Book picks similar to
Fresh Blood by Jessica Hicks


litrpg
sci-fi
aliens
post-apocalypse

Dungeon Crawler Carl


Matt Dinniman - 2020
    The buildings and all the people inside, they've all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your views and your followers. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game, with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

Alien: Out of the Shadows


Tim Lebbon - 2013
    But in deep space, he found only darkness and isolation. Then on planet LV178, he and his fellow miners discovered a storm-scoured, sand-blasted hell - and trimonite, the hardest material known to man.When a shuttle crashed into the mining ship Marion, the miners learn that there was more than trimonite deep in the caverns. There was evil, hibernating - and waiting for suitable prey.Hoop and his associates uncover a nest of Xenomorphs, and hell takes on new meaning. Quickly they discover that their only hope lies with the unlikeliest of saviors...Ellen Ripley, the last human survivor of the salvage ship Nostromo.

Opening Moves


Cosimo Yap - 2016
    The alien invasion brought social upheaval, advanced technology, and an armada of peacekeeping robots. But Alan, a college student pursuing a now-useless degree, cares little about all of this. He has only one thing on his mind: the Game. A fully immersive virtual reality, the Game appears to be a major part of the invading civilization. Alan can't wait to play, recklessly diving into the digital universe. Soon though, Alan realizes the Game is anything but simple, and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.

The Otherist: Arrival


William Dickey - 2017
    A day where boundaries between worlds were bent and nature’s most divine laws violated. To the humans remaining on Earth, it was the day where a million people vanished in an instant, carried away by columns of light descending from the heavens.To Isaac Stein, an ordinary 17-year-old boy, it was a fresh start. Isaac finds himself on an alternate version of Earth named Tautellus, an extraordinary world filled with magical beings thought to exist only in legend. Isaac struggles to establish new ties and harness his newfound mystical powers, but just as he begins to thrive in his new home, it is savagely ripped away by the invasion of a hostile nation.Driven to prevent others from meeting the same cruel fate, Isaac must brave the harsh wilderness, overcome betrayals, and wage war for his survival. In the meantime, he stumbles upon secrets of a long lost magitechnologically advanced civilization and their ancient enemy. An enemy that now seeds war and chaos throughout the land as they attempt to seize both Tautellus and Earth.

Devil's Deal


Dante Sakurai - 2018
    Rowan's body recovers but the treatment leaves his memories fragmented and his psyche shattered into something inhumane, irritable, and callous—and a tad bit lustful. When his doctor fails to notice this, his parents reluctantly sends him back to Westwind Highschool, resulting in the murder of Rowan's past bully. Rowan serves two years of juvenile detention in a psychiatric center and after his 18th birthday, he is offered a choice by a powerful corporation: Either spend the next decades in a psychiatric prison or play in their fully-immersive virtual reality game, Aeon Chronicles Online, and grow into the role of the world's next major raid boss that players must defeat. Will Rowan regain his old psyche? How will Aeon Chronicles' AI controller react to Rowan’s unique mind? Will Rowan receive help in a team-oriented game or is he alone? Find out in this 130k+ word, dark LitRPG novel! Warning: Contains gore, profanity, and traumatizing content plus some sexual content and romance.

Upload


Matthew Siege - 2018
    Unbeknownst to him, he’s one of a handful of individuals capable of implementing a Save Point, a static moment in time he’s able to revisit over and over upon death.It’s a good thing, too. Brain cancer was turning into a real drag…The government owns the list though, and they’ve wasted no time snapping him up. According to them, he has thirteen days in an alien realm to learn as much as he can before the inevitable, at which point his memories, Skill Progressions and Weapon Proficiencies will endure despite his body resetting.Then it’s rinse and repeat.But there are unwritten rules to the game he’s about to play, and unseen forces acting in judgment. Adam will have to learn the hard way that dying is the easiest thing he’s going to do today.

Orbs


Nicholas Sansbury Smith - 2013
    Cataclysmic solar storms have forced leaders from around the world to finally put aside their differences and agree on one thing—to jump ship. The human race is headed to Mars. Dr. Sophie Winston is hired by New Tech Corporation to test a biosphere deep within the heart of Cheyenne Mountain; a mission she believes will help prepare NTC for the three-year flight to the red planet. But, just days into the assignment, things start to go wrong. When the blast doors hiss open, Winton's team finds a changed world outside. Humans are gone, vanished without a trace, and they aren't the only thing missing. The planet's water is gone, too. As the team explores their surroundings, they find thousands of luminous blue orbs lining the streets. It isn't until they uncover what's inside that they realize the nightmare that lies ahead.

The Idle System (A LitRPG series) 1-4 Box Set


Pegaz - 2019
    Inspired by classical LitRPG and Xianxia, it's a new take on the genres. Containing romance without harem elements, The Idle System isn't a novel for the weak of heart, but one for those enamored with planetary-levels of destruction. If the aforementioned tropes are to your taste, don't hesitate to buy this bundle.This volume contains the first four novels in The Idle System series: The New Journey, The Rogues, The Birth and The Sins, all of which are available separately.

ChronoTemplar


Burt Wrenlaw - 2021
    unless you're a pawn for an eldritch horror that: (A) can bend time, and (B) is a sore loser.Justin Thyme is not a good man, nor one destined for glory. He was meant to die in obscurity, yet another level 82 Templar that was just about to get chewed up by a horde of skittering monstrosities clawing at humanity's last enclave.One short conversation with a time-splitting monstrosity later, and Justin finds himself flung five years into the past—right when the Earth was first chosen to host the 9,947th Gladiatorial Games.Justin must now do all that he can to help save the world from crumbling under the twin pressures of monsters and murderers. But it's not all about grinding experience, gaining the most levels, and kicking the most ass. He can’t even stand out too much, lest he draw the attention of the other eldritch horrors observing Earth’s struggles for their amusement.No, it’s all about making the right connections, sowing the seeds of hope, culling the pests causing despair… oh, and exploiting the hell out of the System with his ‘borrowed’ ability to tweak time to his advantage.*ChronoTemplar is a dark, crunchy litRPG with lots of stats, skills and battles, for those who love action and complex characters.

The Fifth Column


J.N. Chaney - 2019
     The truth of what happened remains a mystery, and the government will stop at nothing to keep it buried. Together with the unit’s medic, Eva finds herself branded a terrorist and enemy of the State, hunted by two opposing governments. When the pair uncover a plot that could have ramifications for the whole galaxy, they know they have to act, but it will take all of their training, cunning and just a bit of luck to do what no one else has achieved. But what do you do when every secret begets another? And how far will you go to find the answers?

Leviathan Wakes


James S.A. Corey - 2011
    When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

In Times Like These


Nathan Van Coops - 2013
    How do you break time? Can something so bad happen that you fracture the world?" Benjamin Travers has been electrocuted. What's worse, he and his friends have woken up in the past. As the friends search for a way home, they realize they're not alone. There are other time travelers, and some of them are turning up dead. When Ben meets an enigmatic scientist and his charming, time-traveling daughter, salvation seems at hand, but escaping the dangers of the past may lead to a deadly future. If he hopes to save his friends, Ben must learn to master space and time, and survive a journey where past and future violently collide.

Until the End of the World


Sarah Lyons Fleming - 2013
    After all, she’s been on a self-imposed losing streak since her survivalist parents died: she’s stopped painting, broken off her engagement to Adrian and dated a real jerk. Rectifying her mistakes has to wait, however, because Cassie and her friends have just enough time to escape Brooklyn for her parents’ cabin before Bornavirus LX turns them into zombies, too. This is difficult enough, but Cassie’s tag along ex-boyfriend and her friend’s bratty sister have a knack for making everything, even the apocalypse, more unpleasant. When the two attract a threat as deadly as the undead to their safe haven, Cassie’s forced to see how far she’ll go to protect those she loves. And it’s a lot farther than she’d anticipated. This, coupled with Adrian’s distant voice on Safe Zone Radio and, of course, the living dead, threaten to put Cassie right back into the funk she just dragged herself out of. Survival’s great and all, especially when you have leather armor, good friends and home-brewed beer, but there’s something Cassie must do besides survive: tell Adrian she still loves him. And to do that, Cassie has to find faith that she’s stronger than she thinks, she’s still a crack shot and true love never dies.

Rewinder


Brett Battles - 2014
    But even if you did, you’d never believe it.The world as you know it wouldn't be the same without him. Denny was born into one of the lowest rungs of society, but his bleak fortunes abruptly change when the mysterious Upjohn Institute recruits him to be a Rewinder, a verifier of personal histories. The job at first sounds like it involves researching old books and records, but Denny soon learns it's far from it. A Rewinder's job is to observe history.In person.Embracing his new duties with enthusiasm, Denny witnesses things he could never even imagine before. But as exciting as the adventures into the past are, there are dangers, too. For even the smallest error can have consequences. Life-altering consequences. Time, after all, is merely a reference point.

Odyssey One


Evan Currie - 2011
    Assigned the task of blazing man's first trail into that great unknown, Captain Eric Weston and the crew of the NAC Odyssey launch on a mission destined to make history.Past the bounds of comfort, they encounter horrors and wonders beyond their imagining, with people and monsters beyond reckoning.Odyssey One is the first voyage of the NAC Odyssey and its crew, and the beginnings of a Military Science Fiction Epic that combines both old school space opera, and modern storytelling in one great, exhilarating adventure.Odyssey One is a 150,000 word novel.