Favorite Reads in 2024

Post-Nebulas, I’ve been going through and trying to clear away a lot from my shelves and TBR list, particularly given that I still had a substantial armload from the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts and its munificent book tables. Here’s some particular recent favorites.

• The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne Valente. Funny, fierce, and feminist. Valente gives a voice to some women who’ve got shrewd insight into and experience with the gender norms of the comic book world, including Phoenix, Harlequin, and Gwen Stacy. If you are a woman who loves comic books you should stop reading this and go find it. Fucking fantastic.
• Deadwood by Pete Dexter. This historical novel is the one the HBO series was based on, and it’s terrific, particularly if you enjoyed that series and want to revisit some of those characters. The plain style of the writing combined with a sharp eye for historical detail is lovely, and it’s a book worth savoring. There are few things on earth more disappointing than reading a regular Western when you’re hoping for a weird one, so let me emphasize again that this is straightforward, non-fantastic fiction.
• All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Far future SF with one of the most engaging first person narratives I’ve ever have the pleasure of watching in action, Wells’ independent, wry and stubborn Murderbot. Snappy and funny and yet thoroughly engaging. Alas, all too short since it’s a Kindle Single, but luckily it’s billed as the first in a series.
• The Greatcoats by Sebastian de Castell. Early on in the first book, I knew I’d be picking up the rest, and did so, quickly working my way through to the highly satisfying conclusion. Basically French musketeers and a cool magic system, with the snappy dialogue and fast-paced, high-stakes action you would expect. Very enjoyable. I should note I picked them up due a Kindle deal that’s no longer going; if your budget is limited you will find more bang for your buck elsewhere (IMO).
• Super Extra Grande by Yoss. In some ways this read like a more modern version of Keith Laumer’s Retief series, with a lot of the things about them that I loved as a teen and less of the stuff I’m not so fond of as an adult. Fast-paced and funny, and Spanglish scattered throughout made it more fun for me, but the mileage for a non-Spanish speaker may vary, I’m not sure. I picked this up because I wanted to read some Cuban science fiction; Yoss is one of the people at the forefront of that.
• Dreadnought: Nemesis by April Daniels. Superhero YA with a trans main character who is identifiable and fabulous. I’m looking forward to the next in the series. Along the same lines, I want to point to Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee, also snappy and fun. I’m so happy to see superhero fiction have become an established thing in fiction; I will happily read as much of it as our fine genre writers can produce.

In the last year or so, I found a genre that hadn’t previously been on my radar, but which I really enjoy: furry fiction. Kyell Gold had put up his novel Black Angel on the SFWA member forums, where members post their fiction so other members have access to it when reading for awards, and I enjoyed it tremendously. The novel, which is part of a trilogy about three friends, each haunted in their own way, showed me the emotional depth furry fiction is capable of and got me hooked. Accordingly, when I started reviewing for Green Man Review, I put out a Twitter call and have been working my way through the offerings from several presses.

Notable among the piles are the multiplicity by T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon, and two appear in this armload. Clockwork Boys, Clocktaur War Book One (Argyll Productions, 2017) is the promising start to a fantasy trilogy featuring a lovely understated romance between a female forger and a paladin, while Summer in Orcus (Sofawolf Press, cover and interior art by Lauren Henderson) is aimed at younger readers and will undoubtedly become one of those magical books many kids will return to again and again, until Vernon is worshipped by generations and prepared to conquer the world. Honestly, I will read anything Kingfisher/Vernon writes, and highly recommend following her on Twitter, where she is @UrsulaV.

Huntress by Renee Carter Hall (Furplanet), which originally appeared in 2015, and whose title novella was nominated in the 2014 Ursa Major Awards and Cóyotl Awards, is a collection of novella plus several shorter stories. I’d love more in this fascinating and thought-provoking world, particularly following the novella’s heroine, the young lioness Leya, and the sisterhood of the huntresses, the karanja.

Always Gray in Winter by Mark J. Engels (Thurston Howell Publications, October, 2017) demonstrates one of the difficulties with furry fiction, which is the reader’s uncertainty where to site the fact of furry characters, primarily whether to take them as a given or have some underlying science to it, such as bio-modified creatures. Here Pawly is a were-cat, but the unfamiliar reader is forced to spend so much time figuring out whether this is something people take for normal or not that the story sometimes gets confusing, and with multiple POV shifts, the reader keeps having to re-orient themself. It’s tight, sparse military SF that readers familiar with the conventions of the genre will find compelling, entertaining, and quickly paced; newer readers may find themselves floundering a bit.

The Furry Future, edited by Fred Patten (Furplanet, 2015) is a solid and entertaining anthology that showcases how widely ranging the stories that use the rationale behind the existence of anthropomorphic beings as part of the narrative can be. Authors in the collection include Michael H. Payne, Watts Martin, J. F. R. Coates, Nathanael Gass, Samuel C. Conway, Bryan Feir, Yannarra Cheena, MikasiWolf, Tony Greyfox, Alice “Huskyteer” Dryden, NightEyes DaySpring, Ocean Tigrox, Mary E. Lowd, Dwale, M. C. A. Hogarth, T. S. McNally, Ronald W. Klemp, Fred Patten, and David Hopkins with illustrations by Roz Gibson and cover art by Teagan Gavet. This book is one that scholars writing about furry fiction will want to be including on their reading lists for reasons including its focus, its authors, the snapshot of the current furry fiction scene that it provides, and the variety of approaches to anthropomorphic body modification.

Along with the furry fiction, I wanted to point to an indie humorous horror collection that is one of the most specifically themed I have yet encountered, Ill Met by Moonlight by Gretchen Rix (Rix Cafe Texican, 2016), which features evil macadamia nut trees, including “Macadamias on the Move,” “Ill Met by Moonlight,” and “The Santa Tree” in a lovely sample of how idiosyncratic a sub-sub-niche can get. The production values of this slim little book show what a nice job an indie can do with a book and include a black and white illustration for each story.

You can read this review at http://thegreenmanreview.com/books/armload-of-fur-and-leaves/