73 books like Awakening

In Dragaera, the fortunes of the seventeen Great Houses are determined by the Cycle, which elevates royalty, merchants, artisans, wizards, the mob, and even peasants as it turns.

The Cycle takes thousands of years to turn… but Dragaerans live thousands of years. Easterners, like Vlad Taltos, are lucky to see a hundred, and they can’t be members of the Great Houses. Except the House of the Jhereg, which sells titles.

They’re the mob; and Vlad, Baronet of Taltos, is an assassin. JHEREG and its many sequels are constantly exploring the social dynamics underlying this situation; as an Easterner with a bought title, Vlad doesn’t fit in with either Easterners or Dragaeran nobles, and choosing sides can mean destroying relationships or putting his life on the line.

This book is about how trauma can force you to choose between memory and sanity… and how this problem gets worse when you live in a society of telepaths.

Said telepaths are the mer-person descendants of enslaved Africans who threw themselves off the boats from Africa to the Americas, but the emotional core of the book makes the deep weirdness of the premise pretty much an afterthought. 

Although The Scar is the second book in the Bas Lag series, I prefer it to Perdido Street Station (which is also glorious.) The Scar takes to the seas, a place I always prefer to be, in the form of the floating, roving city of Armada.

We come aboard (as it were) and experience life on Armada—its precincts, villages, towns, secrets, and its people—swordsmen and librarians and vampires and the mysterious pair who run the place—The Lovers (that’s the only name we get) through the eyes of Bellis Coldwine, a prickly, difficult, but fascinating woman who would literally rather be anywhere else.

I get where she’s coming from but I would absolutely book a cruise on Armada!

The action in this book begins when Severian, an apprentice in the Torturers’ Guild, gives a convict a weapon to kill herself rather than be tortured.

The reason there’s a Torturers’ Guild is, allegedly, that it beats prison: Better to deliver a punishment and then let the punished person return to their life, the thinking goes, than confine them to a useless existence as a ward of the state. Severian is expelled from the Guild, but not from the profession, and wanders the world plying his trade, at least until the plot can’t spare him.

It’s a constant dissonance, looking through the eyes of a character whose training and purpose is the infliction of pain, who seems so decent and forthright in the story he narrates. (But don’t be fooled.)

Away from the lurking eyes of their parents for the summer, the Lumberjanes finally have a chance to cut loose and truly be themselves.

Of course, they’ll have to figure out “who” that is first. Luckily for them, they have some awesome friends to help them along the way. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the path to discovery is paved with monsters and mystery.

This book does a wonderful job of showing how important the bonds of friendship can be, especially when you are facing the unknown.

Sawkill Girls is so scary that I couldn’t read it before bed. In fact, I wouldn’t even bring it into my bedroom! But it’s also gorgeously written—eerie and atmospheric, with the most immersive worldbuilding. Its monster is terrifying, but the main characters—all girls—are so, so powerful. This is one of my top YA novels of all time. 

I loved this series because it took a person who was struggling in life and brought them into a new and more deadly world where her struggles became more intense and real. She had to grow, trust herself, and learn how and who to trust in this new world. It was filled with Runes magic and though character driven it had a plot that pulled you along. 

Did someone say monsters? As much as I love the stories about the dark sides of human souls, there is nothing quite better than actual monsters. And this anthology packs them in, I’m talking the literal stuff of nightmares! Creatures designed by writers who obviously love monsters as much as the readers; demons with frames and features that only a mother could love. This parade of monsters was a lot to absorb in one sitting, which is the whole point of my list – collections that give you so much to dig into that it leaves you breathless. Short of being an all-out gore-fest, Monster Brawl! is so well curated that you might be surprised to find that you care about a few of them. 

As a reader of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I believed when the Creature drifted away on an ice raft and was never to be seen again, the Creature did not die. I even thought about writing a sequel myself. Well, Dean Koontz beat me to it in 2004 with the first novel of his Frankenstein trilogy. 

This is a modern update and sequel to Shelly’s book that uses elements of not only horror but also fantasy and science fiction. The novel is set in present-day New Orleans and follows the activities of Victor Frankenstein, now going by the name of Victor Helios, who is using modern technology to create more creatures. Unbeknownst to Victor, his original Creature is still alive and looking for revenge.

Dean Koontz is the King of Exposition and in-depth storytelling. If you like an imaginative, updated take on a classic horror tale with detailed plots and… show more.

 On the spectrum that ranges from narrative fragmentation to narrative linearity, this verse novel triumphs in its capacity to compel the reader both to turn the page and linger over every fine phrase.

A remarkably contemporary retelling of ancient myth, Autobiography of Red reminds us that the ancient stories are the new ones. As the poet Linda Gregg once wrote, “The singers change, the music goes on.” This is a must-read for all students of poetry and lovers of literary experimentation.