Dear friends! It’s Friday! This time of year is very birthday-laden in my family, as my brother, sister, and husband all celebrate theirs within about a week of each other, so I’m doing a bit of running around. This is also the beginning of what gets called “Award Season” in SFF; I just got an email informing me there’s just under a month left to nominate works for the Nebula Awards, which close about a month before the nomination period for the Hugo awards, which close about a month before the Locus Awards, and so on.
So, since that’s on my mind, a two-part question for you:
1) what’s ONE thing published last year you’re looking forward to reading but haven’t yet?
2) What’s ONE thing published last year you’d like to get someone else to read?
(No counting This Is How You Lose the Time War for either!)
1) Very much looking forward to reading "Air Logic" by Laurie Marks (which means I also get to read the other Logics this year! One of those things where I have not had the chance to do so, or it's been on the pile, or ... I must not be the only one who has sheepish guilt for Books Not Yet Read, But Must Be Read); and 2), I think I'd like to get more of my friends to read Sarah Gailey's "Magic for Liars", it is just so damn slick, and then I want to have a LARP set in that world. [And I've already bought HYLtTW for everyone I know worth buying books for, nearly...]
I was really excited to read A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay. The horse race in the city state of Bischio was a tour-de-force, and I could spend all day reading about the rivalry between the two mercenary captains, Teobaldo Monticola and Folco Cino. I'd highly recommend it, and the research books he mentions in the afterword also look fascinating if you love Renaissance Italian history.
I am looking forward to reading I Hope you Get this Message by Farah Naz Rishi, an Odyssey classmate of mine. It's about a bunch of teenagers who have to get a message out to aliens to stop the end of the world. Should be an entertaining read and a change of pace!
1) Gideon the Ninth by Tasmin Muir. It's sitting on top of my TBR, all black-edged and gorgeous and whispering in a dark chorus of torment every time I walk by.
2) Quichotte by Salman Rushdie. It's a fantastic romp that homages Don Quixote and draws from and comments on the opioid crisis, racism in America, first- and second-generation migrant life in America from an Indian perspective, and some classic SFF (Clarke in particular). I couldn't put it down, and I was lucky enough to attend a phenomenal craft talk by Rushdie and ask a question about the book.
1) I really need to read Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow. I still have the ARC copies on my nightstand! Shameful, really. There were so many good books published in 2019.
2) I’ve suggested or outright given so many people The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
For the thing I'm most looking forward to reading, think it has to be a tie between Middlegame by Seanan McGuire and the other person who shouted out Jade city/War.
And ohhhh, what a struggle, to pick just one thing published last year. But I think I'd have to go with The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling. Claustrophobic and harrowing, set around a treacherous cave expedition on a distant planet. A protagonist who lied about experience to get in, with only the voice of a lone guide on the surface to keep her company in the dark. It's about two deeply broken women, slowly, oh so slowly, reaching out a hand to one another and taking the first tiny steps towards redemption through horrors neither of them expected. SO atmospheric, psychologically both tense and somehow also...cathartic as we watch them begin to be vulnerable with each other. Some of the most inventive world-building I've ever seen--I can't believe! this's Starling's debut. And that all this is centered around a growing romance with queer women just gives me such astounding joy.
It reminds me of that podcast you did, with Kameron Hurley about Traitor Baru when it first came out. You coined the phrase representation 202, for talking about the need to let marginalized characters expand and be as flawed and complicated as their non-marginalized counterparts. And this felt, in so many ways, like all those wishes made manifest in a book; I loved it for many of the same reasons I anticipate adoring Gideon by Muir and that deeply complex relationship.
Though I'm also screaming about Vivian Shaw's Greta Helsing trilogy, whose capstone, Grave Importance, came out last year. (Have you read that trilogy yet, Amal? I'd suspect yes, since you love urban fantasy like Borderline and The Hollows, and adoring Arkady Martine's work would bring you into proximity to Vivian's. But if not, OMG they're so good! multi-pov, all about creating a liminal space where the supernatural and mundane can meet and build bridges; brimful of kindness and empathy, ringing clarion-bright with the belief that if given chances, people will ultimately show their best colors and reach for the common good, without glossing over for an instant that there're always people willing and ready to undermine the best of society. They're such a brilliant, multipov--I was gonna say tapestry, but it's more like symphony, with everyone's storyline merging to form this astonishing whole.) And gaaah, thinking of Arkady, I also desperately wanna read Memory this year, too.
Fonda Lee's Jade War and Harry Connolly's One Man are both high on my to-read list, but the latest Graydon Saunders book in the Commonweal series *just* hit Google Play Books and that is displacing other things, because I am in the very weird niche market that likes those books.
Among the various books I gave out to people for Yule last year were _This Is How You Lose the Time War_, Sam Sykes’ _Seven Blades in Black_, Arkady Martine’s _A Memory Called Empire_, Max Gladstone’s _Empress of Forever_, Malka Older’s _Ninth Step Station_, Paul Krueger’s _Steel Crow Saga_, and Karl Schroeder’s _Stealing Worlds_.
I'm really looking forward to reading The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Unfortunately, half the other library members in my city seem to feel the same way — I'm about sixth in the waiting list for a library hold, and have been on the hold list since October last year!
Of all the books published last year, I wish people would read A Memory Called Empire the most, mainly so I can have more people with whom to discuss it!
I’ve read all of these but it’s my first time commenting!
1) I preordered & subsequently bought Angel Mage by Garth Nix, but still haven’t managed to read it! Soon I’m sure. I also need to finish reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
2) Americana, a graphic memoir by Luke Healy about his relationship with America (he is Irish) and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, is kind of my perfect book. Autobiographical comics are maybe my favorite genre (?), and this one is executed in a unique way that I loved. Anyone who wants to understand my idiosyncratic taste in books, or likes autobio comics, should read it.
1) _Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy_ by Matt Stoller. Matt’s blog is ... spectacular. Sitting in the queue, waiting for non-fiction reading space to open up. (But non-fiction, so maybe doesn’t count? If not, A Memory Called Empire gets the nod. ;-)
1 - i really badly need to get around to Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I've had it since it came out and it keeps hovering near the top but not quite AT the top of my TBR, augh
2 - probably either The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie or A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, given your constraints. Both utterly utterly fantastic.
1) Looking forward to reading: "The Bone Ships" by RJ Barker looks really good. I'm a sucker for nautical fantasy worlds--lots of islands, much mucking about in boats.
2) Like to get someone else to read: "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham", by, uh, TJ Radcliffe. :-) A fantasy in verse (mostly anapestic tetrameter) based on the well-known Arthurian poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" but by no means a translation of it (I'm a fan of Marie Borroff's translation for anyone who wants the original, and Simon Armitage's more recent translation has a fluency that is quite beautiful.)
1 - Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone. I've read all his other stuff, I got it out of the library once and didn't get around to it, I need to just get there some time.
2 - The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. I haven't been able to find anyone else I know who's read it, and it's such an interesting book. I hope to get it into our book club once it's around in paperback later this year.
1) Hmm. Probably REVERIE by Ryan La Sala. I’ve been meaning to get to it and have heard so many good things about it, but just haven’t gotten to it yet!
2) Ugh, there were so many good books that came out last year! I think the book that I’ve shoved at people the most, though, was RED WHITE & ROYAL BLUE by Casey McQuiston. These last few years have been one horror story in the news after another, so that book in particular was a much needed escape to just laugh and enjoy.
A Memory Called Empire is next to my bed for reading!
1- City of Girls by Liz Gilbert. Love her and will read everything she writes.
2- The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo—it was an engrossing read with a satisfying end.
1) Very much looking forward to reading "Air Logic" by Laurie Marks (which means I also get to read the other Logics this year! One of those things where I have not had the chance to do so, or it's been on the pile, or ... I must not be the only one who has sheepish guilt for Books Not Yet Read, But Must Be Read); and 2), I think I'd like to get more of my friends to read Sarah Gailey's "Magic for Liars", it is just so damn slick, and then I want to have a LARP set in that world. [And I've already bought HYLtTW for everyone I know worth buying books for, nearly...]
I was really excited to read A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay. The horse race in the city state of Bischio was a tour-de-force, and I could spend all day reading about the rivalry between the two mercenary captains, Teobaldo Monticola and Folco Cino. I'd highly recommend it, and the research books he mentions in the afterword also look fascinating if you love Renaissance Italian history.
I am looking forward to reading I Hope you Get this Message by Farah Naz Rishi, an Odyssey classmate of mine. It's about a bunch of teenagers who have to get a message out to aliens to stop the end of the world. Should be an entertaining read and a change of pace!
One? Only one? That's so mean.
Gideon the Ninth's sitting on my shelf. It's just the one on top.
I want everyone to read Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. Not spec fic, but really dang good.
1) Gideon the Ninth by Tasmin Muir. It's sitting on top of my TBR, all black-edged and gorgeous and whispering in a dark chorus of torment every time I walk by.
2) Quichotte by Salman Rushdie. It's a fantastic romp that homages Don Quixote and draws from and comments on the opioid crisis, racism in America, first- and second-generation migrant life in America from an Indian perspective, and some classic SFF (Clarke in particular). I couldn't put it down, and I was lucky enough to attend a phenomenal craft talk by Rushdie and ask a question about the book.
1) The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
2) Tied between Gideon the Ninth and Middlegame.
1) I really need to read Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow. I still have the ARC copies on my nightstand! Shameful, really. There were so many good books published in 2019.
2) I’ve suggested or outright given so many people The Ten Thousand Doors of January.
For the thing I'm most looking forward to reading, think it has to be a tie between Middlegame by Seanan McGuire and the other person who shouted out Jade city/War.
And ohhhh, what a struggle, to pick just one thing published last year. But I think I'd have to go with The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling. Claustrophobic and harrowing, set around a treacherous cave expedition on a distant planet. A protagonist who lied about experience to get in, with only the voice of a lone guide on the surface to keep her company in the dark. It's about two deeply broken women, slowly, oh so slowly, reaching out a hand to one another and taking the first tiny steps towards redemption through horrors neither of them expected. SO atmospheric, psychologically both tense and somehow also...cathartic as we watch them begin to be vulnerable with each other. Some of the most inventive world-building I've ever seen--I can't believe! this's Starling's debut. And that all this is centered around a growing romance with queer women just gives me such astounding joy.
It reminds me of that podcast you did, with Kameron Hurley about Traitor Baru when it first came out. You coined the phrase representation 202, for talking about the need to let marginalized characters expand and be as flawed and complicated as their non-marginalized counterparts. And this felt, in so many ways, like all those wishes made manifest in a book; I loved it for many of the same reasons I anticipate adoring Gideon by Muir and that deeply complex relationship.
Though I'm also screaming about Vivian Shaw's Greta Helsing trilogy, whose capstone, Grave Importance, came out last year. (Have you read that trilogy yet, Amal? I'd suspect yes, since you love urban fantasy like Borderline and The Hollows, and adoring Arkady Martine's work would bring you into proximity to Vivian's. But if not, OMG they're so good! multi-pov, all about creating a liminal space where the supernatural and mundane can meet and build bridges; brimful of kindness and empathy, ringing clarion-bright with the belief that if given chances, people will ultimately show their best colors and reach for the common good, without glossing over for an instant that there're always people willing and ready to undermine the best of society. They're such a brilliant, multipov--I was gonna say tapestry, but it's more like symphony, with everyone's storyline merging to form this astonishing whole.) And gaaah, thinking of Arkady, I also desperately wanna read Memory this year, too.
I am terrible at choosing just one thing.
Fonda Lee's Jade War and Harry Connolly's One Man are both high on my to-read list, but the latest Graydon Saunders book in the Commonweal series *just* hit Google Play Books and that is displacing other things, because I am in the very weird niche market that likes those books.
Among the various books I gave out to people for Yule last year were _This Is How You Lose the Time War_, Sam Sykes’ _Seven Blades in Black_, Arkady Martine’s _A Memory Called Empire_, Max Gladstone’s _Empress of Forever_, Malka Older’s _Ninth Step Station_, Paul Krueger’s _Steel Crow Saga_, and Karl Schroeder’s _Stealing Worlds_.
I'm really looking forward to reading The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Unfortunately, half the other library members in my city seem to feel the same way — I'm about sixth in the waiting list for a library hold, and have been on the hold list since October last year!
Of all the books published last year, I wish people would read A Memory Called Empire the most, mainly so I can have more people with whom to discuss it!
1. A lot, but one that stands out is Sarah Gailey's Magic for Liars.
2. Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire - it came completely out of nowhere for me, and absolutely blew me away.
1. Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.
2. Starless Sea.
I’ve read all of these but it’s my first time commenting!
1) I preordered & subsequently bought Angel Mage by Garth Nix, but still haven’t managed to read it! Soon I’m sure. I also need to finish reading Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
2) Americana, a graphic memoir by Luke Healy about his relationship with America (he is Irish) and hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, is kind of my perfect book. Autobiographical comics are maybe my favorite genre (?), and this one is executed in a unique way that I loved. Anyone who wants to understand my idiosyncratic taste in books, or likes autobio comics, should read it.
1) _Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy_ by Matt Stoller. Matt’s blog is ... spectacular. Sitting in the queue, waiting for non-fiction reading space to open up. (But non-fiction, so maybe doesn’t count? If not, A Memory Called Empire gets the nod. ;-)
2) Harsh rules, only one. Gideon wins.
1) A Memory Called Empire is definitely on my list to be read.
2) Jade War. Read Jade War. Thank Fonda for Jade War.
(If I write more than that, I'm going to end up putting down 15 books for question 2!)
1 - i really badly need to get around to Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I've had it since it came out and it keeps hovering near the top but not quite AT the top of my TBR, augh
2 - probably either The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie or A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, given your constraints. Both utterly utterly fantastic.
1) Looking forward to reading Bogi Takács's collection The Trans Space Octopus Congregation.
2) I'd like to get someone else to read Carmen Maria Machado's fantastic memoir In the Dream House.
1) Looking forward to reading: "The Bone Ships" by RJ Barker looks really good. I'm a sucker for nautical fantasy worlds--lots of islands, much mucking about in boats.
2) Like to get someone else to read: "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Ham", by, uh, TJ Radcliffe. :-) A fantasy in verse (mostly anapestic tetrameter) based on the well-known Arthurian poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" but by no means a translation of it (I'm a fan of Marie Borroff's translation for anyone who wants the original, and Simon Armitage's more recent translation has a fluency that is quite beautiful.)
1 - Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone. I've read all his other stuff, I got it out of the library once and didn't get around to it, I need to just get there some time.
2 - The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. I haven't been able to find anyone else I know who's read it, and it's such an interesting book. I hope to get it into our book club once it's around in paperback later this year.
1 - Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia looks fabulous
2 - Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I will hurl this at people until they devour it.
1) So You Want to be a Robot by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor - I've followed them on social media for a while but haven't read any of their writing yet!
2) The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie - Which I want people to read so I can talk about how fantastic it is because of *spoilerspoiler*
I like the double emphasis on ONE thing. It's like you knew what was going to happen... 😅
1) The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
2) Probably Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Because it is utterly charming and delightful! And literally moved me to tears because hope.
I only get to pick ONE?
1) Hmm. Probably REVERIE by Ryan La Sala. I’ve been meaning to get to it and have heard so many good things about it, but just haven’t gotten to it yet!
2) Ugh, there were so many good books that came out last year! I think the book that I’ve shoved at people the most, though, was RED WHITE & ROYAL BLUE by Casey McQuiston. These last few years have been one horror story in the news after another, so that book in particular was a much needed escape to just laugh and enjoy.