It seems like the villain is the one who actively wants to sow chaos and destruction but I want to see the main character of the story wanting to do that and accomplishes it.
Preferably a fantasy genre but would accept anything if the main plot is something I'm looking for.
Motivations of the main character could be revenge, cynicism, nihilism, etc.
Don't have to be a 4-5 star book or have good writing. It could just be popcorn entertainment or turn your brain off book. I'm okay with web novel suggestions.
by node_pt
4 Comments
*Stone*, by Adam Roberts. SF.
Why a novel? Just read the news😂
Chelsea Vowel’s “Buffalo Is The New Buffalo” is a collection of Metis futurisim short stories. I think you’d particularly be interested in the last one, about a group of indigenous young people running a long-term hybernation facility, discussing ethical conflicts in history and their present.
“The Deep” by Rivers Solomon is a novella about a psychic autistic mermaid who can’t cope with her community’s trauma, and ties into a plotline I think you’ll appreciate.
“The Raven Tower” by Ann Leckie is a stand-alone fantasy novel set in a world where gods are national resources. A prince and his sidekick return to investigate why their city’s god seems to be missing/inactive/unpredictable. To say more would involve spoilers, so admittedly the nihilism only comes out near the end.
“The Power” by Naomi Alderman is a spiritual sequel to “The Handmaids’ Tale” (so you MIGHT want to read that first, if you’re deeply concerned with spoilers). AFAB people suddenly develop electrokinesis. Shirley, this will be a straightforward story of revenge against the patriarchy and not a story about unchecked power!
“The Holdfast Chronicles” by Suzy McKee Charnas is an out-of-print series about a post-apocalyptic world divided by sex, where women are seen as subhuman slaves and decide to violently swap who’s in charge. Charnas is unapologetic about unleashing her anger at the patriarchy and the feminist movement, this is not a series that offers suggestions on how to address real-world problems, it’s about sucking and suffering in a post-apocalyptic hellscape and cycles of vengeful violence. Includes honest to god >!horsefucking!<, Dracula-style impalement, and some deeply cringe descriptions of black characters. Some kind of fascinating attitudes towards female beauty and sexuality that I could ramble about.
Octavia Butler was very interested in the idea of long-term social projects that shape humanity in morally questionable ways, and a lot of her writing involves an element of “What the fuck, you’re causing an apocalypse!” “No, things are just CHANGING, trust me this is for the best!” Her “Xenogenesis” trilogy is about a woman named Lilith, who survives a nuclear war and thanks to the intervention of seemingly benign aliens who want to help her re-colonize earth. As her name implies, she is not remembered well by certain threads of history. Her “Patternist” novels take a spin in that direction too, it starts of as historical speculative fiction (psychics and shapeshifters in colonial America!) and follows a path of plot development that I can only describe as anime-like. She’s also got a collection of short stories published under the title “Bloodchild And Other Stories”. There’s one, I can’t quite remember the title, about a human woman who’s kind of a La Malinche figure for an alien invasion, facilitating the alien’s colonization to the horror of humanity, that explains how she got to that mental state.
“Sister, Maiden, Monster” by Lucy A. Snyder is a gross-out body-horror about three women living in dark times. Spoilers, but not everyone’s plot arc bends towards ‘not evil’.
America is a Zoo by Andre Soares