sixthlight

...actually, no, it’s three things. The third was giving myself permission to actively DNF books that I wasn’t enjoying, instead of slogging on through, which freed me up to try more books. But a lot of that came from the blogging, because I started to be able to identify whether I wasn’t enjoying a specific aspect of a story that might change, or whether it was the characters/premise which had lost me (in which case: DNF).

All that in mind, this is a list of my best reading of 2019 – books that were new to me in 2019, not necessarily books published that year. Selection is based about 50% on my opinion of the books’ quality, and 50% on how much I personally enjoyed them. I would recommend them all as worth a go.

Non-fiction

My top non-fiction reads – dominated by books I read for the science book club I participate in – were Sea People (Christina Thompson), Timefulness (Marcia Bjornerud), and Superior (Angela Saini). Despite their very different topics (the history of Polynesian settlement, the history of the Earth, and the history of eugenics and scientific racism) they were all engaging, conveyed information clearly, and written by women with a deep understanding of their topics.

Honourable mentions to Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Thomas Picketty) and Bad Blood (John Carreyrou) for giving me the detail to back up why we need to tax the rich (Picketty) and just being an incredibly entertaining story of the Theranos scam/trainwreck (Carreyrou).

Fiction

In terms of series, the Green Bone saga (Fonda Lee, not yet finished) and Dominion of the Fallen (Aliette de Bodard, trilogy finished this year with The House of Sundering Flames) were stand-outs. They’re both great plotty thrillers with not necessarily heroic protagonists, and they both deal with colonisation, emigration, cultural continuity, and loyalty. Other than that they’re completely different – the Fallen trilogy is post-apocalyptic gothic fallen angels in Paris, the Green Bone books are a Mafia/martial arts mash-up family saga in Fantasy Island East Asia. 

For stand-alones, the ones that stuck with me were Empress of Forever (Max Gladstone) and The Afterward (E K Johnston). Empress of Forever is Journey to the West as a psychedelic space opera, with all Gladstone’s usual panache at blurring the line between technology and magic, and questions about what power costs and what it can do. In contrast, The Afterward is a small, quiet novella about what happens after the end of your D&D campaign epic quest, but it makes you think about where stories end and why.

I also read a few books that start series: the best of those were A Memory Called Empire (Arkady Martine), Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir), and Any Old Diamonds (K J Charles). The first two don’t have sequels out yet; the last has an associated novel and novella, but is the best of the three. Both of the first two have received all the accolades, and deservedly so. A Memory Called Empire is a political thriller space opera, and Gideon the Ninth is gothic fantasy sci-fi, and they’re both the kind of rare book where everything is good except the bits that are great. I can’t wait for the sequels coming in 2020/2021. Any Old Diamonds is completely different, a m/m Victorian romance involving JEWELLERY HEISTS and ART and the thesis that rich people are the fucking worst, and it was in every way a 2019 Mood (and, I suspect, will also be a 2020 Mood).

Honourable mentions in fiction: Kingdom of Copper (S A Chakraborty) because the Daevabad trilogy owns my soul, The True Queen (Zen Cho) for queer Regency excellence, and Lovecraft Country (Matt Ruff) for digging to the heart of what cosmic horror is really about.