More serious adventure books?

[Dog Food]

Hi.

Any good adventure (at least some of it) book like this?

- no fantasy or low fantasy (might have minimal magic themes or few monsters, but no epic dragons, no elven world etc)
- I hate modern or future setting. Everything up to 1800s will do
- the less romance the better
- No archetypical hero saving the world
- Not a must have, but I like brutal/dangerous worlds

I'm currently reading Game of Thrones and this is more or less what I'm searching for. But I'd prefer less magic

[crich70]

Sounds like Robert Louis Stevenson is right up your alley then. Treasure Island in particular.

[mihranda]

I was thinking Jack London until the year you gave and the suggestion of "Game of Thrones." Hm...

[Bilbo1967]

Maybe Wilbur Smith?

[Apache]

Harold Lamb?

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/l/harold-lamb/

Apache

[BenG]

Try the Flashman Papers by George MacDonald Fraser, a twelve book series which are purportedly the memoirs of Harry Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays.
He grows up to be a cad and a coward who ends up (undeservedly) being a Victorian war hero.
He somehow ends up in many of the most interesting moments of the Victorian era, including the First Afghan War,the Crimean War, the slave trade and abolition movement in America, the Great Game in India, Malay pirates, the American West, the Opium Wars, and others.

http://www.amazon.com/George-MacDona...rnid=618072011

[MickeyC]

Totally agree on the Flashman series. Although technically historical fiction they are very accurate apart from Flasman's antics.

[Mivo]

Originally Posted by mihranda

I was thinking Jack London until the year you gave and the suggestion of "Game of Thrones." Hm...

I think the Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series would still be a decent fit. It is fantasy, but fairly "hard boiled" without most of the fantasy cliches. It's certainly brutal.

The first three books are very solid, but the newer ones seem to suffer a bit from the "trilogy turned into longer series" problem, just like Wheel of Time and Goodkind's Seeker series.

[hildea]

Not sure what "serious" means in this context, but Megan Whalen Turner's "The Thief" fits your criteria, and is a really, really good book.

The most powerful advisor to the King of Sounis is the magus. He's not a wizard, he's a scholar, an aging solider, not a thief. When he needs something stolen, he pulls a young thief from the King's prison to do the job for him.

Gen is a thief and proud of it. When his bragging lands him behind bars he has one chance to win his freedom-- journey to a neighboring kingdom with the magus, find a legendary stone called Hamiathes's Gift and steal it.

The magus has plans for his King and his country. Gen has plans of his own.

http://meganwhalenturner.org/NovelsThief.html

It's the first in a series, but it works well as stand-alone, too. The culture is inspired by ancient Greece, the tech level is renaissance-ish, and the plot and characters are really, really good.