Book suggestion for my boyfriend who wants to get into reading

Joe Abercrombies First Law series, the 6 series books and the 4 standalones. Very manly.

Mercy of Gods series by James Corey, just getting started but 1 novel, 1 novella and the 2nd novel out in April. Alien Invasions!

Check out **The Blade Itself** by Joe Abercrombie. Dark, gritty, funny, character-driven fantasy. Really great audiobooks as well, if he’s into that, narrated by Steven Pacey. Endlessly quotable, violent, featuring a cast of highly-flawed bastards you’ll come to love. Filled with dark wit/cynical humor, plus tons of commentary on the human condition and all that good stuff. 10 books, all excellent.

Riyria Revelations by Michael J Sullivan is a fun, fast-paced, fantasy series. It follows a ‘rogues-for-hire’ duo in a classic-feeling fantasy world, who take on a job and are pulled into an adventure bigger than they were expecting. It starts off pretty light/low-stakes, but soon grows into quite an epic series, filled with great characters, adventure, and plenty of twists and ‘revelations’ along the way. The first book is **Theft of Swords (The Crown Conspiracy/Avempartha)**. If you like Revelations, check out Legends of the First Empire afterwards, a prequel series set thousands of years earlier in the same world.

**Dungeon Crawler Carl** by Matt Dinniman is a lot of fun, especially the audiobooks narrated by Jeff Hays. A regular dude from Seattle and his ex-girlfriend’s cat get pulled into a real life video game ‘dungeon’ when aliens bring about the end of human civilization. It’s a silly premise, but it’s actually pretty great, with constantly creative world building, great characters, and a pretty intense, epic story as of book 7.

**Red Rising** by Pierce Brown, is a fast-paced, intense, twisty, dystopian sci-fi/fantasy revenge story. Great world building and characters, lots of action, and an epic story that to me feels more fantasy than sci-fi.

You might also enjoy Stephen King’s dark fantasy opus, The Dark Tower, starting with **The Gunslinger**. I enjoyed that first book, but it was written a long time before the others, and is quite different. Still, it’s short, but if you find you’re intrigued but not totally sold, definitely give book 2, **The Drawing of the Three** a chance. The series really kicks off here, introducing the main cast, a lot more humor, and even a change in audiobook narrator if you’re listening to those. Trippy, interdimensional, fantasy following a badass ‘Gunslinger’ from another world and his companions, with King going off the rails with all the weird ideas. It’s a lot of fun.

Brandon Sanderson has a lot of fun fantasy as well, if you enjoy his style, and I’d recommend checking out something like **Mistborn** if you want to give one of his big series a go. In a world where ash rains from sky, a group of super-powered thieves plan the ultimate heist.

Or **Warbreaker**, a fun, twisty fantasy standalone, with great characters, creative magic, rich world building, and adventure.

**Assassin’s Apprentice** by Robin Hobb is the first book in her huge fantasy series The Realm of the Elderlings. Beautifully-written, melancholy, fantasy, with complex characters, rich world building, strange magics, and an epic story told over the course of multiple great trilogies. The first book follows Fitz, the bastard son of a dead prince, who is raised by others in the royal court to become the King’s assassin. Despite the title there’s not actually a *ton* of assassinating going on, it’s more of a high-emotion, low-action type of series.