I was on the road for most of September. That photo’s taken in the elevator of the Flatiron Building while I was in NYC, but other places I stayed included Dallas, Texas and Pocatello, Idaho. (More on that to come!) Here’s what I read in September, according to my notes, which always seem to leave out some stuff. Bolded indicates a particularly notable read.
Alex P. Berg. Red Hot Steele.
Jillian Blake. Antisocial.
Ramsey Campbell. The Parasite. Jessica Cluess A Shadow Bright and Burning. George Alec Effinger. Heroics.
Justin Evans. The White Devil.
Rumer Godden. Black Narcissus. Interesting because I’d been thinking about omniscient POV, which this book uses.
Joe Hill. The Fireman.
Tami Hoag. Cold Cold Heart,
Aaron James. Assholes* A Theory. Some useful stuff on dealing with bad-faith actors.
Stephen King and Owen King. Gwendy’s Button Box.
Stephen King. End of Watch. Mur Lafferty. Six Wakes.
Carrie Ann Noble. The Gold Son.
Dan Padavona. Crawlspace. Sarah Porter. Vassa in the Night.
Susan Kaye Quinn. Third Daughter. Enjoyable steampunk romance with an Indian-flavored milieu.
Ron Ripley. Berkley Street. Jon Ronson. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Fascinating read about social media and publicity gone awry. Sherwood Smith. Inda, The Fox, King’s Shield, and Treason’s Shore.
Wendy Corsi Staub. Lullaby and Good Night.
Steven Rasnic Tem. Deadfall Hotel.
I’ve been watching DC’s Legends and am halfway through Season 2 so far.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Some Favorite F&SF Reads of 2019
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but includes many of my favorites.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. The success of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians trilogy has led to quite a few other “college for mages” books. This was my favorite of this year’s batch, although I did also enjoy Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars.
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi is a young adult novel that is just extraordinary and beautiful and astounding. I’m about to ship it off to my godkid as well as the next book.
Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez is another young adult novel, this time much more humorous than Pet, but with its sadnesses as well. The voice is funny and delightful while still full of all of the insecurities of high school.
unsplash-logoJaredd CraigThe Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey has a gorgeous, depressing texture, an interesting storyline, and an evocatively detailed world that had its Kafka-esque moments. This is very different than Kadrey’s Sandman Slim books — while they’re fun reads, this feels like a much more serious book without being ponderous.
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher is a spin-off from Arthur Machen’s horror work The White Ones and it is, like all of her books, crazy good. It’s weird to me, however, that in 2019, she’s got a hoarder grandmother story, I’ve got a hoarder grandmother story, and Ellen Klages has a hoarder mother story that I enjoyed as well. Something in the zeitgeist?
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. It took me a little while to settle into the voice of this book, but once I got with the groove I was totally hooked. Leckie’s a master of storytelling. There’s a lot that’s hopepunk-y about this book, including the casual community-based heroism of the protagonist as well as the insistence on the power and mutability of stories and language.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is a complicated and interesting book delivered with McGuire’s usual smooth prose and engaging characters. I don’t want to say too much about it for fear of spoilers.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is like Mervyn Peake’s Gorgmenghast in space with lesbian necromancers. This was a terrific read and (IMO) well worth all the hype. I don’t even know how to describe it but I loved the slow burn of relationship building and the atmosphere and the overall bizarreness of the world. So delightful.
A Song For a New Day by Sarah Pinsker is near-future SF reminisencent of a mash-up of Marge Piercy and Joni Mitchell. This is definitely one of 2019’s hopepunk standouts.
A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland is the follow-up to her amazing A Conspiracy of Truths and it deepens the understanding of the first book in a way that had me going back to read it again. When people are building lists of hopepunk, this and its predecessor definitely should always be included.
Today I am Carey by Martin Shoemaker is a lovely expansion on the award winning story. I really love this piece and it’s very timely.
The Deep by Rivers Soloman (novella) is a fabulous example of how stories can shift forms. Based on a Daveed Diggs by the same name, this is an intense and beautiful translation of the song.
The Fall by Tracy Townsend is the sequel to a book I loved, The Nine, and it was a great continuation of the series, reminiscent of one of my favorite writers, P.C. Hodgell.
The Lesson by Cadwall Turnbull is a fascinating, tightly drawn novel in which humans are forced to co-exist with super-advanced and mostly benevolent aliens, set on the Virgin Islands after the killing of one of the locals by an alien.
You Should Read This: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The cover is gorgeous, and conveys a sense of the complicated world of Ancillary Justice.I must admit to an extra hint of pride in this book’s appearance here, because Ann was a member of my Clarion West class back in 2005, when she was first wowing all of us with her Radchi universe. Ann and I also know each other through SFWA and our shared agent, Seth Fishman.
What:Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie is a fabulous space opera with an unusual protagonist whose struggle will pull the reader in. It is, alas, not a particularly long book, and I could have read at least twice more the length happily.
Who: read this if you like space opera or action-filled but character driven SF. Read it if you want to hear the latest in the ongoing conversation about gendered pronouns held between SF writers for decades now. Read it for the sake of enjoyment and rejoice to know it’s the first of three.
Many writers have an artistic side, and Ann Leckie is no exception. Here's a lovely pink pin she made for me and which is among my treasures.When: read this when you have time to devour great chunks in one sitting, because otherwise the story will haunt you, will keep calling you back while you are spending time at other tasks, making you remember exactly where you laid the book down, calculating when you can return to it.
Why: Read this because it will be appearing on many of the awards ballots this year and rightly so. Read it so you know why you’re voting for it. Read it because it does new and interesting things. Read it because it’s good.
Where/how: This is ideal for a while-away-some-hours situation, depending on your reading speed. Leckie’s world is immersive, intelligent, and interesting.
I was on the road for most of September. That photo’s taken in the elevator of the Flatiron Building while I was in NYC, but other places I stayed included Dallas, Texas and Pocatello, Idaho. (More on that to come!) Here’s what I read in September, according to my notes, which always seem to leave out some stuff. Bolded indicates a particularly notable read.
