Books like Sleepwater Beat — picked by fans

I do not think any list relating to fantasy books would be complete without an entry from David Gemmell, a true gold standard of the genre. Legend is another book I first fell in love with as a teenager. I loved the simple enough premise: countless enemies at the gates of a fortress, and if the fortress falls, the Drenai Empire falls.

The story also introduces what I believe to be one of the most iconic heroes in heroic fantasy, the Deathwalker—Druss The Legend. While there were battles like nothing I had ever read before it was the interaction between the characters and the fellowship of the embattled defenders which brought me into this world fully as I read. The expert craft of the story made me really care about each of the characters and their fate. 

There is an expertly realised villain in Ulric, the leader of the enemy,… show more.

Brave mice defend a monastery from marauding pirate rats! An evil snake haunts the forest, eating gentle beasts!

Redwall is a medieval Viking tale populated by animals. But what animals! Speedy hares with bottomless appetites evoke British Army captains. Quarreling shrews must pass around an object to speak at the council, reminding us of The Lord of the Flies. We meet tiny sparrows who follow a Spartan warrior ethos, and Friar Tuck-like fieldmice who cook great feasts that will make you salivate.

Yes, it’s a young adult book, but it’s also one of the reasons I became a writer in the first place. Let me throw down a glove here: the vitality of Redwall’s characters equals anything found in Dickens, Dumas, or Stevenson. 

Sidenote: the first piece of fiction I produced was an imitation of this very title, fulfilling an elementary school assignment. I folded ten pages of… show more.

A deep dive into a new kind of anti-heroin. The first book in the Gyenona's Children duology delivers readers into a new kind of dark fantasy world that has enough to feel familiar yet is innovative and fresh. Any fans of fiction that is brutal and bloody as well as features strong minority demographic representation will enjoy this book as well as Hutson’s work as a whole.

Despite being a work of fantasy the level of research and authenticity has to be gravely respected. The storytelling is organic and feels effortlessly natural while still delivering a compelling mix of action and intrigue. Students of Celtic history will eat up the genuine feel that Nicholas is able to produce in her work from cover to cover.

Brian Aldiss is one of my favorite writers. His SF books are usually set far away, but this is a welcome change of pace. This novel is set around Oxford, and Aldiss breaks out his inner Tolkien (another one of my favorite authors) to describe the landscape.

In an age where ‘yoof’ is venerated, I loved the over-50s protagonists struggling with the declining world they created while their bodies and minds also declined. As I am in my mid-50s, I empathized with them.

Full disclosure, I blurbed this knockout of a novel, and I would do it one hundred times over. It takes place in a near-future dystopia ravaged by climate change. However, a billionaire TERF has started a new climate relief program called Inside, which promises a safe and hopeful future for its members (but we all know that’s far from the real story).

Following an unforgettable cast of diverse characters, including some who get accepted to Inside, this book is at once suspenseful, haunting, and revelatory. It’s about queer community, survival, chosen family, paternalism, the harms of white feminism, parenting, freedom vs. control, and hope, always, always hope. It’s highly propulsive, and you’ll probably read it in one sitting just like I did. 

This is one of those books where you’re like – the premise couldn’t possibly be as good as the execution. And yet it is. The dystopic world in which Sid has to take the punishment for all of Knox’s behavior is so rich and dark and delicious it resonates as a class critique of our own world without even having to try. It’s a knock-out debut, and I can’t wait to jump into London’s Black Wings Beating, which is next on my Kindle.

I have always been fascinated by Russian authors because of their command of presenting human nature and its fears. I picked up this book because the author is from Russia.

Yevgeny wrote this novel at the height of the Russian Revolution in the aftermath of the First World War. He projected a society in a distant future, fearing that complete control of the state would turn us into monotonous machines. Anyone daring to be different would be eliminated to ensure compliance and similarity.

My only reservation is that the book borders on science fiction rather than historical fiction.

I discovered this book in 1985, reading and re-reading the book during high school and, eventually, buying the worn-out copy from the library before graduation.

While it may seem to be a dystopian story – it takes place after a nuclear-biological armageddon, after all – it’s an early example of hopepunk. Candy Smith-Foster repeatedly puts the good of others, including her macaw, Terry (short for Terry Dactyl), ahead of her own welfare. Not bad for a preteen facing the destruction of all she knew.

How much of an impact did this have on me? One of the reasons Kendra’s name starts as Foster-Briggs is to honor Palmer’s masterwork.

I was surprised at how much I loved The Wizard of the Kremlin. I was sorry to reach the last page. Why? The central character is a fascinating post-modern Machiavellian political strategist whose machinations set the global standard for disinformation as a political tool in the post-modern, digital world.

Vadim Baranov is based on a real-life character, Russian President Putin’s long-time former PR man and advisor, Vladislav Sirkov. The book is an imagined one-night meeting with the now-retired former reality TV producer, an utterly cynical but simultaneously surprisingly morally aware man, who unwinds the story of his career.