Books like Empire in Black and Gold — picked by fans

This book was one of the first assassin books ever written, and it’s a masterpiece of classic fantasy. The character is exactly as brooding and dour as I’d expected, but the moment he saves a young woman and her two orphaned companions, I understood there was so much more to him. And over the course of the book—and all his books—I saw those layers stripped away piece by piece and the grief-stricken man beneath.

The story was action-packed in exactly the way I wanted it to be, but it also profoundly explored nobility, morality, belief, and faith. The final scenes of the trilogy had me in tears, something not easily accomplished.  

I’ve read The Name of the Wind twice, and each time it feels like sitting down to hear a bard weave his life into song.

Kvothe isn’t perfect—he’s brilliant, arrogant, reckless—but that’s why I believe him. Rothfuss’s prose has a rhythm that lingers in my head like music. What struck me most wasn’t the magic or mystery, but the small human moments: playing the lute for coins, hungering for knowledge, fumbling through mistakes.

For me, it was less about answers and more about the act of telling one’s story, flaws and all.

So, first off, this is one of the best audiobooks of all time. While Scott did an amazing job spinning the tale, Michael Page elevated this work to a whole new level. There was a time around 2010 when fantasy became overly serious and dark. And I was rescued by the Gentlemen Bastards which was fast paced, fun, and fabulous. The absolute best part of this book is its humor, something that is sorely missing in fantasy these days.

Of course the stars of the show are Locke and Jean. Locke is a charismatic, cunning cutthroat and Jean is his loyal right-hand man. Together they make a great pair. Their deep, brotherly friendship and unwavering loyalty to each other is fantastic, and the reason they made my list.

I like the Jack Ryan concept, a spy whose dad is the president. I like the campus one-for-all-all-for-one esprit de corps.

The starting point is nothing new – a diabolic plan to start a civil war. The Balkan venue is what makes it interesting. Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Turks, Chechens, Syrians, Russians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Muslim fanatics – what a mix! The reason this particular book is special is because I read it twice.

I have a Serbian colleague, which made the story more relevant to me, personally. We often discuss world events. The first time I read the book I did not know him. The second time I read it was after we had met and discussed extensively. I saw things in a different light and enjoyed it much more the second time.

I loved this book for so many reasons. The world-building is beautiful, the plot line is intriguing, and the main female character has a lot of depth to her. She’s beautiful and courageous, kind but strong, and she does anything for those she loves.

I saw much of myself in her character, which helped immerse me in the book as I read it. I’m a sucker for any book with a female protagonist that has a lot of depth; I feel it makes them more real, as we all have different sides to our personalities. 

A Song for the Horse Nation investigates the role and importance of horses in many Native American cultures historical and today. Most people believe that contemporary horses are not indigenous to the Americas but came with the Spanish literally carrying in the colonizers. In A Song for the Horse Nation, Herman J. Viola writes, “America’s Native peoples have little for which to thank Christopher Columbus except the horse.”

In the beginning, Native Americans were scared of the horses that came carrying white men on their backs. Viola explains, “They had never seen an animal that could carry a person. They called the horses, ‘sky dogs,’ believing that they were monsters or messengers from the heavens." The desire to have horses quickly replaced Native people’s fear. The colonizers, on horseback, stole land and life from the Native Americans whom they encountered. Native Americans stole horses from the colonizers to make… show more.

This too often overlooked classic—written by my PhD advisor—not only explains why Clausewitz wrote his masterpiece but what he was trying to say. In doing so, Sumida breaks conventional understandings of both the great German military philosopher and the very subject of military history. Clausewitz and Sumida combine to eschew history limited to explaining outcomes by linearly tracing them back to their origins and instead advocate for narratives that reveal what the participants saw as their options in the moment and then contextualizes their choices and actions. It is this path that leads to knowledge gained through synthetic experience. Decoding Clausewitz is the single most influential work in my approach to military history.

Studies for general readers tend to be weak. An exception that logically would form an example of a popular writer’s efforts in an essential library is John Sugden’s Tecumseh. The Indigenous history of the war is poorly understood, and often suffers from grim biases when non-specialists write about the First Nations. This text on the most famous of the conflict’s Native participants presents readers with an accessible biography aimed at general audiences within the context of the wider issues that afflicted the Shawnees and other tribes of the “Old Northwest” in today’s Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and neighbouring regions. Another, older meritorious book is by Cherokee author R. David Edmunds, who wrote Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership. Dr. Edmunds is well known for other important books in Indigenous history, and like British historian John Sugden, is well worth reading for his insights, presented through strong… show more.

I liked this book because it examines the role loyalty and social customs play in our lives. As soldiers are transported from location to location, the laws of relativity step in to move the characters decades into the future.

In that time, social customs have changed, and things that we thought were important no longer are. It shows how vulnerable we are to custom and tradition. In the end, it is the personal that is important, not the bigger cause.