Looking for recommendations (World building, character driven)

[Diana]

Help! I need books! I am having trouble finding books that I can get into, lately.

Tropes I am sick of:
"Chosen One"
"Reluctant Chosen One"
"Fey Prince/Vampire/Werewolf falling for smart mouth mortal girl"
"Alpha/Luna"
"Harem/reverse harem"
"Damsel in Distress"
I am not particularly into smut.
I am not particularly into YA.

Stuff I like:
World building
Interesting characters
Deciding to step up
Playing with ideas, concepts, moral dilemmas
Non-romantic alliances
Emphasis on choices
Character growth
I like to support indie authors.

Any suggestions? Currently reading the murderbot series.

[CJ]

Heh, well I'd personally recommend Witch King by the same author as Murderbot, Martha Wells. It checks all the boxes you list, in my opinion.

[Diana]

CJ wrote: "Heh, well I'd personally recommend Witch King by the same author as Murderbot, Martha Wells. It checks all the boxes you list, in my opinion."

Thank you!

[CBRetriever]

a lot of the Cherryh books have partnerships, not romances

[Tara]

@Diana
Have you read any of October Daye?

[Diana]

Tara wrote: "@Diana
Have you read any of October Daye?"
Yes, I read those :)

[Diana]

CBRetriever wrote: "a lot of the Cherryh books have partnerships, not romances"
I read a lot of those - It's not that I am anti-romance. I just want a story besides obsessing over a love interest.

[Tara]

That is supposed to be Urban Fantasy lol

[Tara]

The Vanished Series?

[Michelle]

I think Tuyo fits your criteria. Definitely smutless, too.

[Anna]

Reminder to everyone that it's against the group's rules to promote your own work outside of the Authors' folder.

[Charlton]

One of my favorite books deals with a Hmong child with epilepsy and how the medical system clashed with the Hmong culture. non-fiction. The book is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
Other than that I would say in high-fantasy Raymond E. Feist and David Eddings.

[Jan]

I second Tuyo. Other possibilities: Lois McMaster Bujold e.g. The Curse of Chalion. Or Rosemary Kirstein's The Steerswoman series.

[Tiny]

just read Murderbot again. that's what I did :)

By Wells as well: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
I prefer this over her other series. it's good. weird and interesting. the end of the series was less good, but I had fun till book 5 or so.

flip Murderbot on it's head and you get this https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
anymore info and I'll spoiler it for you.

one of the best recent world buildings and ship crew interactions (IMO anyway):
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
first book is amazing, didn't like the second (others did), third was good, fourth was best (after the first).

very very unique Asian world building book about enhanced warriors and their culture:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

a classic, about biological scifi and warbuilding. actually, anything by Butler is top:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

HAVE FUN :D

[Machiavelli]

Farseer Trilogy- Robin Hobb

Hits most of your targets for things you like I think…

https://www.goodreads.com/series/4145...

[Cheryl]

Why did none of us remember to mention The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and others by Becky Chambers? Totally ticks the boxes, and would be a great read even if it were only a partial match.

[Eva]

Try these:

The Sword of Kaigen (indie, but one of the best fantasy novels of all time IMHO)
The Spellshop
The Book That Wouldn’t Burn
Tress of the Emerald Sea
The Tainted Cup
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

All of the above are really wonderful, avoid all the tropes you’re tired of, and excel at a lot of the things you like, so I’m sure there’ll be something you’ll enjoy.

[Ambereyes]

The Sword of Kaigen and Tress of the Emerald Sea are indeed free of these tropes. I'm happy to confirm this because I've read those books and they're really not bad. :)

[Colin]

I took another look at the initial likes/dislikes and thought of a couple of rather different ideas:

Science fiction: Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, a clash of political, cultural, social, and (some) military systems of Earth and human settlements on Mars. Terrific world-building.

Fantasy: The Water Outlaws by SL Huang, re-gendered, re-telling of The Water Margin, set in a fantasy version of the Chinese Empire with a well-developed magic system.

[P. Pherson]

Sword of kaigon is one i want to read. Can i recommend
my own book here? It has next to none of that.

[CJ]

I just recently read Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse and loved it. I felt it excels at everything one would expects of a complex high fantasy novel, with the added bonus of being based on a pre-Columbian American type of civilization rather than a medieval European type. It kind of has a chosen one character, but it's quite a bit different than the typical trope, as the story explores the moral and social complexity around the idea of this character being a chosen one.

[CBRetriever]

P. wrote: "Sword of kaigon is one i want to read. Can i recommend
my own book here? It has next to none of that."

you can recommend it in the author's section of this forum

[Ambereyes]

Colin wrote: "I took another look at the initial likes/dislikes and thought of a couple of rather different ideas:

Science fiction: Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, a clash of political, cultural, soc..."

I think it could be a very interesting book. I read the original version of The Water Margin and I liked it.

[Ambereyes]

CJ wrote: "I just recently read Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse and loved it. I felt it excels at everything one would expects of a complex high fantasy novel, with the added bonus of being based on a pre-Colu..."
Great book!

[Richard]

Guy Gavriel Kay? Tigana remains one of my all time favourite books

[Ambereyes]

I've decided to write some reviews for books I read this summer. I really liked them, but I didn't have time to write good reviews at the time (and I didn't want to write bad ones).
So I remembered In the Time of the Sixth Sun series by Thomas Harlan. It's got great world-building (if you like alternate history and space opera, of course) and virtually no romance. It also has none of those tired tropes that make you sick.

[Ian]

For those already interested in “The Water Margin” (which one of the major Chinese novels from the Ming era), there is a free (yes free) Kindle edition of Scott W. Gregory’s “Bandits in Print: ‘The Water Margin’ and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel” (2023), describing how different editions are substantially different books. (Turning it into a modern fantasy novel, even with gender shifts, might be one more iteration, unfortunately not covered.)

Lots of literary shenanigans, and censors at work. Of course I expect that it is going to be more interesting to those who have read the novel, but most to those who have already noted odd inconsistencies between translations and retellings (which I have on a small scale).

[Ambereyes]

Ian wrote: "For those already interested in “The Water Margin” (which one of the major Chinese novels from the Ming era), there is a free (yes free) Kindle edition of Scott W. Gregory’s “Bandits in Print: ‘The..."

Thank you so much! I really like this book.

[Bonnie]

Diana wrote: "Stuff I like:
World building, Interesting characters, Deciding to step up, Playing with ideas, concepts, moral dilemmas, Non-romantic alliances, Emphasis on choices, Character growth"

How about Carol Berg?
I have read Flesh and Spirit / Breath and Bone; she has others too. Very solid writing.

I learned about her from fellow member YouKneek; check out her reviews of Berg's books.
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2...

[Camelia Rose (on hiatus)]

Cheryl wrote: "Why did none of us remember to mention The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and others by Becky Chambers? Totally ticks the boxes, and would be a great read even ..."

Totally agree with the Becky Chambers recs.

[Michelle]

I agree with the Carol Berg recommendation! Her stories have terrific characterization.

[Bookworm]

Chris Beckett's "Dark Eden" trilogy from 2012-2015 , it's an epic parable about basic human conflicts in a true alien world creation.