Here are 100 books that Thud! A Discworld Novel fans have personally recommended if you like
Thud! A Discworld Novel.
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I’m the author of an award-winning indie book series that focuses on a pretty unusual main character: a middle-aged mother actively parenting three kids in an insane situation. I love unexpected situations and fresh or unusual characters, and the books I recommend here reflect that.
I am so impressed by Pirateaba’s worldbuilding. While there are some fantasy staples in the series, like dragons and dwarves, there are also plenty of lesser-seen races, like gnolls and djinni, and some that are completely unique creations, like the Antinium and the Gazers.
What’s more, all of these races feel like they have their own identities and shared culture, and then, on top of that, individuals from each race are distinct! Two gnolls won’t necessarily see eye-to-eye just because they’re gnolls.
(This novel is the e-book version of the free web serial. You may read the entire ongoing story at wanderinginn.com free of charge.)
“No killing Goblins.”
So reads the sign outside of The Wandering Inn, a small building run by a young woman named Erin Solstice. She serves pasta with sausage, blue fruit juice, and dead acid flies on request. And she comes from another world. Ours.
It’s a bad day when Erin finds herself transported to a fantastical world and nearly gets eaten by a Dragon. She doesn’t belong in a place where monster attacks are a fact of…
Millions watch on live stream as Brit battlemage Daxx and his teammates, Asian-American twin-blade sword-dancer Qrysta and heavily-armored Aussie Orc warrior Grell, triumph in the World Championship of Sword and Sorcery.
The next thing he knows, Daxx is in the middle of a wilderness he’s never seen before. And he’s…
As an author who has narrated my own audiobooks, I’ve realized that it is an art and a joy to perform books aloud. I wanted to offer this list to inspire more people to read aloud to one another. It’s one of the most bonding experiences I’ve had with my husband and children.
Performing my Orchid audiobooks has been such a rewarding experience. I loved revisiting my characters and having one final time to enjoy my stories from beginning to end. The narration process allowed me to experience my books fresh, from a reader’s point of view. The good news is that everyone can experience this joy. Pick your favorite book and share it out loud!
What happens when Earth turns into a competition to the death, all for the entertainment of alien cultures around the universe? Well, you get an eminently engrossing tale that my husband and I have been reading aloud to each other!
As a cat mom, I've completely fallen for Princess Donut the Chonk. She is imperious, yet her vulnerability shines through too. Carl is a fine hero, as he grapples with his morals and grows in his ability to save others.
My husband and I are hooked. We're literally reading the series aloud to each other, complete with a watery accent for Zev and her fish tank hood, Princess Donut's innocent voice, and nasally shapeshifter Mordecai.
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
I’m the author of an award-winning indie book series that focuses on a pretty unusual main character: a middle-aged mother actively parenting three kids in an insane situation. I love unexpected situations and fresh or unusual characters, and the books I recommend here reflect that.
Do you know what makes life-and-death drama better? Throwing it in a pot with a healthy dash of family drama and stirring vigorously. Rachel Aaron understands that, and I love that almost all of her series effortlessly blends the importance of apocalyptic disasters with the difficulty of dysfunctional familial relationships.
And sometimes–just sometimes–the characters get a little healing along the way.
As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: keep quiet, don’t cause trouble, and stay out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't fly in a family of ambitious magical predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.
Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ--a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit--Julius has one month to prove he can be a ruthless dragon or kiss his true shape goodbye forever. But in a city of modern mages and…
Constance is a wild, stubborn young girl growing up poor in a small industrial town in the late 1800's. Beneath her thread-worn exterior beats the heart of a dreamer and a wordsmith. But at age twelve, she’s orphaned. Running away to join the circus—like kids do in adventure books—seems like…
I’m the author of an award-winning indie book series that focuses on a pretty unusual main character: a middle-aged mother actively parenting three kids in an insane situation. I love unexpected situations and fresh or unusual characters, and the books I recommend here reflect that.
This book does one of my favorite things: deconstructing and reconstructing tropes. It goes ahead and uses Jin, the main character, to critique everything that doesn’t quite make sense in the cultivation subgenre, and then it later uses other characters to validate the same tropes it earlier poked fun at.
On top of that, the contrast between a relaxed Canadian farmer and his ultra-chuuni “death before dishonor” rooster never fails to be delightful.
A laugh-out-loud, slice-of-life martial-arts fantasy about . . . farming????
Jin Rou wanted to be a cultivator. A man powerful enough to defy the heavens. A master of martial arts. A lord of spiritual power. Unfortunately for him, he died, and now I’m stuck in his body.
Arrogant Masters? Heavenly Tribulations? All that violence and bloodshed? Yeah, no thanks. I’m getting out of here.
Farm life sounds pretty great. Tilling a field by hand is fun when you’ve got the strength of ten men—though maybe I shouldn’t have fed those Spirit Herbs to my pet rooster. I’m not used to…
When I was a small child I used to stare long and hard at playing cards, absorbed in the mediaeval-ish drawings and with the feeling that they were trying to tell me something beyond the obvious; which was that they simply represented numbers and suits for the purpose of playing Whist or Rummy or whatever. Gradually I learned that the instinct was true, that ordinary playing cards have long been used for fortune-telling and are related of course to Tarot cards, which take the divination angle to a whole other level (and conversely can equally, if rather frivolously, be used for playing Poker if you leave out the Major Arcana cards).
Does Terry Pratchett seem a frivolous choice compared to my others? Not at all. There is deep and humane wisdom hidden in his Discworld humor.
In the eternally recurrent conflict between Dwarves and Trolls in the Discworld, the board game Thud (a parallel world echo of the Scandinavian hnefatafl games) plays a pivotal and, ultimately, crucial role.
The story's hero is Samuel Vimes, a favorite avatar of Pratchett's. Vimes is a recovering alcoholic, depressive policeman who through chance and a stubborn inborn streak of decency and sense of fair play, happens to end up as the Duke of Ankh Morpork (the Discworld equivalent of London) and mediator between the two warring tribes. It's his job to find the point at which they can at least agree to not slaughter each other.
Once, in a gods-forsaken hellhole called Koom Valley, trolls and dwarfs met in bloody combat. Centuries later, each species still views the other with simmering animosity. Lately, the influential dwarf, Grag Hamcrusher, has been fomenting unrest among Ankh-Morpork's more diminutive citizens—a volatile situation made far worse when the pint-size provocateur is discovered bashed to death . . . with a troll club lying conveniently nearby.
Commander Sam Vimes of the City Watch is aware of the importance of solving the Hamcrusher homicide without delay. (Vimes's second most-pressing responsibility, in fact, next to always being home at six p.m. sharp to…
My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.
This novel takes an absurd premise (everyone magically receives a string whose length reflects how long they will live) and spins it into a profound thought experiment. I loved it for its complete indifference to the scientific credibility that I tried to build into my novel, which is in part about knowing (if you want) exactly how long you have to live.
I found it liberating to learn that, as a writer, I could have it both ways: be extremely thoughtful and nuanced about the consequences of your premise while being completely arbitrary and absurdist about the premise itself. I don’t have that kind of nerve, so I fell back on mere science for my premise, but I love Erlich’s gall.
India Muerte and the Ship of the Dead
by
Set Sytes,
India Muerte and the Ship of the Dead is the first book in a pirate fantasy adventure series, featuring the thrilling exploits of India Muerte in an exotic yet dangerous world.
After a night of misadventure, a roguish street lad from Mexico Island wakes up aboard a legendary ship crewed…
I believed the Internet would be as colorful a cultural phenomenon as LSD. But before I was even able to convince people that something wonderful was on the horizon, big business swooped in and recontextualized the digital renaissance as a business revolution and the Silicon Valley mindset was born: Companies should grow exponentially forever! Any tech problem can be solved with more tech! Humans on Earth are just larvae–maggots–while wealthy tech bros will get to Mars or upload their minds to the cloud. This list of books is meant to show how these guys think and why they’re taking us in the wrong direction.
This heartfelt but bitingly satiric novel explores the ridiculousness informing how tech companies operate.
This novel hit me in a surprisingly deep way. It follows a young woman trying to maintain her connection to humanity—and stay employed—in an increasingly technologized world. The joke is that she’s the driver of an autonomous taxi. Yeah, it’s about a tech company with a fleet of autonomous vehicles and human drivers hidden inside.
It felt so true to me, the perfect symbol for the uselessness of so much tech, the desire of tech bros to replace humans with machines, and the toll on those of us who want to live lives of meaning and connection.
For years, Teresa has meandered from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, unable to move ahead in any field or career, the dreaded move from one gig to another starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a "good" job. It's a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver's claims…
As a queer speculative fiction writer, I often find myself drawn to themes of identity. Reckoning with identity and defining your own (and redefining, and redefining, and redefining) is a critical part of the queer experience in the cis-hetero norms of the real world. Fantasy and science fiction have always given readers a lens to see themselves through, and many queer readers have found their own definitions between the lines of a book. The protagonists and stories in these books couldn’t be more different, but each offers a unique and compelling vision of discovering—or making—a place for themself in their magical world.
Thirsty for more buff orc lesbians? Legends & Lattes serves up a mug of warm, cozy queer fulfillment. Viv was an adventurer, but she no longer wants to be. Despite her battle scars and intimidating looks, she longs to open her own quiet coffee shop.
The journey to small-business success has challenges, but her determination to live on her own terms brews up a staff of misfits that become a queer-found family. This quiet, low-stakes novel is as sweet as an almond croissant and will leave you hungry for more.
High fantasy, low stakes - with a double-shot of coffee.
After decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is finally hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream - for she plans to open the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the past behind her, she can't go it alone. And help might arrive from unexpected quarters. Yet old rivals and new stand in the way of success. And Thune's shady underbelly could make it all…
I’ve been a fanatic of horror, especially Gothic horror since I was about eight years old when I read all of Poe’s short stories. It’s the genre I read most often and the one I’m dedicated to writing about. For me, the most effective horror novels have a setting that is as rich and fully developed as any of the characters. You can battle vampires, zombies, and all of the other delightful monsters out there, but how do you battle what’s trapped in the walls around you? How do you fight a home that hates you? Or one that loves you too much to let you go? It’s endlessly fascinating.
The vivid, lush descriptions in this book bring the titular hacienda to roaring life.
Although initially I was drawn in by the comparisons with Rebecca, this novel is its own thing. It brings in folk beliefs as well as thoughts on colonialism, all within the hacienda’s oppressive yet intoxicating atmosphere. It’s what you look for in a Gothic horror novel.
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...
During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.
But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
Everything you know about Santa Claus is a lie. And that’s just the way she likes it.
She remembers nothing of her real parents. She was abducted by fairies who taught her all she knows. Everyone calls her Key, but no one can tell her why.
This recommendation list is a celebration of these authors’ creativity! Like every reader I love a good story, and this list highlights five books that not only weave entertainment within their respective genres—but also tell their stories in unique visual ways by being fearless with formatting. I love being into a story and seeing there’s a journal entry or letter coming up—it’s like an intimate view into the characters’ world and experiences, and I want to eat it up! If you’re interested in finding more authors who do this, Googling “epistolary novels” will help.
I loved Maame not only because it is the perfect concoction of tender and funny, but because the Google searches formatted within the story were like the perfect cherry on top of the perfectly assembled turtle sundae.
I found myself looking forward to every time the main character Google-searched her next new-adulthood obstacle—like friendship, grief, dating, and caregiving.
It was visually stimulating, and hilarious, and a fun edition to the story.
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! • A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick • A February 2023 Indie Next Pick
"Sparkling." ―The New York Times
"An utterly charming and deeply moving portrait of the joys―and the guilt―of trying to find your own way in life." ―Celeste Ng, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
"Lively, funny, poignant . . . Prepare to fall in love with Maddie. I did!" ―Bonnie Garmus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry
Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman.
