Novels with a wide range of manipulative characters fighting each other, female and male?

[Skimpole]

I was thinking primarily about Historical Novels about nobilities where everyone lust for power and ambitious is the law but I accept any genre. Of course the characters must be fascinating in their own way with very different personalities and goals, their motivations not always clear (ambiguous characters are very good). If possible I wish a realistic, amoral setting and ending with some "good" characters "losing" and some of the "bad" getting away with their actions and living happily ever after.

These are just suggestion. I don't want to be demanding. I just tried to outline my preferences but if you have a suggestion that doesn't fit only some requisities, feel free to answer. Thank you very much!

[Anthony]

Try Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian books (starts with The Winter King).


Absolutely loved this book. I'm not that familiar with this time period (at least not the real version of it), and so the Welsh and gaelic terms and pagan Druid rites and beliefs are quite beguiling and mysterious...it's almost like i'm reading a beautiful realized sword and sorcery fantasy world that was conceived by a really brilliant writer. It's like another world, so foreign and yet so strangely similar to our own. I feel like i'm reading Game of Thrones or a Guy Kavriel Kay book.

And yet...it's our history. it's the roots of our own culture. Yet it feels so strange and alien and wondrous. The characters are incredibly well fleshed out and the politics of the time are amazingly complex, despite being set in such a "barbaric" period.

This was really the first Bernard Cornwell book I've ever read, and i'm working on the rest of the Arthurian series and will then progress to his other books. This man can write battle scenes like no other. And his sense of story and pacing is incredible. I literally could not put this book down, it was so good. I highly recommend it.

[Sherri]

Have you read the Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett? There are some characters in there you can really grow to hate and of course the ones you want to cheer for as they dedicate their life to building an amazing Gothic cathedral in the 1200s. Just persist past the opening scene in the forest. I thought it would never end and I had to come back to the book years later before I got sucked into the story and couldn't put it down.