99 books like Feed

What I love most about this book is how Bell uses a zombie apocalypse to explore the complexities of humanity. I felt that Bell uses the zombie threat as a backdrop to look at how people respond under intense pressure.

I enjoyed the contrast of each character’s response to the apocalypse, ranging from kindness and fellowship to exploitation, violence, and madness. I liked the way Bell creates the protagonist Temple to be both innocent and kind whilst being plagued by guilt and tormented by a belief that she is a sinner.

I also liked the complexities and seeming paradox of the antagonist Moses Todd, whose dogged pursuit of Temple is at times Terminator-like and yet somehow almost chivalric in nature, operating under a code of honor, even if it is a misguided one. 

I love the contrast of bleak desperation with gross opulence and excess that Collins creates in The Hunger Games.

The parallels between Panem and Rome turn what could otherwise be seen as a somewhat far-fetched or unlikely story into a reasonably plausible post-apocalyptic future possibility. I enjoyed the building of tension in the lead-up to the beginning of the games, as well as the explosive release and action when Katniss finally enters the arena.

I liked the way Collins creates an enemy in the very terrain of the arena itself so that, when coupled with the threat of the other contestants, the tension is heightened even further. 

A time-travel classic, this book is also a masterful example of how to juggle two very different tones and timelines without it coming across as jarring to the reader. The two timelines diverge at the start of the story, which begins in near-future Oxford. Time travel has been invented, and a student named Kivrin is going back to the Middle Ages to conduct research. Half of the book follows her story as she navigates the Black Death, while the other half follows the much lighter (and at times very funny) story of her colleagues dealing with the bureaucracy of an unexpected lockdown in response to a flu outbreak.

Red Rising is fast-paced science fiction that follows the journey of Darrow, a low-caste member of a society divided by color, as he rises up against the tyrannical rulers of his world. There’s a single sentence on the first page that I think bridges sci-fi with human emotion in such a striking way that I had to stop and say out loud, “If I were a publisher, I would buy this book right here, on this crazy-good concept alone because whatever comes next has got to be amazing.” The writing is engaging and immersive, and while set on Mars, the world-building is rich and detailed, and the characters are well-developed and complex. I read this book not only as a sci-fi story, but as a tale of real personal drama.

Is this book a bit of a Twilight knockoff trying to capitalize on teens by replacing vampires and werewolves with zombies as the love interest? No! Okay, well…sort of. I love this book because of its darkly humorous take on the whole zombie apocalypse deal. Written in the first-person from the zombie’s perspective, Marion was able to give his main character, R, a lot of…wait for it…life. Coupled with his magnificent use of morbid humor and smooth prose, this book definitely has a lot of bite.

This book blew my mind!

Dickinson’s vision of a fantasy world driven by an exceptionally well-thought-out system of economics and social engineering is complex and fascinating, as is his main character, Baru. Her journey—starting with her adolescence on a small island as it’s colonized by force, through her mastery of the colonizers’ education system, and her slow, cunning infiltration of the Masquerade’s hierarchy of power—is tense, and made even more compelling by her need to hide her queerness from the homophobic powers she pretends to serve.

Her learned ruthlessness and the sacrifices she ultimately makes in her quest for power and revenge are heartbreaking and represent the very essence of a tragic Bildungsroman.

When I was in high school, I didn’t like to read that much because I was a slow reader.

My best friend was an avid reader and he loved fantasy in particular. One day he handed me this book and said I needed to read it. He said the characters were amazing and the book was not one of the big thick fantasy tomes I refused to read.

I decided to try it and I read it cover to cover in about two days. I continued on and read the entire five book series, and then went on to read more from the author. This book turned a non-reader into a reader, then an English major, and finally into a teacher and an author. I still read slower than I would like, but this book and series set me on the path I still follow today. 

If you haven’t read The Mummy by Anne Rice, you’re totally missing out. Her deliciously intense prose and ability to render an environment with emotional impact always thrills me. And while I love the Vampire Lestat books, the tale of Ramses and Julie is part Beauty and the Beast, part Raiders of the Lost Ark, and all awesome. Anne Rice brings you to the early 20th century in London while Egyptian “recovery” was all the rage and I swear you can see, feel and taste that experience on every page. It’s billed as a horror, but I’ve always read it as a deeply adventurous and exciting love story.

Take a sweeping YA adventure and magic and horses and a delicious book boyfriend all dropped on an outspoken, stubborn young woman thrown into a life she’s uniquely suited to and you have this delightful read from Robin McKinley. With a powerful heroine doing her best to understand her place, suspended between two distinct ways of life, The Blue Sword makes me want to run away from feeling out of place, awkward and never good enough and be just like Harry Crewe.

Teens, monsters, mind control, conspiracies. Dashner’s YA book packs a punch and forms a fantastic conclusion to the Maze Runner trilogy. I personally loved that while the world’s biggest crisis is a zombie outbreak, the character’s struggle for survival began at a far more basic level – the teens’ need to know what lies beyond their clinical artificial reality.  

Each character is faced with enemies from without – monster and man, but they also need to come to terms with themselves. Do they embrace the old shadow of their former selves? Or do they find out who they can become in a new more dangerous world?  Each character is faced with a myriad of moral dilemmas that outweigh the threat of the monsters created by the flare, and it makes for a fantastic read.