Books I Read in 2019

[Mike]

I just came in here to rave about N.K. Jemison's Broken Earth trilogy and find Kyle has praised it far more eloquently than I could. Jemison is a stunning author. I fell in love with her work after two of her short stories were featured on Levar Burton Reads. She's wonderful.

Kyle's right about everything. And on top of all that it is a treatise on gender, race, oppression, power, and fear that is magnificent in its ambition and execution. High recommend.

[El Jefe]

Ann Leckie's Imperial Radche series. It's one of the most innovate sci-fi setups I've seen in a while, and the gender dynamics and complete change in gender identity it has on display are more than worth the read. It's a wild series.

[akiva]

[Kyle]

I haven't been posting up reviews of the books- but here's a short synopsis of the ones I haven't:

Catch and Kill- Ronan Farrow: The investigative non-fiction book about the obstacles trying to bring to light the allegations of rape and misconduct by Harvey Weinstein. Amazing and will make you angry.

Red Seas Under Red Skies/The Republic of Thieves- Scott Lynch: This is book 2 and 3 of the Gentleman Bastards series. Low magic fantasy set in a renaisance-like time period. Every novel is another heist plot. Lynch is a great writer and I love the characters. Republic of Thieves was a bit of a let down for me because it was SO intensive on the characters that I felt the heist was a byproduct, instead of the point.

The Ballad of Black Tom- Victor LaValle: This was a novella that retold the story of H.P. Lovecraft's The Horror of Red Hook, but from the perspective of the "dusky poor people" as the main characters. Really well done and compelling, and was cleverly highly critical of Lovecraft's racist work, while still being true to the style of Lovecraft.

The Horror of Red Hook- H.P. Lovecraft: Racist Lovecraft at its worse. I'm not a fan of Lovecraft's writing (boring and four times as many words as necessary), but the racism and elitism is a bit difficult, even if you want to apologize for the context in which it was written. Not good.

John Crow's Devil- Marlon James: A weird, hypernatural story set in a diminishing Jamaican town in the 50s (or maybe it was 60s). A great parable on religion, faith, colonialism and gender. Marlon James is kind of my hero.

Eat the Dark- Joe Schreiber: Bad horror which seems to have been written for the purpose of being optioned for a movie. Not well written. Heavy male gaze saturates everything. Not enjoyable.

Winter World- A. G. Riddle: So bad. The main character is the single most egregious example of a Mary Sue that I've ever read. That might not be true. Maybe some of L. Ron Hubbards was worse, but I can't remember that so well. The main character's only flaw is that he's too smart. Ugh. I won't even bother with the stupid plot. Oh- and predictable as shit. I really didn't like this book.

[mimekiller]

APPROS of nothing I thought VERONICA MARS always did a great job of showing a character thats very clever and usually the smartest cookie in the room but also flawed with some glaring blind sights in her methodology.

SPIDER MAN LIFE STORY-a six issue mini series that ages spider man in real time, so his origin is in the 1960s and each episode picks up on his life the next decade. a absolutely simple but brilliant way to tell a cape and cowl story that I hope marvel makes more of with different characters.

Sons of the Oak by David Farland #5 of The Runelords

I read the first four books of this series in high school and in my 20s and haven't touched the series sense. AMAZED how quickly I snapped back into great series and had a blast with the fifth book, can't wait to finish the series.

[mimekiller]

I guess I could make this its own thread but I like this post as the GO TO book talk one.

https://www.startrek.com/news/dc-fontan ... D=ref_fark

As someone whose only access to Star Trek was often just a dusty used book store shelf I read a lot of her books, a tremendous talent. RIP

[Mike]

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

I talked about this one on the podcast last year, don't know that I brought it up here. Spectacular book. The basic premise is what happens when you get to play Groundhogs Day, except with your entire life. Every time you die, you find yourself at the beginning again, except with full knowledge of your entire life lived. And what if you aren't the only one? It is a globe-spanning metaview of history with incredibly detailed characters and amazing settings. I loved this book. It is in my Top 10 books of all time. Brilliantly done.


Touch by Claire North

This one is a body-hopping story. There are people who can jump from body to body simply by touch. How do they live out their decades and centuries? How do people find them? How do they find each other? Our protagonist is one of these and finds that their kind is being hunted by a new type of enemy. It feels very similar to The First Fifteen Lives in it's worldwide scope and its intrigue. Again, Claire North is really good at what she does. I couldn't put it down. Ultimately, the ending didn't satisfy as well as Fifteen Lives, and I'd be happy to discuss it with anyone who's read them. But based on these first two, anything by Claire North is a high recommend from me, and I'll be checking out more of her work. It is right up my alley.

Side note: Claire North is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb, who has also written as Kate Griffin. She's only 33, and she has 20+ novels under her belt. Impressive.


Last Year by Robert Charles Wilson

The year is 1876. A billionaire from the future has commissioned a window from his time to 1876 and is using the past as a tourist trap for rich futurites. Last Year is the story of Jesse Cullum, a local hire from 1876 working security for the City of Futurity. Really well written novel with deep, introspective characters and a great dive into the cultural differences between times, but also oppression and class struggle across time as well and clearly has commentary on today's corporatist oppression. Obviously, I'm a sucker for time travel, but I thought this was great. It has action-mystery-thriller written all over it, and is ready-made for a movie adaptation.

[Kyle]

[Mike]

Broken Earth is a friggin masterpiece. I have not read Black Leopard Red Wolf, but I plan to now.