[Chance]

So 2022, was a good year of very uneven reading some weeks nothing others a book each other day or so. A lot of quality reads spread out over the year and I think I'll hit 100 or 101 before its over so better than I expect these days. Thought a few of them like Will Wights Cradle series, Craig Alansons Expeditionary Force and even Craig Schaefer's interconnected series weren't exactly hard reads, with plenty of fairly short books, still I enjoyed them and a few of those books are among the very good below.

Best book: In the Shadow of Lightning. Brian McClellan did a fun series with the powder mages but this is on an entirely different level.

Most entertaining Book: Three Axes Falls.

New author for me: Gunmetal Gods, while I bounced hard of the sequel the first time I read it I will attempt it again, it and In the Shadow of the Lightning where both brilliant fantasy with a heavy dose of historical background which I just love.

Best urban fantasy: Easily Craig Schaefer's entire crop of books the Daniel Faust ones are pure fun most of the time for those who enjoy their protagonists as deeply flawed and amoral, the Wisdom's Grave crossover books are totally great, not entirely sold on Harmony Black but its pretty much required reading for the other two.

The rest of the very good books: Artifact Space, Blackflame, Wintersteel, A Plain Dealing Villain, The Castle Doctrine, Neon Boneyard, Detonation Boulevard, Bring the Fire, The Golden Enclaves, Among our Weapons, Kingdom of Death, Quantum of Nightmares, Ceephay Queen.

Worst book of the year?: Not really, there where some slightly boring ones when I went on a non-sf/fantasy binge early in the year but bad, no not this year or at least not any of the books I've finished.

Whats up for next year then...well the pile of books to read is thick and I'm been itching for a Malazan re-read it is an awful long time since I did one last and it might get me in the mood for Eriksons current crop of books which I've not yet got through.

This post has been edited by Chance: 27 December 2022 - 01:21 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

I only read around 20 non-comic books this year. But my favorite was easily Gemma Files' EXPERIMENTAL FILM, a gripping horror tale that makes its supernatural elements really hit by grounding them in a lot of details of actual film history and daily life mundanity. Files' work became a must-read, which is why I'm in the currently in the middle of a trilogy omnibus of hers that I'll likely finish mid-Jan...

Other books I really liked, in no particular order:

• I read the second half of Tanith Lee's "Secret Books of Venus" this year (after reading the first two books last year) and the finale, VENUS PRESERVED, was such an unexpectedly over-the-top conclusion that I couldn't help but love it. A recommended series.
  
  
• Becky Chambers' THE GALAXY, AND THE GROUND WITHIN (fourth book of the Wayfarers series) is perhaps the gentlest book I've read in a long time, about a bunch of different aliens stranded together during a catastrophe, all trying their hardest to be nice to each other. Refreshing and hopeful. (Chambers' sci-fi novella TO BE TAUGHT, IF FORTUNATE was equally hopeful, but with a bit more danger and anxiety.)
  
  
• Elizabeth Hand's WYLDING HALL is an "oral history" about a fictional band (reminded me a bit of Daisy Jones and the Six) who record an album in an abandoned mansion, in a slow-burn not-quite-horror tale whose final haunting images might still just keep you from sleeping.
  
  
• Sarah Gailey's THE ECHO WIFE is a reflection on trauma in the form of an absolute roller coaster ride of clones and revenge. There may be some lapses in logic, but if you're like me you'll turning the pages too fast to care. And her excellent MAGIC FOR LIARS takes what could be a ho-hum murder mystery at magic school and elevates it to something more mature.
  
  
• And finally, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's THE BEAUTIFUL ONES, a charmingly old-fashioned story about a courtship, with just tiny bit of "magic" sprinkled in.

[worry]

I think I finished for the year, in terms of books I'll complete. I read [Edit] 26 books, including graphic novels, but they were mostly fatties (like those giant The Sandman Vol I & II).

My favorites:

• Wayfarers 2-4 by Becky Chambers -- Book 1 was end of last year, loved all 4 -- gotta agree with Salt Man about that final one, it's something quite special.
• Crimson Empire trilogy by Alex Marshall -- Extremely my jam, from plot to character to narrative style to sense of humor.
• The Sandman by Neil Gaiman -- What I gather is the original run, #1-75 plus a few contemporary straggler issues. You don't need me to tell you about it.
• The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere. by James Spooner -- A graphic novel memoir set largely in my small speck on the globe. The author's about half a decade older than me, and faced the racism endemic here in ways I never had to, but there was a lot to relate to either personally or as an observer and I read this thing in a day.
• A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney (nonfiction) -- He's a very funny man, but this one's a heartbreaker. Focused on the diagnosis, care, and eventual death of his young son a few years ago, plus a few contemporaneous tragedies I wasn't aware of. It's very very very good, and still laugh out loud funny in spots, but drenched in grief from top to bottom so just be warned.

The worst (I think I mentioned both already in the Currently Reading thread, so will keep it brief):

• The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri -- You know with unlikable/thorny characters you can kinda tell that it's a narrative choice (e.g. The Magicians trilogy)? Some still don't like it, but I can absolutely hang with that. Liked The Magicians books quite a bit, and the show even more so. Here though, I genuinely could not tell if it was a choice or if this author just doesn't realize how gross his protagonists are, and I bounced off them real hard. Also, and this wouldn't necessarily be a sin otherwise, but in this case it is because the book had little else to offer and it felt like one more glaring flaw: this guy is sold as the "Italian Neil Gaiman" but there's hardly any fantasy elements present, such that I would be hard pressed to call this even magical realism for like 97% of the book. This thing is dull on top of being obnoxious.
• Kill Creek by Scott Thomas -- Not as offensively bad as the other, just a regular disappointment.

This post has been edited by worry: 31 December 2022 - 03:37 AM

[worry]

I guess I didn't keep it brief for that one I hated, sorry.

[Abyss]

champ, on 24 December 2022 - 11:07 PM, said:

...

Whatever happened to Bakker, not heard him mentioned in years?!
...

If my sources are correct (yes I have sources) his publisher low budgeted the marketing on the last two books in the second series then did not buy the third series. I don't know whether they dropped him completely. He made some noise about crowdfunding it then went quiet.

[Tattersail_]

Not sure where to put this but I just watched a "booktubers" top 20 list of fantasy reads. It gave me the thought of what our community would rank as the top 20. Some on the list I've not read but there are a lot of omissions in my opinion.

Thanks to you guys I picked up A Chorus of Dragons and have binge read all the books almost as they are that good.

Recency bias aside it'd be good if everyone submitted their top 10 to Abyss or someone who'd use the same formatting as the below video.

Have a watch
Top 20 fantasy list

[worry]

Lol I was just watching that last night at bedtime but fell asleep pretty soon in, so I gotta try again. I don't follow that many booktubers so I guess this one's successfully riding the algorithm!

[Abyss]

Tattersail_, on 12 January 2023 - 11:18 AM, said:

... it'd be good if everyone submitted their top 10 to Abyss or someone who'd use the same formatting as the below video.

Have a watch
Top 20 fantasy list

Cute idea, way too complicated. Just the distinctions between complete and incomplete and crossover series' gave me a yawnache.

[Tiste Simeon]

Abyss, on 13 January 2023 - 05:37 AM, said:

Tattersail_, on 12 January 2023 - 11:18 AM, said:

... it'd be good if everyone submitted their top 10 to Abyss or someone who'd use the same formatting as the below video.

Have a watch
Top 20 fantasy list

Cute idea, way too complicated. Just the distinctions between complete and incomplete and crossover series' gave me a yawnache.

Plus I assume you already have the data using your patented BrainzSucker 3000 machine?

[Tattersail_]

I'm mainly curious as to the amount read by this forum. I hardly agreed with the majority on the list. Dresden didn't even make top 20.

[Chance]

Tattersail_, on 13 January 2023 - 11:26 AM, said:

I'm mainly curious as to the amount read by this forum. I hardly agreed with the majority on the list. Dresden didn't even make top 20.

Its a good list for a collection of what people engaged in current fantasy likes, but it is useless as a top list of fantasy. I would probably only agree to less then half of the ones named and miss some big names like Kay, Zelazny or Cook.

A couple of the books I like like the Gentleman's Bastards (at least the first book) and Name of the Wind shouldn't be in any list simply by their incomplete and likely remaining so status and very much questionable 2nd/3rd books.

A couple of the books seem utterly strange such as The Poppy War, The Dandelion Dynasty and Jade City my expectation is that people who like one of these love the other two, skewing data by selecting people.

At the same time I really got an itch for making another go at The Faithful and the Fallen which I dropped a lot of years ago and that self published guy in 20th place make me curious

[Macros]

Is there a list without having to watch the video?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Macros, on 13 January 2023 - 06:50 PM, said:

Is there a list without having to watch the video?

19
Ash and Sand (Richard Nell, self-published)
Dandelion Dynasty
A Wizard of Earthsea

17
Harry Potteransphobia
Name of the Dragoncow

16 The Books of Babel
The Broken Earth

14 Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, and Oxford Comma

13 The Green Bone Saga

11 The Poppy War
Gentlemen Bastard

10 The Greatcoats

9 Discworld

8 Malazan

7 The Realm of the Elderlings

6 ASoIaF
First Law

4 The Wheel of Yawn

3 The Banished Lands

2 Middle Earth

1 Cosmere (Blanderson)

Well the top four have my faith in humanity un... no actually it just managed to go down even further.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

To be fair I don't remember whether I've read anything by Gwynne (The Banished Lands)---I thought I listened to a novella on Audible but I don't see anything there now. So I decided to glance at his Goodreads quotes. Pretty bland and generic, except for one that caught my eye:

'They were fearsome pack hunters, bred by the giant clams during the War of Treasures.'

Unfortunately I misread it, and it actually says 'clans'... oh well. For a moment I was imagining intelligent giant clams breeding people (? or 'hunters' anyway)....

[polishgenius]

To be fair, it's basically impossible to make a list of 20-best-fantasy and be anything even close to comprehensive. I don't think that one's particularly surprising- Gwynne being up there is a bit, but it's always been the case that this kind of forum's favourite topics are only tangenially related to what actually sells.


For Poppy War and Dandelion Dynasty, even though I thought Poppy War was good-not-great and didn't get twenty pages into Dandelion Dynasty, I think it is fair to say they marked a big change in the fantasy market, or at least how publishers understand the fantasy market. Poppy War in particular. They're obviously hardly the first Asian-based fantasy books, but before those it was rare to see books/series in that vein actually written with writers from Asia or of Asian background on the shelves, and now if you walk into the fantasy section of the average bookshop there's plenty, front-and-center of the displays. Books by authors like Axie Oh and Sue Lynn Tan. And Poppy War and Kuang's other books, in particular, taking up loads of space.


They're a big deal, basically.

[Macros]

Azath Vitr (D, on 13 January 2023 - 07:22 PM, said:

Macros, on 13 January 2023 - 06:50 PM, said:

Is there a list without having to watch the video?

19
Ash and Sand (Richard Nell, self-published)
Dandelion Dynasty
A Wizard of Earthsea

17
Harry Potteransphobia
Name of the Dragoncow

16 The Books of Babel
The Broken Earth

14 Memory, Sorrow, Thorn, and Oxford Comma

13 The Green Bone Saga

11 The Poppy War
Gentlemen Bastard

10 The Greatcoats

9 Discworld

8 Malazan

7 The Realm of the Elderlings

6 ASoIaF
First Law

4 The Wheel of Yawn

3 The Banished Lands

2 Middle Earth

1 Cosmere (Blanderson)

Well the top four have my faith in humanity un... no actually it just managed to go down even further.

That's a fairly underwhelming list.

[Abyss]

2023 Bestestiest Reads...

GO

[JPK]

Abyss, on 21 December 2023 - 03:32 AM, said:

2023 Bestestiest Reads...

GO

Well, what were they then? Trying to keep us in suspense?

[amphibian]

The Blacktongue Thief, almost all of Lightbringer by Pierce Brown, The Book That Wouldn't Burn, and I can't quite put it on a best of list, yet I really enjoyed Mike Carey writing another Felix Castor story (The Ghost in Bone).

I didn't read any Erikson this year and promise to get to the missing ones next year.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Jacquelyn Hagen's Riverfall Chronicles (The Wickwire Watch, The Spider Key, and The Blue Flames). I found out about this series from the SPFBO. It is really, really enjoyable.

Do not sleep on this series!