Here are 26 books that Thessalonica fans have personally recommended if you like
Thessalonica.
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The last book of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, it brings to a conclusion the adventures of Taran and his friends. Since I had read the previous volumes, I anticipated a satisfying finish to the saga and I was not disappointed. I can see why this is considered a classic of the epic fantasy genre. Alexander's characters are memorable: heroic, flawed, determined, funny, endearing and courageous all at once. The adventure is truly epic as the heroes chase down the villains for a final confrontation. His prosed makes you laugh one minute, gasp the next and cheer thereafter. The ending, in particular, is satisfying and gives a great lesson in what really matters in life. Highly recommended for fantasy fans everywhere.
The black sword Dyrnwyn, the most powerful weapon in the kingdom, has been stolen by the Death Lord Arawn. The greatest battle in the history of Prydain has begun.
Taran joins the war leaders as Prince Gwydion asks him to raise an army to march against Arawn's terrible warriors. Friends both old and new are willing to fight by his side, and the companions must stand strong as they battle through a frozen wasteland to Arawn's stronghold, Mount Dragon. A deadly confrontation awaits them there, and Taran's true destiny will at last be fulfilled.
The Martians failed in 1894. In 1915, humanity won't be so lucky.
It’s 1915, and the trenches of the Somme are already hell for German soldier Emil Zimmerman. But when the familiar, terrifying howl of a Martian Wanderer sounds across the battlefield, he knows the true war has just begun.…
Stephen Lawhead has a way of building a world based on the real one that feels so authentic that you start to believe it's actually real. His grasp of Celtic myth, culture and literature is impressive and helps make the experience immersive and seamless. Also, he writes like JRR Tolkien in a way. He incorporates his world view (a positive one, I might add) into the narrative without being preachy and everything just seems to fit. This is the third in a series and though the ending was a bit sad, it had a hopeful message after all. The only knock was that the descriptions and narrative seem to meander a bit at times, but I was ready to forgive those things in favor of his skills as a writer and the finely crafted story. I enjoyed it like I have enjoyed his other works in the past.
As Silver Hand, the long-awaited champion, begins his reign, cosmic forces of evil unleash one final thrust, and soon the great city of Dinas Dwr is engulfed in flames.
I am all the characters in this and every book I have written. I grew up in Rome, teach Roman art and architectural history, and am a practicing architect. My books are suffused with the things I love, from culture to cuisine, pace of life, love of consort, affection for children and animals, to the adventures I have been so fortunate to enjoy through my fifties. Reading has been a big part of my education. I have many interests and loves to share. These five book recommendations are but the tip of the iceberg. I became an author so I could write what remains unwritten and read the stories I wish to tell.
This author is the master of alternative history. I love where he takes me. I enjoy his humanization of characters often seen as wooden or stone.
He examines the “what-ifs?” of the historical record. I find the twists and turns remarkable. Small events could so easily have altered major social, political, and cultural evolutions. Imagine a South victorious in our civil war. Imagine if there were no Lincoln assassination. Imagine Robert E. Lee as the newly elected President of the Confederacy with a platform of ending slavery.
As a historian, I am well aware that the smallest alterations in the fabric of time can have huge consequences. I love how Turtledove presents these possibilities to me.
"It is absolutely unique--without question the most fascinating Civil War novel I have ever read." Professor James M. McPherson Pultizer Prize-winning BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM January 1864--General Robert E. Lee faces defeat. The Army of Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equpped. Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower. Then, Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle: Its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking--and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantitites to the Confederates. The name of the weapon is the AK-47.... Selected…
Liberty Bell and the Last American
by
James Stoddard,
Americans love their Constitution. In seventeen-year-old Liberty Bell’s era it has become a myth. Centuries after the Great Blackout obliterates the world's digitized information, America's history is forgotten. Only confused legends remain, written in "The Americana," a book depicting a golden age where famous Americans from different eras existed together.
I’ve loved both history and fantasy since I was a child. The first book I can remember reading at all was The Hobbit. The first historical novel I fell in love with was The Killer Angels. I visited the battlefield of Gettysburg with my family, and currently teach the movie every year to my high school film class. (I’ve never visited Middle Earth, but plan to visit New Zealand as soon as possible). I’ve been reading both genres ever since—and quite by accident my first novel contains a mix of both genres.
This one isn’t fantasy at all. In fact, it’s probably the most accurate fictional retelling of the battle of Gettysburg out there. But I love it so much I had to list it here.
Furthermore, the characters involved—such as Lee, Longstreet, and Chamberlain—are deeply spiritual men, meaning that many pages meditate on the meaning of all this blood and loss. These meditations evoke a sense fantasy often can: that the visible world contains a mystery deeper than our limited minds can grasp.
Yet the text remains deeply human. The Civil War pits brother against brother, friend against friend. In it, there is a great speech by Col. Chamberlain addressing his men which captures a theme of the book.
“This is a different kind of army,” he says. “If you look back through history you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight…
“My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant.”—James M. McPherson
In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation’s history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine…
Like many people of my generation, I first discovered fantasy worlds through morning cartoons. Then came comics, but The Lord of the Rings changed everything for me, followed by Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and many more. I was an introverted child, often bored with ordinary life, and these worlds gave me somewhere to escape. Most importantly, I loved journeys that transformed characters, because they gave me hope that people could change too. I created fantasy realms in my head for years, but it took reaching my 40s to finally start putting them on paper. Today, I write and publish my own stories, including Chronicles of Ankhara, through AltWorld Comics.
Everybody talks about the shock value of this series, but they forget that these books have the greatest and most realistic character developments of all time.
Sansa, Daenerys, and Jon Snow are the most obvious ones, but I chose Jaime because I can relate to him the most. Sometimes everything goes your way, and you feel invincible. But remembering the fall of Jaime keeps my feet on the ground.
I had similar experiences several times when I acted like a jerk because of my job titles before reading his story. Now I never get ahead of myself.
HBO's hit series A GAME OF THRONES is based on George R R Martin's internationally bestselling series A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, the greatest fantasy epic of the modern age. A GAME OF THRONES is the first volume in the series.
'Completely immersive' Guardian
'When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground'
Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun.
From the fertile south, where heat breeds conspiracy, to the vast and savage eastern lands, all the…
This is a reread (about thr 4th or 5th!) - I love the immersion in the world of Ancient Rome. It can be tricky to get all the names straight (sons being called the same as their fathers etc) but the author does a great job of making the charaters unique enough that, certainly for the most important ones, it is not a burden.
With extraordinary narrative power, New York Times bestselling author Colleen McCullough sweeps the reader into a whirlpool of pageantry and passion, bringing to vivid life the most glorious epoch in human history.
When the world cowered before the legions of Rome, two extraordinary men dreamed of personal glory: the military genius and wealthy rural "upstart" Marius, and Sulla, penniless and debauched but of aristocratic birth. Men of exceptional vision, courage, cunning, and ruthless ambition, separately they faced the insurmountable opposition of powerful, vindictive foes. Yet allied they could answer the treachery of rivals, lovers, enemy generals, and senatorial vipers with…
I’ve spent my career with my students exploring microbes in all kinds of worlds, from cosmetics on our skin to the glaciers of Antarctica. In Antarctica, I discovered bizarre bacteria that form giant red blobs; we call them the “red nose” life form. In our lab at Kenyon College, we isolated new microbes from a student’s beauty blenders. These experiences, and those of the books I list here, inspire the microbial adventures of my science fiction. If microbes could talk, how would they deal with us? Find out in my novel, Brain Plague. And I hope you enjoy all the microbial tales on this list!
This is the best novel I’ve read about bubonic plague.
Student historian Kivrin travels back in time to England of the Middle Ages—unknowingly at the start of the Black Death. The cause of Black Death was the plague bacteria, unknown to people of that time.
What makes the book memorable is its depiction of everyday life, where children who get lost in the forest must find their way home by the tolling of the village church bell. Ultimately, the bell tolls for all the plague’s victims.
The vivid characterization makes me experience people of a time so distant their minds feel alien to us, yet still deeply human.
"Ambitious, finely detailed and compulsively readable" - Locus
"It is a book that feels fundamentally true; it is a book to live in" - Washington Post
For Kivrin Engle, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing a bullet-proof backstory. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.
A big complex adventure in a in a big, complex, and believable (within itself) future, but told through the points of view of very human, interesting characters. This is a gritty, workaday, human world, not some mythic galactic empire.
Humanity has colonized the planets - interstellar travel is still beyond our reach, but the solar system has become a dense network of colonies. But there are tensions - the mineral-rich outer planets resent their dependence on Earth and Mars and the political and military clout they wield over the Belt and beyond. Now, when Captain Jim Holden's ice miner stumbles across a derelict, abandoned ship, he uncovers a secret that threatens to throw the entire system into war. Attacked by a stealth ship belonging to the Mars fleet, Holden must find a way to uncover the motives behind the…
What's not to love about Jane Austen? She amuses, informs, instructs, and surprises us in her work. I've read her books more than once, and each reading is more delightful and meaningful.
Jane Austen's best-loved novel is an unforgettable story about the inaccuracy of first impressions, the power of reason, and above all the strange dynamics of human relationships and emotions.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is illustrated by Hugh Thomson and features an afterword by author and critic, Henry Hitchings.
A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, Pride and…
Ever since I discovered science fiction and fantasy as a kid, I loved playing in other worlds. It didn’t take me long to start creating my own to play in, so I thought I might as well write them down. I also learned that it’s more fun to throw disparate elements and genres together. Why not throw some time travel and aliens in a Western? Or put some aliens and a little cyberpunk in an alternate history? I always find the most interesting worlds are the ones where things are not so easily categorized.
This is a cyberpunk classic, but what I really love about it is the combination of modern computer technology with Sumerian mythology, the Tower of Babel myth, and how well Stephenson is able to integrate them, so we have hackers throwing around Sumerian terms like 'me' and 'nam-shub'.
And for me, I love that there’s just a lot of cool stuff happening here, like a biker with an atomic bomb on a deadman switch, a nuclear-powered needle gun. And our lead character is named Hiro Protagonist. But probably the biggest point for me is that despite the dystopian setting, there really is more hope in this story than one would think.
The “brilliantly realized” (The New York Times Book Review) breakthrough novel from visionary author Neal Stephenson, a modern classic that predicted the metaverse and inspired generations of Silicon Valley innovators
Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.
Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defending his pies from marauders when necessary with a matched set of samurai swords. His home is a shared 20 X 30…
