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waterfall_maker  5d ago (text post)   1170 thread views

I am looking for story about nondysfunctional family (or group of friends)

I am looking for story where group of characters (family or friends) form together a group that is NOT dysfunctional.

Them dealing with problematic/oppressive/bureaucratic/evil world is fine, in fact I want to have some conflict. On the other hand I do not want them to win effortlessly or get some insanely OP powers that invalidate any opposition. I do not want tragic/bad ending, I also do not want obvious 100% perfect absurd success thanks to blatant plot armor.

I also want story to not feature blatantly stupid setting or characters that make no sense whatsoever. Initially I phrased it as "no unrealistic stuff" but I am in fact fine with dragon-flying slave traders as antagonists, as long as suspension of disbelief is achievable.

I strongly prefer avoidance of current politics in either direction, I have seen remarkably few cases where it was done well. I also do not want books that would be recommended only due to current politics, quality of that is even worse.

Story may be small scale. I actually prefer to avoid "saving the world" story. I think that within last decade I seen two stories that did it and were done well (House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds, Deepness in the sky by Vernor Vinge). And maybe few more that I read earlier (LOTR, Ursula K. Le Guin)

I was thinking about fiction when I was writing this, but if you have anything that is nonfiction and fits - even better!

I hope that it is fine to ask for book recommendations here? If not, then please delete/downvote this and let me know what went wrong.

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Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard is about the unofficial prime minister of the world going on vacation with his boss and coworkers while trying to explain his job to his relatives.

The Human Division by John Scalzi is about, essentially, a second rate team of diplomats (well, they're billed as second rate; in the actual story they appear to be pretty good at their job).

Artifact Space/Deep Black by Miles Cameron is about the crew of a Space Indiaman, and while the main character has some personal issues, the crew overall is a pretty well-oiled machine.

Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard

interesting, it is also what LLM recommended me when I feed this question into them (they actually recommended more but this one was one of few that seemed worth reading).

I guess I will count it as a double recommendation :)

I enjoyed it, but I will warn a) it is incredibly slow b) basically nothing happens.

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