Here are 90 books that The Dragon's Path fans have personally recommended if you like
The Dragon's Path.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
My first two lessons as a geophysicist were confusing opposites. My supervisor told me that I must carry my investigations to professional conclusions, while the very best physicists showed me that good scientists are the most parsimonious about what they conclude. It's a battle between humility and the need to tell a story. We human beings crave a nice, neat ending, and we often only get one in fantasy, for the real world is complex. It was this insight that led me to start every story I ever wrote with at least a concept for the ending. If we are going to go anywhere with our narratives, we better first consider where that is.
Who doesn’t want to right the wrongs committed against them? I try to be a grown up and move on with my life when someone antagonizes me, but sometimes I wish there was justice in the world. Who doesn’t, even if sometimes we know we are not being mature? Revenge is the ultimate ending, and Abercrombie’s clever stand-alone novel examines just how cold it really can be. It turns out, not at all. Monza has been screwed over bad. She has every reason to want to get even—which means everyone who tried to kill her needs to end up dead. The bodies certainly pile up but when she reaches victory, Monza finds it more absurd than cold. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and more than a little darkly humorous. Take it with a shadowy laugh.
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.
War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories…
I have long been fascinated by what makes us human. Great art is about the human condition. We are very quick to reject art that gets that human condition wrong. I’m a poet, a playwright, and a scientist. While my science has found itself at the center of fields such as computational psychiatry and neuroeconomics, I find myself turning again and again to the insights from great novels to understand the subtleties of the human condition. So to complement the scientific questions of morality (because morality is all about the human condition), one should start with great novels that ask who we are and why we do what we do.
The best description of sainthood I have ever found. In The Curse of Chalion, Bujold starts from a world of visceral reality with a new religion based on family archetypes.
In her world, these gods are real and play very specific roles within the society, and well-constructed prayer opens up a space for the gods to use one for their purposes. As the main character learns what it means to be a saint, to allow miracles to flow through him (as he says, “like a mule being whipped up the mountain pass”), we see the difference between supportive and unsupportive roles, how failure can lead one astray and how the journey home can be long and difficult.
Warning: This book contains scenes and situations not suitable for children.
A man broken in body and spirit, Cazaril returns to the noble household he once served as page and is named secretary-tutor to the beautiful, strong-willed sister of the impetuous boy who is next in line to rule. It is an assignment Cazaril dreads, for it must ultimately lead him to the place he most fears: the royal court of Cardegoss, where the powerful enemies who once placed him in chains now occupy lofty positions.
But it is more than the traitorous intrigues of villains that threaten Cazaril and the Royesse Iselle here, for a sinister curse hangs like a…
I’ve been heavily immersed in the fantasy and sci-fi world since the age of nine, across fiction novels, role-playing games, tabletop miniature gaming, and movies. My first love was fantasy, and that’s one of the reasons why the post-apocalyptic genre particularly appeals to me when it comes to sci-fi. It plays in that dark, gritty place between futuristic, sci-fi, technology, and dark-age style fantasy. In addition, I’ve always felt socially conscious and value writing that highlights themes that are relevant today. This is another place that the post-apocalyptic genre slides comfortably into. And, of course, there’s the zombies. Another fantasy element that works beautifully in post-apocalyptic, sci-fi settings.
I loved this book for its combination of fantasy and sci-fi, the gritty and grim world Lawrence has created, and the high-energy and higher-stakes action sequences that fill the book.
I loved that it was unexpected. Lawrence's post-apocalyptic world concept was unique and fresh, compellingly combining the technology of a dying world with supernatural themes. I certainly did not expect the convent setting and nun-in-training protagonist in a sci-fi storyline, and yet that’s what I got in his main character, Nona Grey.
I love the tension and suspense created in the frequent action sequences Nona finds herself in, which left me wanting more and more. This leads to the last thing I really loved about this book: that it continued across two more books: Grey Sister and Holy Sister.
It's not until you're broken that you find your sharpest edge.
"I was born for killing - the gods made me to ruin."
At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices' skills to deadly effect: it takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist.
But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don't truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought…
My first two lessons as a geophysicist were confusing opposites. My supervisor told me that I must carry my investigations to professional conclusions, while the very best physicists showed me that good scientists are the most parsimonious about what they conclude. It's a battle between humility and the need to tell a story. We human beings crave a nice, neat ending, and we often only get one in fantasy, for the real world is complex. It was this insight that led me to start every story I ever wrote with at least a concept for the ending. If we are going to go anywhere with our narratives, we better first consider where that is.
Sometimes we think we are reading fiction as an exercise in entertainment, and fantasy as a guilty pleasure. Abercrombie is a favorite writer of mine because his work does all that, but he also surprises with sharp insight every single time. Last Argument of Kings ends his First Law Trilogy with the most surprising reveal of all—that the moral center does not exist. Not at all. All the blood and death that his characters have dealt out and survived are not in service to some higher good. More than just an exercise in cynicism or a service to violence, this story shines a light on power, politics and the people who stand atop the heap. And somehow Abercrombie does this all while making you laugh and shake your head in amazement.
Logen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him - but it's going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm, and there's only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend, and his oldest enemy. It's past time for the Bloody-Nine to come home.
With too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no-one is safe, and no-one can be trusted. His days with a sword are far behind him.…
I started my career teaching high school. I attended amazing professional development institutes, where scholars showed me how the stories I’d learned and then taught to my own students were so oversimplified that they had become factually incorrect. I was hooked. I kept wondering what else I’d gotten wrong. I earned a Ph.D. in modern US History with specialties in women’s and gender history and war and society, and now I’m an Associate Professor of History at Iowa State University and the Coordinator of ISU’s Social Studies Education Program. I focus on historical complexity and human motivations because they are the key to understanding change.
Generally speaking, I hate anything that hints at theory. But this slim volume, which investigates the relationship between states of war and how we understand time, is grounded solidly in reality and does not require mental gymnastics to understand.
Using the examples of World War II, the Cold War, and the Global War on Terror, Dudziak made me rethink how we define when it’s “wartime” vs. when it’s “peacetime” and why that matters. Her argument is about how war has not been a time out of time or aberration, so treating war as a period when different rules apply has real consequences.
The book pushed me to rethink how and when I silo ideas, time, and events and how dangerous silo’ing can be.
When is wartime? On the surface, it is a period of time in which a society is at war. But we now live in what President Obama has called "an age without surrender ceremonies," when it is no longer easy to distinguish between wartime and peacetime. In this inventive meditation on war, time, and the law, Mary Dudziak argues that wartime is not as discrete a time period as we like to think. Instead, America has been engaged in some form of ongoing overseas armed conflict for over a century. Meanwhile policy makers and the American public continue to view…
I've always been a reader. In my childhood, I read Hardy Boys novels by the bucketload. I loved scholastic book fairs, pouring over the lists to find new books to read. Then my uncle gave me The Hobbit followed by giving me a hardback set of Lord of the Rings for Christmas of the 6th Grade. After that, my mother gave me Pawn of Prophecy, which cemented my love of the genre. I write fantasy because of all the books I listed. Each one led me down a path that ended with me publishing my first novel.
I picked this book up as a lark at the SeaTac Borders Bookstore while waiting to fly down to my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary celebration. I can't really say why I bought it, but I have never had a book series that challenged me more.
The philosophy and metaphysics of this world had me thinking like no other books did. It pushed me to write far more gray characters and to see a human as a flawed yet beautiful amalgamation of strengths and weaknesses. Bakker is fearless in his subject matters, and I try to be as well. I write about the best and worst of humanity because of the depths of Bakker's broken characters.
The Darkness That Comes Before is the first book in R. Scott Bakker’s epic fantasy trilogy The Prince of Nothing. Set in a world scarred by an apocalyptic past, four people are swept up in the launch of an imminent crusade, during which they are ensnared by mysterious traveler Anasûrimbor Kellhus, whose magical, philosophical, and military talents have origins in a distant time.
“[An] impressive, challenging debut . . . [the book’s] willingness to take chances and avoid the usual genre clichés should win many discriminating readers.” —Publishers Weekly
Simo Laakkonen is director of Degree Program in Digital Culture, Landscape and Cultural Heritage, University of Turku, Finland. He is an environmental historian who has specialized among other things on the global environmental history of warfare during Industrial Age. He has coedited on this theme two special issues and three books, the latest one is The Resilient City in World War II: Urban Environmental Histories. He has selected five books that cover some main phases of the long environmental history of wars and mass violence.
How has nature influenced war and how have these changes presented? These kinds of basic questions make everyone interested in environmental history of war think.
This comprehensive book is easy to read but it provides valuable insights to the interaction between societies and nature from pre-colonial India to post-war Japan and serves as an excellent introduction to the field.
Contributors to this volume explore the dynamic between war and the physical environment from a variety of provocative viewpoints. The subjects of their essays range from conflicts in colonial India and South Africa to the U.S. Civil War and twentieth-century wars in Japan, Finland, and the Pacific Islands. Among the topics explored are: - the ways in which landscape can influence military strategies - why the decisive battle of the American Civil War was fought - the impact of war and peace on timber resources - the spread of pests and disease in wartime.
My passion for Mexican and military history came from many sources. Wandering in my 20s in Europe and Asia honed my appreciation for the historical experience. Good friends in the Canadian military made me curious about the odd rituals and strange subcultures they inhabited. As I moved from Calgary to Vancouver to Tucson I devolved from degree to degree, studying deviance, military history, Mexican culture, and finally finishing a dissertation that combined these elements into one work. And now I happily get to inflict all of this history on my students in California.
Reed’s wonderful writing style and great turns of phrase make this an enjoyable read, while his attention to detail and excellent research make it requisite to understanding the long Caste War of the Maya after 1847. It is a critical antidote to works that pay too little attention to indigenous agents, to religious motivations, and to a long-simmering insurrection with vibrant cultural voices. Other works have taken this on since, but it remains a classic.
This is the classic account of one of the most dramatic episodes in Mexican history-the revolt of the Maya Indians of Yucatan against their white and mestizo oppressors that began in 1847. Within a year, the Maya rebels had almost succeeded in driving their oppressors from the peninsula; by 1855, when the major battles ended, the war had killed or put to flight almost half of the population of Yucatan. A new religion built around a Speaking Cross supported their independence for over fifty years, and that religion survived the eventual Maya defeat and continues today.
I am an American-born writer and I have been writing fantasy and science fiction since I was just out of elementary school. I have been obsessed with Star Wars (and later Trek) since I was able to watch television, and I believe I was twelve when Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters…needless to say, I have not stopped reading and writing fantasy since. The books on my list are some (but not all) of my very favorites and many of them have gone on to heavily inspire my own style when writing my own works.
Every entry of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive is epic, hands down.
Filled with fantasy lore, action, weird magic, and displeased gods, yes, there is something good to say about every book in the series so far. But book 2, Words of Radiance, is filled with moment after moment where I found myself standing up and pumping my fist in the air after the story’s main protagonist does something terrifically badass, especially in the latter half of the novel.
It’s got all the other good stuff, too. Like its predecessor, The Way of Kings, it has plenty of light humor, moments of shared brotherhood in the face of oppression, complicated characters, sweeping battles…but those moments of tension building followed by resounding victory are excellently written and gets my heart pumping to this day.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance, Book Two of the Stormlight Archive, continues the immersive fantasy epic that The Way of Kings began.
Expected by his enemies to die the miserable death of a military slave, Kaladin survived to be given command of the royal bodyguards, a controversial first for a low-status "darkeyes." Now he must protect the king and Dalinar from every common peril as well as the distinctly uncommon threat of the Assassin, all while secretly struggling to master remarkable new powers that are somehow linked to his honorspren, Syl.
As a veteran of the United States Army Special Operations Command, my time in the army will always guide my actions. When I began my career in cybersecurity and later took on the role of President and Chair of Conquest Cyber, I looked to my military experience for guidance. The lessons I learned from leaders were much like those I’ve learned through these books, and they are lessons that will benefit any leader, business owner, or founder.
Even corporate America needs heroes. While Tier One Wild is fiction, it was written by a true hero, Dalton Fury. Fury was the senior ranking officer in the Battle of Tora Bora. He helped author the operation to hunt and kill bin Laden.
This book, the second in the Raynor series, has the flair of someone who has been there as Fury has been. Its fast moving and includes elements of both redemption and sacrifice. While this would be easy to dismiss as fiction or another war story, readers will be surprised by how applicable the lessons can be in the business world.
New York Times bestselling author and former Delta Force commander Dalton Fury (Black Site and Kill Bin Laden) is back with an explosive new thriller
Former disgraced Delta Force commander Kolt "Racer" Raynor has earned his way back into The Unit after redeeming himself during an explosive operation at a black site in Pakistan. But he is about to face his deadliest challenge yet.
The most wanted man in the world, American al Qaeda commander Daoud al Amriki, and his handpicked team of terrorist operatives, have acquired stores of Russian-built, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles (SAM's) from ex-Libyan spies in Cairo. Their…
