100 books like Leviathan Wakes

This is my favorite hard sci-fi classic. I love the beautiful mix of real science (wormholes excepted), compelling story, and characters, and it touches on both first contact and the way in which human nature might cause us to react to it. That is the power combo, in my opinion!

The movie of the book was very good — Robert Zemeckis is a brilliant director — although it left out some fantastic details that, as a math and science fan, I really loved! (I won’t spoil it here; it’s too good.)

J.R.R. Tolkien's masterful storytelling is unmatched, and The Lord of the Rings weaves together moral dilemmas and profound philosophical ideas seamlessly, encouraging me to contemplate the nature of power, the importance of preserving the natural world, and the significance of individual choices.

The book's themes of heroism, friendship, sacrifice, and the struggle between good and evil resonate deeply. In addition, each of his characters feels like an aspect of oneself; the introspection it inspires is brilliant!

The Lord of the Rings instills a sense of wonder, ignites the imagination, and imparts timeless wisdom, which heavily transformed my perspective on life, my values, and my understanding of the human condition.

H.G. Wells delivers an astonishing tale of space invaders from Mars, with breathtaking scenes of monstrously huge three-legged walking machines terrorizing the populace of London and its surrounds. For sheer imagery, few science fiction stories before or since have come close to its gripping, real-world feel.

The story is told by an unnamed protagonist who goes on an odyssey in ravaged London as towering alien war machines chase, kill, or capture fleeing citizens in chaotic scenes of panic and fear. That fear sent chills along my spine on rereading this classic recently.

Notable were touching humanistic scenes with Dr. Ogilvy, an astronomer who leads an ill-fated attempt at truce-making, and a defeated soldier whose counterattack with artillery failed horribly.

Game of Thrones, right? This author has created so many characters that fit this category, and they all handle their situations in a different manner. I love the three major ones, Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen, who could not be more different from each other. Sansa and Arya have grown up in privilege, but one scheme to be a pampered lady, and the other would be happy sleeping in the kennel with her dire wolf.

Daenerys has been hidden much of her childhood to protect her, and suddenly, she is thrown into the game with her arranged marriage to a wild horse lord, where she grows up very fast in order to survive. Sadly, as women in Westeros, they do not control their own fates, and following how their lives evolve and intertwine is fascinating.

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.

This book is both a fascinating vision of a tumultuous world and a deep dive into the mind of a troubled and compelling protagonist.

The character work in this book is incredibly impressive, with the long arc of the protagonist’s development drawn in convincing and gripping detail that left me feeling like I had known this person for years through all their triumphs, tragedies, and mistakes, which is to say nothing of its creative and plausible magic, its socio-political commentary, and its meditation on family and grief. Rightfully recognized as a modern classic, it is a book all fans of fantasy should read.

With a cover like a Halloween fever dream, I expected a lot of otherworldly gothic creepiness, which this book delivered. What I didn’t expect was Gideon, an unforgettable character whose unapologetic frankness is like a shot of whisky in what could otherwise be an overwrought space opera. It’s a bit of stretch to call this historical fantasy, but I love that the world-building implies a complex backstory both for the characters and their world. Which sets up a wonderfully weird juxtaposition of ancient and modern.  Set in a feudal world, inhabited by undead necromancer lieges and their cavalier servants, I kept thinking, “Did Gideon just say that *&^$ to her master?” Yes, she did. And I was there for every word.

I had been reading Heroic and Epic Fantasy for years, and I’d purposely avoided reading Sci-Fi, convinced that it would influence my burgeoning plot development. I wanted to maintain my plot integrity and not be subconsciously led by other authors in the genre (but of course I couldn’t avoid the influence of the SF I watched on TV). Of course, I was missing out on some great writing. I was enthralled by this story—it combined an undead trope with space opera, as the ‘risen empire’ maintains its territory while facing an external threat from the technologically hybrid Rix. There’s a fascination with the potential of biological augmentation and the place of AI in our distant future (consider ‘immortal’ humans against potentially ‘eternal’ hybrid humans), but this story is extremely character-driven and concerned with the place of the individual. The fictional science was breathtaking and not without research, but what stuck… show more.

Chasm City is part of Reynold's Revelation Space series, but this future-noir mystery is perfectly readable as a standalone. It follows a man on a mission of revenge, one that takes him into the crumbling, plague-ridden remains of a once-great civilization that has descended into chaos and squalor. The world-building is top-notch—this is a dying, decaying city that you can feel in your bones—and full mysteries that explore ideas of identity, memory, and redemption in a twisty mystery that ties together past, present, and future.

My sister and I were only close because we’re only two years apart. But recently we’ve had some tragedy in our family, and that brought us closer.

While I was making this list of books, I was reminded of this story and how much I enjoyed it, not just for the prose, which I take notice of and will drop a book if it’s bad, but for that reminder of the brother and sister story here. Not to mention the rescue crew of odd characters which reflects a belief of mine: truth is universal.

Any human or alien can understand compassion and suffering and choose the better of the two.