I have a reading itch I’m having a really hard time scratching. I like darker themes, but probably not quite to what’s considered grimdark. Something that’s hugely important to me is feeling like whatever bad thing happened had appropriate consequences. Ex: If the main character murders someone, that’s probably going to mess them up, and there will be consequences. I want those to be shown and not just glossed over. I also don’t want to read something where the author just throws dark shit around to be edgy. I do not want torture porn. I *do* want to get kicked in the feels. Either high or low fantasy is fine, might also be convinced to look at sci fi.
**\*\*\*\*I want realistic, emotional characters that need therapy.\*\*\*\***
As far as triggers go, I don’t have any ‘absolutely nots’ but unless you have the perfect book for me, I do not want to read sexual assault.
**Things I’ve read that kind of come close to what I want in some way, shape or form:**
* Abhorsen series by Garth Nix
* Scholomance trilogy- If you can give me more of what I felt in book 3 >!when you find out what maw mouths really are, and how that gets handled!<, that’s what I want, maybe a smidge darker, and more of it.
* Sunshine by Robin McKinley
* Newsflesh trilogy By Mira Grant
* Give me an adult uncensored version of Animorphs.
**Preferences (not required!):**
* 3rd person limited POV
* Female main character
* Multiple books
* Little to no sex
* If its an unfinished series, I want it to be reasonable that it will actually be finished someday.
* Published less than 40 years ago
* Main character is at least in their 20s
* Medium or fast paced
**Dealbreakers:**
* **I’m not reading Malazan.**
* Heavy politics (I’m autistic as fuck, it sails over my head and frustrates me to no end and makes me feel stupid.)
* Military
* More than \~5 povs
* Romance being a main theme (It can be there, but I am uninterested in it.)
* Not a hard dealbreaker, but I’m really sick of books where characters will just make unrealistic witty quips *Avengers* style in heated moments. It just does not work for me in books and is immersion breaking
* Also not a super hard dealbreaker, but excessively described battles and fight scenes are kind of annoying.
* Overly flowery prose.
**Books I hated/disliked:**
* A song of Ice and Fire – too many povs, too much sex, too much political bullshit
* She Who Became the Sun- too much political bullshit and military, and hated the other POV, but I loved the first 100 pages and thought it was well written.
* The Poppy War- I thought this was written like garbage, main character was obnoxious and unrealistic, and I feel like a lot of things were just done for shock value. This is quite literally the only book in the last 5 years that I’ve DNF’ed.
* A Discovery of Witches- I didn’t *hate* this I guess, as I read all 3, but the main character had the complexity of a sheet of printer paper and that got old. (Also she gets herself knocked up on purpose like 2 months after meeting that guy and was happy about it wtf.)
**Books I’m not interested in:**
* **Malazan**\- I do not want to have to take notes to understand a novel that I am reading for pleasure. 400+ povs across 10 books is insane. Don’t care how good it is, not doing it. I had a hard enough time with 9 in another series.
* First Law- I know someone is going to suggest this, but I’ve read the synopsis and it does not seem interesting to me.
* Anything that people regularly compare to Game of Thrones.
* Fourth Wing. I feel like that’s already obvious but I know someone’s going to say it.
* Anita Blake
* The “Mercyverse” series by Patricia Briggs
* Sookie Stackhouse
* Anything remotely resembling the above 3 that will inevitably degrade into vampire werewolf sex fests.
* The Witcher
* Stephen King- guy’s brilliant, just not a fan of his books.
**Other** **Stuff I’ve read that I liked just in general that I can think of off the top of my head:**
* Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne
* Coldfire Trilogy by CS Friedman
* Dragonriders of Pern
* Artemis Fowl
* Lord of the Rings
* Themis Files
* Gearbreakers/Godslayers by Zoe Hana Mikuta
* Seven Kennings Trilogy by Kevin Hearne
* Brimstone Angels by Erin M Evans
* R A Salvatore’s Drizzt novels
* Dragonlance
* Neil Gaiman
* Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter
TL;DR
Don’t tell me to read Malazan.
by chajava
1 Comment
You might like Lauren Beukes — she’s at best low fantasy/scifi but gets into darker places that may hit what you’re looking for. These are all standalone.
The Shining Girls – about a time traveling serial killer, really gets in his head and the victim who got away. There are one off third person POVs of most of his victims, most of the story is the killer and the one who got away.
Broken Monsters – about a series of murders where the victims’ bodies are fused with animals, POVs most heavily focus on the detective and her daughter who is catfishing potential predators online.
Bridge – a young woman pursues the truth about her mother through the multiverse via a psychedelic drug, while someone bent on killing everyone who uses that drug hunts her. Main POVs are the woman and the hunter, with occasional chapters from the woman’s best friend and the mother’s former assistant.
Other ideas:
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean – low fantasy standalone. A secretive not-quite-human species living in plain sight who literally eat books to learn and survive, your sex determines what kind of books you eat, there’s arranged marriages within families to keep bloodlines pure, and some children come out fucked up to the point that they have to eat humans to survive. One woman attempts to free herself from this world to give her son, who is one of these abominations, a better life.
All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody and
C. L. Herman – YA duology, I admittedly have only read the first book. Imagine The Hunger Games but it’s the children of magical families competing to gain control of a source of immense magic for 20 years.