[polishgenius]

I didn't read a lot of books by my standard this year- I finished 31, which is pretty rubbish especially when you consider I was on 10 by the end of February - but it was a pretty good one nonetheless. No books that blew my mind or totally obssessed me the way a Victoria Goddard or Ada Palmer had in previous years, but a lot of good stuff and some solid new series and authors to be getting on with it.


Best book I read all year: it's not always that the best book I read in a year came out that year, but this year it was probably Georgia Summers' The City of Stardust, so this year it did. It managed the rather impossible trick of being a whimsical, Valente/Morgenstein/that guy we don't talk about anymore-esque tale of magic, yearning, and mystical realms, and a page-turning espionage thriller. Really, really good.

Runner up: The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman is a post-Arthur Arthurian tale which does a lot and will probably stick with me for a while. Great balance of fable, legend, genuine political and cultural commentary, charm, character... don't be put off if you didn't enjoy the Magicians trilogy, it's not at all similar, far less acerbic. You do have to enjoy a diversion, though.

Best space thing: you can tell there was a high standard because I read books by both James SA Corey and Ann Leckie this year but the winner is neither: instead, The Red Scholar's Wake, by Alliette de Bodard, takes it. It's a piratey space adventure and a romance between a woman and her ship (who is also a woman, more or less), and it's rolicking good stuff.


Best book about mysterious events happening on a large, luxuriously outfitted, but isolated vehicle: if I had a Euro for every book that fit this category this year, I'd have two euros, but it's weird that it happened twice. I'm not going to pick an actual favourite, because both Voyage of the Damned by Frances White- a delightfully witty, plotty, twisty murder-mystery about magical heirs being murdered on their big yacht- and The Cautios Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks - imagine a journey on the Trans-Siberian express but Siberia is Area X from Vandermeer's novels and you're a good portion of the way there- are excellent.


Best new series: I'ma give another joint award here, between Elijah Kinch Spector's Kalyna books- of which two are out, I am cheating in that the first one came out last year but I read it in January so it sneaks in - and Rogba Payne's Dance of Shadows, which is the first book in an as-yet-unnamed series but I'm all in.


Best non-SFF book: trying to up my non-SFF reading, not doing that well, but I have become enamoured by the writing of James McBride- his brand of rambling yet insightful community tale really appeals to me, and Heaven and Earth Grocery Store hit the spot.


Best comic: the Warworld Saga, the Superman-vs-Mogul story by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, was superb, in my view an all-timer Superman story. The kind of big epic I love when Superman writers get it down, and he did here.