After dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels to take on holiday

[toffeechai]

Hoping that if I share my tastes, people might be able to suggest some good reads for my holiday.

Examples of books I have loved: Station Eleven, The Quiet at the End of the World, The Girl With All the Gifts, The Handmaid’s Tale, Red Clocks, Lauren Oliver’s Delirium series.

I quite liked The Power.

I didn’t like: Hollow Kingdom (such a great premise but gave up as I hated the writing style), Moths. The Last, which I took on a previous holiday and finished but didn’t enjoy. Also not a Stephen King fan.

I’m looking up past threads too but any suggestions are appreciated, old or new!

I have a few post-apocalyptic series I've liked -

The Hunger Games
Divergent
The Maze Runner
The Testing

Z for Zachariah. Bleak but really engrossing

Also a little late, but Sheri Tepper - The Gate To Women's Country, Grass, The Fresco, Family Tree, The Companions, The Margarets.
She's written a lot of other stuff but those best fit your OP.

Thanks everyone!

Only Ever Yours by Irish Author Louise O' Neill - more YA fiction but I really enjoyed it recently.

Surprised no one’s mentioned Octavia Butler. Utterly revolutionary and a huge influence on later writers.

The unwind series (4 books in the main series and then some side stories) by neal schusterman are phenomenal and never get the recognition they deserve.

The slated series is all good but not quite up to the same level

You say no Stephen King, but The Stand is surely the ultimate post-apocalyptic novel. It's immense.

The Margaret Atwood Maddaddam trilogy is amazing. The Children of Men by PD James, if you liked The Handmaid’s Tale. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro x

Second Swan song and Death of Grass.
Also World War Z, nothing like the film. Chapters are interviews with people who survived a zombie plague. Super book.

Also following for holiday read recommendations!

I’ve just finished the William forstchen trilogy about post-EMP. The first is excellent, but by the third I did feel like I’d read the exact paragraph before - can only assume he’s scribbled in a notebook various brilliant must-use phrases and then forgotten he’s already included them. Nonetheless, 4 corned beef tins out of 5 for misery and “bad gangs”.

also managed to send me down a rabbit hole about military history so have been reading up on that.

Oryx and crake.

An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim

Year One by Nora Roberts.

I got back in to this genre early pandemic and re-read the classic original dystopian novels, starting with WE by Zamyatin, the basis for 1984, which I'd not come across before. I'm currently reading Ayn Rand's Anthem. There are some good lists of the early ones on the internet.

My favourite series of books - The Passage by Justin Cronin. There are, I think, 3 books in the series and that's the first one. So so good. I loved them.

Flawed, by Celia Aherne, is a great fictional read.

The sequel isn't so don't go for that.

Am reading these now. Wonderful.

I tried to read a sample of this but the author seems to have missed the memo about ‘show don’t tell’ so I’m struggling to get into it!

I really enjoyed 'Before & After' by Andrew Shanahan and the sequel Flesh & Blood.

They're both on Kindle unlimited at the moment too.

The age of miracles and the passage

Another vote for The Passage trilogy, amazing

I've read quite a few of these but can't anymore, doesn't anyone find they get too immersed by them? Too bleak? I can't handle the content so much now even though some brilliant books, too close to reality with COVID, climate change etc

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Yes this is very disturbing

Any newspaper?!

For fiction though id second Cormac McCarthy’s ‘the road’