Just read Orphan X and its sequel The Nowhere man. Really enjoyed them both.

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Sorry for the double post

Guy Gavriel Kay is one of my favorites, and this fits your criteria. It's in the same world as a few of his other works, but doesn't really tie in to them.

The Last Light of the Sun

 

I mean, you're in a thread for book recommendations. Just look at the previous pages. I'm pretty sure most of my recs are stand-alone or stand-alone books within a series (like the discworld novels) so if you want a place to start, just look at my posts here. Another standalone book recced in this thread that I would suggest is Uprooted by Naomi Novik. She's just a very engaging writer in general. It's hard to put down any of her novels and she's very good at worldbuilding. My only quibble with that novel would be that the political plotline felt a bit thin in comparison to the other fantasy/horror/romance aspects of the plot.

 

So I've read a pretty awesome book. It's called Kings of the Wyld.

It's about a couple of old mercs coming out of retirement to help rescue the daughter of one of them.

Goodreads description:

The world is hard core fantasy with dragons wyverns etc etc... The book reminds me of The Heroes by Abercombie, it has that sense of humor but also some really nice fight scenes.

 

Literally just bought that book a few hours ago on a whim. I liked the cover.

 

I've recently read this book. It is goodish.
Though at times it felt somewhat superficial. For example: A lot of creatures are introduced through the story, but most were just a passing mention, or part of a list, which made them much less interesting.
I'm having a hard time explaining why, but it kinda felt like it was a novelization of a DnD campaign Where some of the characters where role-played half-heartedly.
So I have some problems with the book, but I mostly enjoyed reading it, and I will read the sequel when it comes out.

 

Just finished The Dry, by Jane Harper. It's been a while since I devoured a book so quickly, but I just couldn't put it down - about five hours, start to finish.

It's a crime thriller set in the drought stricken town of Kiewarra in Australia, and the surrounding farmland. It all kicks off with three bodies, and a cop with a murky past digging through the local tensions and resentment to find out what happened. It's fair to say that it's not revolutionary, but holy shit it's good.

 

I'm looking for books similar (not even similar, maybe just as good as) Dresden Files, King Killer, Wheel of Time. The only thing I ask is it's one main character pov for the whole story. No switching back and forth between chapters.

So what books would y'all recommend?

 

Red Rising has only one POV character and is definitely worth a read: https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=27868

 

The Reckoners series by Brandon Sanderson is one main character's POV. It's written for YA but still has an interesting world and I enjoyed them. Brandon Sanderson finished the final novel in the Wheel of Time and wrote the Mistborn series.

The Reckoners series is 3 books and a novella.

 

Started reading the Iliad. Was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I am. Diomedes rampaging through the Trojan lines sets a new, or old I guess, standard for epic battle scenes. 10/10 would sack the city of troy with.

 

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

 

I just finished it recently and was gonna post about it somewhere on DLP, I suppose this is a good place for it.

It's definitely an interesting book, but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. And probably more of a "read once" variety to me than something I'll come back to.

Lynch's trick here is worldbuilding and that is great. Clearly the dude gave a lot of thought to making his world authentic and populated with people and places and history.

Writing is good, hitting some real high points, but also hitting a few "trying too hard" moments.

Spoiler

Structurally, I didn't mind hugely mind alternating past & present chapters, but I did mind when those interludes stopped being story chapters and just became infodumps (talking about the Coin-Kisser's Row and the prostitute war chapters). Compared to the chapter where Lynch sneaked a whole bunch of worldbuilding about the House of Bel Auster during the Teeth Show, those two interludes were really low effort.

I'm sad to say that the plot is weak. There were some really interesting threads (the Spider and the Midnighters being one), but everything seemed to fall apart the moment the Grey King's plan was realized. He was introduced too late, his buildup was insufficient and the late-stage revelation of his reasons for revenge didn't make me care about it in the least. The Falconer was a much better villain. The plot probably could have been stronger if Lynch hadn't spent half the book building up the Don Salvara game which was then promptly relegated to a B plot. It's like the author decided halfway through the book to derail his heist story in favor of an arbitrary cutthroat villain.

 

I have to agree with @ScottPress about the Locke Lamora. About everything.

Additionally, I felt the author tried too hard to keep the MC doing stuff "in the nick of time", so was permanently ramping up the odds against Locke. Very much like the Dresden series for instance, except it's much more ridiculous and basically made me abandon the series second book in. Was expecting fantasy flavoured Ocean's Eleven, but while the flavour (the world) was great, the author just… I'd say wasn't simply smart enough for the plots to work for me.

 

Well, I enjoyed the first book, I just didn't really think any of the sequels really worked. It's been too long for me to give anything more in depth than than though >.>

 

You guys are certainly more patient than I am.

Gave up on Lamora only a few chapters in. Reading it felt like a chore, especially considering it kept on being mentioned in the same breath as The Name of the Wind. I see the similarities, but it just didn't do it for me. It was like comparing instant coffee to a good espresso, and I don't even like coffee all that much.

 

I've read the first four books of the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin, and they've been fantastic. It's high-fantasy with dragons and wizards (and more than once I got the impression that Rothfuss got his ideas about names from Le Guin). What's more, and arguably even better, is her prose. There's a bewitching quality to it, and it's so fantastic at times that I'm still salivating a little at the thought.

To anyone interested in fantasy (and even those who aren't usually) I can only recommend the Earthsea series. They're tremendous books.

5/5 (especially the third, The Farthest Shore)

For any writer: keep a notebook handy to scrawl down some of her phrases. They're beautiful, and also make me bow my head in shame -- I'll definitely steal as much as I can from that author-lady. (Fifth and sixth book have been ordered already.)

 

Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature a little while ago and I'm about halfway through The Remains of the Day. Impressively simple, would recommend.

Although I've heard even better things about Never Let Me Go.

 

I'm looking for a Limitless type book. Young adult, doing nothing great in life and then turns things around. What follows could be just about anything ranging from globe trotting adventures to rainy days at the office. Or another way to describe this would be a muggle version of Independent Harry, with the caveat that it's well written. I haven't read the novel it's based on, but I might.

If the protagonist has questionable morals, even better.

Is there a genre for this? It sounds like something that would sell. Coming of age-ish?

 

Jeffrey Eugenides’ relatively new book of short stories, fresh complaints, is good but not great. Stylistically rather satisfying, but it’s hard to get on board with a collection of stories of mostly slimy men doing slimy things.

I’m looking for any books about teenagers but not YA. A stranger things kind of vibe I guess?

 

I got Dan Brown’s new book for Christmas (Origin? Origins? I’ve already forgotten).
I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

The plot is a bit meh and the reveal isn’t much of one, but the art and science described is pretty interesting. Mostly it’s the smooth quality of the prose though. I had trouble putting the book down. Snappy short chapters worked imo.

The lead up to the reveal was handled well, and I was sufficiently invested in the success of Robert Langdon and co.

Negatives for me were basically all the PoVs in Madrid. It just felt like filler time and again when you get another chapter there, and boring filler besides. At least it’s only a couple hundred words each time.

I don’t actually know when this was released, so for all I know everyone’s read it already. If you haven’t though, it might be worth spending some leftover Christmas money or exchanging some less succesful gifts to get this.