100 books like Dragon Age

As an editor, I don’t really get much time to read for fun. The ASoIF series had come highly recommended to me, and I was captivated. The cast is large, but I found it easy to keep track of who was who and part of what house. It also helped that there is a “dramatis personae” in the back of the book, which I referred to a few times.

I loved the idea of Ned Stark as a protagonist - not your young adventurer, but a father who gets wrapped up in a mystery. Being presented with different points of view and then figuring out how they all would come together was very engaging. As an author who likes to utilize big casts, this was a great help in influencing how I structure my own writing.

The imagination of a child should be nourished and fed–growing up, this book did just that for me. I could relate to the protagonist in the sense that I loved to learn–and to this day, I am a sponge for knowledge–but I was easily bored with the mundane, often creating worlds that led to my becoming an author.

This was probably one of the earliest works to cultivate that. The characters are rooted in real-life comparisons and still live in the back of my mind. It continues to resonate with me today because despite some tropes being beaten into the ground, this novel took simple concepts, like talking dogs and numbers and letters at war, and made them have a fantasy life of their own.

This is the first book in a series that I don’t think is talked about enough. There are several characters from different points of view, but the ones that stand out most are Lukien and Baron Glass. I love a redeemed villain in any media, and Baron Glass fits that mold.

Originally depicted as the villain in a warring kingdoms opening story, I loved the way that the “villain” becomes portrayed as a kindly mentor that despite age and injury can still fight. Lukien and Glass serve as perfect foils for each other, and the author uses plenty of symbolism to support that. Put together with the whole cast; you have a perfect rag-tag cast of main and supporting characters that breathe on their own with flaws and relatable goals.

The cast of this book are all vastly different. I enjoyed going from a human, relatively normal perspective between Jaymes and Caithlin to the antagonistic orc Ghurak. Jaymes is not a superhero but a regular human on a warship, and with that comes relatability in his character.

The humor sown throughout this book between Jaymes and Karnon about understanding nautical terms also helped me to properly understand some of the words I had never heard of before while not beating me over the head with dry prose. I enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean, but taking that general concept and adding salamanders, orcs (not to mention a sober protagonist), and more into the mix made it that much more fun!

What persuaded a priest to join El Salvador’s largest guerilla organization, the FPL (Popular Liberation Forces)?

This biography explains the metamorphosis of “Padre David,” as he was known. The book also places his experience within the larger context of the role progressive priests and nuns played in helping the poor to realize their worth, which inspired many to then demand change in society. Because the state crushed all peaceful opposition, especially through violence, many Salvadorans concluded that the only way to work for change – and to simultaneously protect themselves – was to join an armed movement. Padre David was no different. He felt an added sense of responsibility because he trained catechists to work for change who were later killed because the state saw them as threats to the status quo.

This is a great book written by an accomplished scholar later in his career and confident in his research and writing. Telling the tale of the uprising, and crushing, of Tomochic village, Vanderwood zooms into the smaller details of village life and pans out to nation-level decisions with remarkable panache. In a highly enjoyable way, he brings the reader into the action without omitting the broader historical relevance. The reader may enter this for the critique of the dictator’s late nineteenth-century armies, but they will keep reading to find the fate of the unfortunate “town son of a bitch.” 

Marwan Kraidy’s book is a deep dive into the cultural politics of the Arab Uprisings during 2011. Wonderfully written and cleverly organized this academic book looks at the ‘digital’ nature of these resistance movements and the use of art and media tools in the protests. The focus is on young Arabs who used the street to challenge authority and cutting-edge social media platforms to argue for social change. In the book political activism and a period of digital euphoria meet when places like Tahrir Square became the centre of the world. This is one of the most essential accounts of 2011 that offers a refreshing take on Facebook and Twitter as revolutionary agents that helped to bring down the military regime. 

You know how you go somewhere you’ve never been and you feel hollow in your bones, like you’re more fragile there, you might blow away in a strong wind or just melt down if this place doesn’t learn to recognize you?

Amatka is like that, and it’s about that. We follow someone trying to diligently do a perfectly normal market research gig in place where everyday objects must be clearly labelled and the labels reinforced constantly, otherwise they dissolve into slush.

She has to keep putting things in their place, but she’s not too good at that, because she’s always been out of place herself.

I mean, isn’t that exactly what life is like? And then it all falls apart.

Packer examines why the United States invaded Iraq without a just cause and without a plan for what to do once it succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein. He explains the critical first few months of the war that set the course for everything that followed in a searing examination of America’s extraordinary hubris in the “War on Terror.” What sets Packer’s work apart is his ability to explain events in the White House and Pentagon and tie them to their bitter denouement on the streets of Baghdad. He tells the story of a big war of choice gone badly wrong before the first shots were fired. 

I knew Saw Ralph and Naw Sheera when we were in Manerplaw, which used to be the headquarters of the Karen resistance, in Burma. As a little girl, I often followed my mother Nant Kyin Shwe to her workplace and remembered seeing Naw Sheera in the office of the Karen Women's Organisation. When I read her book, it reminds me of all the places and the people, and my beautiful childhood in, Kawthoolei, Burma.