Are you moved by surrogate father/daughter relationships? Maybe messed up human/fungus relationships? Planet Earth/apocalypse relationships? Whatever kind of The Last of Us style relationship floats your emotional boat, I’ve got just the thing for you. Ten of them, in fact! These 10 best books for The Last of Us fans are a heady blend of person-to-person bonding and biological horror to hold you over until Season 3. You’ll never look at mushroom pizza the same way again.
Between Two Fires
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman is literally just a grimdark fantasy version of The Last of Us – and all the better for it. Set in bubonic plague-ridden France, Buehlman makes The Dark Ages even darker with the advent of the apocalypse. The forces of Heaven and Hell are duking it out for spiritual supremacy, and have decided to use our world as the battleground for Armageddon. Enter Thomas, a French knight turned brigand who attempts to make ends meet by introducing people to the business end of his blade. In a botched robbery, he stumbles across Ellie – I mean, Delphine – a tweenage girl who claims she holds secret power. Delphine swears that she has the divine ability to stop the apocalypse, and needs Thomas to escort her to Avignon to prove it to the Pope. And so begins a surrogate father/daughter bond, tempered in the fires of Hell itself.
Check out the latest price for Between Two Fires on Amazon here.
Annihilation
Now a pop-culturally famous work of ecological horror, Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation infected the minds of the movie-going populace with its big budget Hollywood interpretation staring Natalie Portman. While the film certainly leaves loose ends untied, the original novel leaves even more up to the imagination. In an undisclosed stretch of wilderness, an alien anomaly is infecting the land. Dubbed “Area X” by the Southern Reach facility created to study it, the anomaly is slowly encroaching upon the civilized world – and scientists are powerless to stop it. All attempts to cross the shimmering border of Area X have ended in disaster, but Southern Reach is content to keep on throwing personnel at the problem until it goes away. What biological nightmares await an all female team of explorers sent to study the phenomenon? Like clickers in a dark basement, some things are better left undisturbed.
Check out the latest price for Annihilation on Amazon here.
The Parable of The Sower
Octavia Butler’s The Parable of The Sower isn’t a tale of horror, but a Last of Us-style story of hope. In a world ravaged by the effects of climate change, the teenage Lauren Olamina lives in one of the few safe settlements left. After a fire separates her from her home, Lauren is left to wander the California wilderness and fend for herself. She decides to cope the way many do when faced it comes to matters of apocalypse, with religion. Traveling around the nation with a group of kids her age, Lauren takes it upon herself to spread the gospel of “Earthseed” a self-created religion whose central tenant is “God is change.” If Ellie skipped her journey to the Firefly headquarters and decided to start a more positive version of the Seraphite religion, you’d have this novel.
Check out the latest price for The Parable of The Sower on Amazon here.
The Road
The Road by Cormac McCarthy is the blueprint end of the world novel. An undisclosed disaster is causing the Earth to slowly die, and an unnamed father and son are attempting to make the best of things – which isn’t very much. While dodging killers, cannibals, and roadside desperados like themselves, the pair are spurred on by the father’s insistence to his son that they “carry the fire” inside. The Road is a devastating novel about a pair who cling to survival as part of a divine quest, and are forced to resort to diabolical methods in order to continue doing so. It’s a story of faith in hopelessness. Light in darkness. Meaning in chaos. A shred of cold, grey dawn in bitter and black night. No, this is not a feel good read – but feel you certainly will. Assuming your soul isn’t shredded by the last page, you can check out the film adaption starring Viggo Mortensen and get the sob train a-rolling again.
Check out the latest price for The Road on Amazon here.
Zone One
Zone One by Colson Whitehead is set in a world laid to waste by a deadly virus that has turned the population into flesh eating zombies. The regular sort, not the shroomy kind. Unlike the world of The Last of Us, which is slowly but surely going to hell in a hand basket, humanity has managed to bring itself back from the edge and begin to rebuild. Mark Spitz is a “sweeper,” a civilian soldier assigned to clear out the infected from sections of New York City. While the military has mopped up the worst of the mess, Mark has to deal with the stragglers, who are rendered catatonic by the infection. A survival horror story told in the style of a slice of life anime, the novel is flavored with the brutal mundanity of FEDRA-controlled Boston. Orders are given, people die, humanity moves on.
Check out the latest price for Zone One on Amazon here.
The Girl With All The Gifts
Thought The Last of Us was the only shroomocalypse story on the market? You thought wrong. The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey is the story of a world rocked by, you guessed it, the Cordyceps virus! Twenty years ago, a South American spore caused mass social breakdown, turning everyday people into flesh-eating “hungries.” In Beacon, England, the military has set up a base to study child hungries, who are able to retain their mental facilities so long as they aren’t exposed to human scent. One of these child hungries is Melanie, a gifted little girl who loves Greek mythology and, when the mood strikes, raw meat. Unlike The Last of Us, which is a story about killing monsters, The Girl With All The Gifts is a story about living alongside of them, and hoping they don’t catch a whiff of you. While the un-infected don’t think that such coexistence is possibly, Melanie is keen on proving them wrong. So long as she can resist eating them too.
Check out the latest price for The Girl With All The Gifts on Amazon here.
The Stand
One of Stephen King’s best novels, The Stand is set in the world where a government engineered super-flu has killed over 99% of the human population. In the remnants of The United States, the few immune survivors are left to pick up the pieces. In classic King fashion, the immune begin to experience “shining” – the sort of physic visions that appear in many of the author’s other novels. Depending on the orientation of their moral compass, the survivors see differing visions. The good see a kindly old woman living alone in rural Nebraska, while the bad see a man dressed in black setting up shop in Las Vegas. You thought the end times were over? The apocalyptic battle between good and evil is only just beginning.
Check out the latest price for The Stand on Amazon here.
Station Eleven
Set in a world where most of humanity has perished due to a deadly virus, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is the story of a group of survivors coping the only way they know how: by staging a play. The Traveling Symphony is a group of actors and musicians who travel from town to post-apocalyptic town performing Shakespeare for the masses – or in this case, the minimums. Jumping between pre and post-collapse timelines, the novel shows how the members of the Traveling Symphony ended up joining this post-apocalyptic band of theatre kids. Love The Last of Us-style “finding beauty in devastation” themes but not too keen on the zombie on human violence? Station Eleven is all heart, little blood.
Check out the latest price for Station Eleven on Amazon here.
The Ruins
If Station Eleven is a hopeful story about living in harmony with the natural world, Scott Smith’s The Ruins will ensure those hopes are dashed. After a group of college kids go mucking through the jungle to find some forbidden Mayan ruins, they realize that the jungle isn’t keen on letting them leave. These ruins are home to a hideous, insidious, and carnivorous species of vine that has preys on human hosts – infecting minds and causing madness. Fair warning: if you thought The Last of Us was the death of hope, The Ruins sees that hope was never born in the first place. This novel is a downright brutal descent into the depths of hot, steaming, rainforest insanity. In case the description didn’t clue you in, no, this story does not end well.
Check out the latest price for The Ruins on Amazon here.
Semiosis
In keeping with The Ruins‘ “evil plants” theme, Sue Burke’s Semiosis one-ups the horror by introducing us to extraterrestrial botanicals! After a group of human colonists land on a distant jungle world, they begin to suspect that the forest is alive. Yes, plants are already alive, but you know what I mean. These plants are intelligent, cunning, and potentially even murderous. The after making contact with a sentient species of bamboo, the colonists get the feeling that they’re trespassing on a planet where humans are anything but the dominant species. After all, you can’t spell “planet” without “plant,” you just gotta take the “e” out and – yeah, you get it.
Check out the latest price for Semiosis on Amazon here.
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