Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

I would be interested to know what people think are the best books of the year so far. Some books might hit the UK one year and the US a different one so obviously there needs to be some flexibility with dates.

I have really liked what I have read so far of Fallen Land: A Novel but its too early to say too much.

The Uninvited was published in some places in 2012 but others 2013. I really loved this.

Saga Vol 2 - continuing to develop into a must read comic series filled with action, surprises, humor and invention.

I really liked Homeland but it felt a little unnecessary. I have heard good things about The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Life After LifeRiver of Stars and Great North Road among others.

I have only mentioned novels here but interested to know what shorter fiction people have loved that is out this year too.

Hey, you're four month early in asking this question! :)

I seem to have read more just-out books this year than usual. Impressions:

1. Jordan/Sanderson's A Memory of Light actually rates #1-10 on my list for the year's best! Heck, best of the decade! After 23 years, the Wheel of Time finally ends and it's really well done, a genuinely satisfying conclusion to the lengthy epic. No disappointment can mar a year that starts with this book!

2. MLN Hanover's Graveyard Child is my second hit. I know this group isn't big on urban fantasy, but The Black Sun's Daughter is now my favorite UF series. Last year, book 4 of the series knocked down a lot of assumptions, and this 5th book wrapped up a lot of the story with a bunch of revelations. (Imagine that, an urban fantasy that actually wraps up the plot!)

Stedman's A Necklace of Souls was a pleasant surprise, a YA sword and sorcery with enough originality to poke through the pile. Not great, but good, and a debut surprise on the upside. I'll buy the sequel.


Pretty much everything else on my list was a bit of a disappointment:

Campbell's The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian, the third book in his 2nd Lost Fleet military SF series, added a couple of alien races but left on a small cliffhanger. (At 11 books and counting, this is now the 5th longest series I've stuck with!) I'll be getting the 2nd "Lost Stars" side-story next month.

Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane just didn't seem as imaginative as his other books such as Stardust, Neverwhere, American Gods or even Coreline. It's a pleasant enough read, more horror in the vein of Coreline than wonder, just a little, I don't know, "ordinary".

The Rithmatist is the Sanderson's first try at YA. Another world, another detailed magic system (too detailed, perhaps.) It's not bad, but I guess I expect awesome from Sanderson every time out. (Also, the preview chapter of Sanderson's upcoming YA superhero story, Steelheart, didn't leave me feeling like I was in a hurry to check that out.)

The Human Division continued Scalzi's Old Man's War series with new characters. The release as a series of 13 "episodes", one per week, was regrettably the most notable thing about it. The usual Scalzi snarky dialogue, but no conclusion, just a cliffhanger. Very disappointing.

The Last Stormdancer is a novella prequel to Kristoff's Japanese-flavored steampunk fantasy Stormdancer. Unfortunately, it borrowed more of the flaws of his debut novel than its strengths. I still plan to check out the sequel, Kinslayer, when it's released next week, but I'm feeling less enthused.

I know these things are traditionally left till the end of the year but say this is done in February (as Locus do) then some books are over a year old and those published in the tail end have less chance of making it.

Often threads with books we are looking forward to this is as much about buzz as anything else. Sure if you like the Dresden books you may well be excited about the next one coming out. If you like Jonathan Carroll you might be excited about his first novel in a while coming out this year....But this isnt based on what the actual book will be like, or only very loosely.

I like the idea of finding out what people are loving NOW, not waiting till the end of the year where they may get forgotten or go unnoticed around all the other books talked about.

I am planning on giving Ocean a read soon. I have read some Gaiman but not loads. I think Gaiman is most lauded for his imaginative ability but I have heard reviews suggesting that this might be one of his best written, most fully realised works...Its so short that I dont feel it is too big a commitment for me.

I enjoyed the bit in Unfettered which was a Sanderson/Jordan scene that didnt make it into the books. I read a few of the books but there are many many pages I havent read and I dont think I loved the books enough to read the 7 or so big books in the series I haven't got to but for those who stuck with it I am very glad that it came to such a strong conclusion and pay off despite the unfortunate death of Jordan.

Ben wrote: "I enjoyed the bit in Unfettered which was a Sanderson/Jordan scene that didnt make it into the books...."

I didn't mention Unfettered because I haven't gotten very far into it. I tend to read anthologies, especially multi-author anthologies, at a very leisurely pace, and they sit on my reading table for a long time, getting picked up now and then for a story or two (I think some of the Kindle anthologies may get lost on the carousel :) I just finally finished an anthology yesterday that according to Goodreads I'd been "reading" for nine months.

I got through Unfettered pretty quickly but usually I can be a bit the same - I have been "reading" Gene Wolfe's best of for months and months, ditto with some of the "best of" anthologies.

Ben wrote: "I like the idea of finding out what people are loving NOW, not waiting till the end of the year "

This time of year, almost all the "just out" books I've read are almost by definition part of the series I'm following or by authors I really like. I'm still working on 2012 award nominees, not to mention a pile of much older stuff that just got skipped and I think I really ought to read someday. Plus, I sometimes get distracted by shiny objects :)

At least for me, books outside my "usual suspects" tend to wait until awards season announcements bunless I read some really enticing review.

To update with a few titles I've read recently, here are two more 2013 space opera novels that are part of a longer series that I'm following:

Jack Campbell's The Lost Stars: Perilous Shield is the 2nd 2013 Campbell novel I've read, and the 2nd novel of the "Lost Stars" spinoff series from the "Lost Fleet". This is better than the first "Lost Stars" story as the characters begin to find some footing. On the negative side, the story is so closely tied to events in the parallel Lost Fleet sequel series Beyond the Frontier: Guardian, that I read the first 70 pages waiting for an event I already knew would happen (but the characters didn't), which is weird.

KK Rusch's Skirmishes is the 4th novel in her Diving space opera series, and has two parallel plots, one for each of the main characters, that only connect at the denouement. On the plus side, we expand things with a new character (who I assume we will see again). On the minor disappointment side, a large part of one of the storylines had already been published in novella form. (Rusch does that quite a bit with this series. The original novel, "Diving into the Wreck," was a fixup of three novellas.)

Both of those were satisfying reads for people who are already following the series, but neither will make my Hugo ballot.

I found Ocean at the end of the lane disappointing - it was fine enough but there are other books I have enjoyed much more.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is something I have started and it is already well written enough that I would recommend it. It is a time loop story written by someone known more for her literary fiction and her crime fiction.

People seem to be saying great things about A Stranger in Olondria and Ancillary Justice - I will be reading Olondria soon but would be interested to know if people have read the Ann Leckie and what they think of it.

Zombie Baseball Beatdown also sounds like a lot of fun.

So, GoodReads has launched it's Best Books of 2013 voting.

Voting for A Memory of Light was a no-brainer for me in the Best Fantasy Category. (Great ending to a very good series.)

But in the Best Science Fiction Category, I'm stuck. While a enjoyed Abaddon's Gate, The Lost Fleet: Dauntless & Skirmishes ( in roughly that order, The Human Division & Terms of Enlistment not so much), I didn't think any of them were such runaway stories that I want to put the "best" label on them (I.e., I wouldn't put any of them on the Hugo ballot.)

Well, I still have The Darwin Elevator, Ancillary Justice, Dust & Great North Road on my Kindle. (Unfortunately, I only have another four days to vote in round 1.)

I really liked the Powder Mage by McClelland, and the Storm Riders books by Margaret Weis.

I think it is a bit soon to be doing aggregated best ofs. I mean professional reviewers get books 3-4 months ahead of the rest of us and often mainly read stuff just published but probably only 5-10% of what I read is published in the same year as I am reading it (although I am reading this year quite a bit of stuff from 2012).

The time to know about a book, decide to get it, receive it and read it means that it will be pretty near the end of the year before I have read a decent amount of this years genre offerings.

It means that books like Stranger in Olondria that have had buzz but not masses of buzz will not have much of a chance of getting picked by these aggregators but continuations of series' where there is most eagerness to find out how the cliffhanger in the last book was resolved is much more likely to be picked.

Zombie Baseball Beatdown turned out to be quite a bit of fun and well worth checking out. Zombie elements were a little lackluster but there was plenty of fun overall to be had.

Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter is proving to be a lot of fun.

James S.A. Corey's Abaddon's Gate is the third book in his Expanse story (started with Leviathan Wakes), and I think the best of the three space opera novels so far. Had a couple of great new characters to the cast.

It's now clear this is going to be a loooong series.

I finally decided to make this my Goodreads Choice vote for Best Science Fiction of 2013.

A Happy New Year to all our science fiction and fantasy readers. ("It's the first blank of a 365-page book; write yourself a good one." - Some Hallmark Dude.)

This is that time of year we make lists. Some are lists of New Year's resolutions we don't really intend to keep. Others are the perennial "Best of..." lists that crop up on every blog and news site.

So let's make our own list.

What were your favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy books of 2013?

(I decided to continue the previous "Best of 2013 so far...." topic, because I expect there's a certain amount of overlap :)

My favorites from what I've read so far:


#1-2. Tied (I can't decide). Both are apparently from January, so I guess the year got off to a really strong start:


- A Memory of Light by Jordan/Sanderson
After two decades of waiting, I was really looking forward to a conclusion, any conclusion, and this delivered a nice, comprehensive ending to the series. (I'm reminded of a critique I read of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Evita" and the song "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina", saying that after the buildup, she could have sung "Three Blind Mice" for the finale and still brought down the house.)

- The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker
Only just read this as part of our current Group Discussion of The Golem and the Jinni. I guess it came out in January, and is now really building critical buzz. And I really liked it. (And it's a stand-alone fantasy novel. How rare. Must add to list...)


And the rest....

3. In Urban fantasy, MLN Hanover's Graveyard Child comes in at #3 on my 2013 SF/F list. The 5th book continues where the 4th book left off in revelations, explanations and surprises. It's unusual for a UF series to actually resolve so much. These franchises are supposed to run forever :) (In fact, I'm not sure there's another story coming in the series.) The author is actually Daniel Abraham, half of the writing team "James S. A. Corey", which brings me to....

4. If I have to pick a favorite sci-fi, it's James S.A. Corey's Abaddon's Gate that continues the Leviathan Wakes series of space opera. I didn't really find any Science Fiction novels in 2013 but I wanted to immediately convinced my friends to read. Which isn't to say I was terrible disappointed with The Lost Fleet: Dauntless, Skirmishes, or The Human Division, the latest in three other series I've been reading, but none of these really blew me away.


Caveat Lector: I still have The Darwin Elevator, Ancillary Justice, The Crown Tower, Year of the Demon & Great North Road on my Kindle, but haven't read them yet. So many books, so little time...

I don't really read a lot of current-yea releases, but it so happens that my top sci-fi read for 2013 was actually released in 2013: Ancillary Justice

Hope you enjoy when you get around to it, G3z33r.

I've been waiting on the Leviathan Wakes series because I like reading series in order & hate ending on cliff-hangers. For those who've read them, do you think Abaddon's Gate provides a satsifying ending/pausing point? Or should I keep waiting for more books to come out?

Hillary wrote: "I've been waiting on the Leviathan Wakes series because I like reading series in order & hate ending on cliff-hangers. For those who've read them, do you think Abaddon's Gate provides a satisfying ending/pausing point?..."

Exactly the opposite, I'm afraid. The first book, Leviathan Wakes, is essentially a standalone space opera. If there were no sequels, I don't think you'd feel cheated.

The second book, Caliban's War, likewise has a solid, self-contained story. It drops a couple of hints for the subject of the sequel, and the last two pages totally teases it, but the main story ends cleanly.

The third and most recent book, Abaddon's Gate, is the strongest of the three, IMO, but it revolves around what is clearly going to require more storytelling, and while the immediate subplots are resolved, it leaves a giant elephant in the room. So #4, Cibola Burn, is already on my must-read list.

Hugo Award Nominations are now open.

Must... read... faster...

well, with the year over, I can choose the best of 2013 that I read by now:

On the Razor's Edge by Michael Flynn

With some stiff competition from:
These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman
and
Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

Locus Magazine's February issue has their staff's Recommended Reading List for 2013, including novels, novellas, novelettes, short stories....

Just when you think you are well read,
a list comes along with tons of great stuff I never got around to reading.... **sigh**