Hey, all.
I'm looking for books with very tightly-woven plots, where there's a lot of disparate parts and plot threads that are somehow all connected and join into a single whole. Lots of small details and Chekov's guns.
Really, I'm looking for books like Holes, by Louis Sachar. I love Holes. I really want to read something that feels like it, structure-wise.
I'm neutral on genre, though I don't usually enjoy books that are heavy on romance or violence. I'm not necessarily looking for mystery novels, but I do enjoy them now and then.
by accidentphilosophy
30 Comments
Children of Time
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr might be interesting for you.
Mostly commenting to see what others say but two that come to mind are The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley and Lexicon by Max Barry. Maybe The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley but less so
A Prayer for Owen Meany and Raymie Nightingale have similar payoffs (and are both excellent in their own right).
cloud atlas, hearts in atlantis (especially if you are into the stephen king universe), good omens
You might enjoy “The Deptford Trilogy” by Robertson Davies. It takes place over three books, covering multiple, but related characters over many years, all generated by an incident with a thrown snowball that goes astray. I read it last year and it really is the most creative story I ever encountered.
The Smell of Other People’s Houses is nice.
There are two series that fit the bill:
The Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin (*The Passage*, *The Twelve*, *The City of Mirrors*).
A U.S. government/military experiment with an ancient virus goes awry and turns into a massive catastrophe. It’s immersive with great characters, multiple POVs and timelines, solid world building, and an amazing and satisfying story arc. Cronin is a master plotter. It’s a 2000-page epic masterpiece.
The Millenium Trilogy by Steig Larsson (*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo*; *The Girl Who Played With Fire*; *The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest*).
It’s a slow burn for the first 50 or so pages in the first book with the initial setup, but then it speeds up, weaving multiple plot threads that eventually all come together, culminating with a third book that is just 🔥
Middlemarch
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Shogun by James Clavell.
Also Sailing To Sarantium and Lord of Emporers by Guy Gavriel Kay (and then read all his other books because they are amazing).
And the Phedre series by Jaqueline Carey – it starts with Kushiel’s Dart. High fantasy – lots of very kinky sex and violence but in a well-written way with lots of other stuff going on.
All three of these are very different but they are all compelling reads with twisty plots, high stakes, betrayals, red herrings, and satisfying moments where you leaf back through the book to find the clues you missed.
The Wheel of Time series does a great job building the small details and continuity.
Ágota Kristóf, The Notebook Trilogy
The early books by Jonathan Coe, especially What a carve up!, The house of sleep and The Rotters’ club
The Night Circus — Erin Morgenstern
Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal
Try one of my favorites, Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart.
*The Quincunx* by Charles Palliser is a novel about a contested will in Britain at some point in the 1800s, involving four families with competing or aligned interests, with the lives or deaths or marriages of various people having various effects on who gets the inheritance, with certain potential heirs unidentified but possibly existing and possibly involved in plot developments, and a seedy and ominous London as the backdrop.
It was written in the 1980s and definitely has Dickens’ sort of writing involved, but little of his reticence to get into the seamier side of life at the time. It’s insanely complicated but all fits together very nicely like a puzzle. It’s a fun read, too. I read it when it first came out and then again a year or two ago.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead, or To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis.
How The West Was Won – Louis L’Amour, Galore – Michael Crummey
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
*Good Omens*
The hunt for red October
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Some good ones have been said, Cloud Cuckoo Land, There Are Rivers in the sky. But I love this question. I took a children’s lit class in college and read Holes and I thought that is the most tightly plotted book I’ve ever read. It’s genius.
Let the Great World Spin
3 Body Problem
All 6 of Emily St. John Mandels’s novels read like this! The first 3 exist in the same universe and are connected in some way, as are the next 3, though I wouldn’t call either of them trilogies. (I think there may even be crossover characters throughout all 6 novels but I can’t quite remember)
In order—
Last Night in Montreal (my personal favorite), The Singers Gun, The Lola Quartet
The Glass Hotel, Station Eleven (most known), Sea of Tranquility
If you’ve already read & enjoyed Station Eleven (as many people have) I highly recommend reading her lesser known novels! 🙂