LitQueuelitqueue

After

Boy's Life

Robert R. McCammon1991

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • Glimpses

    Lewis Shiner1993

    A stereo repairman uses his obsession with music to mentally reconstruct lost albums by the Beatles, Hendrix, and the Doors.

    warm → elegiac, still magical realism

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

warm → meditative, still magical realism

3 more ↓

  • Tours of the Black Clock

    Steve Erickson1989

    A ghostwriter for Hitler's private pornography lives in a surreal version of the 20th century where history and memory blur.

    warm → dreamlike, still magical realism

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

  • The Light and the Dark

    Mikhail Shishkin2013

    Two lovers exchange letters that transcend time and space. One writes from a domestic life while the other writes from the front lines of a war.

    warm → elegiac

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1

  • In the Night Garden

    Catherynne M. Valente2006

    A girl with tattooed eyelids tells a prince interlocking stories of monsters and folklore. The narrative is a series of nested myths.

    warm → dreamlike

    pace0·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • On a Pale Horse

    Piers Anthony1983

    After accidentally killing the personification of Death, a man must take over the office. He navigates the bureaucracy of the afterlife.

    warm → playful

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

    Rhett McLaughlin2019

    Two friends investigate a reform school in 1990s North Carolina after a classmate disappears. It is a mystery involving local conspiracies.

    warm → playful, still coming of age

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • The Last Question

    Isaac Asimov2007

    A short story told in seven vignettes spanning billions of years. Humanity asks a supercomputer if the heat death of the universe can be avoided.

    warm → meditative

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Mind's Eye

    Douglas E. Richards2014

    A man discovers he has the ability to access the internet and process data directly with his mind. He is hunted by a secret organization.

    warm → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak0

  • The Atlantis Gene

    A.G. Riddle2013

    A geneticist and a counter-terrorism agent uncover a global conspiracy involving human evolution and an ancient Antarctic discovery.

    warm → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak0

  • Monster Hunter International

    Larry Correia2007

    An accountant kills his boss, who has become a werewolf, and is recruited by a private company that hunts monsters for government bounties.

    warm → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-1·bleak0

Slower

3 more ↓

  • The Habitation of the Blessed

    Catherynne M. Valente2010

    A priest finds the lost kingdom of Prester John. The story is told through three nested layers of journals, myths, and historical accounts.

    warm → dreamlike

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Invisible Cities

    Italo Calvino1972

    Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan. The book is a series of short, prose-poem meditations on urban existence.

    warm → meditative, still magical realism

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Among Others

    Jo Walton2011

    A teenage girl at a 1970s boarding school copes with her twin's death through books and subtle magic. It is written as a series of diary entries.

    warm → tender, still magical realism

    pace-1·prose0·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • Pet Sematary

    Stephen King1983

    A family moves to Maine and discovers a burial ground that can return the dead to life. They use it, and the consequences are absolute.

    warm → tense

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2

  • The Poppy War

    R.F. Kuang2018

    A war orphan enters a military academy and discovers shamanic powers. She leads a unit into a total war inspired by 20th-century Chinese history.

    warm → bleak

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2

  • The Traitor Baru Cormorant

    Seth Dickinson2015

    An accountant infiltrates the empire that conquered her home to destroy it from within. She uses economics and politics as her primary weapons.

    warm → cold

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+2