68 books like One in the Gut

Edward Wright is portalled into an RPG world as a bad guy, but he’s determined to use his dark powers for good. What’s lovely about The Wraith’s Haunt is that Edward doesn’t just build a dungeon. He builds a community. He offers shelter for the disenfranchised, many of them monsters, and knits a motley, heart-warming alliance for the betterment of all. And this is all done within the comfortable progression architecture of a classic dungeon core LitRPG. 

Devon Walker is a rare breed of main character in LitRPG. A well-written female! And while there’s a lot of focus on her classic fantasy character build, there’s as much story time spent on town building and community management. Devon forms strong bonds and friendships with the NPCs of this fantasy RPG world and she does her best to improve their ‘lives’. Stonehaven League is as much about building character as it is about character build.

Phil is given a singular gift, the ability to roleplay his own life. He’s able to convert all of that useless World of Warcraft experience into character points, which he then uses to upgrade himself. At first, this is an encouraging story about a young man turning his life around. But it soon becomes a story of gratitude with a main character who gives back as much as he gets. Level Up is about how privilege should be acknowledged and appreciated, and how self-improvement can be a shared experience with those around you.

Carl is an unhealthy old man who gets the break of a lifetime when a strange accident enables him to upgrade his DNA. Not only is it like taking a sip from the fountain of youth, but Carl can also adopt some of the sensory super powers that animals have. But rather than this turning into another boring superhero story, Biomedical Self-Engineering is the story of a nice guy whose positivity brushes off on almost everyone he encounters. Carl’s not out to save the world. He’s just out to make each day a little better for himself and others.

A Virtual Dream is a LitRPG that’s achieved legendary status. The story does so many things right. It establishes a compelling base-building story, gives meaning to NPCs, and pulls us to root for the oddball protagonist, whether or not we agree with him.

Mysteriously, books one and two of The Dragon’s Wrath haven’t been for sale online in years. Nonetheless, the demand for this series continues today and copies of each book still circulate the web, prized like treasures.

This book helped me realize how much more can be done with the LitRPG genre, and even though its story remains unfinished, the third book gives a considerable amount of resolution while leaving you hungry for more.

This isn’t a zombie book. It’s a book about isolation, depression, rage, and escapism. This is the book I continue to come back to and is always the first one I recommend for someone looking for a new book to read. There’s a slow ramping of violence in this book, married perfectly to the main character’s evolution – resulting in some truly bleak scenes.

I listened to this whole series while climbing mind-numbing stacks of backlogged legal work as an Assistant Attorney General. My vision was clogged with the vivid scenes of Bourne's books, legal folders, paper clips, and coffee stains. It actually inspired the fourth book of my zombie series.   

Told in the diary format common to many books of the zombie epic subgenre, this journal depicts one man's struggle for survival. The unnamed narrator is a naval officer who was just returning home to Texas from visiting his parents in Arkansas when the zombie apocalypse hits. John, another survivor, and Annabell, John's miniature greyhound, work together with the narrator to survive, hoping to find some last working vestige of the US government. 

There are some cool elements to this zombie epic that I haven't found anywhere else. They shelter in a functional missile silo at one point. The clunk, clunk… show more.

This is a gem of a novel and one that should not ever be skipped over. The author’s humor bleeds through every page. This novel, and the entire series, literally had me in tears of laughter at many points. Even though the comedic aspect does tend to be the overarching theme, it does not detract from the horror of the situations the main characters find themselves in. The main character is obviously based on the author himself, as well as his family and his dog. This is fascinating because many authors may take certain aspects of themselves or loved ones and create characters with a trait or two, but Tufo goes all out and just makes himself a (hopefully!) exaggerated character in his own novel. The series starts small and centralized and builds itself into an entire world (or ten) of horrific and hilarious zombie craziness. You love many of… show more.

Originally released in ten parts as a horror serial, The Resurrected is a real treat. For starters, the zombie virus has a unique origin. The planet is hit by a series of freak storms. In the aftermath, strange flowers bloom, spreading a virus that transmits across humanity. The shocking action that follows is told from a shifting array of characters with many of their stories intertwining. My favorite thing about this book is Hart’s visceral description. Her sensory details will transport the reader right into each moment. It’s a wicked read, and features the best zombie sex scene you’ll ever read!

I absolutely loved this anthology when I first read it in the 90s. It was still very much in my mind when Constable asked me to do another comics anthology for them. Jones searched for the very best zombie stories but also he wasn’t constrained by one idea of what a zombie was/could be. It has the big names from the time Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, and Christopher Fowler but also some of my favourite authors whose writing blurs genre lines such as Charles L Grant and Dennis Etchinson. It put in my mind that the zombie was as much about ideas of outsiders, rejection, and control as dead flesh continuing to move.