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waterfall_maker  8d ago (text post)   1246 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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Brandon Sanderson’s worlds are often dark, but the main characters themselves are good, reasonably intelligent, wholesome people is healthy relationships. He mostly avoids real-world political topics. If you haven’t tried him yet, give him a look.

Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera might be better than his Dresden Files books, but I found both series to be extremely enjoyable with, especially in the later books, very little disfunction among the main characters.

Now for something even better, and if you are not opposed to Japanese Lightnovels, read Ascendance of a Bookworm. It is an amazingly heartwarming tale where the main character’s bond with her family plays a starring role. I don’t want to say too much for fear of spoilers, but this series just keeps getting better and better with each successive part.

All these recommendations are Fantasy, because that is what I mainly read, but they all take place in worlds which are internally consistent and where all the characters make decisions that make sense to them in their context. There is no plot armor, no easy victories (but there are victories), and they have mostly happy endings.

I really liked Dresden Files though I have not read latest ones. I guess it would make sense to finish it it got completed and look into Codex Alera.

I tried reading Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn) but I got deeply annoyed - supposedly smart plans were fairly dumb, and what worse they actually worked. Overall I had impression of standard extruded fiction product. Really nice if you like it, given insane amount of stuff Brandon wrote. Sadly, I disliked it :(

Unfamiliar with Japanese Lightnovels (so not opposed to them) so I will try Ascendance of a Bookworm - maybe as lower priority as I have no idea how to obtain it, hopefully googling will be sufficient.

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