Here are 64 books that The Vagrant fans have personally recommended if you like
The Vagrant.
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Tolkien ignited my love for fantasy, but after a decade of publishing failure, I quit writing altogether. When I returned to the typewriter more than ten years later it was to create something that “I wanted to read” rather than a book that I “thought could get published,” Ironically, those were the stories that made my career: one that has spanned sixteen years, twenty published books, and multiple New York Times bestsellers. In retrospect, I realize that my books and my recommendations share many of the same elements: bonds of unbreakable friendship, humor, and a grand adventure. So, if that sounds like something you’d enjoy, please check out my recommendations.
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.
'One of my top ten books ever. Maybe top five. If you haven't read it, you should' Patrick Rothfuss, New York Times bestselling author of The Name of the Wind
'Fresh, original and engrossing' George R.R. Martin, the phenomenon behind A Game of Thrones
They say that the Thorn of Camorr can beat anyone in a fight. They say he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. They say he's part man, part myth, and mostly street-corner rumor. And they are wrong on every count.
Only averagely tall, slender, and god-awful with a sword, Locke Lamora is the…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’m a writer by day and martial arts instructor by night, so when not spending time with my wife and kids, I love nothing more than to read, write, and fight. My favourite books are the ones filled with irreverent characters, who can smirk and joke at any grim situation, laughing the light of entertainment through the darkest of ordeals. These are the type of books I’m always drawn to, both in writing and in reading, where I can imagine taking any standout character and dropping them into a completely different book, then sitting back to watch the chaos they could make.
Joe Abercrombie is the king of writing casual comic conversations in dire situations. His seventh book in this world, A Little Hatred is the first in a new trilogy, the freshest from a seven-year gap in the series, and one of the best for the sheer quality of standout characters. Savine dan Glokta is my favourite – “What an honour to see you, my lady.” “Isn’t it though!” – followed closely by Teufel, the brass-knuckled spy; Gunnar Broad, the man or bull (if he wears his spectacles); and Bremer dan Gorst, the deadliest man in the union who can only speak in a high-pitched squeak.
Not only is this a book you can read without prior knowledge of the previous six, this book will also convince you to go back and read all those other books, then re-read this again for it to take on an entirely different light, become…
I am an academic in rebellion. I have interviewed hundreds of urban leaders and professionals in nine divided urban areas throughout the world. I have written much on this subject, replete with footnotes and sophisticated writing. I am weary of writing more about this important topic—how people do or do not get along in urban settings—from an academic distance. I find the scholarly posture sterilized and insufficiently provocative. I entered into the fictional genre in order to reach a broader audience. I think that fictional futurist writing has the unique ability to portray extraordinary new worlds while at the same time addressing fundamental issues that we face now.
What could be more fun than Gods getting involved in city planning? Spy story wrapped inside a grand and mysterious history of once-supreme Gods now dormant (or not). Memorable characters. Don’t mess with the giant grunt Sigrud. Divine power with 6 Gods (light bearer, judge, warrior, seed-sower, trickster, and builder). Imagine holding a committee meeting with this group. Magical portals that enable back-and-forth between current gritty and past majestic city. A thought-provoking conclusion that speaks to worldwide conflict in real life today.
'Robert Jackson Bennett deserves a huge audience' - Brent Weeks, New York Times bestselling author of The Black Prism
In the city of stairs, nothing is as it seems.
You've got to be careful when you're chasing a murderer through Bulikov, for the world is not as it should be in that city. When the gods were destroyed and all worship of them banned by the Polis, reality folded; now stairs lead to nowhere, alleyways have become portals to the past, and criminals disappear into thin air.
The murder of Dr Efrem Pangyui, the Polis diplomat researching the Continent's past,…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
I’m a grown man who reads and writes young adult fantasy books. I believe YA stories are perfect for nearly every audience. Let me tell you why. Our teenage years are filled with growth. As we mature, we forget what such rapid change feels like. We become less empathetic toward youth. And yet, many of our characteristics—positive and negative—develop during these years. I read YA to understand myself. It also helps me be a more understanding father and teacher. That said, I'm very picky. I despise teenage stereotypes. For young men, it is particularly hard to find books that depict empathetic male characters. Here’s a list of books where young men feel genuine.
David Charleston’s character resonated with me. He’s eccentric, passionate, and meticulous, while also being a great friend.
He’s also out for revenge against his father’s killer—A supervillain named Steelheart who has taken over Chicago. David unites with a secret group of people called the Reckoners who are trying to learn each villain's weakness to assassinate them.
David’s obsession with details is relatable, and against the terrifying powers of these supervillains, you're left on the edge of your seat hoping the Reckoner's schemes will be enough.
Ten years ago, Calamity came. It was a burst in the sky that gave ordinary men and women extraordinary powers. The awed public started calling them Epics. But Epics are no friend of man. With incredible gifts came the desire to rule. And to rule man you must crush his wills.
Nobody fights the Epics... nobody but the Reckoners. A shadowy group of ordinary humans, they spend their lives studying Epics, finding their weaknesses, and then assassinating them.
And David wants in. He wants Steelheart - the Epic who is said to be invincible. The Epic who killed David's father.…
My life quest has been to find true magic. Once believing it could only be uncovered in ruins or cathedrals continents away, I ended up discovering it in my own backyard under the Big Sky. When I was young, I read everything science fiction and fantasy to feel like that magic was real and bask in worlds far different from my own. Now, as a professional editor and author based in the West… I still read everything science fiction and fantasy, but now I get paid to do it.
A serious Welcome To The Nightvale-styled western, Golgotha is like any other mining town… except full of writhing demonic worms desperate to possess you. So many legends and religions rub elbows in this saloon-heavy godforsaken place that it feels like any re-imagined version of a dark fantasy americana world, warts and all, is possible. Each character threatened to whisk me on a new journey. I mean, there’s a doctor who can keep severed heads alive? A boy with a mysterious green eye? An unkillable gunslinger sheriff? An angel running a casino? An assassin queen? What is even happening? But all this allowed my imagination to flourish. Instead of spelling out the reasoning for the clashing magic and lore, it reminded me why I love speculative fiction in the first place: the possibilities.
Nevada, 1869: Beyond the pitiless 40-Mile Desert lies Golgotha, a cattle town hiding more than its share of unnatural secrets. The sheriff bears the mark of the noose around his neck; a dead man whose time has not yet come. His half-human deputy is kin to coyotes. The mayor guards a hoard of mythical treasures. And a shady saloon owner, fingers in everyone's business, may know more about the town's origins than he's letting on. Golgotha has known many strange events, but nothing like the primordial darkness stirring in the abandoned silver mine overlooking the town. Bleeding midnight, an ancient…
Having completed military survival courses as well as stints in an improv comedy troupe, James Schannep knows the best zombie stories are those presented with a wry grin while staring down the end of the world. The product of an overactive imagination, the genre-hopping Click Your Poison series puts you in the driver’s seat against zombies, pirates, international spies, a detective whodunit, superheroes (and villains), exploration through a haunted house, and more!
This is another interactive, choose-your-path zombie book that I discovered after I’d published Infected. It’s off-the-wall zany. You play as a stuffed bunny who wields a chainsaw in the apocalypse. If most zombie stories are caused by viral pandemics these days, then Zombocalypse Now must be the resultant lucid fever dream. If you like nonsequiturs, this is the zombie book for you.
You're a stuffed bunny and it's the end of the world.Between you and safety are forty or fifty zombies gorging themselves on the flesh of the living. If you disguise yourself as one of them and try to sneak past the feeding frenzy, turn to page 183. If you grab a tire iron, flip out and get medieval on their undead asses, turn to page 11.Zombocalypse Now is a comedy/horror reimagining of the choose-your-own-ending books you grew up with. You'll be confronted with undead hordes, internet dating, improper police procedure, and the very real danger that you'll lose your grip…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
There are so many different ways of thinking and writing about history. I first noticed this while studying at university, when I saw just how different economic history looked from other kinds of history. I later learned that all kinds of historical writing are forms of literature, only they are rarely recognized as such. I am now a university professor and this is my area of expertise: the overlap between the philosophy of history and economics. The books on this list are great examples of unusual or ‘weird’ works on history that challenge some of our deepest assumptions about what history is and how best to think or write about it.
Baudrillard is by now famous for declaring the end or disappearance of pretty much everything. That includes ‘history,’ and it is in this book where he speaks most directly about this. But unlike others, he doesn’t say that we’ve reached the end of history. Instead, he suggests that we’ve banished the end by going beyond it. It is a terrifying thought, really, because it means we can only dream of the end, and that beneath this illusion is something endless, artificial, and inhuman.
The year 2000, the end of the millennium: is this anything other than a mirage, the illusion of an end, like so many other imaginary endpoints which have littered the path of history? In this remarkable book Jean Baurdrillard-France's leading theorist of postmodernity-argues that the notion of the end is part of the fantasy of a linear history. Today we are not approaching the end of history but moving into reverse, into a process of systematic obliteration. We are wiping out the entire twentieth century, effacing all signs of the cold War one by one, perhaps even the signs of…
As we watch the news–the increasing number of earthquakes, volcanoes, wars, inflation, the rapid progress of AI, unelected elites deciding they know best for the world, and more–we don’t know how to process it all, and it leaves us feeling anxious. My passion for helping my readers not just escape but actually live better fuels me. I created this retelling of the Book of Revelations from the POV of celestial warriors and fallen angels in the unseen realms of our world to allow my readers to “make more sense” of the world and be at peace.
Ee, the author, presents a very different image of angels, which is what I love about it. We usually see angels as protective of humans, willing to help us out of jams. In this series, Ee puts angels in the role of destroyers who hunt humans down to kill them.
I fell in love with the main characters. The story features a courageous girl raised by a “whacko” mother who must rescue her wheelchair-bound sister from angels who have abducted her. She encounters a fallen angel who has had his wings hewn off, and together, they form an unlikely alliance, overcoming their own inner demons on the way to “saving the world.” I loved both of their defiant spirits and unwillingness to quit despite the odds.
Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform.
Prefer something a bit more visual as the world falls apart? Stanley Donwood fills a book with full-page black and white linocut illustrations, the same medium I use for my illustrations. Without relying on any text, Donwood is able to use classic sequential art techniques to move us through the continual destruction of a wild and devolving island habitat. You may recognize his work from his decades-long collaboration with Radiohead, but his distinct style of storytelling and art stands alone.
A wild seascape, a distant island, a full moon. Gradually the island grows nearer until we land on a primeval wilderness, rich in vegetation and huge, strange beasts. Time passes and man appears, with clubs, with spears, with crueler weapons still-and things do not go well for the wilderness. Civilization rises as towers of stone and metal and smoke choke the undergrowth and the creatures that once moved through it. This is not a happy story, and it will not have a happy ending.
Working in his distinctive, monochromatic linocut style, Stanley Donwood achieves with his art what words…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
We are in a time where everything seems fraught, and cozies remind me that there are other paths. I write science fiction and fantasy, a genre known for making things worse. But secretly, I want my books to explore what happens when people talk to one another and make the kinder choice. It’s easy to escalate. But having a book with tension and interest and plot twists, while also making the reader feel secure is much harder. Watching characters in unexpected genres have cozy moments reminds me it’s possible. And also, sometimes you just want a hug from a book.
I read this book ages ago, and it’s stuck with me. My memory of it is wanting to give everyone in the book a hug, and knowing they would give really good hugs back.
It’s a potential-end-of-the-world scenario, wrapped up in a rewarding adult coming-of-age story. The main character has a life and friends that she likes, but she’s also put herself into a small box. It’s a deeply relatable book that heavily features doomsday enthusiasts.
In this young adult rom-com, seventeen-year-old Alba loves routine and doesn't want anything to change, but her world is turned upside down when a conspiracy theorist claims the apocalypse will take place in her small town.
Alba wants to stop time and keep things just the way they are. She loves living behind the bakery and waking up in a cloud of sugar and cinnamon, and thrives when she's drawing comics and watching bad TV with her friends. The only problem is she's spent so much time looking inward that she hasn't noticed everything going on around her.
