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.

Photo by Jaredd Craig on Unsplash — Jaredd Craig

The 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.

The Traveling Triple-C Incorporeal Circus by Alanna McFall is actually a book that I edited, so I have a horse in this race, but it is terrific. This reads like a feminist reworking of Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place, and it is a fine and splendid work.

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.

If you’d like to check out something I wrote in 2019, please take a look at modern day fantasy novelette Carpe Glitter! You can find a list of my other 2019 writings here.

Want to recommend a 2019 piece that you enjoyed? Please drop it in the comments!

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You Should Read This: The Essential Rumi (Coleman Barks translation)

January 30, 2014

Picture of 13th century ecstatic poet Rumi, illustrating blog post about his work by speculative fiction writer Cat Rambo. — He was not bits of husk, or a puddle that freezes overnight or a comb that cracks when you use it, or a pod crushed open on the ground. He was fine powder in a rough clay dish. He knew what both worlds were worth: a grain of barley.

I first discovered Rumi’s work when I was in graduate school. It spoke to me in a way that few other poems had, seeming to pluck out the questions I had and showing me that the answer was already there.

What:Translation is an art form, and Coleman Barks’ translation does the poet justice. Rumi was a 13th century Persian mystic poet who may well be the most popular poet in America, given how often lines of his poetry show up on Pinterest.

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. -Rumi — Rumi may be the most pinned poet of all time.

Who: I cannot think of anyone who would not benefit from this book, particularly if you like poetry.

Why: Read this if you’re interested in simple language presenting wild and wonderful ecstasy. Read it if you’re wondering where you belong in the world or what you should be doing in it. Read it for lines that will linger with you.

When: Read this when you are first falling in or out of love. Read it when your soul is thirsty.

Where and how: Read this in intervals, taking time to savor each piece and turn it over in your head.

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You Should Read This: Ammonite by Nicola Griffith

December 17, 2014

Cover of Ammonite by Nicola Griffith — Ammonite is beautifully real, and a good example of the heights speculative fiction can reach.

Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith, is subtle and beautiful and a terrific piece of speculative fiction. An anthropologist, Marghe Taishan, arrives on the planet GP, there to test a vaccine against the deadly virus that has killed all but a few of the original colonists. She finds that the survivors, all women, have developed the ability to give birth without men.

The book won both a Lambda and Tiptree Award, and it’s easy to see why. A dynamite protagonist interacting with intriguing and beautifully three-dimensional characters. The world is fabulously drawn, evocative, and both the anthropological and physical science are accurate and carefully thought out.

Ammonite was Griffith’s debut novel. I’d also recommend her most recent, the absolutely amazing Hild, a retelling of the life of historical figure, Saint Hild of Whitby. Come to think of it, nothing I’ve read by her has been shabby, including Slow River, a near-future thriller that is also beautifully told and engaging.

I had the luck to sit in on a class Griffith taught for Clarion West a couple of years ago. She is a consummate, careful wordsmith. The word “luminous” keeps appearing in reviews of her work, and that’s because it’s so beautifully crafted that it seems to glow from within.

The first three paragraphs of a piece set up so much. Here’s the first three of Ammonite, to give you a taste:

Marghe’s suit was still open at neck and wrist, and the helmet rested in the crook of her left arm. An ID flash was sealed to her should” “Marguerite Angelica Taishan, SEC.” The suit was wrinkled and smelled of just-unrolled plastic, and she felt heavy and awkward, even in the two-thirds gravity of orbital station Estrade.

She stood by the airlock at the inside end of A Section. THe door was already open. Waiting. She rested the fingertips of her right hand on the smooth ceramic of the raised hatch frame; it was cool, shocking after two days of the close human heat of A Section.

The sill of the airlock reached her knees; easy enough to step over. No great barrier. The lock chamber itself was two strides across. THe dar door was still closed, sealed to another sill, like this one. Four steps from here to B Section. Four steps. She had recontracted with SEC, endured six months of retraining on Earth, traveled eighteen months aboard the Terragin, and spent the last two days on the Estrade bumping elbows with the three-member crew, all to take those four steps.

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