I have read a lot of books growing up but now I’m older and need new stuff to read.
The things I have liked:
Everything Brandon Mull and Rick Riordan. The Eragon series, Harry Potter, Red Rising, and the scythe series by Neal Shusterman.
I’m looking for more grown up versions of these
by Big_m0nkey9620
8 Comments
Dungeon Crawler Carl
I’m gonna give you something divisive. The Magicians by Lev Grossman.
It’s hard to tell from your post, but it sounds like you are an adult now. Both of these are for adults but have fast moving and interesting plots.
A great book that reads like a technothriller movie is Daemon by Daniel Suarez, along with its sequel Freedom TM. An AI set loose by a dead billionaire game designer starts killing people and creating a darknet conspiracy. Great fun, and if AI controlled motorcycle drones with samurai swords chasing people up the stairs sounds like your jam, you’ll love it! But it actually builds into big, world changing science fiction, delving into how to deconstruct late stage capitalism by using technology to decentralize.
The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. It’s a bit of Potter, a bit of Percy Jackson, a lot of wryly narrated police procedural, and a lot of laugh out loud funny, irreverent and adult writing. It’s also a love letter to the culture and architecture of London. And definitely not YA.
The last Magician/Cop of the London police magical crimes unit has a new apprentice, a young cop who is our protagonist, who is having to immerse in The Knowledge to become a ‘Practitioner’. He has to navigate a world that includes his old school upper crust boss, his jazz musician junkie dad, his West African immigrant mom, and a host of other idiosyncratic characters in modern London. Oh, and murderous wizards and supernatural beings of various sorts.
It’s humorously meta. The Master gets annoyed when his pupil keeps referring to the old defunct magic school as Hogwarts. I was cackling when someone new to the existence of magic asked if it was like the Avatar universe with Airbenders and such. He was told an emphatic “no”. A scene later a magical person jams his hand into the sidewalk and breaks it open to disappear! And our protagonist exclaims “fuck me, he’s an Earthbender!”
Later books jump to different countries, and even periods. And it’s fantastic in audiobook, the author in an interview described writing exotic characters just to challenge the reader to do the accent!
Jim Butcher Codex Alera series,
Dark Matter & Recursion (Blake Crouch)
I’m really liking the Lunar Chronicles right now, but I’m reading it in Spanish and not sure how enjoyable the English version is.
Recently liked “Temper the Dark” by L. Ryan Storms.
Wheel of Time and LOTR perhaps?
A Stage Set for Villains by Shannon J. Spann