I’m quite addicted to George RR Martin’s series and the HBO show. One of the things I like best is all the machinations, whether battle plans or personal backstabbing, but best when it’s a combination of the two.
While I wait for the next season of the show (and wait for the next book, probably coming when my elementary school kid is in high school), give me stuff to read in this vein please. It doesn’t need to be fantasy - a good story of corporate “battle” in modern America would be just as welcome, or anything in between.
I’ll even start by offering my own. I loved The Curse of Chalion, by Bujold. Lots of court intrigue in a medieval fantasy setting. The characters are wonderful as well. I’ve rarely been so drawn in by the first chapter of a book.
(I know there are semi-sequels, and they’re on my general reading list, but they seem like they may focus on other issues rather than plotting at the palace.)
The Empire Trilogy Empire Trilogy - Wikipedia by Wurts and Feist. You don’t need to have read any of their other books to love the scheming and plotting that Mara does to survive
Some of the Vlad Taltos series seem like they’d qualify. Jhereg and Yendi, the first two written especially.
Roger Zelazny’s Amber novels also come to mind. Plotting, backstabbing and intrigue everywhere.
The Belisarius series involves quite a bit of intrigue, spying, manipulation, and clever battle plans & strategies.
The Shadow of the Lion and sequels had quite bit of intrigue as I recall, being set in an alternate Venice with warring families and plots by various outside forces.
You want plotting and machinations? Here’s the motherlode:
I, Claudius and Claudius the God by Robert Graves.
Graves was both a poet and a classical scholar; the books are beautifully written and historically plausible. More to the point, while actual history probably diverges somewhat from the events that Graves portrays, the portrayals are masterful and as historical fiction Graves’ Claudius books are timeless classics. ETA: And full of plotting, machinations, evil villains, lovable rouges, and unpromising underdogs that turn out to be surprisingly capable.
Not exactly the same question, but I posed a similar one here:
One of the responses to that thread was the “Malazan Book of the Fallen” and I started reading it. I mention it only to NOT recommend it. I’m trudging through the first book, but unless it gets better in a hurry in the last 150 pages, I’m not going to continue any further than the first one.
There’s the Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh. Lots of intrigue, but only one POV character. He’s trying to figure things out, do his job as a human translator for an alien species, and stay alive. You get to hear him constantly evaluate and re-evaluate actions, statements, and motives. There’s a lot of action, but I’d say 2/3 to 3/4 of the words in the books are descriptions of his internal evaluations.
I know at least one reader who had to stop reading or go bonkers. But she has a decision making style that’s more reactive than evaluative. I enjoyed the first few, but I’m taking a break from them. If I’m not in the right mood, it starts to feel like work.
I know you asked for novels, but since you said you enjoyed the HBO show based on Martin’s novels, I would think that you’d also like watching the Spartacus series on Starz.
Nothing beats the Romans for power-hungry machinations and intrigue.
This is awesome! Between this info and my discovery of John Scalzi, I’m not going to lack for reading material for a looong time.
Dude, I literally put the Amber series in my Wishlist on Audible yesterday. I love A Night in the Lonesome October, so I figured I ought to check out more of his stuff. So this just shot right to the top of my list!
At least 3 of my friends have urged this series on me, but having read the beginning, I just cannot get past a child being presented as getting sexual satisfaction from masochism. No; shh; stop - I know, they are supposedly excellent and it’s not all about that and the books represent her exerting her power and so on, but can. not. get. past. it.
You too? It’s been languishing on my Kindle for months, and reading it feels like such a flipping chore. I was thinking maybe once I got further in it would get captivating, but now I think I’m going to read everything suggested in this thread before forcing myself to slog through Gardens of the Moon.
Intrigue and plotting are a big part of the series but there’s an awful lot more going on. And the Malazan books are heavy on high fantasy (Gods and Magic) so don’t really compare well with the ‘grittiness’ of A Song of Ice and Fire.
Gardens of the Moon is a bit tough to start with, don’t worry too much if you feel a bit lost. The next book Deadhouse Gates is awesome and one of the standouts of the series. Many argue that the main storyline of the whole lot only comes to the fore in Book three anyway.
We don’t need to limit ourselves to fantasy or sci-fi do we?
Try The Family Trade by Charles Stross. It’s the first in a science fiction series (The Merchant Princes) that reads like fantasy, and it’s got intrigue like nobody’s business–er, trade. I also recommend Paul Park’s *A Princess of Roumania. *
Jeffrey Archer’s First Among Equals is my favorite political novel. It’s about several politicians - some good, some bad, none perfect - as they ascend through the House of Commons and party leadership to vie against each other to become Prime Minister, in careers spanning the 1960s through the 1990s.
Michael Dobbs’s House of Cards is somewhat similar, but focuses on one extremely clever but amoral man as he schemes to become British PM over a much shorter time. It’s much more of a black comedy, while First Among Equals is a political thriller.
Gary Jennings’s Aztec is a great historical novel about the last days of the Aztec Empire, as seen through the eyes of a peasant with a talent for linguistics who rises to become the Emperor’s top interpreter and diplomat. Plenty of scheming, palace intrigue, sex, warfare, diplomacy and exploration.
I would recommend the Honor Harrington series. The human characters are fairly wooden and one dimensional but the missiles… oh the glorious missiles! The book explores their nuanced and vivid lives, the men and women who loved them, their nurturing and development, their complex strategies, their fights and ultimately of course, their sacrifices.
Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano Legacy and Vatta’s War series. Lots of military plots, but also quite a lot of politics. It reminds me a bit of Honor Harrington, but the main characters are more flawed, and thus more interesting. (Still very heroic, though.) Among other things, it deals with what happens to a society that has just developed technology for extreme longevity – what happens to the power structures, how do the young people deal with the fact that their parent’s generation won’t die off, etc.
Colleen McCullogh’s Masters of Rome series has a lot in common with Game of Thrones. A vast gallery of people, lots of intrigues on all levels (personal and political, ranging from getting the funds to qualify for a seat in the Senate to becoming consul in order to lead armies to beat off the Gauls). It becomes a bit less interesting later in the books when Gaius Julius Caesar appears (not to be confused with his father Gaius Julius Caesar or his grandfather Gaius Julius Caesar), as McCullogh seems to think he wears his underpants on the outside.
