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Salammbô

Gustave Flaubert · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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❤️

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

Cormac McCarthy · 337 pages

An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indi

MercenariesDense ProseSoldiers and WarfareClassics
❤️

Ash: A Secret History

Mary Gentle · 1,113 pages

Probably the biggest fantasy novel ever published in a single volume, Mary Gentle's magnificent tale of the gutsy and beautiful mercenary leader Ash will take you on an unforgettable ride through medieval Europe as it never quite was: For Ash, life has always been arquebuses and artillery, swords and armor, and the true horrors of hand-to-hand combat. War is her job. But she doesn't realize tha

MercenariesDense ProseSoldiers and WarfareViolent
❤️

Gardens of the Moon

Steven Erikson · 544 pages

The opening chapter in an epic fantasy masterpiece....Bled dry by interminable warfare, infighting and bloody confrontations with Lord Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, the vast, sprawling Malazan empire simmers with discontent.Even its imperial legions yearn for some respite. For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his Bridgeburners and for Tattersail, sole surviving sorceress of the Second Legion, the af

MercenariesDense ProseSoldiers and WarfareViolent
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The Last of the Mohicans

James Fenimore Cooper · 240 pages

In 1757, the third year of the French and Indian War, Hawkeye, a colonial scout, and his friends, Chingachkook, a chief of the Mohicans, and his son Uncas risk their lives to guide two English sisters through hostile territory and evade the evil Huron, Magua, who is determined to destroy them.

Dense ProseSoldiers and WarfareClassicsHistorical Fiction
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Doctor Zhivago

Boris Pasternak · 542 pages

***This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987.*** One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. ***The book quickly became an international be

Dense ProseClassicsHistorical FictionSoldiers and Warfare
❤️

The Silmarillion

J.R.R. Tolkien · 414 pages

A number-one New York Times bestseller when it was originally published, The Silmarillion is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before The Hobbit.

Soldiers and WarfareDense ProseClassicsDark
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The Disorderly Knights

Dorothy Dunnett · 503 pages

Back in Scotland, Crawford establishes a trained force of mercenaries and encounters Joleta Malett, a beautiful and wilful teenager. Through her brother, Graham Reid Malett, a knight of St John of Jerusalem, (who will also be a central figure in the next book of the series, Pawn in Frankincense), Crawford is enticed to Malta to help the Order's defence against the Turkish forces of Suleiman. This

MercenariesDense ProseSoldiers and WarfareHistorical Fiction
❤️

The Naked and the Dead

Norman Mailer · 721 pages

Based on Mailer’s own experience of military service in the Philippines during World War Two, *The Naked and the Dead* is a graphically truthful and shattering portrayal of ordinary men in battle. First published in 1949, as America was still basking in the glories of the Allied victory, it altered forever the popular perception of warfare. Focusing on the experiences of a fourteen-man platoon

Soldiers and WarfareClassicsDense ProseViolent
🙂

The Dread Wyrm

Miles Cameron · 592 pages

The Red Knight has stood against soldiers, armies and the might of an empire without flinching. He's fought on real and magical battlefields alike, and now he's facing one of the greatest challenges yet. A tournament, in which the flower of the nobility will ride against each other for royal favor and acclaim. It's a political contest which the Red Knight has the skill to win. But the court of Alb

MercenariesDense ProseSoldiers and WarfareViolent
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War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy · 716 pages

War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events surrounding the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families. The novel begins in the year 1805 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I and leads up to the 1812 French invasion of Russia by Napoleon. The era of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), when t

Dense ProseClassicsSoldiers and WarfareHistorical Fiction
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A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold

George R.R. Martin · 656 pages

Fear cuts deeper than swords The Starks are scattered. Robb Stark may be King in the North, but he must bend to the will of the old tyrant Walder Frey if he is to hold his crown. And while his youngest sister, Arya, has escaped the clutches of the depraved Cersei Lannister and her son, the capricious boy-king Joffrey, Sansa Stark remains their captive, trapped in marriage with Joffrey's deformed

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareDense ProseViolent
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Return of the Crimson Guard

Ian C. Esslemont · 879 pages

The return of the mercenary company the Crimson Guard could not have come at a worse time for the Malazan Empire. Drained by constant warfare, weakened by betrayal and rivalries, many see the grip of Empress Laseen weakening. Conquered kingdoms and principalities test their old independence.

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareDense ProseViolent
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The Red Badge of Courage

Stephen Crane · 175 pages

The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a "red badge of courage," to counteract his cowardice. When his regiment once again faces the enemy, Henry acts as standar

Soldiers and WarfareClassicsHistorical FictionViolent
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Twelve

Jasper Kent · 480 pages

Autumn, 1812. As Napoleon's army marches relentlessly into Russia, twelve mercenaries are enlisted by a group of Russian officers to turn the tide of the war. As winter closes in, the true, horrrific nature of the twelve and the nightmared unleashed begins to unfold.

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareDarkViolent
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Saga, Vol. 1

Brian K. Vaughan · 160 pages

From New York Times bestselling writer BRIAN K.VAUGHAN (Y: THE LAST MAN, EX MACHINA) and critically acclaimed artist FIONA STAPLES (MYSTERY SOCIETY, NORTH 40), SAGA is the sweeping tale of one young family fighting to find their place in the worlds. When two soldiers from opposite sides of a never-ending galactic war fall in love, they risk everything to bring a fragile new life into a dangerous o

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareViolentDark
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August 1914

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 714 pages

Historical novel with an account of the Battle of Tennenberg in Prussia during the Great War, in which Imperial Russia was defeated after recklessly invading Prussia.

Dense ProseSoldiers and WarfareClassicsHistorical Fiction
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Prince of Thorns

Mark Lawrence · 354 pages

After witnessing the murder of his mother and brother and leading a band of bloodthirsty thugs, Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath returns to his father's castle and his birthright, but faces treachery and dark magic once he arrives.

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareViolentDark
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The Long Sword

Christian Cameron · 425 pages

Pisa, May 1364. Sir William Gold - newly knighted on the battlefield outside the gates of Florence - can look forward to a lucrative career as a sword for hire in the endless warring between Italy's wealthy city states. But when a message comes from Father Pierre de Thomas, Grand Master of the Order of St John - better known as the Hospitallers - Sir William knows he has no choice but to leave his

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareHistorical FictionViolent
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1356 (Grail Quest #)

Bernard Cornwell · 448 pages

The rascally Thomas of Hookton, aka Le Batard, and his band of not-so-merry mercenaries are bidden by the Earl of Northhampton to unearth the lost sword of Saint Peter in this recreation of the Battle of the Poitiers in 1356 wherein a severely outnumbered English army defeats the French and captures the Poitiers and French King John II.

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareHistorical FictionViolent
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The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Victor Hugo · 443 pages

In fifteenth-century Paris, a disfigured man named Quasimodo, who was abandoned as an infant in the cathedral of Notre-Dame and now lives in its bell tower, must come to the aid of a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda after she repels the advances of the cruel archdeacon Don Claude Frollo.

Dense ProseClassicsHistorical FictionDark
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Lonesome Dove

Larry McMurtry · 945 pages

Dense ProseClassicsHistorical FictionViolent
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Mercenaries

Jack Ludlow · 345 pages

"Six brothers, the sons of Tancred de Hauteville, prepare to experience their first taste of battle ... 1033, the Norman/French border. They have been trained since birth to become great warriors, following in their father{u2019}s footsteps. As knights, they have but one true purpose: to fight. But denied service with their duke, they are forced to take employment as mercenaries; their unequaled b

MercenariesSoldiers and WarfareHistorical FictionViolent
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Ivanhoe

Walter Scott · 484 pages

The father of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott invented a literary form that has remained popular for over one hundred and fifty years. Infusing his works with romance, action, and suspense, he brought long-gone eras back to life with splendor and spectacle.Set in England just after the Third Crusade, Ivanhoe is the tale of Wilfrid, a young Saxon knight, and his love for the royal princess R

Dense ProseClassicsSoldiers and WarfareHistorical Fiction
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Julius Caesar

William Shakespeare · 136 pages

Soldiers and WarfareDense ProseClassicsDark

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