#also some of these are slightly diff ratings than i initially rated them bc some i posted right after reading and then thought about more

[night-dark-woods]

2023 Book Recap!

i really figured out this year what i like and don't like in a book i think, at least for scifi/fantasy books.

that ursula le guin quote about genre: "Ignoring all this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel, the space ship, the space alien, and the mad scientist, with cries of innocent wonder. The cries will not be echoed by the readers. Readers familiar with that genre have met the space ship, the alien, and the mad scientist before. They know more about them than the writer does."

& something one of the boys on the stephen king podcast said, where he described being familiar with a genre or medium as seeing the seams, and then a bit later as being like an erector set, where you can see all the pieces.

and that's really it, like bc i have read so much scifi and fantasy, every novel is an erector set. i know what the pieces of the kit are, and what they're supposed to build, so i can recognize when its built well and when its built poorly, and i can recognize when someone does something really cool and different with those kit pieces. but if someone doesnt do anything good or interesting with them, its just a pile of pieces, and that's not enough for me.

so, in descending rating order, books i read this year:

5/5:

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N K Jemison: spectacularly original worldbuilding, heartwrenching story, delightful narrative devices. getting added to the favorites shelf with Baru.

The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin: very fun hard scifi book. if i don't have to google a math concept while reading your scifi book im not interested. i have not yet read the sequels but will.

Machineries of Empire Trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee: great military space opera with REALLY cool novel worldbuilding (the technology of the empire functions because of a high calendar maintained by ritual sacrifice!!!) and very neatly executed plots.

4/5:

How The Light Gets In by Louise Penney: perfectly enjoyable mystery novel i read to bond with my mother. old ladies who saw it sitting next to my register at work were at first delighted i was reading it and then aghast that i was reading one from the middle of the series out of order.

Dead Silence by S A Barnes: fast-paced scifi psychological horror, delivered exactly what i was expecting.

Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner: doctor mechanic fic with the serial numbers scrubbed. also exactly what it says on the tin.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth: fun gay story that jumps around in time and has several cool narrative styles including whatever it is where there are in-universe texts included with the story narrative.

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling: scifi cave-diving survival horror with a homoerotic relationship between the caver and her handler. loses a star for an underwhelming ending but overall it ruled i love survival books.

Blindsight by Peter Watts: this book made me the maddest a book has made me since i read The Word for World is Forest in high school and got so upset at one of the characters that i made myself nauseous. on the one hand the worldbuilding was very intricate and interesting and its a truly fascinating first contact story, and on the other hand i want to fight the author in a parking lot for how eco-fascist and misanthropic the thesis statement is. this book pissed me off but its also going to be something i will reread and also think about for a long time, and for that it can get a 4.

3/5:

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon: cool far-future post-apocalypse with ai gods, about bodily horror and autonomy when youre dealing with high tech divine possession. good book but not for me.

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar: fine, underwhelming. novel equivalent of a montage and the prose didn't wow me.

Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer: made me realize what i want from him is an actual ecology book i would love that but i hate his fiction.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd: would have been higher if it had a stronger conclusion, fun concept though and it was fun to see the ways it referenced Hill House. speaking of:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: alright, i havent read enough horror to know what i like but this wasn't it, im glad i read it though.

2/5:

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang: fine, none of the story concepts were compelling to me so it was hard to like any of them, though the Tower of Babylon was fun.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: no stakes, boring, no thought put into the politics of the setting or the plot.

Authority by Jeff Vandermeer: absolute fucking slog of a book with a boring protag.

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan: i dont like historical figures rewritten to be lgbt, i think the pacing and tone was inconsistent, and if youre going to write a book about a military campaign you need to actually care about writing military engagments and logistics. also as my friend Jake said. for a novel trying to do something with gender, there sure arent very many women.

1/5:

none apparently!