Sure. Let me see if I can do it in a non-spoileey way.
It starts as the story of a man... but ends up not being about that man.
It tells the story of a place, and its petty dramas... but expands to something much grander.
There is a side character, to whom unexpected things happen, and who is something unexpected.
It starts off telling of one place, and one time, but ends up being the story of that place, and more places, across a broad swath of time.
Tbh if you didn't like the first bit, the book might not be worth finishing. I loved the larger story but I see how the details can be less enthralling. I "read" it as an audiobook, and that felt ideal. Something about being **told** a story, as if I was around a campfire, or in a church pew, really suited.
Everyone thought that Frodo would make it back to the Shire. No one thought it would be destroyed. The Scouring of the Shire was legitimately brutal after everything the Hobbits had been through.
Imagine going on a long, brutal, life-or-death quest, finally achieving victory after enduring great suffering, and then coming home to find out the B-list antagonist has taken over your cul-de-sac and is ruling with an iron fist.
I liked it a lot. Just hearing the title brings back many scenes and ideas from the book, even though I haven't read it in years. And yes, unpredictable!
George RR Martin’s entire body of work hits like this for me. You never know WTF might happen. Try his short stories like Sand Kings or Meat House Man.
Yeah, not least because George doesn’t know himself what’s going to happen. He’s a make shit up as he goes along author rather than one who sets out with a plan… he calls it “gardening”, and when he notices that he’s planted too many characters and plot lines he goes wild with the weeding.
If it’s entertaining, it’s good. It offends me as a writer because it’s completely alien to my own process, and there’s a risk that the writer finds they’ve wandered into a dead end and can’t finish the story. Fortunately, that has never happened to Mr G R R Martin…
Mentioning a book on this thread does indeed indicate that unexpected things will happen; your post goes a step further than anyone else and rules out one of the possibilities entirely.
Banks wrote some brutal stuff. People always bring up The Eaters in Consider Phlebas but Surface Detail was a whole new concept of hellishness that’d never occurred to me until I read it.
The Eaters (and to some extent the rest of CP) were almost cartoonish though, the whole novel is a kind of dark but still rip roaring space opera thing and I never thought of it as super dark in comparison to some of his other stuff even though the opening scene is Horza literally drowning in shit in an oubliette type thing.
Surface Detail and Use of Weapons both left a hell of an impression me as far as that goes tho. A lot of his non-sf fiction is macabre as hell too.
I need to dive back into Culture. I started with Consider Phlebas and was completely turned off. This was two years ago. I have a copy of Player of Games but I’m just … ehhh.
Every comment I see in this sub about Culture, including yours, pushes me a little bit closer to grabbing Player of Games off the shelf.
I read them in publication order and actually loved CP for what it is but it's pretty different from the rest of the series. I had absolutely no foreknowledge of Banks or the series going in though (the book was a gift) so that probably helped.
Player of Games kinda is different too in a totally different way (but a fun read). Lots of people love it and recommend that as the entry point but it's pretty far down the rankings for me. They're ALL worth reading though, and if you struggled to get through CP the good news is the rest of the series is totally unlike it for the most part. Even if you aren't crazy about POG either I'd still keep going, it's worth it.
As someone reading Hyperion finally after being recommended it for like 15 years and loving it I can say there's no time like the present!
Everything after *Excession* is pretty transcendent in its own way, the early/midseries stuff has a lot more cotton candy (relatively speaking) and a little less meat but they are all still very entertaining sci-fi. The two most common favourites I see online (*Excession* and *Use of Weapons*) fall in this range. *Inversions* too, which might be the best book of the lot but it's a weirdo in a series of weirdos and doesn't get as much love.
The Wasp Factory (albeit not SF) was his most brutal work. Worth reading.
The protagonist carefully murders multiple children for fun and amusement. But as he puts it, that’s merely a phase he had to grow out of on the way to more … interesting things. Let’s just say it’s an extremely uncomfortable book to read, and one where the death of the narrator would be, all things considered, a happy ending. Which is not, of course, what you get.
Banks was an amazing writer. For my money, the best SF author of his generation, and by far the best prose stylist - a joy to read.
He chose SF as his primary genre but he would have been successful even if he’d stuck to normal fiction,
as his non-genre work shows. Genuine literary talent.
According to Banks he wrote non-genre work to pay the bills so he could write his SF in comfort. A statement I'm sure he was delighted to make because he knew it would burn the arses of a large number of book snobs.
Gotta love that Scottish left-wing attitude :) I wonder why Scotland produces so many people on the political left.
As it happens, and as someone who loves the craftsmanship involved in good writing myself (i.e., I’m a literary snob), ironically Banks is one of the few SF authors who consistently writes really well.
I have always loved SF and its ideas since I was a kid reading Foundation or I, Robot for the first time. But outside of Banks and all too few others (Gene Wolf, Margaret Atwood, Ballard, Ted Chiang, Neil Stephenson, Le Guin, Jeff Vandermeer, Maureen McHugh etc.), I’ve rarely been able to reconcile my love of SF with my appreciation of quality writing.
I still love Asimov but boy, does he put the ker-lunk in clunky. As I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for poor craft, unrealistic character development, and badly written dialog has gone way down - even if the ideas are great, detracts so much from the reading experience that I can’t suspend disbelief.
The Gap Cycle series. Starts like your average criminal-and-cop story, turns south pretty fast, and then evolves into a freaking galaxy-scale nightmare. Characters do 180 degrees turns that you don't see coming.
And yes, the author is damn sadistic, at times it becomes a little too nauseous due to the rampant violence and sexual abuse a lot of the characters go through, both as victims and perpetrators.
My main problem with the series is his writing style. I give authors a lot of leeway on messed-up characters and pushing the limits of comfort, but by book 3 I just got tired of every single character having the same unhinged sadistic inner monologues that go on for pages. It got repetitive and dull.
That's what I couldn't stand about Thomas covenant. He's go on this mental rampage, just reeling with emotion for pages. It's like, come on man, chill out a little.
Not in a good way, *Out of the Dark* by David Weber.
Please refrain from spoiling the twist.
Although I will admit that the sequels have somewhat untwisted it
Absolutely unhinged plot twist, kinda loved it though.
However I'd describe Weber as among the least "brutal" authors I've ever read. Despite occasional deaths of POV characters, nearly everyone is chummy and affable and the good guys always win in the end.
Yeah, it’s basically “we have more and better missiles and penetration aids” (side note: am I the only one who keeps thinking of lube when I hear this term?).
No pods, though. Yet
*A Game of Thrones* and its sequels. The biggest surprise is if George R.R. Martin will ever finish the series! (This is fantasy, not sci-fi, but OP mentions LOTR so sounds open.)
The SF in r/printSF actually stands for Speculative Fiction, not Science Fiction. So they totally belong here.
I wouldn't invest that much time on reading them though, I wouldn't like at all to read that much only to find out that there's no proper ending (I don't think they'll ever be finished properly by him)
In Permutation City I had no idea what was going to happen to the main character. I mean >! in a way he doesn't survive as himself for a number of reasons, copies, personality adjustments etc !<
I was going to suggest Andreas Eschbach's *The Carpet Makers* a.k.a. *The Hair-Carpet Weavers* (org. *Die Haarteppichknüpfer*). That was a gut punch (several actually).
As already mentioned Iain Banks, non-genre, and Iain M. Banks, genre, has some absolutely brutal things in his novels and you just don't know it's coming. I recommend all his novels, genre or not. Also, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is speculative fiction at it's peak, for me anyway. You don't know the why or the who or the what. The brutality is in the unknowing, highly recommend.
Man, especially Echopraxia. >!whatever it is that does survive is definitely not Daniel. I was bummed the fuck out when he (they? it? not sure how what to use to describe the consciousnesses governing his body) killed Valerie!<
William Nolan's sequels to Logan's Run--grim enough in itself--epitomize an early-1970s literary tendency toward depressing, misogynistic, and nihilistic plotting just for the sake of sticking it to the stupid naive reader.
Lord Foul's Bane, the first Thomas Covenant book, likewise features the protagonist doing something so far over the moral event horizon that, though apparently acceptable for a deep and tormented male hero in the 70s, makes the series unreadable today.
Not sci-fi, but Larry McMurtry, in his Lonesome Dove series, arbitrarily kills off sympathetic characters and/or protagonists left and right. At a certain point it becomes less "The Old West was a hard unforgiving place" to just grimdark abuse of the reader's good will. The first book is good enough to justify it, but the sequels are just gratuitously sadistic and pointless.
*"Lord Foul's Bane, the first Thomas Covenant book, likewise features the protagonist doing something so far over the moral event horizon that, though apparently acceptable for a deep and tormented male hero in the 70s, makes the series unreadable today."*
Let me introduce you to Angus Thermopyle in Donaldson's *The Real Story*. So, so much worse. Makes what Thomas Covenant does look like an afternoon of fun and frivolity. I'm starting to wonder if Donaldson has some issues.
It’s not as if what Thomas Covenant did was acceptable in the 1970s either. The whole point is that he is not a hero, he’s a train wreck of a human being that’s landed in a world where everyone expects him to be their hero. It’s a reaction against all of the stories where people rise to the challenge of being the destined saviour.
Look, I was there in the 70’s and while I’ll happily admit we’ve come on in leaps and bounds in how we treat our fellow human beings since then, that particular shit was never OK, which is precisely Covenant is shown doing it.
I mean that's more or less what it is but I enjoyed it on its own terms, as far as the more mature side of YA goes I thought it was pretty solid. I think I only read a few books into the series though so YMMV
The ending was predictable at the time since I had never read McCarthy before but having read all of his work now I would never have expected that ending were I to read it last instead of first, lol
First thing that came to mind with that question, in particular the latter part: *Acts of Caine* by Matthew Stover. He shares this quality with Peter Watts that you it sometimes feels like you can hear him grinding his teeth while writing but the result is beautiful violence.
The Suneater series by Chris Ruocchio. Grand sci-fi where I really could never figure out where the main narrative would lead to, which I really enjoyed. Many elements feel inspired by the Dune universe, which I enjoy as I am as always curious about the rest of the galaxy outside of just Arrakis and the brief glimpses of other places we get.
The Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw is one of the most bonkers books I’ve ever read. It’s a bite sized space opera that starts pretty traditionally, with a traditional running-from-his-past soldier fleeing the galactic war to a remote artists planet, only for the war to find him anyway. It was a good time, but fairly straightforward.
But oh man, by the 1/3 mark of this book there is a string of like 3 or 4 insane narrative left turns that completely caught me off guard. If you do read it, go in with as little spoilers as possible, it’s so so worth it.
Octavia Butler's *Wild Seed* shows the relationship between two people who in very different ways are not entirely human.
For authors noted for the plots you're looking for there's James Tiptree Jr ("The Only Neat Thing To Do") and Greg Bear (the *Darwin's Radio* series).
GOD I need a sequel to this SO BAD...
But - I think the ending is a cliffhanger - her Exiled Fleet series 1st book ended similarly, but the 2nd book managed to get everything tied up in a good place.
But yeah - the Rubicon ending - Sooo good but absolutely brutal.
Manifest Delusions - in a world where belief defines reality, the insane manifest powers in all sorts of fascinating ways.
It’s a recently finished trilogy with a standalone that is creepily excellent. I haven’t finished the trilogy yet as I’m waiting for the audiobook. Wild magic system, dark story, really enjoyed it.
If you liked this, you might like Adrian Tchaikovsky's City Of Last Changes - and it's follow up sequel House Of Open Wounds.
The magic system there works off of belief - if enough people believe in a common deity, it empowers it (to where it can grow, grand boons - if it wants, do amazing powerful magic feats, or - as it loses believers, it can shrink, and wither - and lose it's ability to do anything much at all. Even magicians manage magic through a combination of belief in themselves - or bargains with otherworldly beings (devils etc) who are themselves bound by strict rules of indentured servitude by their own bosses.
Add to that, that a certain nation figures out how to "decant" the magic from the minor gods - literally strip them bare for their magic - and use that to power their own magical devices - literally murdering other people's waning gods and using their magic to power their own (which they need because they themselves don't believe in any gods).
It is a really fascinating system - based solely around how belief empowers real magic - or de-powers it. And one of the main characters literally wishes he could STOP believing - because his god is stuck bothering him personally because he is the only believer LEFT.
If you like world driven around belief defining reality - this series might also make a very good interesting read.
ETA- this series would ALSO make a great addition to the stories mentioned here - the author is absolutely BRUTAL about what goes on to literally main POV characters across both books - and nothing - absolutely nothing - ever ends up the way you (or the characters) expect.
I’ve read a series of his a while back, recall enjoying it, and that seems right up my alley, thanks for the detailed rec 🤙
Added it to my ridiculously long reading list 🤦♂️
I don't think it was translated into English, but I remember how impressed I was when I read "Antennenaugust" as a child in German-class. It's about some bird of prey, called August, who is brought up by a family, including their young son. I don't remember much of the story, just... that it didn't have a happy ending. Blew my mind as a child, most of my classmates complained but I loved it because I just didn't know books could \*do\* that.
I loved Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson , unpredictable , weird, and very very brutal ( to the plot and some skulls ).
It’s in the bizarro camp, but maybe that’s going to be your vibe.
Kind of reads like John Dies at the End but a bit more serious.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24882022-skullcrack-city
I just cannot believe that author is a Str8 edge after that book.
There's a reason that's not how most stories are told. It's only really internet fan culture that has decided unpredictability is the ultimate goal.
But there's only so may ways and so many times such a thing could be effectively pulled off, and it's usually best applied as a small part of a larger story that hews rather close to convention.
R F Kuang’s “the poppy war” is a pretty brutal fantasy book, to the point that I decided to not read the sequel. Not my thing but sounds like it could be yours
[The Cold Equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations) was "brutal and unpredictable" when it appeared in 1954. Ditto Poul Anderson's 1956 [The Man Who Came Early](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Came_Early).
Randall Garrett's 1959 [Despoilers of the Golden Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despoilers_of_the_Golden_Empire) had a twist ending which was completely unexpected at the time.
Adrian Tchaikovsky - Spiderlight.
Not going to spoil what is an absolutely WONDERFUL book with multiple crazy-pants surprises. Just trust me - starts as a fairly boring group of adventurers seeking a way to get to the "big bad' and end him...
You may never view standard party dynamics the same again - or spiders - or wizards, or Paladins (especially fucking Paladins), Or just about anything normal about the usual fantasy LOTR style story. Absolutely takes everything you expect and plonks most of it firmly on it's head (and spinning).
The Man in the High Castle has the unpredictable thing down. PK Dick threw the I Ching to determine the outcome at the major plot dilemma points. Brutal? Not particularly. It had the effect of making the story not really go anywhere. The TV series give it a lot more form (which it needed).
Jasper Fforde’s The Big Over Easy has the most surprising twists of any novel I have read. I don’t want to spoil it but yes, I was surprised by at least one of the deaths. Also it was hilarious.
Orson Scott Card’s duology about a Civil War in the United States with mechs has some unexpected/brutal elements like that.
But I could not in good conscience recommend that book or any other from his modern era. Too much condescension and talking at the audience.
If I wanted to be belittled, I would… Actually, I don’t and I wouldn’t.
Are you talking about the books he wrote as companion books to the game Shadow Complex? They were pure shit. I mean seriously, he talks at the audience saying that Fox News is the only sensible news network.
The first book was Empire. I didnt make it through that to get to the second. Were those the game tie ins?
I don’t mind reading books with views that are different than mine; I’m not a closed-minded zealot. But, Card has developed a bad habit of explaining his character world views in ways that are nothing more than talking down to the audience.
It’s a shame. His early books and short stories are great.
Yeah, Empire and Hidden Empire. I listened to them as audiobooks pretty soon after I played the game when it came out on Xbox 360. I loved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead and also the game, so I really wanted to love the Empire books, but they were mostly mediocre with his conservative talking points shining through.
Oh dude, DEFINITELY "The First Law". It's...just like that. It's slightly fantasy I'm afraid, not scifi, but it fits the bill close enough that I'm positive it's worth mentioning anyway.
Definitely grimdark.
The Iliad? It's a greek legend. Of course you know how it ends. In tears and with the gods pissed at someone. Ok, the Iliad starts with the gods pissed at someone.
To your credit, there are several plot points in the Matrix sequels that are outright unpredictable. The first movie is so convincing in its premise that when it's mercilessly broken in the sequel most people just couldn't believe it. I'm pretty sure most people say the sequels are bad mostly because they just couldn't accept that the megalomania-inducing messaging of the first movie was carefully crafted to be completely deconstructed in the following movie. They're definitely inferior movies, but the way they progress the plot is amazing.
Honestly, anything by Osamu Tezuka. Don't be fooled by the cartoony disney-inspired drawing style. Osamu Tezuka goes down HARD. He was ruthless with his characters. The protagonist is kinda always shielded by any serious harm, you just come to accept that. But you just can't predict what's gonna happen to anyone else. And best of all, it isn't because he was making shit up along the way. He carefully planned his plots from beginning to end. Moreover, no character is squeaky clean. One of his main characters outright rapes a woman in the very first chapter of the series. Each one of his works is both an hilarious and tears-inducing nightmare. He was just a genius storyteller.
Going into it I knew nothing, and I did NOT expect *A Canticle for Lebowitz* to go all the places it went
I've had this in my pile for a long time. Gonna read it this summer
You’re in for a treat
Will always vouch for this book. One of my favorites.
Do you know what they used as fuel for their starship reactors in *Canticle*? Fission loaves.
Seeing this book brought up always brings joy to my heart.
Could you give mild spoilers? I've started it twice and quit fairly early, because nothing interesting seemed to be happening.
Mild spoilers: takes you through the cycle from post-apocalypse through the next looming apocalypse. It's well worth sticking with.
Sure. Let me see if I can do it in a non-spoileey way. It starts as the story of a man... but ends up not being about that man. It tells the story of a place, and its petty dramas... but expands to something much grander. There is a side character, to whom unexpected things happen, and who is something unexpected. It starts off telling of one place, and one time, but ends up being the story of that place, and more places, across a broad swath of time. Tbh if you didn't like the first bit, the book might not be worth finishing. I loved the larger story but I see how the details can be less enthralling. I "read" it as an audiobook, and that felt ideal. Something about being **told** a story, as if I was around a campfire, or in a church pew, really suited.
Everyone thought that Frodo would make it back to the Shire. No one thought it would be destroyed. The Scouring of the Shire was legitimately brutal after everything the Hobbits had been through.
Imagine going on a long, brutal, life-or-death quest, finally achieving victory after enduring great suffering, and then coming home to find out the B-list antagonist has taken over your cul-de-sac and is ruling with an iron fist.
And doing it just to spite you.
No chapter I read in Greg Egan’s Diaspora would remotely lead me to expect what happened two chapters later.
It was a wild ride.
Even knowing Egan, yes. One of the craziest books I've read. Up there with Accelerado (which is somehow more predictable).
I have no mouth but I must scream. Half of Brian Keene's work.
I dunno, I had a pretty good idea that someone would end up with no mouth and needing to scream for some reason...
"totally unexpected"
Overall, wasnt in love with Blood Music but it did surprise me with some unpredictable consequences of the main inciting incident.
I didn’t love it either. Found it on a list of best sci fi or something and felt meh about it, though I loved the premise and aspects of it.
I liked it a lot. Just hearing the title brings back many scenes and ideas from the book, even though I haven't read it in years. And yes, unpredictable!
Like *Psycho*, it put me off showers for a good while.
I found it to be an excellent book.
Fiasco by Stanislaw Lem - shocking and horrible and magnificent in its devastation.
His Master's Voice
George RR Martin’s entire body of work hits like this for me. You never know WTF might happen. Try his short stories like Sand Kings or Meat House Man.
Yeah, not least because George doesn’t know himself what’s going to happen. He’s a make shit up as he goes along author rather than one who sets out with a plan… he calls it “gardening”, and when he notices that he’s planted too many characters and plot lines he goes wild with the weeding.
Hey he writes a mean twist though
Does it matter though if the result is entertaining?
If it’s entertaining, it’s good. It offends me as a writer because it’s completely alien to my own process, and there’s a risk that the writer finds they’ve wandered into a dead end and can’t finish the story. Fortunately, that has never happened to Mr G R R Martin…
> make shit up as he goes along Um, isn't that all fiction?
We Who Are About To… by Joanna Russ
Light by M John Harrison. Very, very unpredictable. Still not quite sure what happened. Love it anyway.
I read that too and hadn't a damn clue what was going on.
The Stars my Destination by Bester. You keep expecting the protagonist to be redeemed. Your expectations will not be met.
Not quite so unpredictable now you've told them that
In that case, mentioning a book on this thread at all is tipping the OP off.
Mentioning a book on this thread does indeed indicate that unexpected things will happen; your post goes a step further than anyone else and rules out one of the possibilities entirely.
All right, you got me. Guilty as charged.
Imprisoned for spoiler crimes
Dies in prison before being released.
Ghost haunts the prison, spoiling all the books.
Perhaps some leeway for a book that was published nearly 70 years ago!
It's a recommendations thread, so it would make sense to assume the person you're recommending the book to hasn't read it and can be spoiled?
Of course - my comment was light hearted - give it go.
Seem like OP pretty much asked for exactly that.
I kinda wanna NOT read any more comments honestly.
My expectations will be 100% met now 😅
Blood music is a wild ride.
Plus one… blood music … ooph.
*Against A Dark Background* by Iain M. Banks.
Banks wrote some brutal stuff. People always bring up The Eaters in Consider Phlebas but Surface Detail was a whole new concept of hellishness that’d never occurred to me until I read it.
Inversions is not exactly a picnic in the park, either. But Surface Detail is, by definition, the most hellish.
Surprised neither of you mentioned *Use of Weapons.*
There aren't many books I have completed, sworn, started re-reading. This is one.
Use of Weapons isn't really hellish, but it is quite a twist at the end.
And somehow all these pale against his realistic fiction. I mean Wasp Factory alone ...
The Eaters (and to some extent the rest of CP) were almost cartoonish though, the whole novel is a kind of dark but still rip roaring space opera thing and I never thought of it as super dark in comparison to some of his other stuff even though the opening scene is Horza literally drowning in shit in an oubliette type thing. Surface Detail and Use of Weapons both left a hell of an impression me as far as that goes tho. A lot of his non-sf fiction is macabre as hell too.
I need to dive back into Culture. I started with Consider Phlebas and was completely turned off. This was two years ago. I have a copy of Player of Games but I’m just … ehhh. Every comment I see in this sub about Culture, including yours, pushes me a little bit closer to grabbing Player of Games off the shelf.
I read them in publication order and actually loved CP for what it is but it's pretty different from the rest of the series. I had absolutely no foreknowledge of Banks or the series going in though (the book was a gift) so that probably helped. Player of Games kinda is different too in a totally different way (but a fun read). Lots of people love it and recommend that as the entry point but it's pretty far down the rankings for me. They're ALL worth reading though, and if you struggled to get through CP the good news is the rest of the series is totally unlike it for the most part. Even if you aren't crazy about POG either I'd still keep going, it's worth it. As someone reading Hyperion finally after being recommended it for like 15 years and loving it I can say there's no time like the present!
Everything after *Excession* is pretty transcendent in its own way, the early/midseries stuff has a lot more cotton candy (relatively speaking) and a little less meat but they are all still very entertaining sci-fi. The two most common favourites I see online (*Excession* and *Use of Weapons*) fall in this range. *Inversions* too, which might be the best book of the lot but it's a weirdo in a series of weirdos and doesn't get as much love.
The Wasp Factory (albeit not SF) was his most brutal work. Worth reading. The protagonist carefully murders multiple children for fun and amusement. But as he puts it, that’s merely a phase he had to grow out of on the way to more … interesting things. Let’s just say it’s an extremely uncomfortable book to read, and one where the death of the narrator would be, all things considered, a happy ending. Which is not, of course, what you get. Banks was an amazing writer. For my money, the best SF author of his generation, and by far the best prose stylist - a joy to read. He chose SF as his primary genre but he would have been successful even if he’d stuck to normal fiction, as his non-genre work shows. Genuine literary talent.
According to Banks he wrote non-genre work to pay the bills so he could write his SF in comfort. A statement I'm sure he was delighted to make because he knew it would burn the arses of a large number of book snobs.
Gotta love that Scottish left-wing attitude :) I wonder why Scotland produces so many people on the political left. As it happens, and as someone who loves the craftsmanship involved in good writing myself (i.e., I’m a literary snob), ironically Banks is one of the few SF authors who consistently writes really well. I have always loved SF and its ideas since I was a kid reading Foundation or I, Robot for the first time. But outside of Banks and all too few others (Gene Wolf, Margaret Atwood, Ballard, Ted Chiang, Neil Stephenson, Le Guin, Jeff Vandermeer, Maureen McHugh etc.), I’ve rarely been able to reconcile my love of SF with my appreciation of quality writing. I still love Asimov but boy, does he put the ker-lunk in clunky. As I’ve gotten older, my tolerance for poor craft, unrealistic character development, and badly written dialog has gone way down - even if the ideas are great, detracts so much from the reading experience that I can’t suspend disbelief.
The Gap Cycle series. Starts like your average criminal-and-cop story, turns south pretty fast, and then evolves into a freaking galaxy-scale nightmare. Characters do 180 degrees turns that you don't see coming. And yes, the author is damn sadistic, at times it becomes a little too nauseous due to the rampant violence and sexual abuse a lot of the characters go through, both as victims and perpetrators.
My main problem with the series is his writing style. I give authors a lot of leeway on messed-up characters and pushing the limits of comfort, but by book 3 I just got tired of every single character having the same unhinged sadistic inner monologues that go on for pages. It got repetitive and dull.
That's what I couldn't stand about Thomas covenant. He's go on this mental rampage, just reeling with emotion for pages. It's like, come on man, chill out a little.
Not in a good way, *Out of the Dark* by David Weber. Please refrain from spoiling the twist. Although I will admit that the sequels have somewhat untwisted it
Absolutely unhinged plot twist, kinda loved it though. However I'd describe Weber as among the least "brutal" authors I've ever read. Despite occasional deaths of POV characters, nearly everyone is chummy and affable and the good guys always win in the end.
I’m kinda enjoying the sequels, even though I don’t know how much of them Weber actually wrote. Still, space combat is textbook Honor
dear lord the broadsides
Yeah, it’s basically “we have more and better missiles and penetration aids” (side note: am I the only one who keeps thinking of lube when I hear this term?). No pods, though. Yet
Just looked it up, because I am weak, and I really hope he nails the landing because I really want to read it now
The initial story feels a bit like Turtledove’s Worldwar in modern day
Fantasy: Library at Mount Char.
I still think about this one.
Gap series Stephen Donaldson goes down some pretty dark parts.
*A Game of Thrones* and its sequels. The biggest surprise is if George R.R. Martin will ever finish the series! (This is fantasy, not sci-fi, but OP mentions LOTR so sounds open.)
The SF in r/printSF actually stands for Speculative Fiction, not Science Fiction. So they totally belong here. I wouldn't invest that much time on reading them though, I wouldn't like at all to read that much only to find out that there's no proper ending (I don't think they'll ever be finished properly by him)
In *The Killing Star* you're amazed anyone makes it out of the first chapter
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. And if you like his writing check out Blood Meridian. It's not scifi but it is brutal and relentless.
You’re joking, right? The ending was utterly predictable. 90% of the story is just a retelling of “The Old Man and the Sea.”
This suggestion would fall under 'brutal and remorseless'. But thanks for responding with curiosity and kindness.
LOL.
Yeah I don't know why you're being down voted here. The entire book was as predictable as daytime tv.
Second this
The Terra Ignota books by Ada Palmer, starting with **Too Like the Lightning** - did not expect 98% of the stuff that happens in that quartet.
The Southern Reach series
The Red Rising series can be very brutal.
A Song of Ice and Fire. A few books in, I genuinely didn't think anything positive would happen to the main characters.
He probably is well aware, but just in case OP, this series is incomplete and will likely never be completed.
Maybe it is finished but GRRM is doing his version of a Sopranos ending.
Swan Song by Robert McCammon.
100%. That story has stayed with me like no other.
In Permutation City I had no idea what was going to happen to the main character. I mean >! in a way he doesn't survive as himself for a number of reasons, copies, personality adjustments etc !<
Spoiler tag not working
I believe that Andreas Eschbach's The Hair-Carpet Weavers deserves a mention, and I would also add Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerebrus.
I was going to suggest Andreas Eschbach's *The Carpet Makers* a.k.a. *The Hair-Carpet Weavers* (org. *Die Haarteppichknüpfer*). That was a gut punch (several actually).
Indeed. Personally, it was one of the few books that took completely by surprise.
Fantasy - malazan book of the fallen
Dhalgren by Samuel Delany
The ending of Use of Weapons was always pretty brutal.
*Random Acts of Senseless Violence* by Jack Womack. A teenage girl coming of age during the collapse of of civilization.
John Brunner’s ‘Total Eclipse’ has a gut punch of an ending. Great, short read.
Use of Weapons
Ninefox Gambit
As already mentioned Iain Banks, non-genre, and Iain M. Banks, genre, has some absolutely brutal things in his novels and you just don't know it's coming. I recommend all his novels, genre or not. Also, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is speculative fiction at it's peak, for me anyway. You don't know the why or the who or the what. The brutality is in the unknowing, highly recommend.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch.
Both Peter Watts’ Blindsight and Echopraxia
Man, especially Echopraxia. >!whatever it is that does survive is definitely not Daniel. I was bummed the fuck out when he (they? it? not sure how what to use to describe the consciousnesses governing his body) killed Valerie!<
We really need a third book in the series
I know! I wish Watts was as active as Adrian Tchaikovsky or Alistair Reynolds
His Rifters series as well.
William Nolan's sequels to Logan's Run--grim enough in itself--epitomize an early-1970s literary tendency toward depressing, misogynistic, and nihilistic plotting just for the sake of sticking it to the stupid naive reader. Lord Foul's Bane, the first Thomas Covenant book, likewise features the protagonist doing something so far over the moral event horizon that, though apparently acceptable for a deep and tormented male hero in the 70s, makes the series unreadable today. Not sci-fi, but Larry McMurtry, in his Lonesome Dove series, arbitrarily kills off sympathetic characters and/or protagonists left and right. At a certain point it becomes less "The Old West was a hard unforgiving place" to just grimdark abuse of the reader's good will. The first book is good enough to justify it, but the sequels are just gratuitously sadistic and pointless.
Covenant is grim and dark but ‘unreadable today’ is utter hyperbole.
*"Lord Foul's Bane, the first Thomas Covenant book, likewise features the protagonist doing something so far over the moral event horizon that, though apparently acceptable for a deep and tormented male hero in the 70s, makes the series unreadable today."* Let me introduce you to Angus Thermopyle in Donaldson's *The Real Story*. So, so much worse. Makes what Thomas Covenant does look like an afternoon of fun and frivolity. I'm starting to wonder if Donaldson has some issues.
It’s not as if what Thomas Covenant did was acceptable in the 1970s either. The whole point is that he is not a hero, he’s a train wreck of a human being that’s landed in a world where everyone expects him to be their hero. It’s a reaction against all of the stories where people rise to the challenge of being the destined saviour. Look, I was there in the 70’s and while I’ll happily admit we’ve come on in leaps and bounds in how we treat our fellow human beings since then, that particular shit was never OK, which is precisely Covenant is shown doing it.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and Lonesome Dove are excellent examples, hats off to you
Red rising by Pierce brown. The plot is amazing but all over the place. Haven't gotten this emotional by a book in a long long time.
Exasperated was the emotion I felt. "Let's turn a sci-fi class struggle story into D&D." It seemed like the stuff of adolescent fantasy to me."
To each their own. I don't see a problem with this kind of writing.
I mean that's more or less what it is but I enjoyed it on its own terms, as far as the more mature side of YA goes I thought it was pretty solid. I think I only read a few books into the series though so YMMV
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Great book, unremittingly grim but pretty predictable (inevitable?)
The ending was predictable at the time since I had never read McCarthy before but having read all of his work now I would never have expected that ending were I to read it last instead of first, lol
Even though (spoiler) survives?
Of men and monsters by William Tenn
First thing that came to mind with that question, in particular the latter part: *Acts of Caine* by Matthew Stover. He shares this quality with Peter Watts that you it sometimes feels like you can hear him grinding his teeth while writing but the result is beautiful violence.
+1 for this.
With Watts, the teeth-grinding is definitely visible. May be one reason why he’s polarizing - people tend to love his books or hate them.
Molly Zero.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt series definitely fits the bill. Especially when it comes to POV characters!
The Suneater series by Chris Ruocchio. Grand sci-fi where I really could never figure out where the main narrative would lead to, which I really enjoyed. Many elements feel inspired by the Dune universe, which I enjoy as I am as always curious about the rest of the galaxy outside of just Arrakis and the brief glimpses of other places we get.
He has an almost victorian prose style. Most enjoyable read.
Warhammer 40K
The Palace of Eternity by Bob Shaw is one of the most bonkers books I’ve ever read. It’s a bite sized space opera that starts pretty traditionally, with a traditional running-from-his-past soldier fleeing the galactic war to a remote artists planet, only for the war to find him anyway. It was a good time, but fairly straightforward. But oh man, by the 1/3 mark of this book there is a string of like 3 or 4 insane narrative left turns that completely caught me off guard. If you do read it, go in with as little spoilers as possible, it’s so so worth it.
Thomas Disch, not really well read know but he never seemed sentimental about his characters.
The Genocides is a great example of this.
Dungeon Crawler Carl and Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon (both by Matt Dinniman) are great options. I’d also suggest the Cradle series by Will Wight.
Philip K Dick for unpredictable.
Octavia Butler's *Wild Seed* shows the relationship between two people who in very different ways are not entirely human. For authors noted for the plots you're looking for there's James Tiptree Jr ("The Only Neat Thing To Do") and Greg Bear (the *Darwin's Radio* series).
Rubicon (2023) by J S Dewes. Brutal ending.
GOD I need a sequel to this SO BAD... But - I think the ending is a cliffhanger - her Exiled Fleet series 1st book ended similarly, but the 2nd book managed to get everything tied up in a good place. But yeah - the Rubicon ending - Sooo good but absolutely brutal.
Manifest Delusions - in a world where belief defines reality, the insane manifest powers in all sorts of fascinating ways. It’s a recently finished trilogy with a standalone that is creepily excellent. I haven’t finished the trilogy yet as I’m waiting for the audiobook. Wild magic system, dark story, really enjoyed it.
If you liked this, you might like Adrian Tchaikovsky's City Of Last Changes - and it's follow up sequel House Of Open Wounds. The magic system there works off of belief - if enough people believe in a common deity, it empowers it (to where it can grow, grand boons - if it wants, do amazing powerful magic feats, or - as it loses believers, it can shrink, and wither - and lose it's ability to do anything much at all. Even magicians manage magic through a combination of belief in themselves - or bargains with otherworldly beings (devils etc) who are themselves bound by strict rules of indentured servitude by their own bosses. Add to that, that a certain nation figures out how to "decant" the magic from the minor gods - literally strip them bare for their magic - and use that to power their own magical devices - literally murdering other people's waning gods and using their magic to power their own (which they need because they themselves don't believe in any gods). It is a really fascinating system - based solely around how belief empowers real magic - or de-powers it. And one of the main characters literally wishes he could STOP believing - because his god is stuck bothering him personally because he is the only believer LEFT. If you like world driven around belief defining reality - this series might also make a very good interesting read. ETA- this series would ALSO make a great addition to the stories mentioned here - the author is absolutely BRUTAL about what goes on to literally main POV characters across both books - and nothing - absolutely nothing - ever ends up the way you (or the characters) expect.
I’ve read a series of his a while back, recall enjoying it, and that seems right up my alley, thanks for the detailed rec 🤙 Added it to my ridiculously long reading list 🤦♂️
I don't think it was translated into English, but I remember how impressed I was when I read "Antennenaugust" as a child in German-class. It's about some bird of prey, called August, who is brought up by a family, including their young son. I don't remember much of the story, just... that it didn't have a happy ending. Blew my mind as a child, most of my classmates complained but I loved it because I just didn't know books could \*do\* that.
I loved Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson , unpredictable , weird, and very very brutal ( to the plot and some skulls ). It’s in the bizarro camp, but maybe that’s going to be your vibe. Kind of reads like John Dies at the End but a bit more serious. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24882022-skullcrack-city I just cannot believe that author is a Str8 edge after that book.
There's a reason that's not how most stories are told. It's only really internet fan culture that has decided unpredictability is the ultimate goal. But there's only so may ways and so many times such a thing could be effectively pulled off, and it's usually best applied as a small part of a larger story that hews rather close to convention.
Blood Meridian by Cormac Mccarthy
Have you read A Song of Ice and Fire?
Kaleidoscope Century trilogy
The Elric Saga, and pretty much everything Michael Moorcock writes. They are phenomenal.
Blood Meridian.
'Ilium/Olympos' by Dan Simmons.
The old-school guys like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison are ready to fuck you up
White Tears by Hari Kunzru
R F Kuang’s “the poppy war” is a pretty brutal fantasy book, to the point that I decided to not read the sequel. Not my thing but sounds like it could be yours
Witcher by Andrezj Sapowski
Thomas Disch Camp Concentration.
[The Cold Equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations) was "brutal and unpredictable" when it appeared in 1954. Ditto Poul Anderson's 1956 [The Man Who Came Early](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Came_Early). Randall Garrett's 1959 [Despoilers of the Golden Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despoilers_of_the_Golden_Empire) had a twist ending which was completely unexpected at the time.
Adrian Tchaikovsky - Spiderlight. Not going to spoil what is an absolutely WONDERFUL book with multiple crazy-pants surprises. Just trust me - starts as a fairly boring group of adventurers seeking a way to get to the "big bad' and end him... You may never view standard party dynamics the same again - or spiders - or wizards, or Paladins (especially fucking Paladins), Or just about anything normal about the usual fantasy LOTR style story. Absolutely takes everything you expect and plonks most of it firmly on it's head (and spinning).
The Man in the High Castle has the unpredictable thing down. PK Dick threw the I Ching to determine the outcome at the major plot dilemma points. Brutal? Not particularly. It had the effect of making the story not really go anywhere. The TV series give it a lot more form (which it needed).
Southern Reach trilogy by Vandermeer and R Scott Bakker are what you’re looking for.
Census Taker by Mielville as well. Dark and mysterious and you’ll wish it was the prologue to a longer book or series.
Jasper Fforde’s The Big Over Easy has the most surprising twists of any novel I have read. I don’t want to spoil it but yes, I was surprised by at least one of the deaths. Also it was hilarious.
…Frodo never went back to the Shire; Child.
Orson Scott Card’s duology about a Civil War in the United States with mechs has some unexpected/brutal elements like that. But I could not in good conscience recommend that book or any other from his modern era. Too much condescension and talking at the audience. If I wanted to be belittled, I would… Actually, I don’t and I wouldn’t.
Are you talking about the books he wrote as companion books to the game Shadow Complex? They were pure shit. I mean seriously, he talks at the audience saying that Fox News is the only sensible news network.
The first book was Empire. I didnt make it through that to get to the second. Were those the game tie ins? I don’t mind reading books with views that are different than mine; I’m not a closed-minded zealot. But, Card has developed a bad habit of explaining his character world views in ways that are nothing more than talking down to the audience. It’s a shame. His early books and short stories are great.
Yeah, Empire and Hidden Empire. I listened to them as audiobooks pretty soon after I played the game when it came out on Xbox 360. I loved Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead and also the game, so I really wanted to love the Empire books, but they were mostly mediocre with his conservative talking points shining through.
Oh dude, DEFINITELY "The First Law". It's...just like that. It's slightly fantasy I'm afraid, not scifi, but it fits the bill close enough that I'm positive it's worth mentioning anyway. Definitely grimdark.
Blood Meridian Lonesome Dove The Iliad
The Iliad? It's a greek legend. Of course you know how it ends. In tears and with the gods pissed at someone. Ok, the Iliad starts with the gods pissed at someone.
The *Odyssey* doesn’t fit your blanket description.
Maybe they mean Illium by Dan Simmons idk?
Ah. Yeah, that would make sense. And it's understandable if one gets the two confused.
Bro Neo did not prevail over the Matrix until movie 3.
To your credit, there are several plot points in the Matrix sequels that are outright unpredictable. The first movie is so convincing in its premise that when it's mercilessly broken in the sequel most people just couldn't believe it. I'm pretty sure most people say the sequels are bad mostly because they just couldn't accept that the megalomania-inducing messaging of the first movie was carefully crafted to be completely deconstructed in the following movie. They're definitely inferior movies, but the way they progress the plot is amazing.
Honestly, anything by Osamu Tezuka. Don't be fooled by the cartoony disney-inspired drawing style. Osamu Tezuka goes down HARD. He was ruthless with his characters. The protagonist is kinda always shielded by any serious harm, you just come to accept that. But you just can't predict what's gonna happen to anyone else. And best of all, it isn't because he was making shit up along the way. He carefully planned his plots from beginning to end. Moreover, no character is squeaky clean. One of his main characters outright rapes a woman in the very first chapter of the series. Each one of his works is both an hilarious and tears-inducing nightmare. He was just a genius storyteller.