99 books like The Book of Jhereg

This book was one of the first assassin books ever written, and it’s a masterpiece of classic fantasy. The character is exactly as brooding and dour as I’d expected, but the moment he saves a young woman and her two orphaned companions, I understood there was so much more to him. And over the course of the book—and all his books—I saw those layers stripped away piece by piece and the grief-stricken man beneath.

The story was action-packed in exactly the way I wanted it to be, but it also profoundly explored nobility, morality, belief, and faith. The final scenes of the trilogy had me in tears, something not easily accomplished.  

Who hasn’t dreamt of being able to converse with a wolf? We get our chance in this intriguing story of Fitz Farseer, my all-time favorite character.

There’s much to enjoy in this series—royal assassins, secret mentors, and family betrayal—but what I love most is the outlawed magic that creates a deep bond between Fitz and a fearless wolf named Nighteyes, allowing them to communicate.

Nighteyes, another favorite character, reminds me of my childhood golden retriever, only with sharper fangs and claws. He reveals exactly how much we’re missing out on when we can’t converse with animals like him—sharing their sharper perceptions, grasping the wolfishly obvious, or having our human foolishness pointed out in their bluntly canine way.

I can’t find a more deeply philosophical book, among all adult literature, to compare with the works of Madeleine L’Engle.

The protagonists of these stories may be children, but they live in a world of scientific supernature that blurs the lines between measurable, observable reality and mystic philosophy. Even before researching Madeleine L’Engle’s life, I could tell that she was a serious thinker.

Few books have had such a profound impact on the way I approach living in the “real” world of adults. Einstein would have loved this book.

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. 

Where so many other fantasy novels focus primarily on young characters discovering their abilities, this book introduced me to Durzo Blint, an assassin at the peak of his powers with a legendary reputation and a leave-no-one-alive attitude.

I loved seeing his humanity through his interactions with his apprentice (Azoth/Kylar), but what made this series one of my all-time favorites is knowing that anytime Durzo goes against an enemy, he goes hard and doesn’t stop until he’s the last man left standing. It has insane action, a beautifully dark flavor, and a truly epic story. 

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!

In addition to his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure story delivers world-class excitement and deeply satisfying reading. Doyle’s story of explorers who find living dinosaurs in the Amazonian rainforest can hardly be matched for its originality.

I read it long ago and found it so memorable it was worth another read more recently. And I’m glad I did. The dinosaurs are portrayed dramatically, to say the least, but I was also impressed by rereading that the characters were quite ingenious. Professor Challenger, the expedition leader, is a gruff, highly irascible fellow, given to brawling as much as to debate. Ned Malone, newspaper reporter, and central “I “ character is a riveting taleteller and keen observer of dinosaurian and human nature.

There are many reasons why I love the character Conan. He is big, strong, and fearless in the face of danger. He battles monsters of epic proportions and evil beings to satisfy his own bloodthirsty tale of revenge. That plus the action kept me on the edge of my seat. 

For me, The Black Company opened a whole range of personalities that could “work” for fantasy—the grim, desperate men of the Company are not good men… but they’re heroes nonetheless. I found The Black Company’s focus on character over grandiose plot to be refreshing after many years of reading swollen tomes. Even better, The Black Company taught me a lot about focusing in on the relationship between men: the Company men talk like the men I know, gruff, to the point, competitive and combative even when they’re working together. It feels rough and real in a way that sticks with me even years later. As a dad and an educator, my reading time is limited; Cook gets far more across, in far less space, than many other fantasy authors.

It is Bakker’s controversial rethinking of the lives and science behind earth’s prehistory. In his avant-garde ideas, Bakker proposes and answers questions of things like what these monsters are and how they defended themselves or hunted. He even spoke on how they might have reproduced.

It’s a book to create dreamers who can take the torch to shed new light on those questions we all share in common as members of humanity.