All told, I read 70 novels and novellas by 53 different authors in 2020, plus 20-odd pieces of short fiction (I’m going to try to actually keep track in 2021, but it’s a little late for 2020). Overall, I rated 15 books by 11 different authors at 17 or higher on my 20-point scale and… Continue reading Five-Star Reads of 2020
As part of my branching out in my sci-fi and fantasy reading, I’m reading a bit more YA than I used to. Elatsoe (eh-lat-so-ay) by Darcie Little Badger is a pretty new offering, but I’d already seen a couple glowing reviews, it’s been a while since I read a book with a Native main character,… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger
Full disclosure: nautical stories are not usually my thing, and this colors my review. But I’ve read some really good books that might not have grabbed me based on the blurb, and The Bone Ships (and its sequel, released last month) had been getting such rave reviews that I thought R.J. Barker’s offering may be… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Bone Ships by R.J. Barker
Before I started this blog, the vast majority of my book discussion came on Reddit. And r/Fantasy has really been a wonderful place for book discussion and recommendations, but like many such communities, it always has to fight feedback loops. A handful of hyper-popular dudes get recommended to new readers, new readers focus their reading… Continue reading Keeping Account: What I Recommended in 2020
I know it’s traditional to close December with a post about the best books you read this year, and I will recap my five-star reads sometime next week, but I thought I’d start with something a little bit different. These books weren’t all on my five-star list, but they all had a special element that… Continue reading 2020 Superlatives
The Murderbot Diaries don’t need much introduction, and it’s no accident that it’s the only ongoing series where I’ve caught up on new releases. Martha Wells has been writing speculative fiction with strong characters for years (my introduction to her work came in The Books of the Raksura, which I would also recommend), but she’s… Continue reading Sci-fi Series Review: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
The Origin of Birds in the Footprints of Writing is certainly not my standard fare, but I picked it up as a change of pace between heavier fantasy epics, and it served the purpose quite well. Raymond St. Elmo is heavily influenced by magical realism, which makes it a little more difficult for me to… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Origin of Birds in the Footprints of Writing by Raymond St. Elmo
Fantasy Regency novels were so far off my radar that I had to Google “Regency novel” (basically, a novel set in early 1800s England with a lot of concern about social standing), but I knew about Krista D. Ball from some excellent work on social media addressing the gender imbalance in genre publishing and fandom… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: A Magical Inheritance by Krista D. Ball
Code of the Communer only had four ratings on Goodreads when I got to it, but it was a semifinalist in this year’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, and a couple of the folks at The Fantasy Hive gave absolutely glowing reviews before eventually naming it the runner-up of their batch. So I gave Kai Greenwood’s debut… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Code of the Communer by Kai Greenwood
I’d heard enough glowing reviews—not to mention the Locus Award win and Nebula and Hugo nominations—to have pretty high expectations for Ninefox Gambit, and it certainly lived up to them. Yoon Ha Lee’s debut space fantasy delivers some fascinating psychological warfare on both a grand and a personal scale, interspersed with moments of levity to… Continue reading Sci-fi/Fantasy Novel Review: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
