Here are 77 books that The Illuminae Files fans have personally recommended once you finish the The Illuminae Files series.
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I am an avid fantasy reader and writer. I have been writing for many years and love to craft detailed worlds and complex characters that surprise and delight readers. Stories are about challenges, overcoming the barriers that are put in front of us, and growing in the process. Characters do not have to be good or bad; they can be both, a mixture, just like real people. I strive to create characters that make people stop and think, make them question their assumptions, or relate to them in ways that they had not expected. Fantasy is about bringing real emotions to readers through an imaginary setting, and I love it.
I loved the Nevernight books because the main character is not necessarily always a hero. Mia is an assassin and cares only about killing. This means it can be uncomfortable to support her decisions and actions when they involve so much death and bloodshed.
She kills for reasons that she thinks are justified, but that isn’t always right, and it is great to see her grow and become something more than just a killing machine. She has a great personality and endures many hardships through the series but I loved reading along and seeing how she overcame everything she faced.
In a world where the suns almost never set, a woman gains entry to a school of infamous assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers that destroyed her family. Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father's failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she wanders a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and its thugs. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the hearth of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined. Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock…
I’m an author of Young Adult Fantasy fiction. When my oldest was six, I started reading Harry Potter to him. It was such a bonding experience that we both cherish. We still talk about the stories, even though he's all grown up and lives away from me most of the time. The thing about fantasy is that stories set in worlds or with people that don’t actually exist make it easier for us to swallow deep meanings, storylines with which we can identify, and that crawl deep down into our souls and nest there. It’s not just about escaping into a fantasy world, but about finding human experience in otherworldly situations and characters.
You know that question about being stranded on a desert island with only one other person and a spaceship? Oh, wait. I think that’s supposed to be a sunken ship. This story has a bit of a similar feel, only instead of an island, it’s a deserted planet, and no one is coming to save Lilac and Tarver—so they have to save themselves instead. This one is a good mix of the rich-girl/poor-boy dynamic, (think Pretty in Pink, flip-flopped) with a hint of mystery, all in the style of Survivor. The depth of feeling is strong in this one.
"One of the most intense, thrilling, and achingly beautiful stories I've ever read."--Marie Lu, New York Times best-selling author of the Legend trilogy
The first in the New York Times bestselling author duo Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds.
It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet. Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen are the only survivors.
As a bullied teenager I wanted to escape and fantasy was my drug of choice. (My parents may have grounded me from the library, which by the way—not cool.) I love working within fantasy worlds and magic systems but my true passion lies in the story itself. I write character based books focusing on the inner workings of all of us. Occasionally when writing a battle scene in a gladiator arena with three levels, multiple characters with magical abilitiesm and a secondary magical system in the background, I wonder why I can’t just tell a story in freaking Chicago for goodness sake! But fantasy is where it's at for this girl!
I’m a sucker for good dialogue and this is about as good as it gets. This book nails sarcasm, wit, and humor. You can hear every quip and see every facial expression as you spend the entire book wishing you could have a seat in that spaceship—even if they are facing certain doom. I basically wanted to be best friends with every character… and the authors. (So umm *clears throat* if anyone has Amie or Jay’s number…hook a girl up.)
'Aurora Rising is to sci-fi what Stranger Things is to the cinema of the eighties - a fusion of everything you love about the genre that adds up into something completely fresh.' Samantha Shannon
From the New York Times and internationally bestselling authors of The Illuminae Files comes a new science fiction epic...
The year is 2380, and the graduating cadets of Aurora Academy are being assigned their first missions. Star pupil Tyler Jones is ready to recruit the squad of his dreams, but his own boneheaded heroism sees him stuck with the dregs nobody else in the Academy would…
I tell stories for the page and the screen (and sometimes to bribe my kid to brush her teeth). The stories I tell have one thing in common – they transport the reader to another world. For me, building a new world starts with building a new character – a narrator with strong opinions and a complicated past that will shape how the reader experiences their world. We don't experience the real world objectively – no matter how hard we try, our past, our feelings, and even our bodies affect how we experience the world. That's why the worlds I build and the stories I tell are all filtered through the particular truth of a bold narrator.
The Last Queen is a totally addictive historical novel bursting with love, danger, political intrigue, and heartbreak.
The Last Queen is the story of an impoverished young woman named Jindan who is swept into the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh as his last and youngest bride. Eventually, Jindan becomes Regent for her young son and rises to the occasion, becoming an inspirational leader so formidable that she strikes fear into the hearts of the encroaching British Empire.
Exploring the world of pre-colonial Punjab through the eyes of Jindan is breathtaking – an experience you’ll enjoy even if you aren’t a history buff. The details of Jindan’s world are even more gripping because they’re real, and so is she.
'I am Rani Jindan, Mother of the Khalsa. That is my identity. That is my fate.' Daughter of the royal kennel keeper, the beautiful Jindan Kaur went on to become Maharaja Ranjit Singh's youngest and last queen; his favourite. She became regent when her son Dalip, barely six years old, unexpectedly inherited the throne. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, passionate, and dedicated to protecting her son's heritage, Jindan distrusted the British and fought hard to keep them from annexing Punjab. Defying tradition, she stepped out of the zenana, cast aside the veil and conducted state business in public. Addressing her Khalsa troops herself,…
Comedy and science fiction have special places in my heart. I’m fascinated with the prospect of what AI and machine learning might bring us, and I believe to laugh and enjoy life is to be healthy and content. The best humor is revealed through character relationships. I grew up watching Doctor Who, a show that presented a serious story with lighthearted moments. Douglas Adams put that same formula in his books. For ten years I honed my writing skills producing graphic novels, where you had to tell a story and inject humor onto one page. Now novel writing is my means of bringing a little joy to the world.
I have so much love for this story and I can’t understand how it’s not a bestseller. This book helped me understand my own brand of humor could work in a novel. Michael Rubens has a unique razor wit like Douglas Adams, and what I cherish about this story is all the laugh-out-loud moments. When I read this book, I am smiling the whole time—it lifts my spirits! Cole, the main character, flees the galaxy’s most hideous and feared bounty hunter who wants to lay eggs in his brain. Things don't get any better when he smuggles a ship full of freeze-dried orphans. In the end, Cole has to make a tough choice, which always resonates with me. Do you want to be happy? Read this book!
In the spirit of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, The Sheriff of Yrnameer is sci-fi comedy at its best—mordant, raucously funny, and a thrilling page-turner.
Meet Cole: hapless space rogue and part-time smuggler. His sidekick just stole his girlfriend. The galaxy’s most hideous and feared bounty hunter wants to lay eggs in his brain. And the luxury space yacht Cole just hijacked turns out to be filled with interstellar do-gooders, one especially loathsome stowaway, and a cargo of freeze-dried orphans. Cole gathers a misfit crew for a desperate journey to the far reaches of the galaxy: the mysterious world of…
I inherited a love of puzzles from my mother, and we still share crossword clues, looking for answers. I also shared her love of reading mysteries and trying to solve crimes, from the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie and Sue Grafton. So, when I started writing, it was only natural that I create my own literary puzzles. Add in an ingrained sense of justice–so often missed in society–and I love it when the bad guy (or gal) gets their comeuppance. I also love the mental workout I get when I need focused logic to puzzle out the ending before the final pages.
Because I love Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy five-book trilogy (trust me!), his down-to-earth detective Dirk Gently was an immediate attraction. The layers of mystery take quite a bit of untangling, and I was hooked all the way through. This is my reliable go-to when I need a break from reality that won’t take me too far from home. Or does it? Somehow, with the help of Thor’s hammer, his characters travel from London to the Great Hall of Valhalla and back again. But Avengers, this is not!
I read this more than once before parts of the intricate plot really made sense, but what a journey! And its precursor, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, has a permanent spot on my bookshelf, too.
Beloved, bumbling Detective Dirk Gently returns in this standalone novel from Douglas Adams, the legendary author of one of the most beloved science fiction novels of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
When a check-in desk at London’s Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the event is said to be an act of God. But which god? wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently. And how is this connected to Dirk’s battle with his cleaning lady over his filthy refrigerator…or to the murder of his latest client? Or are these events just another stretch of coincidences in…
My PhD work was in developmental robotics, which is about how a robot could wake up and learn about the world the way a human child does. The robot in my thesis work does this by building models, and, more generally, society as a whole advances when science builds ever better causal models about how the world works. The books in this collection are about what could happen when we are 5, 10, and 100 years ahead in the causal model-building process, and they look at what happens when those models are built by robots instead of humans.
Don’t be fooled by the silly title; this book shows how I want to spend eternity. A guy has his consciousness uploaded to computers and then explores the universe. I want to see what is out there, but exploring such a vast space isn’t possible given the short time span of human life, so we need a technology like this.
This book is the first in a series where he meets aliens and serves as a god-like mentor for one relatable developing culture. He also interacts with different versions of himself as he copies his consciousness to better explore the universe.
Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.
Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first…
I think there are two great mysteries in our lives: the mystery of the world and the mystery of how we live in it. The branches of literature that explore these conundrums magnificently are science fiction for the world and murder mysteries for how we live. So, it is no wonder that the subgenre that most excites me has to be the science fiction murder mystery, in which, as a reader, I get to explore a strange new world and find out how people live (and die!) in it. This is why I read and, it turns out, what I write.
A brilliant science fictional idea changes everything about the world, and in Tade Thompson’s Arthur C Clarke Award-winning Rosewater, where an alien dome has appeared in Nigeria and opens once a year to heal the sick, the world has been thrown dangerously off-kilter.
The murder-mystery is not a conventional one as our hero Kaaro, a human sensitive created by this alien intrusion and now government agent, is trying to figure out why those like him are suddenly dying. There are many strange science-fictional ideas driving this book, but it is Kaaro – a former thief trying his best to do good in difficult circumstances – that gives this book its wonderful heart.
I believed in and rooted for him even though he doesn’t ever seem to believe in himself.
Rosewater is the start of an award-winning trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction's most engaging voices.
*Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, winner *Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel, winner
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless -- people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.
Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care…
I’ve always loved to be scared! When I was young I turned off the lights to watch movies like Alien and It. When I got older, I played Resident Evil and Silent Hill. And when I got even older, I started writing things that would make me jump if the dog came in too suddenly mid-chapter. I think we are drawn to scary books and movies because they give us a safe way to explore the unknown – and, less philosophically, because sometimes it’s just fun to get sucked into a dark and creepy universe!
This is another period piece, this one a classic Victorian gothic that appeals to my secret nostalgia for the old original horror pieces such as Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, or Jane Eyre. The main character finds herself enmeshed in a strange and dark world where right and wrong become blurred as she struggles to find the place she fits in. You won’t be able to stop reading between one chapter and the next.
An all-new creepy fantasy series from the New York Times bestselling author of Asylum.
Featuring stunning interior illustrations from artist Iris Compiet, plus photo-collages that bring the story to chilling life, House of Furies invites readers to a world where the line between monsters and men is ghostly thin.
After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house.
But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house's mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more…
I’ve always loved to be scared! When I was young I turned off the lights to watch movies like Alien and It. When I got older, I played Resident Evil and Silent Hill. And when I got even older, I started writing things that would make me jump if the dog came in too suddenly mid-chapter. I think we are drawn to scary books and movies because they give us a safe way to explore the unknown – and, less philosophically, because sometimes it’s just fun to get sucked into a dark and creepy universe!
Icarus is a totally different kind of scary read from what I normally pick up, more psychological thriller than actual horror – but don’t let that stop you from reading this amazing book. In Icarus, Stone leads us through a complicated, dark, and forgotten history until we find the place Tess’ present intersects with her half-forgotten past. The ride is thrilling and the conclusion won’t leave you disappointed!
Being the ‘new kid’ at school is hard, but for Tess Novak - who’s moved more times than she can remember - it’s a role she knows by heart. Transferring during senior year means yet another place she’ll eventually leave, more classmates she’ll forget. Fate, it seems, has other plans.From the moment Tess is introduced to honor student Drew Martinez, she is convinced she has met him before. But when? Confident and attractive, Drew is exactly the type of ‘rich kid’ Tess’s father hates, and Tess avoids. Thrown together by a class project, their tentative friendship sparks a smoldering attraction.…
