Books like Awakening

I love the cunning, wit, and charm of the one-and-only Vlad Taltos. Though he’s an assassin, he’s never cruel or wicked; he merely does what he needs to appease the “mafia-feeling” organization he works for. He’s almost more a swashbuckling rogue than a killer.

In his interactions with his familiar, Loiosh, you see his more nuanced side, the morality beneath the magic and swordplay. And few fantasy worlds I’ve ever visited have been as rich and colorful as those created in the Vlad Taltos series. 

Confession time: I tend to be picky about mermaid stories because life under the sea is such a dramatic difference from our reality that it’s often hard to really reflect that difference. In this book, you never forget that these people aren’t human, and you never lose their connection to the sea. It’s everywhere, from the way they think about distances to their relationships with the other creatures around them to the way Yetu’s disabilities are handled.

In the same way, the trauma that created their people was always lingering at the forefront of my mind as I read, even when it wasn’t the subject at hand. This is another one where my experience was elevated even further by the audiobook, as narrated by Daveed Diggs. 

This book is horrifying, weird as shit, and absolutely beautiful, from China Mieville’s stunning prose to the grotesque splendor of his imagery.

Mieville’s follow-up to Perdido Street Station is a Melvillian Gothic that takes its characters on a sprawling, twisted naval journey that incorporates such horrors as giant mosquito monsters, a symbiotic pair of dictators known as the Lovers, and a Frankensteinian punishment system where bio-thaumaturgists graft foreign limbs or organs onto their victims’ bodies.

The Scar blew my mind when I first read it in college, and made me rethink what a novel could be. Its creativity and depth feel endless, with layers of philosophical and thematic depth. It’s the kind of book that makes you feel like you could read it a hundred times, and still find fresh meaning.

The Scar’s final act also perfectly captures the feeling that you’re beholding something beyond your capacity to fathom—and… show more.

The action in this book begins when Severian, an apprentice in the Torturers’ Guild, gives a convict a weapon to kill herself rather than be tortured.

The reason there’s a Torturers’ Guild is, allegedly, that it beats prison: Better to deliver a punishment and then let the punished person return to their life, the thinking goes, than confine them to a useless existence as a ward of the state. Severian is expelled from the Guild, but not from the profession, and wanders the world plying his trade, at least until the plot can’t spare him.

It’s a constant dissonance, looking through the eyes of a character whose training and purpose is the infliction of pain, who seems so decent and forthright in the story he narrates. (But don’t be fooled.)

Away from the lurking eyes of their parents for the summer, the Lumberjanes finally have a chance to cut loose and truly be themselves.

Of course, they’ll have to figure out “who” that is first. Luckily for them, they have some awesome friends to help them along the way. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the path to discovery is paved with monsters and mystery.

This book does a wonderful job of showing how important the bonds of friendship can be, especially when you are facing the unknown.

Sawkill Girls is so scary that I couldn’t read it before bed. In fact, I wouldn’t even bring it into my bedroom! But it’s also gorgeously written—eerie and atmospheric, with the most immersive worldbuilding. Its monster is terrifying, but the main characters—all girls—are so, so powerful. This is one of my top YA novels of all time. 

I loved this series because it took a person who was struggling in life and brought them into a new and more deadly world where her struggles became more intense and real. She had to grow, trust herself, and learn how and who to trust in this new world. It was filled with Runes magic and though character driven it had a plot that pulled you along. 

The Earth has stopped spinning; magic rules on the night side, science on the light.

Not all of Zelany’s work holds up, but this one, a tale of Jack, a denizen of the dark side, is perhaps his best novel. I love the world Zelazny creates here.

It’s a slender book that drew me through from beginning to end.

This book is a wonder of a collaboration between siblings Sofia Samatar and Del Samatar, and it has haunted me for years.

This collection is a surreal work of autobiography told through Sofia’s short fiction and Del’s illustrations, all featuring different monsters. These monstrous vignettes are interwoven with memories of growing up as multiracial Somali Americans in the 1980s—to me, they highlight the power of speculative fiction at its very best.

This book feels a little bit like reading someone’s journal, and a little bit like when I realize I’m dreaming but can’t wake myself up. The monsters mesmerized and unsettled me; the Graphis gives me shivers and the Collector of Treasures makes me feel ill. It’s a challenging read and one that I will come back to again and again.

Framed by a scholarly appraisal of an actual archaic text, this novel, in verse, proceeds to tell a story of love, from boyhood to death.

It’s the story, amazingly, of a monster, a mythic creature with wings and red skin, but you forget about the myth when you’re reading. And you forget about poetry. Or you wonder, what’s the difference between poetry and a beautiful narrative of longing, of heartbreak, of hope and friendship and family ties, and when you get to the end of the life of this kid, which, like all our lives, is a story of love, you feel you understand a little more clearly what it is.