For me it’s Metro 2033 by Dmitriy Glukhovskiy, which is 500 pages long
My longest and by far best read was the Three-Body trilogy by Liu Cixin, weighing in at a combined 1400 pages. It is hard science-fiction and may require a bit of physical-mathematical background to appreciate how it makes esoteric scientific concepts into driving plot points, but if you have that, it is an absolutely stellar experience from the tons of creative worldbuilding to the inventive storytelling to even the minutest technical details.
One thing of note is that the Dark Forest hypothesis, today one of the most well-known solutions to the Fermi paradox, was invented by the author and had its first-ever appearance in the second book of the series.Correction: Upon further looking into it, the Dark Forest hypothesis apparently predates the book, which then axiomatised and coined the term for it
Read the first two. Some guy once pointed out that the Dark Forest hypothesis rests on the assumption that communication is slower and more expensive than instantaneous destruction, which is false.
I wish i only read the first two, they were great, but third is absolute garbage, guy ran out of ideas for plot and instead presented one of two nead ideas he had left along some really weird shit mixed with wide plethora of apocalyptic scenarios broken by some really tedious nothing parts. There’s also 4th book written by other author and accepted by original one which straightens out the ending dud, but i would still rather not read it at all.
Really? No one else read “House of Leaves”? Y’all are missing out on the best psychogical essay novel ever written
I read it Sophomore year. It gave me nightmares for a while. I loved it.
House of Leaves is around 700 pages long, am I wrong? Most books mentioned in this post’s comments are longer, so maybe that is why.
David Weber Honorverse, something like 30 books averaging around 600 pages each. Main plot is 17 books (i think, at the end main plot and spinoffs converge).
A single tome book would be James Clavell’s Shogun, 1125 pages, small font.
What do you make of Clavell? I like long reads and Asian culture, but I hesitate to buy his books because he is an Englishman and I fear they might eventually converge into the usual White Saviour and Noble Savages bullshit you tend to find in literature from back in the day
Shogun is pretty good, protagonist do have some white saviour moments and quite a lot of orientalism but the book is written good, so the author is invisible, and all that is put on a head of XVI century british sailor (for a XVI century British sailor Blackthorne is actually remarkably tolerant and open minded at least after Yabu and Omi explain to him he’s not in England anymore). The book also make few important points about about christianity in Japan. Definitely low key anticolonialist.
Tai-pan is worse, but i read it long ago and don’t remember much.
I am halfway through Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, 1047 pages long.
How is it? I’ve heard good things.
And you’ve heard well if you ask me.
