Books like Watchmen

If Watchmen stayed with you, these share its feel: power, morality and dread. Each comes with a real page, so you can tell in a minute.

About Watchmen · Alan Moore

1.Vicious

V.E. Schwab, 2013

Also morality and dread. Two former friends with extraordinary powers and no moral brakes hunt each other across a cold, comic-book-dark America. A superhero story told from the villain's side.

The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words."I’ll go first.

Excerpt from Vicious, V.E. Schwab 2013. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
2.Foundation

Isaac Asimov, 1951

Also power and awe. A mathematician arrives on the capital planet of a galactic empire and finds that history itself can be predicted—and is running out.

What Gaal was waiting for after the disappointment of the Jump was that first sight of Trantor. He haunted the View-room. The steel shutter-lids were rolled back at announced times and he was always there, watching the hard brilliance of the stars, enjoying the incredible hazy swarm of a star cluster, like a giant conglomeration of fireflies caught in mid-motion and stilled forever. At one time there was the cold, blue-white smoke of a gaseous nebula within five light years of the ship, spreading over the window like distant milk, filling the room with an icy tinge, and disappearing out of sight two hours later, after another Jump.

Excerpt from Foundation, Isaac Asimov, Del Rey 1951. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
3.Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card, 1985

Also power and morality. A gifted child is recruited to a space battle school where the games are real and the adults never explain the rules.

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them... I destroy them. -”“You beat them.” For a moment she was not afraid of his understanding.“No, you don’t understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don’t exist.”

Excerpt from Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, Macmillan 1985. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
4.Seven Days in May

Fletcher Knebel, 1962

Also power and dread. A Cold War thriller about a popular general's plot against the White House, and the handful of insiders trying to stop him in seven days.

All you’ve got to know is this: right now the government of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, right on the very point, tilting right and left and ready to fall off and break up on the pavement. There are just a handful of men that can prevent it. And you’re one of them.

Excerpt from Seven Days in May, Fletcher Knebel 1962. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
5.Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton, 1990

Also dread and power. A billionaire builds a private zoo of extinct animals and flies experts in to approve it. The experts keep finding reasons to say no.

Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.

Excerpt from Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton, Ballantine Books 1990. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
6.Death Note, Vol. 1

Tsugumi Ohba, 2003

Also dread and power. A brilliant, bored student finds a notebook that kills anyone whose name it holds — and discovers he likes playing god.

I AM RIGHTEOUS!! I’m the hero who’s liberating people from fear. I’m the savior who’s going to be like a god of this perfect new world!

Excerpt from Death Note, Vol. 1, Tsugumi Ohba 2003. Quoted for discovery. Source Rights & removals
7.The Secret History

Donna Tartt, 1992

Also melancholy and dread. A California scholarship boy is taken up by a circle of Greek students at an elite Vermont college — and by the thing they have done. A novel about beauty, envy and the cost of belonging.
8.A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1968

Also power and awe. A young goatherd goes to a school for wizards and learns that magic means names, balance, and limits before it means power.
9.Mr. Mercedes

Stephen King, 2014

Also dread and morality. A retired detective is drawn into a taunting game with the killer who drove a stolen Mercedes into a crowd.
10.Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

J. K. Rowling, 2007

Also dread and power. A fugitive year spent hunting the pieces of a divided soul, while the wizarding world chooses sides and every friendship is tested.
11.Mistborn

Brandon Sanderson, 2006

Also power and dread. A street thief who burns metals for luck is pulled into a heist against a god-emperor—and a world buried in ash.
12.Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood, 2003

Also power. A man called Snowman survives on a beach among green-eyed children, haunted by a world of engineered animals and lost time. Atwood’s speculative dystopia of memory and myth.