2017 roundup: Books
I have read many books this year. Shoutouts to: (may contain mild spoilers!)
Heavy - Derek Des Anges
Finished just before Christmas. I wrote a long rambling review on Amazon UK about some parts of this, and I would really like to see what other people who spend more time writing book reviews thought of it. I spent a long time thinking about it afterwards.
The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley
A bit later than planned as I was sure I'd pre-ordered it and then found I hadn't, or possibly it was cancelled at some point. Anyway, read it in November. It didn't really give me a pause and think section, because Zan is so focused on slogging onwards. (This is a thing with Zan in these books, Nyx in the Bel Dame Apocrypha books and with various characters in Hurley's Worldbreaker Saga books - they all have a lot of dogged moving onwards and not necessarily stopping to think about things that much. Zan has reasons for that because of how much she doesn't know, but given she doesn't know, she also doesn't spend too much time asking questions or really trying to find out). It's not a bad thing, but it becomes noticeable! Nyx's ideas of strategy are mostly to point a gun at things and kick them in the head. (I also follow Hurley on Patreon, so there're a lot of short stories I've read by her too - I do really like her stuff and she's noticeably got better at plotting since the first couple of Bel Dame books: she always had the worldbuilding and the banter).
Sarah Gailey - River of Teeth
I enjoyed the characters and the setting, and went straight and bought the next one, but was a bit let down by the caper, which seemed particularly badly-planned. Surprise, you have ended up in proximity to the bad guy you were expecting, and he proceeds to do exactly what he's known for, and there was no sneaky plan on Houndstooth's part for what to do about him. The hippos are great.
Yoon Ha Lee - Machineries of Empire series (Ninefox Gambit etc)
Awesome. In contrast, these are full of characters who are all sneaky plans all the time. The calendrical warfare is fascinating. Also loved Yoon Ha Lee's short story collection Conservation of Shadows.
Becky Chambers - Wayfarers series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet etc)
I'd got this for Owain's sister last Christmas on recommendation without actually reading it - got it for myself this year and straight away got the second. They are quite fun, good characters and interactions. (Some of the bits about paying attention to other species' ways of communicating reminded me of Janet Kagan's books too). I note some people were complaining in reviews about book 2 not being a straightforward continuation of book 1 and instead following other characters - ahahahaha. I really liked that. Book 2 had heavier stuff in Pepper's sections - the contrast with Lovelace learning how to be a person in the same ways worked well.
Janet Kagan - Mirabile, Hellspark, The Collected Kagan short stories
Out in ebook, and I love them. They're just joyful, especially Mirabile. There is a lot in Hellspark about communication, different cultural values, manners and body language, and what happens when they clash. I wanted to buy everyone paper copies of these for Christmas, but was foiled in that Uhura's Song is the only one you can find easily second-hand (in the UK - there wasn't time to get Hellspark shipped from the US). They mostly feel like they could have been written just now (possibly bar the joyfulness!) - Hellspark was 1988, revised 1998. Mirabile is stories written 1989-91.
N.K. Jemisin - Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season etc)
(Not all this year). Jemisin is on my 'buy everything she writes' list after the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which was so not what I was expecting from the vague notions of it I had picked up. I love the way she does narration, and the way that my niggling about how it was different in the Fifth Season led me to working out what was going on.
I have also been trying to keep up with everything Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant puts out, which is harder than it sounds! (Damnit, UK eBook publisher, bring out the rest of Incryptid! I am several books behind now because you just stopped). I'm loving the Wayward Children books. I reread all the October Daye books either before or after Once Broken Faith (book 10) to remind myself of exactly what the Luidaeg has said to her over time. I also follow McGuire's Patreon, and I do love the short stories she does that slot into the past/outside the bounds of a novel as well as her completely original short stories (of which there are also a great many!)
Frances Hardinge! I started reading her books at the end of last year, and I love them. She's like Diana Wynne Jones in many ways, and her books are so different from each other, and also just beautifully written. I have a pile more on my Kindle to look forward to.
Nnedi Okorafor - Binti novellas, The Book of Phoenix, Lagoon, Kabu Kabu
Her new stuff is also on my buy straight away list. I found reading Lagoon and Kabu Kabu to be really different in feel from the newer stuff, which I'd read first. I think she mentions at some point switching to writing for an SF audience, and it is very different. Kabu Kabu and Lagoon are far more folklore feeling, and folklore from somewhere I'm not familiar with - they are set in Nigeria. They're difficult and unpleasant in places, and I was left going 'But WHY did that character do that?'. I liked and found the last one or two stories in Kabu Kabu much easier than the earlier ones. (What was also interesting was how much the Book of Phoenix must have changed from the first telling of those stories, because I'm pretty sure the main character was essentially the same one and it contained some of the same aspects, but it was far more familiar to read and Phoenix was more understandable to me). It's a huge change of mode, and I think it's unusual to find that so obviously in an author (at least, I don't recall being struck by it so much). It also makes it stick out that there's definitely a way of writing that I'm far more familiar with than some possible others, and I don't often hit things that really diverge from that.
One thing I did not like much was Caitlin R. Kiernan's Agents of Dreamland, at least to start with. It has some heavily Moorcock-esque New Weird chapters near the start, which I was not expecting at all. (I stopped and went, 'What book was this again?' as I'd forgotten what I was reading). I think I've somewhat lost patience for that - I did love some of Moorcock's, a long way back now. It's Cthulhu Mythos, which was easier to pick up on exactly what parts as I'd also read The Gods of HP Lovecraft short stories recently (which I think was done pretty well - there's a typical chapter on that particular one's normal aspects, and a companion story that twists that somewhat), having not read much of the non-Lovecraft bits of the Mythos. (The Mythos also unexpectedly showed up in the third Limbus anthology, which I didn't like so much - I much preferred the non-Mythos stories in that). I'd got Agents of Dreamland because I've heard people really liking Kiernan's writing: in this case, eh. I think I've probably read some short stories by her, but don't remember.
I am continuing to enjoy Bujold's Penric & Desdemona short stories - they are a delightful pair, Nikys is fantastic, and I really, really love the way Bujold puts women in who have already experienced plenty in their lives *before* the story we're reading begins.
*looks up at screed* That should do.
Heavy - Derek Des Anges
Finished just before Christmas. I wrote a long rambling review on Amazon UK about some parts of this, and I would really like to see what other people who spend more time writing book reviews thought of it. I spent a long time thinking about it afterwards.
The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley
A bit later than planned as I was sure I'd pre-ordered it and then found I hadn't, or possibly it was cancelled at some point. Anyway, read it in November. It didn't really give me a pause and think section, because Zan is so focused on slogging onwards. (This is a thing with Zan in these books, Nyx in the Bel Dame Apocrypha books and with various characters in Hurley's Worldbreaker Saga books - they all have a lot of dogged moving onwards and not necessarily stopping to think about things that much. Zan has reasons for that because of how much she doesn't know, but given she doesn't know, she also doesn't spend too much time asking questions or really trying to find out). It's not a bad thing, but it becomes noticeable! Nyx's ideas of strategy are mostly to point a gun at things and kick them in the head. (I also follow Hurley on Patreon, so there're a lot of short stories I've read by her too - I do really like her stuff and she's noticeably got better at plotting since the first couple of Bel Dame books: she always had the worldbuilding and the banter).
Sarah Gailey - River of Teeth
I enjoyed the characters and the setting, and went straight and bought the next one, but was a bit let down by the caper, which seemed particularly badly-planned. Surprise, you have ended up in proximity to the bad guy you were expecting, and he proceeds to do exactly what he's known for, and there was no sneaky plan on Houndstooth's part for what to do about him. The hippos are great.
Yoon Ha Lee - Machineries of Empire series (Ninefox Gambit etc)
Awesome. In contrast, these are full of characters who are all sneaky plans all the time. The calendrical warfare is fascinating. Also loved Yoon Ha Lee's short story collection Conservation of Shadows.
Becky Chambers - Wayfarers series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet etc)
I'd got this for Owain's sister last Christmas on recommendation without actually reading it - got it for myself this year and straight away got the second. They are quite fun, good characters and interactions. (Some of the bits about paying attention to other species' ways of communicating reminded me of Janet Kagan's books too). I note some people were complaining in reviews about book 2 not being a straightforward continuation of book 1 and instead following other characters - ahahahaha. I really liked that. Book 2 had heavier stuff in Pepper's sections - the contrast with Lovelace learning how to be a person in the same ways worked well.
Janet Kagan - Mirabile, Hellspark, The Collected Kagan short stories
Out in ebook, and I love them. They're just joyful, especially Mirabile. There is a lot in Hellspark about communication, different cultural values, manners and body language, and what happens when they clash. I wanted to buy everyone paper copies of these for Christmas, but was foiled in that Uhura's Song is the only one you can find easily second-hand (in the UK - there wasn't time to get Hellspark shipped from the US). They mostly feel like they could have been written just now (possibly bar the joyfulness!) - Hellspark was 1988, revised 1998. Mirabile is stories written 1989-91.
N.K. Jemisin - Broken Earth Trilogy (The Fifth Season etc)
(Not all this year). Jemisin is on my 'buy everything she writes' list after the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which was so not what I was expecting from the vague notions of it I had picked up. I love the way she does narration, and the way that my niggling about how it was different in the Fifth Season led me to working out what was going on.
I have also been trying to keep up with everything Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant puts out, which is harder than it sounds! (Damnit, UK eBook publisher, bring out the rest of Incryptid! I am several books behind now because you just stopped). I'm loving the Wayward Children books. I reread all the October Daye books either before or after Once Broken Faith (book 10) to remind myself of exactly what the Luidaeg has said to her over time. I also follow McGuire's Patreon, and I do love the short stories she does that slot into the past/outside the bounds of a novel as well as her completely original short stories (of which there are also a great many!)
Frances Hardinge! I started reading her books at the end of last year, and I love them. She's like Diana Wynne Jones in many ways, and her books are so different from each other, and also just beautifully written. I have a pile more on my Kindle to look forward to.
Nnedi Okorafor - Binti novellas, The Book of Phoenix, Lagoon, Kabu Kabu
Her new stuff is also on my buy straight away list. I found reading Lagoon and Kabu Kabu to be really different in feel from the newer stuff, which I'd read first. I think she mentions at some point switching to writing for an SF audience, and it is very different. Kabu Kabu and Lagoon are far more folklore feeling, and folklore from somewhere I'm not familiar with - they are set in Nigeria. They're difficult and unpleasant in places, and I was left going 'But WHY did that character do that?'. I liked and found the last one or two stories in Kabu Kabu much easier than the earlier ones. (What was also interesting was how much the Book of Phoenix must have changed from the first telling of those stories, because I'm pretty sure the main character was essentially the same one and it contained some of the same aspects, but it was far more familiar to read and Phoenix was more understandable to me). It's a huge change of mode, and I think it's unusual to find that so obviously in an author (at least, I don't recall being struck by it so much). It also makes it stick out that there's definitely a way of writing that I'm far more familiar with than some possible others, and I don't often hit things that really diverge from that.
One thing I did not like much was Caitlin R. Kiernan's Agents of Dreamland, at least to start with. It has some heavily Moorcock-esque New Weird chapters near the start, which I was not expecting at all. (I stopped and went, 'What book was this again?' as I'd forgotten what I was reading). I think I've somewhat lost patience for that - I did love some of Moorcock's, a long way back now. It's Cthulhu Mythos, which was easier to pick up on exactly what parts as I'd also read The Gods of HP Lovecraft short stories recently (which I think was done pretty well - there's a typical chapter on that particular one's normal aspects, and a companion story that twists that somewhat), having not read much of the non-Lovecraft bits of the Mythos. (The Mythos also unexpectedly showed up in the third Limbus anthology, which I didn't like so much - I much preferred the non-Mythos stories in that). I'd got Agents of Dreamland because I've heard people really liking Kiernan's writing: in this case, eh. I think I've probably read some short stories by her, but don't remember.
I am continuing to enjoy Bujold's Penric & Desdemona short stories - they are a delightful pair, Nikys is fantastic, and I really, really love the way Bujold puts women in who have already experienced plenty in their lives *before* the story we're reading begins.
*looks up at screed* That should do.