LitQueuelitqueue

After

When She Woke

Hillary Jordan2011

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

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  • Iron Gold

    Pierce Brown2018

    Ten years after the revolution, four different characters navigate the fallout of a fractured solar system and a failing new government.

    Same tense register, still dystopian

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • Infinite Jest

    David Foster Wallace1996

    A sprawling narrative centered on a tennis academy, a halfway house, and a lethal film. The text includes hundreds of pages of detailed endnotes.

    tense → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

    William S. Burroughs

    A series of nonlinear vignettes follow a drug addict's hallucinations and travels. The prose is fragmented and satirical.

    tense → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

  • Star Maker

    Olaf Stapledon1937

    A narrator travels through space and time to observe the birth and death of civilizations across the universe.

    tense → elegiac, still speculative fiction

    pace0·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

3 more ↓

  • Perfection

    R.L. Mathewson2011

    A woman tries to ignore her neighbor, a man with a massive appetite who constantly steals her food. They bicker until a relationship forms.

    tense → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Night Pleasures

    Sherrilyn Kenyon2002

    An immortal warrior and a skeptical accountant are handcuffed together while being hunted by supernatural predators.

    tense → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Hot property

    Sandra Brown2008

    A publicist tries to repair the reputation of a disgraced baseball player while dealing with his intrusive family. It is a lighthearted romance.

    tense → playful

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

Faster

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  • 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.

    tense → propulsive

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Red Rising

    Pierce Brown2014

    A laborer on Mars discovers his caste is being lied to and undergoes surgery to infiltrate the ruling elite. He joins a brutal war games academy.

    tense → propulsive, still dystopian

    pace+1·prose0·bleak0

  • 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.

    tense → wry

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

Slower

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  • 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.

    tense → meditative

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak-1

  • Translated Accounts

    James Kelman2001

    Anonymous witnesses describe life under a military regime. The prose uses broken, bureaucratic syntax to mimic a literal translation.

    tense → bleak, still dystopian

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

  • The Other Valley

    Scott Alexander Howard2024

    A girl lives in a valley flanked by identical valleys that are twenty years in the past and future. She must decide whether to intervene in time.

    tense → elegiac, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose0·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • The Testament of Jessie Lamb

    Jane Rogers2011

    A teenager decides to volunteer for a medical program that will end her life to save humanity from a biological catastrophe.

    tense → earnest, still dystopian

    pace-1·prose0·bleak+1

  • Watchmen

    Alan Moore1986

    Retired masked vigilantes investigate the murder of a former teammate. The story takes place in an alternate 1985 on the brink of nuclear war.

    tense → bleak, still dystopian

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

  • A Clockwork Orange

    Anthony Burgess1962

    A teenage gang leader is imprisoned and subjected to state-mandated psychological conditioning. The story is told in a slang called Nadsat.

    tense → sardonic, still dystopian

    pace0·prose+2·bleak+1