LitQueuelitqueue

After

Time Was

Ian McDonald2018

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Dragonfly in Amber

    Diana Gabaldon1992

    A woman returns to Scotland with her daughter and recalls her 18th-century life with a Highland warrior. It spans two different centuries.

    Same elegiac register, still time travel

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Rakesfall

    Vajra Chandrasekera2024

    Two souls reincarnate across centuries of Sri Lankan history and a distant future. The narrative shifts through different bodies and realities.

    elegiac → dreamlike

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • 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.

    elegiac → meditative

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • All Those Vanished Engines

    Paul Park2014

    Three linked stories follow the Park family through an alternate history where the American Civil War ended in a two-nation settlement.

    elegiac → dreamlike

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

To recover

3 more ↓

  • This Girl

    Colleen Hoover2013

    A husband retells the story of his early relationship to his wife. It uses dual timelines to revisit events from the first book in the series.

    elegiac → earnest

    pace0·prose-2·bleak-1

  • The Duke and I

    Julia Quinn2000

    A duke and a debutante enter a fake courtship to avoid social pressure. They navigate Regency London's marriage market while hiding their deal.

    elegiac → playful

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

  • Red Lily

    Nora Roberts2005

    A single mother in Tennessee falls for her employer's son while a century-old ghost possesses her. It is the final book in a trilogy.

    elegiac → warm

    pace+1·prose-2·bleak-1

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Ready Player One

    Ernest Cline2008

    A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

    elegiac → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

  • All Systems Red

    Martha Wells2017

    A self-aware security android hacks its own governor module to watch soap operas while protecting a team of scientists on a distant planet.

    elegiac → wry

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak-1

  • Skin Game

    Jim Butcher2014

    Wizard Harry Dresden joins a team of villains to rob a vault in the Underworld. It is a fast-paced heist set in a modern fantasy Chicago.

    elegiac → propulsive

    pace+2·prose-2·bleak0

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Beelzebub's tales to his grandson

    Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff1950

    An extraterrestrial being explains the history and strange behaviors of humanity to his grandson during a long space voyage.

    elegiac → meditative

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

  • Gödel, Escher, Bach

    Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

    An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

    elegiac → playful

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak-1

  • Ulysses

    James Joyce1914

    Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

    elegiac → playful

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak0

Heavier

elegiac → bleak, still time travel

3 more ↓

  • The Year of the Quiet Sun

    Wilson Tucker1970

    A social scientist travels forward in time to document the collapse of the United States through racial conflict and nuclear war.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak+2

  • Strangers

    Gardner Dozois1978

    An artist living among the alien Cian on a distant planet falls in love with a local woman and attempts to navigate their incompatible biology.

    Same elegiac register, still romance

    pace0·prose0·bleak+2

  • The Gone World

    Tom Sweterlitsch2018

    An investigator travels to possible futures to solve a murder and stop an approaching apocalypse. The timeline changes based on her observations.

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+2