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Espionage Thrillers eBooks:
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> I am kind of excited about this one since I apparently bought the full trilogy on Kindle during a sale years ago. Reading from my owned TBR is something I need to do more.
It actually wasn't a sale (apparently), the full trilogy combined edition is still $3 and has been for at least a year now even though the individual books are still like $10. So if anyone else wants to read it for book club, definitely grab that one!
I also avoid combined editions when I can cause of the annoying percentage thing, but this one is too good to pass up.
Shibumi: A Novel by Trevanian
"A classic spy novel from the bestselling author, Trevanian, about a westerner raised in Japan who becomes one of the world's most accomplished assassins."
"Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi."
"Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy—a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other . . . shibumi."
The Laundry Files by Charles Stross is about a top-secret British intelligence agency charged with managing all things supernatural.
The sci-fi twist is that magic is basically applied math, and as computing becomes more ubiquitous, more and more stuff starts leaking over.
Think a joke-cracking IT professional evolving into James Bond as he fights the supernatural, and you've got The Laundry Files.
Plus, at least on Amazon UK, there's an omnibus edition on Kindle for £1.93
Have a look at the opening of Samuel Delany's <em>Time Considered as a Helix</em>. He's pushing a lot of information at his reader, yet he still manages to give you a pretty good idea what sort of person is his main character, and you also feel he's on your side.
For a longer work, have a look at Terry Hayes' technothriller <em>I am Pilgrim</em>. You can read the opening in the Amazon "Look Inside" preview, or library it for a longer read. Different genre, very different style, slower burn, but it's a wonderful book to study. For one thing, the pacing is outstanding, in the sense there are essentially no boring parts; the author is able to manipulate narrative tension through the slower expository sections and keep you up reading in the wee hours. But in regards to the bond between the writer and the reader, with Hayes it quickly develops as a bond of trust. You come to care about the MC, and there's the feeling the MC cares about the reader, even though he deliberately withholds information.
With good writing, you feel you're in the hands of a master craftsperson, so you relax and let the story carry you away.
Bob Howard from Capital Laundry Services shows up, the books are confiscated and everyone forgets it happened. This probably kicks off an interesting adventure involving time travel, where we learn that the Deep Ones actually opened the first book store some time during the mid-paleolithic.
Charlie Stross's Laundry series. Sci-Fi -> Lovecraftian Fantasy in an action/spy thriller framework.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga.
Deal link: Amazon
^^Note: ^^The ^^deal ^^may ^^have ^^expired ^^by ^^the ^^time ^^you ^^see ^^this ^^post.
Add to that The Sympathizer, which, while a work of fiction, masterfully brings it home on a human level.
Here is your reading assignment It's actually a really good novel if you're interested in AI.
I bet you'd like Angelmaker and To Say Nothing of the Dog!
Any chance you're talking about The Sympathizer? The guy just won a Pulitzer for it. He's a fucking refugee and his brother, also a fucking refugee, is now some important guy in the Obama administration. Native-born Americans: what the fuck have you done with your mickey mouse life of comfy 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoons?
<em>I am Pilgrim</em> by Terry Hayes.
<em>Tigerman</em> by Nick Harkaway.
I'm a big fan of all the books you've listed, so I'll mention a book that I would probably include in a list of favorites alongside those you've already mentioned - the Rook, by Daniel O'Malley,
It has an extremely likable main character, probably my favorite female protagonist in the genre. The book centers around an organization that protects the world from supernatural threats and is mostly staffed by people with various supernatural abilities. Not a super original-sounding premise, but it's done really well. The main character is a fairly high-ranking bureaucrat in that organization who has just had her memory erased at the start of the book. She left herself copious notes about the organization and about her own life, but a lot of the humor comes from the main character stumbling around trying not to let on that she has no idea what's going on. There's a really fun dynamic between the current main character and her relationship with her former self via the notes left behind. I've only read this one, though, so I don't how the audio itself is.
Others you should definitely read if you haven't already (though I suspect you may have) include Sanderson's Way of Kings and Sullivan's Riyria Revelations.
Much of Trevanian's novel Shibumi is set in the Basque country of Spain. One of my favorite spy thrillers.
The great thing about Trevanian is you never know exactly if he's putting you on.