Ello everyone, Blacky here.

I have been craving adventure lately, and was wondering if anyone knew of some good books/movies/tv shows, whether they are very old, or brand spanking new that will last me a week or two at least, and leave some kind of emotional impact on me.

What I mean by emotional impact is something similiar to the effect that things like, Harry Potter, Watchmen, Batman, The Lord of the Rings, Deathnote, and so many other works of art have left me with. I'll take anything you guys throw at me, as long as you are sure I will walk out with something to keep forever from it.

I prefer either detective, adventure, horror, or super-hero type stories, but will honestly take anything.

Thank you squids, and may Cthulu hold you tight in his arms as you sleep!

A Song of Ice and Fire. (AKA Game of Thrones)

Iain M. Banks, "Use of Weapons"

Darren Shan Vampire series (don't even think about watching the movie)
Sherlock Holmes series (start with Adventures, then read the novels, then read Memoirs)
The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya (I can vouch for the anime, haven't read the manga)
A Scanner Darkly (book or movie, I enjoyed both)

In the superhero genre, I would've strongly recommended Watchmen, but seeing as you've already read/seen it, nothing else comes to mind.

I got The Hunger Games for Christmas and I'm enjoying it very much.
His Dark Materials is a great series too. Something to really get svcked into.
The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo books were brilliant imo. Great characters and the story really stuck with me.
Karin Slaughter has a great series of detective novels which feature some pretty horrific crimes too - one in particular still creeps me out a bit, and I first read it years ago.

Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy (Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest) I could not put the books down

Well, I don't know if it's your thing, and it's horrible terrible awful dubbed (so watch it subbed), but Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water was a show I recently watched that's filled to the brim with adventure and awesomness. It's very loosely based on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but it still feels kind of like a Jules Verne novel in Anime form. Don't be put off by how it looks on the outside either; Nadia can be a very serious show at times.

For that matter Slayers is another Anime filled with just plain old fun adventure. That one is more fantasy with magic and monsters and blowing up towns and getting into trouble and setting bandits on fire in good classic D&D fashion. I lilke to call it the Diablo Anime, just because in the first episode Lina takes a bunch of crappy gems and transmutes them into one decent gem.

If you just don't do Anime, I can recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingkiller_Chronicle very easily. It's sort of fresh off the presses, so it's a nice change from the old Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fantasy. Really good reads, but you're just gonna have to wait for the final book to be written.

Not sure whether it gives emotional impact or not, but i quite enjoyed reading the forgotten realms books. I read all the ones containing Drizz't Dourden in the run up to skyrim.
They arent that long each, but theres quite a few of them.


Definetly this though. Personally i hated some of the characthers, but then as it went on it changes and you feel a bit sorry for them. And then they get their head chopped off usually.

Deathnote was good, until Mel and Near showed up. God that was just a horrible way to ruin it.
Avoid this at all costs. Unless you want cliche, 2d characters, and fanfic qualiy writing. I struggled on hoping it got better, but nope. I gave up around the second time they started describing the six scenes. First was just some woman talking about feeling a good ache after having six, then it even was more creepy when the kid from the windows watches two people having six...

Its sort of like twilight, (overhyoed poor writing) only its more accaptable for some reason.

A song of Ice and Fire isn't all that bad as Ratslayer would paint it out to be but it does suffer in places. I quite like the books but I feel that the constant "tragedies" that happen in these books mar any other tragedies removing all impact from what happens. George R.R. Martin hardly introduces you to a character enough for you to care about it before he kills the character off and you're just sitting there thinking "meh, another character died". It's like a child describing his fantasies of making a horror movie "and then the monster goes WHAM and all the people die, and then the people die again, and then they die more! And all is crying, but monster just WHAM and more people die!". No impact at all that way, no matter how many characters die.

But a song of Ice and Fire is really quite good but it's not the kind of emotional story you're looking for.

The main Halo series
The Fall of Reach
The Flood
First Strike
Ghosts of Onyx
Contact Harvest
The Cole Protocol
Glasslands

That will keep you reading for atleast a month, and I've heard you don't even need to like halo to enjoy the book, it makes references to the game but it's also a good military sci-fi.

Have you read any of the Philip Marlowe novels by Raymond Chandler? They were contemporary when written, but now serve as great historical fiction that really take you back to the era.

If you have a DS:
Ghost Trick
Phoenix Wright series

They're pretty much interactive books, with excellent stories.

I've only just started it actually but The Count of Monte Cristo seems pretty awesome and swashbucklingly adventurous so far. And it's like a billion pages long so it should last you long enough.

Get Dragon Age: Origins

Characters, adventure, storytelling (from Bioware remember!), all of it.

Just do it, and thank me later

Edit: oops, I notice you didn't mention video games, but ah well.

The story was predictable and cliche. Characters were pretty lame too, all I remember about Oghren was he got drunk alot... Thats all of his personality.

Its a good game, but story isnt anything spectacular.

Everything by Alexandre Dumas is a good read.

Most fantasy is cliche. I don't read fiction all that much, and mostly choose thoughtful sci-fi books like 1984 or Brave New World when I do. Fiction just doesn't give me much satisfaction, and it's almost entirely impractical knowledge. Anyway, no story to suggest.

I think it's how the story is told that makes the difference over the plot. No matter, in my opinion Allistair and Morrigan are two of the most memorable characters I've come across in a game. Plus the fact you can choose how the story begins makes it all the more personal.

^^^^^^^^ All of these.
I also enjoyed Both of the Elder Scrolls novels.

A really good Vampire, post apocalyptic book is "The Passage" by Christopher Ronin. It was new this year and is the first part of a trilogy. It's long, but I was hooked the whole time.

Not sure if you'll like it but i have some of my stories in my sig.

On the subject of TV series, have you seen An American Horror Story? Obviously meant to be a horror (it has a few scares to be fair), it's mainly just bizarre and good fun with some great characters - I couldn't stop watching it. God knows what they're going to do with the next series.

I'd like to put in another vote for Haruhi, or at least The Dissapearance of Haruhi Suzumiya since you've already seen melancholy.

Metro 2033 is a video game, but it's also a book. It could be hard to find an english copy considering that it was originally in Russian, but I've heard that it is worth it.