Here are 89 books that Morningwood fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been a huge fan of D&D and RPG games since I’ve been old enough to play them. The idea of grooming a character, growing it in terms of strength and levels until it becomes powerful enough to take on gods always captured my imagination. LitRPG is a relatively new book genre, and reading it (the good ones at least) makes you feel like you’re playing those games yourselves. Following a new protagonist growth and journey, often illustrated by actual numeric values you can easily keep track of (like skills and levels) is so much fun, and I think more people should be aware it exists.
Want another new hero perspective? How about storytelling from the point of view of a rock? Well, that rock grows to become a full dungeon including traps, monsters, and hidden treasures. It's an amazing journey from a small crystal entity who just wants to survive to become humanity’s only hope for survival.
My first dive into dungeon core books, and boy, this one is hard to top. Carl is just a great character, how he figures out to grow himself as a dungeon, eat people and whole, yet retain his own streak of 'humanity,' and it's a pleasure to watch him evolve both as a dungeon and as a person. A must-read!
A powerful dungeon. A sheep-herder turned Noble. Their path to ascendance through cultivation.
Conquering dungeons and using them to grow has long been the most efficient way to become a powerful adventurer. The only thing keeping the process from being easy is the Beasts that inhabit these places. Questions plague those entering this particular place of power: Where do the ‘rewards’ of weapons, armor, and heavy gold coins come from? Why is a fluffy bunny charging at me? For abyss-sake, why are there so many monsters?
Cal has all of the answers to these age-old questions for a very simple…
I’ve been a huge fan of D&D and RPG games since I’ve been old enough to play them. The idea of grooming a character, growing it in terms of strength and levels until it becomes powerful enough to take on gods always captured my imagination. LitRPG is a relatively new book genre, and reading it (the good ones at least) makes you feel like you’re playing those games yourselves. Following a new protagonist growth and journey, often illustrated by actual numeric values you can easily keep track of (like skills and levels) is so much fun, and I think more people should be aware it exists.
A great story about the underdog bullied kid who rises up to become a necromancer builds up an undead nation, and rises up to contend with powerful forces against all odds. Great storytelling and compelling character, it’s a pleasure watching Jason grows up from a timid teen to a confident leader – and by using the dark arts. It's a great coming-of-age \ underdog reach the top kind of story – except the underdog does it by embracing necromancy and his tools are the undead soul-wilting powers – yet you can't stop rooting for him to win.
A side quest adventure in the best selling world of Awaken Online!In the aftermath of Thorn's attack on the Twilight Throne, Frank is in an awkward position. Jason and Riley have outpaced him and everyone is hard at work rebuilding the Twilight Throne, establishing new towns, and trying to get their fledgling manufacturing operation off the ground. Everyone except Frank - who finds himself with no immediate task or goal.So Frank decides to strike off on his own. He sets his eyes on the north, heading toward the snow-capped mountains that loom over the undead kingdom's border in the hope…
I’ve been a huge fan of D&D and RPG games since I’ve been old enough to play them. The idea of grooming a character, growing it in terms of strength and levels until it becomes powerful enough to take on gods always captured my imagination. LitRPG is a relatively new book genre, and reading it (the good ones at least) makes you feel like you’re playing those games yourselves. Following a new protagonist growth and journey, often illustrated by actual numeric values you can easily keep track of (like skills and levels) is so much fun, and I think more people should be aware it exists.
An excellent Litrpg sci-fi series. The protagonist goes out beyond earth to discover new races and worlds, slowly gain power, and unearth the secret of the ancient race that started it all. He’s just a human, but he’ll change the galaxy in his quest for knowledge.
The best scfi-fi litrpg in my opinion, the character growth is very visible and keeps you glued to the pages as the protagonist struggle to raise himself. Through his eyes, I got to experience unearthing ancient, hidden cultures, find ancient relics, and uncover galactic-wide schemes that blew my mind away.
An Artificial Intelligence, LitRPG, Cyberpunk adventure.
The Earth is changing. The alien invasion brought social upheaval, advanced technology, and an armada of peacekeeping robots. But Alan, a college student pursuing a now-useless degree, cares little about all of this. He has only one thing on his mind: the Game.
A fully immersive virtual reality, the Game appears to be a major part of the invading civilization. Alan can't wait to play, recklessly diving into the digital universe. Soon though, Alan realizes the Game is anything but simple, and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.
I’ve been reading basically since I learned how to, and I’ve always loved fantasy stories that I could imagine myself in, with stuff going on in every corner of the world, everything fleshed out so thoroughly that the reader just understands how things work and has that world playing in their mind long after they’ve put the book down. I also love stories with well-written characters, where mistakes happen because of who they are, not because of an idiot ball, because nothing launches me out of a story faster than an idiot ball. And this kind of story is what I hope to have written myself.
This is the biggest, most overwhelmingly awesome fantasy story I’ve ever read, bar none. I started reading it and kept doing so non-stop for probably well over a month. It’s so good that I basically did nothing except read, go to class, and do the usual self-care.
It’s a story about a thousand people from Earth scattered across a vast fantasy world, and you really get to see every nook and cranny of this world across the series. Because this is an ancient world, every nook and cranny actually has something fascinating to find. I just absolutely love this story.
(This novel is the e-book version of the free web serial. You may read the entire ongoing story at wanderinginn.com free of charge.)
“No killing Goblins.”
So reads the sign outside of The Wandering Inn, a small building run by a young woman named Erin Solstice. She serves pasta with sausage, blue fruit juice, and dead acid flies on request. And she comes from another world. Ours.
It’s a bad day when Erin finds herself transported to a fantastical world and nearly gets eaten by a Dragon. She doesn’t belong in a place where monster attacks are a fact of…
During my childhood summers, my dad bought thrift-store paperbacks by the bagful, and fantastical stories filled my shady hammock days. Now as an author, writing and reading go hand in hand. There’s no better way to improve my prose and hone my personal style than to read books I love. My trusty highlighter immortalizes the lyrical passages that I swoon over, those luscious words that slip from the tongue, make music in my ears, and paint scenes behind my eyes. I’m swept away by gorgeous language despite the genre, though fantasy books usher in summer memories and a lovely time of idleness when there was nothing to do but read.
The Crown of Stone series is an undiscovered gem in grim-dark fantasy, and Magic-Price is the book that kicked it off. Grim-dark fantasy isn’t often associated with lyrical writing, which made this book a rare find. It’s violent, contains profanity and a few scenes of erotica, and has a great anti-hero, but it’s also beautifully written with rich imagery, vivid descriptions, and a wrenching emotional fullness that stuck with me for days after closing the last page. I loved the flow and how all this luscious writing contrasted with the brutality of the characters and story. All that and a fabulous ending to the series too.
Born of a fallen race, forced into combat at an early age, Ian Troy knew little but the brutality of war. A hope for more was born when, on the brink of defeat, an instrument of victory fell into his hands. Unaware of its true nature, Ian wielded the Crown of Stones, an ancient relic of untold power. He cast, wanting only an end to the conflict tearing the lands apart. Fate had other plans.
A decade later, Ian is still haunted by that tragic day. Running from the blood in his veins and on his hands, he struggles to…
I am a British writer and avid reader of a wide range of genres who’d harbored a life-long ambition to be an author. It wasn’t until I became addicted to seductive romance that I found my own writing flow. I love books that have the power to transport you. Indulging in an adult ideal for a few minutes (or hours) in a day, when your body reacts viscerally to the words on a page, makes you swoon, your cheeks flush and your heart race is my reading and writing heaven. I hope you will experience the same delicious escapism in my book choices as I have.
I want to include a fellow British writer in my list and JEM is my favorite for suspenseful steamy stories. The Brit is the first in the Unlawful Men series. Dark and broken, mafia anti-hero Danny Black is brooding and bad. He is not supposed to fall in love with the women he takes as ‘collateral’ in a deadly game of power. Rose Cassidy has learnt to be tough to survive. Danny sees her as the mirror of himself. Their twisted attraction is not for the feint-hearted but I loved it!
Rose Cassidy doesn't truly live; she just exists. Numbing herself to fear and pain is the only way she can survive in this cruel world. So when she's taken as collateral by the notorious Danny Black in a deadly game of power, she's thrown by the deep fear she feels rising within her. And, worse than fear, a profound desire. She's heard tales of The Brit. He's callous. Coldblooded. But no one ever said he was wickedly beautiful and darkly captivating. He sees past her mask, giving her a cruel sense of hope. But…
I was lucky enough to land a job teaching English at the University of Montevallo, a small public liberal arts college where I have had the opportunity to explore my strange academic interests and teach classes with titles like “Am I Human?” and “Southern Neogothic II: Disability, Hicksploitation, Meat.” When I got tenure, I also had the time and freedom to try my hand at writing the kind of Southern Gothic, Bizarro, and Horror tales that I have always adored. From Mad Magazine to MaddAddam, I have always craved dark satire, body horror, and the grotesque. It’s in my blood.
I love this novel because it mixes Southern Gothic with speculative fiction in a hilarious epic struggle between man and hog. When middle-aged taxidermist Romie Futch becomes a research subject in the shady Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience, he becomes both super genius and guinea pig, his middle-aged brain now brilliant beyond comprehension. Troubled by errant downloads that track his thoughts and actions, Romie turns taxidermy into pop art as he hunts down the legendary super pig “Hogzilla.” This is the funniest, wittiest book I’ve read in a long time.
From the author of The Wilds, which Publishers Weekly called “a brilliant combination of emotion and grime, wit and horror,” comes a debut novel that is part dystopian satire, part Southern Gothic tall tale: a disturbing yet hilarious romp through a surreal New South where newfangled medical technologies change the structure of the human brain and genetically modified feral animals ravage the blighted landscape.
Down on his luck and still pining for his ex-wife, South Carolina taxidermist Romie Futch spends his evenings drunkenly surfing the Internet before passing out on his couch. In a last-ditch attempt to pay his mortgage,…
I’ve had a thing for antiheroes since my early days that were dominated by stereotypical “true-blue” protagonists in straightforward “good versus evil” narratives. Comic books, novels, and television shows were stunted by this unrealistic division that was intended to shelter the reader from provocative ideas and philosophies in favor of presenting a stable worldview. This distortion was most obvious in entertainment intended for young Canadian minds, so it wasn’t until I was old enough to make my own library selections and book purchases that I began to seek out the dark characters populating the gray area that is fiction and life. This ongoing exploration is reflected in my books.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is a fantastic tale of two worlds. There is the Land, a mystical place of good versus evil, with inhabitants who use supernatural means to summon help against the darkness, and our world where the writer Thomas Covenant lives as an outcast to keep his leprosy in remission and to avoid his hostile neighbors. When he is magically transported to the Land and its people beg him to fight the evil for them, he refuses, believing it is a suicidal delusion that will reactivate his disease and kill him. The troubled hero Covenant could not be more compelling, or his dilemma better written, especially as the true-blue inhabitants of the Land struggle to understand why he can’t do the right thing.
I’m a writer of all genres that’s found a lot of love, particularly in fantasy and thrillers. My love for epic fantasies first began when I was young, and like all young readers, was introduced to Harry Potter and the Magic Tree House series. The idea of being whisked away to a magical world captivated me, and so, I started to create my own stories to keep that magic alive.
In Grey, Gabrian doesn’t believe in magic. She’s a psychologist, and proud to be one. She bases her life on logic, but when things start to happen that she can’t explain, she finds herself in a whirlwind of magic. The way that Gabrian slowly comes to the truth is probably my favorite part of this book. As a Borrower, she’s considered not just a magical being, but a dangerous one. At first, she doesn’t handle this well and takes on the role of an anti-hero, nearly villain which was an interesting way to not only build Gabrian’s character but to introduce the truth of the magical world as well.
And skeletons—all dressed in their finest secrets—will come out to dance.
Raised in urban downtown New York, Gabrian holds no grand illusions of how life really works. And legends of magic and vampires, nothing more than a bunch of hocus pocus stuffed within book pages or painted on the big screen.
But when a woman, no one else can see, enters her office and delivers a riddle filled warning about her intended fate, Gabrian's grip on sanity takes a big hit—terrified she is falling into madness.
I've spent my life feeling out of place in this world which had me diving into novels since I was a little girl able to read. I was increasingly drawn to the supernatural dynamic in shows and novels. On top of that I am neurodivergent which means that I have spent years in and out of my own forms of darkness and self-doubt. As an author I wanted to create a world for characters that struggle with the same issues I struggle with and help them heal and grow through their trials. My hope has always been that in the course of my stories I can help a reader heal as well.
This is the John Constantine series. I am constantly enthralled with the nit and grit of this series.
There are a great deal of historical and biblical references in this series as well as their own twists. I found when writing my book that this was the same feeling and style I wanted. I didn’t want a world that was fluffy and beautiful but I wanted to show a world tortured and used as a battleground for angels and demons.
I couldn’t recommend this series more. The magic in this series is power from supernatural being. It's definitely the closest form of magic we could gain for ourselves as we learn the rules of our dominion over the earth.
London's savviest street sorcerer is a foul-mouthed, cynical, chain-smoking con man, but sometimes he's also our only hope. All of these facets of Constantine's character have made him one of the most popular figures in graphic literature. John Constantine, Hellblazer: 30th Anniversary Celebration collects some of the antihero's greatest stories from some of comics' greatest writers, including Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Neil Gaiman, Garth Ennis, Brian Azzarello, and Mike Carey, and also features a foreword written by worldwide musical icon Sting!
When all the chips are down and everything's on the line, what would you do to come out on…
