looking for suggestion for novel please... no Generic chinese protag who is boringly over powered in another theme park novel where the main attraction is the side characters being amazed by our over powered protag. ruthless mc with dark themed novel (torture, mind breaking, a real slavery and if posible ntr) no turn based battle novel Edit : accept western novel
So does Brent Weeks' second series: Lightbringer. Some serious NTR goin' on in that one, quit reading because of it.
Well... not actually NTR in a sexual meaning, as far as I can remember. Plenty of people being swayed by people from other groups though.
You might try this out, pretty dark and gritty : How to Survive a Summoning 101 Reviews will be appreciated. I...I mean it's...it's not like I am waiting for a review or a-anything, baka!
Not sure if this is the kind of "dark" you're looking for, but I'll pitch it anyway (both by the same author); Worm ~ Setting: Superpowers in modern world. People obtain powers after a "trigger event", which means the hero:villain ratio is skewed towards villains (from "light" like Thieves, gangs, drug dealers, supremacist groups, to veeery dark). It is set in a grey-and-grey morality system; not all villains have truly evil intentions, and not all heroes are selfless. The MC is a girl with bug powers, and certainly counts as ruthless. Not cruel, but doesn't think it twice if being cruel is the best course of action for her. The one thing that's awesome are... the team battles. They each have different win conditions, settings, and of course powers involved. Twig ~ Setting: Biohorrorpunk world. Basically, frankenstein was not a story, but a breakthrough in technology. This means that, instead of cars, people prefer carriages with "stitched" horses, for example. The Academy has a monopoly on this technology, and the normal people feel oppressed. That's why the MC decides to oppose the evil Academy! pfft no, he's basically an experiment which is used to do "odd jobs" (i.e. take care of escaped experiments/people doing too reckless experiments outside the Academy) with his team, in order to basically justify that he's not useless. Their team is made up of "ideals"; the "ideal actor", "ideal reliable gentleman", "ideal bookworm" etc. He's pretty much the "ideal bastard", and tries his best to "read" his opponents in order to find their weaknesses. The thing to look out for in this one are the mindgames.
You might want to try Transformation by Carol Berg which is the first in the Rai-Kirah trilogy. The MC is a male slave who starts out beaten down only to reveal hidden depths once he gets sucked into some major events. Definitely a mature novel. Or Joust by Mercedes Lackey, which is more young adult-oriented so is lighter in tone, about a young slave boy who tends to dragons that are used in battle.
If there's actually nothing that is specific to NTR, but just common betrayal, why mention NTR at all?
A reasonably plausible assumption, but it's somewhat extra. In the case of NTR, there's mostly another party which mind-breaks someone to change sides. A normal betrayal doesn't necessarily have that .
I wouldn't go 'mind-break' as a definition. What does simply seducing someone to switch sides do? In my opinion it's an NTR, but not necessarily, 'mwahahahha-now-you-are-ad'dick'ted to me" mind-breaks.
Eh, then maybe I just happen on the more 'severe' NTR, when I occasionally does read one. Though, the one I can closest relate to being seduced to switch sides was the Danavis girl, and that seduction happened after she switched. Might've forgotten someone else though.
+1 on the Warlock of the Magus World. MC usually operates silently, and especially at the beginning part of the series where he's still weak he's adept in shifting blame / heat to other people, or making other people expend their resources first so that he incurs minimal losses. Most of the people he's operated on that way usually dies, not many people know, so there's almost no reaction chapters common to other Chinese novels. He's not afraid of using torture, performing soul experiments, buying and actually using slaves (as opposed to MCs who purchase slaves just so that they can set them free). This is already in the translated part, but I'll put it in spoilers just in case : Spoiler MC encounters a remnant soul which he captures and tortures to make it submissive. He makes a contract with that soul eventually so that he can get information that he needs, but then uses a loophole in that contract to destroy that soul so that he can turn it into an ingredient for a magic defensive weapon he's creating
I get the same feeling from both, which is probably what he's going for. Eh, I dunno. They're similar to me.
Oooh, random suggestion time. Lesseee... The Inheritance Trilogy. (No, not that Cycle thing Paolini wrote. That was fun, but totally different) This is one I happen to be reading right now, so I can't really offer any grand descriptions of the series. All I can say is that mildly dark themes abound, with slavery, murder, politics and religion playing roles. It's fun so far~