100 books like The Unfortunates

With a cover like a Halloween fever dream, I expected a lot of otherworldly gothic creepiness, which this book delivered. What I didn’t expect was Gideon, an unforgettable character whose unapologetic frankness is like a shot of whisky in what could otherwise be an overwrought space opera. It’s a bit of stretch to call this historical fantasy, but I love that the world-building implies a complex backstory both for the characters and their world. Which sets up a wonderfully weird juxtaposition of ancient and modern.  Set in a feudal world, inhabited by undead necromancer lieges and their cavalier servants, I kept thinking, “Did Gideon just say that *&^$ to her master?” Yes, she did. And I was there for every word.

Who doesn’t love a book with dragons? Bonus—a magic Hogwarts-ish school where you go to learn about how to control your dragon.

The extra twist in To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is that the story is told from the perspective of an indigenous woman, Anequs. People like her aren’t supposed to have dragons, let alone be capable of learning how to manage them. No one at the Anglish dragon school she’s forced to attend believes Anequs can succeed, but Anequs doesn’t care what the Anglish think. 

What I loved about this book was how firmly grounded Anequs is in her family and her people, as well as the confidence that gives her. Anequs never wavers in her belief in herself and the value of indigenous wisdom and culture.

This remarkable novel, patterned lightly after James Joyce’s Ulysses, is the tale of Carlotta Mercedes, a Black and Hispanic transgender woman who returns to her Brooklyn neighborhood after serving decades in prison because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Unfolding almost in real time over the 2015 July 4 weekend, the book has a chaotic, madcap energy and toggles seamlessly throughout between a traditional third-person narrative and the hilarious, heartbreaking first-person monologue inside Carlotta’s brilliant, bonkers head.

Reading this novel is like getting on a nonstop rollercoaster with a narrator who will crack you up and make you root for her right up to the ecstatic final page.

How do you tell stories about the people who don’t show up in history’s official records?

That’s the question Vaness Hua explores in Forbidden City, which was inspired by a couple of lines Hua read about Chairman Mao Zedong’s love of ballroom dancing. Party officials would bring young women to the Forbidden Palace to dance with Mao and his party faithful. 

Any more detail about the lives of these young women is lost to history, but recreated with astonishing insight and beauty by Hua in Forbidden City. The main character, Mei Xiang, has to navigate the dangerous world of politics during the beginnings of the brutal and violent Cultural Revolution in China.

I love the questions this book raises about all the unknown women and girls whose stories of survival have been lost to time.

If you seek more quests, you will find another exciting one in Utomi’s Forever Desert series, beginning with the novella about the Ajungo Empire.

However, to describe this story simply as a quest (for water, no less) would do no justice to the complex, exciting work Utomi does in borrowing not only from desert empires of the Sahara, but also from popular media (as the Mad Max-esque romp through the desertscape and anime-inspired battles demonstrate).

This novella is a testament to the breadth of manner and shape that Africa-inspired epic fantasy tales can take. Long may it continue.

This remarkable tale is not as well known as others, in part because it was written in 1817 and by a less accomplished writer, but it is hard to beat as a true account of nearly unsurvivable hardship. Captain James Riley, captured when his American ship—Commerce—runs aground south of Morocco, is taken into the Sahara desert along with several of his crew as slaves of Bedouins. Barefoot, terribly sunburnt, forced to drink camel urine, they walk hundreds of miles behind their master’s camels until finally ransomed by an American consul. This shocking reversal of the usual slavery tale is a poignant indictment of the slave trade. Abraham Lincoln claimed that Sufferings in Africa, along with The Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, had the most effect on his political ideology.

The Sahara Desert, more used to Bedouins and camels, had never seen a motorcycle before let alone two Englishwomen riding one. Setting off from London in December 1934, Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron rode their 600cc Panther through Africa from north to south. They maintained a ‘why not?’ attitude that got them through despite frequent punctures, delays whilst waiting for permits and none of the technology provided for today’s motorcycle traveller. These two qualified engineers who had already broken motorcycle speed records at Brooklands, took their motorcycle outfit and trailer with not even a compass... just a map that showed each oasis on the way. I was in a permanent state of suspense when reading about each encounter they experienced and their outstanding ingenuity and perseverance.

I hadn’t read this as a child, but upon reading it the first time, it made me feel like a child. The deep introspection, written with the imagination and voice of a young child, was calming, and I felt as if he knew how I thought as a child and adult.

I was living in France at the time, and the story had a foreign mood but was familiar. The book reached into personal childhood daydreams and fantasies. The prince’s way of thinking and expressing himself was definitely not from the modern day and it inspired me to write “up” to younger audiences. The immediacy and freshness of the illustrations motivated me to think less and feel more when creating.

This book offers a poignant personal view of Sufism by a Scottish-born actor and writer who became disillusioned with a world “where people teach but know nothing, where the sentences flow on endlessly but lead nowhere.” He seeks and finds wisdom and solace in the deserts of Sahara under the guidance of a Sufi master to whom he dedicates his short but powerful book. When I picked it up as a reading for my class on Sufism, I thought I would find a usual mushy account of Sufism by a starry-eyed neophyte. The book was anything but: it was eloquent, deeply personal, and felicitously free from platitudes. I was pleasantly surprised and so were my students. I recommend it to everyone interested in spiritual quests regardless of his or her background.    

One of Cussler’s earlier novels featuring Dirk Pitt, Cussler sends his erstwhile hero deep into a desert landscape where he throws all manner of problems at them.

As Pitt and co battle to survive the harsh conditions, they are tested to the limit as they must not only escape the arid landscape, but do in time to foil a dastardly plot. While perhaps not as much of a literary heavyweight as some of the other authors mentioned on this list, Cussler is brilliant at writing a rollicking good yarn.