Books

I would even go further back, and recommend Equal Rites.

I thought dark tower was okay, but it was a bit too surreal for me towards the end.

Might I recommend the Mortal Engines quartet? They’re kinda YA, especially the first one, but the setting is as far as I know completely unique, and beyond amazing. I really don’t want to spoil the first few moments of realization, so I’m just going to put the first two passages below.

Also, many of the BBEGs are cool af and (spoiler for the later books) as least one matches your request exactly, while others match it pretty well.

Honestly I love the characters, they work so well. Especially Tom, he’s the most normal everyday lead I’ve ever read in a fantasy/sci-fi book, and yet all his actions are totally believable.

My only complaint is that book 2 is kind of frustrating in places.

First two passages:

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

In happier times, London would never have bothered with such feeble prey. The great Traction City had once spent its days hunting far bigger towns than this, ranging north as far as the edges of the Ice Waste and south to the shores of the Mediterranean. But lately prey of any kind had started to grow scarce, and some of the larger cities had begun to look hungrily at London. For ten years now it had been hiding from them, skulking in a damp mountainous, western district which the Guild of Historians said had once been the island of Britain. For ten years it had eaten nothing but tiny farming towns and static settlements in those wet hills. Now, at last, the Lord Mayor had decided that the time was right to take his city back over the land-bridge into the Great Hunting Ground.

No worries, I hope you find something you enjoy.

I would say that I personally can't stand politics in the real world or in stories so I am with you on that and I don't believe any of the cosmere stuff focuses on politics at all. Dune is something politic heavy and whilst I made it through it eventually it took me four or five tries and I probably wouldn't return.

I highly recommend trying out at least the first mistborn book to see if you like it if you get to a point where you are in need of something else to read after you've worked your way through some other suggestions.

Happy reading :)

Not the same guy, but I started reading it a few weeks ago and just finished the fourth book last night. It does a pretty good job at both world building and character development in my opinion (though it really shines across books). In my opinion, the first book does a good job of introducing new elements of the setting at a good pace, and uses it's characters who know little of the world to impart how special/rare some of the things are.

Not really a thriller, more of a mystery + a love story. It's a fantastic read. Especially considering it was translated from Spanish.

I was also going to pitch his books, and I haven't even read all of them. They are very solid fantasy books, and he just keeps writing bangers at an unusual pace. My favorite part of books is magic systems, and all the flavors they come in, idk if that is something you've found you like yet.