learning how to wield the magic that he is capable of using. It puts a fun spin on an old kind of story if you ask me!

While Star Wars was never the biggest franchise I was into growing up, the Knights of the Old Republic games served as my first proper foray into RPGs that have come to influence my books as a whole. Revan follows up on the titular character, set after the end of the first two Knights of the Old Republic games. Worries over his lost memories returning, Revan must seek out answers as to what drove him to go down the path of a Sith Lord in the first place, along the way meeting with Meetra Surik, the protagonist of the second game, following up on a rarely touched-upon point in the Star Wars universe of what happens when someone learns how to wield both the Light Side and Dark Side of the Force at the same time.

I picked up this book when I was much younger. Until this point all the fantasy I read had been serious and gritty. This book showed me that fantasy could be amusing too, but still have high stakes. It follows the ongoing story of Thraxas, a down-on-his-luck and disreputable private investigator with some magical skill whose city is now besieged by orcs. He has to try and survive the siege, which mainly comprises of finding some decent food and drink, whilst searching for an artifact that could change the outcome of the war.

A fun read with some quirky characters and an engaging story.

Did you know that your carpet was home to various tribes of people? Terry Pratchett did. This is the story of two brothers who live in said carpet. They must leave their village before it is destroyed by the Fray. It’s Terry Pratchett, need I say more?

This was Terry Pratchett’s first novel and is a fun read with plenty of humor. Again this is a book from my youth, and whilst I don’t own a copy now, it’s one of those covers I always look fondly on whenever I see it.

This was my first foray into reading Urban Fantasy, and it made me very glad I did. This is the story of Lucy, a woman transformed into a werewolf, who must navigate the task of being Alpha of her new pack as well as adjusting to the new, often violent, world she’s a part of. I love how Heather deals with Lucy embracing a job she didn’t choose for herself. The interplay between the characters makes this a fun read with some very laugh-out-loud dialogue, especially in the interactions between Lucy and her Wolf, Esme. I think the whole ‘fish out of water’ thing speaks to all of us. Who hasn’t daydreamed, what if I could do magic, or had superpowers? The real question is, how would you cope if you suddenly could and it changed your life completely?

Reath Silas is a very relatable Jedi, though perhaps not the most heroic at first.

He deeply doesn’t want to leave the comfort of his home on Coruscant, especially for his first assignment in the outer rim. He would rather explore the Jedi archives and attend historiography. Maybe, like Anakin Skywalker, he too dislikes sand. But reluctantly he faces the challenge.

When his group’s ship is pulled out of hyperspace, they take refuge in an abandoned space station. Reath is thrust into a world of pirate looters, shady guild members, and a dark-side mystery concerning the station itself.

What lessons will this young padawan learn?

Parts of Gust Front hit home. I read this while living in the Appalachians, so seeing Cally preparing for an invasion in a remote valley in Georgia, and the subsequent fighting that takes place in and around the Appalachians, struck a nerve with me. If the worst happened, up to and including the alien invasion depicted here, would the mountains be the best place to hold out and resist? The scope of the novel covers many settings, including other familiar ones like Washington D.C., all of which ground the speculative premise of an alien invasion in a story that feels very real; something that any of us could be forced to live through.