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#5. Discord’s Apple by Carrie Vaughn. 4. American Gods-style near-future fantasy that effectively manages to tie together a comic book script, a dystopia, and a novel take on the Odyssey.
#6. The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. 4. Did you like the parts of Mistborn that were more adventure and less genre-bending? Do you think what Westerns really need is more magic? Then this is for you! The first in the sequel trilogy is not nearly as clever as the first trilogy (see above lack of genre-bending) but is still great fun. You don’t actually have to have read the first trilogy to enjoy this, but there are definitely some nice references for careful readers.
#7. Robots vs. Fairies ed. by Dominick Parisien and Navah Wolfe. 5. You know how in every short story anthology, there’s a couple stories that just don’t work for you? In this one, I had none. I at least liked every single story. Loved many of them. Fairies running theme parks, an ex-Japanese idol visiting her past via androids, caretaker robots vs Icelandic elves. It’s all great. The editors managed to get some of the best current voices in sf/f to participate, and it shows.
#8. Everfair by Nisi Shawl. 3. You know how some things just aren’t…for you? I’m giving this a 3 because I loved the concept (steampunk alternate history in which the Belgian Congo got bought out from the Belgians and is run by a combo of native tribes and American ex-slaves, plus some random European idealists, and the problematicness is all addressed) and because it’s beautifully written. I just really, really, really HATED the structure. It’s not necessarily that the author made a BAD decision, it was just one I really didn’t enjoy. This is a sprawling novel that covers like 30 years. Without being a doorstop. And has about a dozen viewpoint characters. She handles this by using very short chapters and being completely comfortable with multi-month or year time jumps between each chapter. It’s more like 30 years worth of vignettes. So you might not actually get back into a character’s head for five years. As a result, you can’t actually bond with anyone. Every chapter is either an event or an aftermath, but you never get both. So I was just really emotionally disengaged from everyone. Oh, so-and-so is dead? And other person who was in love with them is devastated? That’s sad, I guess. It’s not like we’ll see that person again any time soon.
#9. Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. 3. OK, this is not objectively outstanding. The writing is a little clunky. The heroine is the special-est snowflake to ever flutter. (A twin, with red hair and purple eyes, and a magic sword, and a talking cat, and the bestest horse ever, who’s chosen by the goddess and is loved by everyone except the handful of horrible people who unjustly hate her.) But you know what? It was ground-breaking. It is everything that 10-year-old me would have ever wanted. It’s fun. It’s wish fulfillment at its finest, and you know what? Teenage girls need that.
#10. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. 4.5. Very broad, very interesting take on prehistoric man through the development of agriculture, religion, capitalism, etc. A bunch of the ideas are stuff I’ve seen before (for example, his charge that agriculture actually made human lives shorter and more miserable), but an interesting (and potentially chilling) overall thesis that we have a tendency to embrace advancements that help our species/society be more “successful” but that doesn’t actually work in favor of the individual. Thought-provoking.
#11. In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce. 3. Whee, here we go again with Alanna! More magic, more love-triangle she doesn’t really want, more catnip for the 10-year-old buried in my soul.
#12. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. Re-read. I love Bujold’s writing in general. This one features a convoluted who-can-you-trust plot in which I dimly remember who you couldn’t trust, and it didn’t matter at all. Her characters are often broken in the most interesting ways, and she fixes them with unexpected grace.
#13. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood. 3.5. I really did not like the protagonists of this. (I’m not really sure we’re supposed to.) It’s a testament to Atwood’s talent that I found their mishaps gradually more compelling by the end, while still thinking them reprehensible humans. Overall, a very clever book about the choices people make when desperate, set in a dystopia just close enough to be believable. The pieces click into place in a remarkably satisfying way. My problem, though, was that this features satire-level set pieces and then plays them almost straight. (A prison in which people take turns playing prisoner and guard to keep it economically sustainable! A sadistic security officer who likes to roleplay! Squads of rentable Elvises!) The tone is…deliberately jarring.
#14. Foundation by Isaac Asimov. 2.5. Oh, how I loved this book when I was in elementary school. I wanted to see if it held up. It…doesn’t. The Foundation faces a series of crises which were completely predicted and each have one right answer which the forces of history will make them inevitably take…which can only be discerned by one brilliant authorial stand-in who forces everyone to take this perfectly-predicted-completely-inevitable solution, while everyone else is hysterical. (Never mind that the brilliant protagonist is as belligerent, stubborn, and unwilling to listen as any of his strawman opponents.) The ghost of Hari Seldon appears to declare that the chosen protagonist was in facto correct, making everyone else look dumb…by authorial fiat. Also, there are exactly two women in all of the Empire and Foundation. One is a servant who does not speak but is utterly charmed by a fancy necklace. The other is a shrill, shrewish space princess devoid of redeeming qualities who is convinced to shut up by a fancy necklace. Which was of course repossessed from the poor servant after she was given the immense favor of wearing it for five minutes.
#15. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. 3.5. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Elizabeth and Darcy will pretty much always be charming. Grahame-Smith’s zombie additions are generally rather amusing, although sometimes his desire to make Austen’s characters uncharacteristically lewd for comic effect is disconcerting. Obviously, don’t read this unless you’re already familiar with the original.
#16. Angel’s Blood by Nalini Singh. 2.5. Paranormal romances are pretty often populated by mouthy badass female warriors and broody overpowered male supernatural creatures. This one, though…the leads were just too…too. Elena is so reckless and disrespectful (to everyone) that I never warmed up to her. And Raphael is so “my concerns are so above mere mortals that morals don’t apply to me” that I couldn’t find the idea of him as a romantic lead remotely appealing. And the ending is…Twilight-esque.
#17. The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. Another re-read. Caz’s broken courtier is so incredibly endearing—this is the way to actually do the “character is beloved by good guys, hated by bad guys, chosen by the gods” trope without it being exasperating. Caz pays for every inch of his victory, without ever dragging into misery porn.
#18. Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. Re-read. Miles on another madcap romp. This one involves clones.
#19. Perfect 10 by L. Philips. 3. Gay boy finds himself with an embarrassment of riches in terms of potential boyfriends—who will he chose? I’ll hand it to Philips—Sam makes some really aggravatingly boneheaded decisions, but they’re believable for a 17 year old, and he does end up paying for them. I briefly thought he was going to end up with the wrong guy, and was very frustrated, but I shouldn’t have doubted. Fun but probably forgettable.
#6. The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. 4. Did you like the parts of Mistborn that were more adventure and less genre-bending? Do you think what Westerns really need is more magic? Then this is for you! The first in the sequel trilogy is not nearly as clever as the first trilogy (see above lack of genre-bending) but is still great fun. You don’t actually have to have read the first trilogy to enjoy this, but there are definitely some nice references for careful readers.
#7. Robots vs. Fairies ed. by Dominick Parisien and Navah Wolfe. 5. You know how in every short story anthology, there’s a couple stories that just don’t work for you? In this one, I had none. I at least liked every single story. Loved many of them. Fairies running theme parks, an ex-Japanese idol visiting her past via androids, caretaker robots vs Icelandic elves. It’s all great. The editors managed to get some of the best current voices in sf/f to participate, and it shows.
#8. Everfair by Nisi Shawl. 3. You know how some things just aren’t…for you? I’m giving this a 3 because I loved the concept (steampunk alternate history in which the Belgian Congo got bought out from the Belgians and is run by a combo of native tribes and American ex-slaves, plus some random European idealists, and the problematicness is all addressed) and because it’s beautifully written. I just really, really, really HATED the structure. It’s not necessarily that the author made a BAD decision, it was just one I really didn’t enjoy. This is a sprawling novel that covers like 30 years. Without being a doorstop. And has about a dozen viewpoint characters. She handles this by using very short chapters and being completely comfortable with multi-month or year time jumps between each chapter. It’s more like 30 years worth of vignettes. So you might not actually get back into a character’s head for five years. As a result, you can’t actually bond with anyone. Every chapter is either an event or an aftermath, but you never get both. So I was just really emotionally disengaged from everyone. Oh, so-and-so is dead? And other person who was in love with them is devastated? That’s sad, I guess. It’s not like we’ll see that person again any time soon.
#9. Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce. 3. OK, this is not objectively outstanding. The writing is a little clunky. The heroine is the special-est snowflake to ever flutter. (A twin, with red hair and purple eyes, and a magic sword, and a talking cat, and the bestest horse ever, who’s chosen by the goddess and is loved by everyone except the handful of horrible people who unjustly hate her.) But you know what? It was ground-breaking. It is everything that 10-year-old me would have ever wanted. It’s fun. It’s wish fulfillment at its finest, and you know what? Teenage girls need that.
#10. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. 4.5. Very broad, very interesting take on prehistoric man through the development of agriculture, religion, capitalism, etc. A bunch of the ideas are stuff I’ve seen before (for example, his charge that agriculture actually made human lives shorter and more miserable), but an interesting (and potentially chilling) overall thesis that we have a tendency to embrace advancements that help our species/society be more “successful” but that doesn’t actually work in favor of the individual. Thought-provoking.
#11. In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce. 3. Whee, here we go again with Alanna! More magic, more love-triangle she doesn’t really want, more catnip for the 10-year-old buried in my soul.
#12. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. Re-read. I love Bujold’s writing in general. This one features a convoluted who-can-you-trust plot in which I dimly remember who you couldn’t trust, and it didn’t matter at all. Her characters are often broken in the most interesting ways, and she fixes them with unexpected grace.
#13. The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood. 3.5. I really did not like the protagonists of this. (I’m not really sure we’re supposed to.) It’s a testament to Atwood’s talent that I found their mishaps gradually more compelling by the end, while still thinking them reprehensible humans. Overall, a very clever book about the choices people make when desperate, set in a dystopia just close enough to be believable. The pieces click into place in a remarkably satisfying way. My problem, though, was that this features satire-level set pieces and then plays them almost straight. (A prison in which people take turns playing prisoner and guard to keep it economically sustainable! A sadistic security officer who likes to roleplay! Squads of rentable Elvises!) The tone is…deliberately jarring.
#14. Foundation by Isaac Asimov. 2.5. Oh, how I loved this book when I was in elementary school. I wanted to see if it held up. It…doesn’t. The Foundation faces a series of crises which were completely predicted and each have one right answer which the forces of history will make them inevitably take…which can only be discerned by one brilliant authorial stand-in who forces everyone to take this perfectly-predicted-completely-inevitable solution, while everyone else is hysterical. (Never mind that the brilliant protagonist is as belligerent, stubborn, and unwilling to listen as any of his strawman opponents.) The ghost of Hari Seldon appears to declare that the chosen protagonist was in facto correct, making everyone else look dumb…by authorial fiat. Also, there are exactly two women in all of the Empire and Foundation. One is a servant who does not speak but is utterly charmed by a fancy necklace. The other is a shrill, shrewish space princess devoid of redeeming qualities who is convinced to shut up by a fancy necklace. Which was of course repossessed from the poor servant after she was given the immense favor of wearing it for five minutes.
#15. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. 3.5. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Elizabeth and Darcy will pretty much always be charming. Grahame-Smith’s zombie additions are generally rather amusing, although sometimes his desire to make Austen’s characters uncharacteristically lewd for comic effect is disconcerting. Obviously, don’t read this unless you’re already familiar with the original.
#16. Angel’s Blood by Nalini Singh. 2.5. Paranormal romances are pretty often populated by mouthy badass female warriors and broody overpowered male supernatural creatures. This one, though…the leads were just too…too. Elena is so reckless and disrespectful (to everyone) that I never warmed up to her. And Raphael is so “my concerns are so above mere mortals that morals don’t apply to me” that I couldn’t find the idea of him as a romantic lead remotely appealing. And the ending is…Twilight-esque.
#17. The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. Another re-read. Caz’s broken courtier is so incredibly endearing—this is the way to actually do the “character is beloved by good guys, hated by bad guys, chosen by the gods” trope without it being exasperating. Caz pays for every inch of his victory, without ever dragging into misery porn.
#18. Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold. 5. Re-read. Miles on another madcap romp. This one involves clones.
#19. Perfect 10 by L. Philips. 3. Gay boy finds himself with an embarrassment of riches in terms of potential boyfriends—who will he chose? I’ll hand it to Philips—Sam makes some really aggravatingly boneheaded decisions, but they’re believable for a 17 year old, and he does end up paying for them. I briefly thought he was going to end up with the wrong guy, and was very frustrated, but I shouldn’t have doubted. Fun but probably forgettable.
