98 Books Like Dustwalker

What makes I Married a Naga stand out is the hero. He’s a half-humanoid, half-snake alien. The heroine is human.

I had hesitated to read I Married a Naga because it involved snake people. Snakes?  No thanks! But I kept seeing the book and finally decided to give it a try. Thanks to author Regine Abel’s excellent storytelling, I got accustomed to the idea of a snake-man.

He’ll never be my favorite book boyfriend, but I warmed to him and thoroughly enjoyed the unforgettable characters and world-building.

What makes The Good, the Bad, and the Cyborg unforgettable is the genre mash-up and the story’s poignancy.

It combines two disparate genres--western historical fiction and futuristic sci-fi romance. Mars is being colonized. Tasked with providing law and order are cyborg rangers riding their sentient robotic horses. While cyborgs play critical roles in the settling of Mars, they are considered less than human and are denied the same rights as regular citizens. When they meet their human heroine and fall in love they rediscover their humanity.

So well written and crafted, this story leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

It’s back to the future in Riley’s Journey.

A young woman volunteers for a “research project” unaware she’ll be taking a one-way trip into past—40,000 years. She’s sent to provide companionship for Nathan, a modern man also trapped in the past.

The descriptions of primitive Earth and its dangers were so realistically portrayed the book put me right there with the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon. I sympathized with Riley’s shock and betrayal and with Nathan’s crushing loneliness and despair.

I’ve recommended this book over and over again.

I loved Ghost Planet for its fascinating premise delivered with a zinger.

Colonists of a newly discovered planet are being stalked by doppelgängers of dead people they once knew. Psychologist Elizabeth Cole goes to the planet for a job and immediately bonds with her supervisor, the creator of the Ghost Protocol, which forbids acknowledging or interacting with the ghosts (in an attempt to get rid of them).

And then Elizabeth discovers she, too, is a ghost, having died on arrival to the planet when her ship crashed. It’s been seven years since I read this book, and the plot has stayed with me.

A future run by robots, with one robot above all others, and his only desire to be able to die, which he cannot achieve alone. All books forgotten, humans with no memory of how to read, until one lonely man teaches himself by watching old, silent, subtitled films from centuries earlier. He meets his rebellious female counterpart, and the idea of a future free of the state drugs, public human immolations, and mind-numbing rule by dumb robot, begins to take form. Is there time left to revive a barren, childless, thoughtless, hopeless world, and bring to life again the oldest of dreams? In any case, 'Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.' 

I fear the future described in this masterpiece ever growing near, but the escape hatch from such horrors may lie here also in Tevis' pages. 

I loved the cyberpunk setting, the tension of not knowing who was going to win, the fact that a lot of characters were activists and belonged to the counterculture, the futuristic technology, and the complexity of the protagonists. I also loved how even though a pair of antagonists represented the side my values go against, I couldn't perceive them as villains. I experienced such intimate and vulnerable moments with them that I ended up accepting them for who they were.

The book explores issues of freedom and slavery, human relationships and the relationship between humans and bots, gender, love, the dangers of patented science, and more. It was very intense, brimming with ideas, feelings, technology (some of which went over my head), science, and action.

Dragons are cool. The one on this cover is clearly mechanical, and that got my attention. Cove is a rather dark setting so I would only recommend this for older kids. Readers can tell from the beginning that the oppressive society is rooted in fear. What is behind that fear? The main characters, Trenton and Kallista, aren’t all that concerned with the bigger picture. They’re only trying to solve a puzzle left by Kallista’s father. We get to watch them become good friends in the process.

Like an earlier entry on this list, this story utilizes a unique format. In Sleeping Giants the reader is exposed to a first contact-like plot. Rose is a scientist and the woman spearheading a project to make sense of the discovery of giant robot parts hidden beneath the Earth’s surface. She, along with one of the project pilots, Kara, provide both depth and distance to events thanks to the help of a mysterious interviewer who does well to keep the reader engaged. We discover things as the characters do, and their revelations linger just enough for the reader to crave a sequel. I appreciate the complexity of the sci-fi in the story—there are aliens, robots, and perhaps a few international conspiracy theories.

It’s amazing what a little crayon can do, especially when it’s broken.

Inspired by Ohi’s viral broken crayon illustrations, Park invites two aliens into the planet of broken crayons where magic is made. It’s amazing what a little friendship and art can do together (hmm, similar theme to Dear Unicorn, now that I think of it). Bonus: check out Ohi’s social media for loads more creative found object artwork.

Software is a zany romp through a 1983 vision of 2020, with sapient AIs living on the moon and maybe invading South Florida. 

Like its author, Software is a rich amalgamation of disparate elements: on the one side, the book is campy fun, while on the other, it’s a legitimate exploration of Artificial Intelligence and identity.  Back when I was first getting into cyberpunk, this was another difficult find, despite having won the Philip K. Dick award; I actually didn’t read it until the late ‘90s! 

The author’s life is nearly as interesting as his books, too: his full name is Rudolf von Bitter Rucker, a descendant of German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel, though he grew up in Louisville, KY, and he would eventually develop his own literary movement, Transrealism.