I am looking for books about buff men hitting things with big sticks. An antagonist that is an evil monster with no redeeming qualities and a protagonist that has no moral conundrums of killing said monster. The genre doesn't matter, but no romance, no deep introspection, no whiny characters and no immaturity. Women in the books should be strong and independent. Just looking for manly men to kill classical evil tropes with big muscles and arrogance in bloody battles of iron and steel.
TLDR: gaston autobiography
by Local-Honey-2568
7 Comments
Hemingway, maybe?
Have you tried the Conan the Barbarian?
Manly?
Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie is like that.
First Law series in general too. Logen has the muscles. Bit of a toss up whether is the bad guy or the good guy though. He is NOT the one they are trying to topple though.
No romance. Bit of sex. Not a lot.
For an older book, more of a spy novel, not burly barbarian types, Rogue Male? Manly anyway…
Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser
Spawn of the Winds hy Brian Lumley. Its sort of Lovecraftian, by Lumely decided his heroes wouldn’t faint and gibber when confronted with Nameless Horrors – they’d get out the axes and explosives.
You might like *Transfer of Power* by Vince Flynn, the first book published in gis Mitch Rapp series. Terrorists take control of the White House. Kinda like *Olympus Has Fallen* or *White House Down* as a book, and written in a pre-9/11 world.
There’s also some similar series, Dewey Andreas by Ben Coes, and Pike Logan by Brad Taylor are two more of my favorites.
I’m going to suggest Free the Darkness by Kel Kade. The protagonist was so over the top OP that it ruined it for me, but it sounds like you would like something like it.
>Raised and trained in complete seclusion at a secret fortress on the edge of the northern wilds of the Kingdom of Ashai, a young warrior called Rezkin is unexpectedly thrust into the outworld when a terrible battle destroys all that he knows. With no understanding of his life’s purpose and armed with masterful weapons mysteriously bequeathed to him by a dead king, the young warrior relentlessly pursues his only lead. A single elite warrior escaped during the battle and may have knowledge of who Rezkin is and who is responsible for the slaughter at the young man’s home.
>Rezkin must travel across Ashai to find the one man who may hold the clues to his very existence. His last orders, spoken on the lips of his dying Master, were to “Kill with conscience” and “Protect and honor your friends.” Living in isolation from the outworld under a strict regimen of training and education, the young warrior has no understanding of a conscience or friends. Determined to adhere to his last orders, Rezkin extends his protection to an unlikely assortment of individuals he meets along the way, often leading to humorous and poignant incidents.
>As if pursuing an elite warrior across a kingdom, figuring out who he is and why everyone he knows is dead, and attempting to find these so-called friends and protect them is not enough, strange things are happening in the kingdom. New dangers begin to arise that threaten not only Rezkin and his friends, but possibly everyone in Ashai.