Books of the Year 2010

[dillinisgood]

I don't know how much 'better than HP and Twilight' really conveys.

I like HP but what does something being better than Twilight really even mean?

[Cantabile]

I believe it's like when you're dining at a restaurant and the waiter asks you how your meal is, and you reply, "It tastes better than diarrhea marinaded in urine!"

[pat5150]

I meant to post my top reads of 2010 sooner, but I needed to finish Tad Williams Shadowplay in order to see where the book would fit. So you can now peruse my Top 10 speculative fiction titles of the year and the 10 runner-up titles here.

Here's my Top 10:

1- Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay [Penguin Books, Voyager]

1- (tie) The Dervish House by Ian McDonald [Pyr, Gollancz]

3- Stonewielder by Ian Cameron Esslemont [Tor, Bantam Press]

4- Geosynchron by David Louis Edelman [Pyr]

5- Prince of Storms by Kay Kenyon [Pyr]

6- The Machinery of Light by David J. Williams [bantam Dell]

7- Shadowrise by Tad Williams [Daw, Orbit]

8- Leviathan Wept and Other Stories by Daniel Abraham [subterranean Press]

9- Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis [Tor]

10- Thirteen Years Later by Jasper Kent [Pyr, Bantam Press]

Happy Holidays!

Patrick

[ztemhead]

thanks for the recommendations folks. I just downloaded Matterhorn and Under Heaven to my new Kindle. :)

[polishgenius]

My top ten, from the top:

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

Changes by Jim Butcher

The Midnight Mayor by Kate Griffin

The Last Page by Anthony Huso

Kraken by China Mieville

Stonewielder by ICE

Farlander by Col Buchanan

Lamplighter by DM Cornish

Terminal World by Alistair Reynolds

The top five are very close.

It's still possible that I'll finish Black Lung Captain and Spellwright before 2010's finished, mind you.

[Relic]

man, i must not have been paying close attention this years. Lots of books i seem to have missed.

Wert, did you do a review for Stonewielder?

[Calibandar]

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2010/11/stonewielder-by-ian-cameron-esslemont.html

[Ckrisz]

Matterhorn - not just the best best book of 2010, the best book I've read in the past five years at least.

[Guest Raidne]

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, hands down.

Agree, 100%. I also agree with Brady that this book is on my "best books ever" list and that eventually I think it will be on everyone's "best books ever" list.

I'm also hoping to get my copy back sometime so my husband can read it...hint, hint.

Still need to read Half-Made World. Looking forward to that.

[Starkess]

I don't usually read a lot of new releases, but I've got a few on my wish list now from this thread!

[Guest Raidne]

Damn. It sounds like I really need to get my hands on this Matterhorn book.

Revive the thread when you finish it - a lot of people posted some really interesting thoughts in it, Brady, Stego, etc.

[Lordwalker]

I will cast a vote for Matterhorn as well. It is on my list of Greatest Works of Literature Ever, which is a very short list.

[Mjolnir]

I read a lot of 2010 novels; I tend to be a bit of a sucker for the new thing, though it's led me to some great stuff so at least some days it doesn't bother me that much. Here's a very rough list of what I felt were among the best I read -- all genre, I'm afraid; I have not yet read Matterhorn, which I know makes me a lesser human. I shall fix it, I promise.

A lot of these are really very close, particularly near the top, and really assigning numbers to them is just something to do for yucks:

Runners Up:

20: Chill by Elizabeth Bear: goes by pretty fast particularly given how many characters need to be given their space, and I found the last chapter a bit rushed [if artistically so], but it's got a tense plot set against an interesting world and fraught family politics

19: Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett: great hellish dustbowl imagery and some really cool sequences mixing splattery horror with almost Lovecraftian terror; main character felt a little like one of those laconic hardasses who cry man tears one guides through grim videogames sometimes and I fully connected only occasionally

18: For the Win by Corey Doctorow: cartoonish corporate villains [even if I'm more inclined to agree with Doctorow than with his fiercest opponents] and talky if engaging econ textbook sections made up for by a wonderfully readable but suitably hard-nosed exploration of the unionization ramifications of online gaming; better than Little Brother

17: Prince of Storms by Kay Kenyon: final volume of The Entire and the Rose discards some plotlines I wanted to see followed up, but they were done I guess, and Kenyon closes the series with a fast-paced adventure that puts a definitive and satisfying period on the story

16: An Artificial Night by Seanan McGuire: I'm addicted to the October Daye books, and while the writing feels stilted in places this is the best yet I feel

15: The River Kings' Road by Liane Merciel: straightforward swords-and-sorcery with some nicely grounded practical touches [though the villain's rather black hat]; underappreciated

14: Cold Magic by Kate Eliot: fascinating alt history /secondary world meets concept-heavy plot and characters with much potential, very much Book 1 so a lot of its virtue will be determined by future volumes

13: Sleepless by Charlie Huston: plausible or not, this is good shit; very much a yarn of the wireless age

12: Changes by Jim Butcher: Damn.

11: Zendegi by Greg Egan: really absorbing tale of technology and how it's powered by human genius and also human failing; might not be quite this high, only I read it recently

Top 10:

10: Kraken by China Mieville: the top 5 novel that almost was, wonderfully bonkers and fun while still retaining Mieville's grimmer, grizzlier side; but it just took too long to get going, for me -- main character drifted too long, and I only occasionally thought I was getting what it was about [important with the always-thematic Mieville]

9: All Clear by Connie Willis: comes in a package with its first volume Blackout, but most of the stuff that really elevates the project for me is in All Clear; Bloated? Maybe. But it compelled me to read it. scores over Kraken despite an equally absurdly long build up because I got more invested in the characters' day-to-day struggles

8: Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis: a second WWII novel, potentially the start of something really special

7: Feed by Mira Grant: a zombie novel in which the zombies aren't leant on over much; devoured it in two days; got quite an ending

6: The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer: literary steampunk about the fragmentation of meaning and language and what it's like to live in an age without miracles; Comes with bonus clockwork demons.

5: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin: too easily dismissed as godporn, a really excellent [though not flawless] story lurks beneath; very postcolonial epic fantasy, willing to examine some of the genre's authoritarian leanings

4: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes: An ending I consider slightly rushed keeps this from the very top, but it's great. It's got everything: a fully developed world, a great plot, and an entirely kickass protagonist.

3: The Dervish House by Ian McDonald: Whether its depiction of Turkey's accurate or not I've no idea, but it's a hugely absorbing novel. And the prose reads like a dream. An awesome dream.

2: Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay: my favourite Kay novel out of his last three, at least; fairness note: might not rank quite so high if I wasn't a little biased from days gone by, but I do genuinely think it's very good

1: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor: actually not quite on the prose level of those right below it, imo, but the story's so powerful ... It stays with me, this book.

The not-quites:

I had Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings in my 20 slot for a while, because despite the fact I thought it took too long to swing itself into firing position and the issues I had with its focus and how little I felt things had progressed by the end I basically like the story, and hoo boy the ambition. But Chill's stripped-back approach and writing won out over WoK's bloat and shaky prose. Blake Charlton's Spellright didn't work for me all the time [little infodumping here, little overenthusiastic speechifying by the villain there, couple stupid jokes], but I love it for how much fun it's clearly having. I'd give this book to a fifteen-year-old me without a second's hesitation. I appreciated Naomi Novik's Tongues of Serpents as another chance to chill with Laurence and Temeraire and the rest, but there's just no getting around that the middle of the damn thing has no plot.

I found Gene Wolfe's The Sorcerer's House much smoother going than The Wizard-Knight, the other Wolfe I've read, and enjoyed my time with it. Each letter writer [the novel's epistelary] has an engaging voice. But I couldn't find enough on the surface to grip onto, and so failed to drill my way down into Wolfe's famous layercake narratives. Oh, and one character's portrayal, [the fox / kitsune], is horrendous almost to the point of being offensive, so terrible I really didn't care about all the clever things Wolfe might be using it to say.

I'm reading Catherynne Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed right now, and if I'd finished it before new year it would've been on here, probably top ten the way it's going. Didn't get around to Banks' Surface Detail, Kearney's Monarchies of God, Lorde's Redemption in Indigo, Jemisin's The Broken Kingdoms, Bell's The Reapers Are the Angels or Gilman's Half-Made World, and based on my tastes I suspect they might all have had a shot.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Didn't read too many releases this year-Not entirely sure these strictly qualify but oh well.

Best:

The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington

Warriors Anthology by GRRM Gardener Dozois (spelling?)

Brothers Grossbart was my favourite this year, weird,gross and with a sex scene so vile it would make Abercrombie faint.

Worst

Tower Of Midnight by Sanderson and Jordan.

Pretty poor. At least he got the Mat chapters right this time though.

[Guest Raidne]

To everyone who recommended Half-Made World: I want my $10 back.

Seriously, it was okay. It was fun. It's theme of individualism vs. conformity is tired. It does not deserve a title so close to the inarguably better Gone-Away World. As for fantasy books that came out last year, I liked Sanderson's Way of Kings a lot better, even though I had to toss the fugly book jacket the second it entered the house.

[Calibandar]

Well, maybe I'll say the same once I've read the über-recommended Matterhorn. Though I hope to be very impressed by that book.

I thought the Gilman was muchbetter written than the Sanderson by the way.

[Guest Raidne]

Well, maybe I'll say the same once I've read the über-recommended Matterhorn. Though I hope to be very impressed by that book.

You won't.

I can see how Gilman could be called a more careful writer than Sanderson, but for someone who threw a bunch of gunslingers in with communist-sympathizing steampunk, it should have been a lot more fun.

[Little Valkyrie]

5: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin: too easily dismissed as godporn, a really excellent [though not flawless] story lurks beneath; very postcolonial epic fantasy, willing to examine some of the genre's authoritarian leanings

A bit OT, but Mjolnir, I'm curious as to what you found successfully postcolonial and examining of authoritarian leanings in THTK as a fantasy novel. I was disappointed in it not so much because of the ridiculous over-the-top godporn, but more because I was sold it as a complex fantasy of empire, and instead I got something that was, IMO, pretty morally clear-cut, a fairly traditional fantasy wherein good people get good things and bad people get very little character motivation or depth and a reward of being tortured by the god who is responsible for said ridiculous godporn. Bad authority gets thrown out (and punished), and a new authority is raised up, despite her incredible passivity throughout the novel, based upon her virtues, which contrast to the sadistic pedophiles currently in power. Personally, I think a postcolonial fantasy novel in which a previously occupied culture has to really deal with the traces left on it by a dominating culture, and has to examine that the recovery of past culture might be more complicated now (bits that people realize they no longer want to bring back, even if they were traditional), that would be interesting.

I don't want to spoil you for The Broken Kingdoms if you haven't read it yet--I'd love to hear your thoughts--but I don't think it made much progress on the fronts I was hoping it would.

I read The Long Price Quintet this year, and it was one of the things that would make my list.

[Datepalm]

You won't.

I can see how Gilman could be called a more careful writer than Sanderson, but for someone who threw a bunch of gunslingers in with communist-sympathizing steampunk, it should have been a lot more fun.

Agreed for Half Made World (the further away I am from having read it, the more insubstantial it feels, though I never took the individualism vs conformity thing at face value. I'll be dissapointed if the situation does not complexify at some point.) but Way of Kings is just shy of totally boring.

Reading Empire in Black and Gold now - I have this weird back and forth with it, where one moment its a fairly serious, grittyish fantasy with interesting but not full of itself worldbuilding, and the next some switch flips and i'm actually seeing them as insects, and some level of childishness enters and its like i'm reading bloody Redwall. (other than that, liking it a lot.)

[Mjolnir]

Little Valkyrie Wrote:

A bit OT, but Mjolnir, I'm curious as to what you found successfully postcolonial and examining of authoritarian leanings in THTK as a fantasy novel. I was disappointed in it not so much because of the ridiculous over-the-top godporn, but more because I was sold it as a complex fantasy of empire, and instead I got something that was, IMO, pretty morally clear-cut, a fairly traditional fantasy wherein good people get good things and bad people get very little character motivation or depth and a reward of being tortured by the god who is responsible for said ridiculous godporn. Bad authority gets thrown out (and punished), and a new authority is raised up, despite her incredible passivity throughout the novel, based upon her virtues, which contrast to the sadistic pedophiles currently in power. Personally, I think a postcolonial fantasy novel in which a previously occupied culture has to really deal with the traces left on it by a dominating culture, and has to examine that the recovery of past culture might be more complicated now (bits that people realize they no longer want to bring back, even if they were traditional), that would be interesting.

I don't want to spoil you for The Broken Kingdoms if you haven't read it yet--I'd love to hear your thoughts--but I don't think it made much progress on the fronts I was hoping it would.

Hmm. All very fair criticism of the thing so far as I'm concerned. Let's see if I can articulate some of what made it work for me:

There's one place where the book scores a lot of points with me just on concept, and that is the enslavement of the gods. Not something unique to Jemisin -- John Scalzi's The God Engines includes it, I know, though I haven't read it -- but it's a powerful piece of worldbuilding in a fantasy novel, I think. Gods are a huge part of the accepted furniture of modern fantasy -- whether the book's religiously themed or not they're usually there and often very real, particularly in the very traditional faux medieval and/or D&D inspired stuff; for an evil regime to enslave them makes more of a statement for me than just slapping down another evil king or emperor -- both more or less par for the course at this point. When I call the Erimeri's regime colonial I'm almost talking more about their dominance over the gods specifically, rather than their rule of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in general which I agree could've been developed much better [though I think that would've been a different and possibly much longer book.] The degree to which the gods are shown to be exploited as resources by the Erimeri does a decently good job [for me] of approaching the basic truths of colonialism as use and exploitation from a fantastical, metaphorical angle. Let's think about what the Erimeri can do to the gods: They can rape and otherwise humiliate them. They can utilize the gods' unique strengths to accomplish things they wouldn't be able to otherwise, building marvels [the improbable and rather anime-esque palace of Skie] and empires on the backs of their slaves. They can turn the gods against their own family. I know there were some rules as to how they can use the gods, and I admit I forget most of them, but even if they can't make god fight god directly [and I don't remember that they can't] they can turn family member against family member through making some of them collaborators in their own enslavement -- there's a collaborator revealed in the climax of THTK. So we've got the ability to divide the enslaved population against itself too.

The whole construction might be more complex if the evil imperialists weren't so clearly set up as horrible people, sure. But: A: I don't think the book is particularly interested in excusing the Erimeri; it's about how colonialism sucks. Which isn't terribly deep, I grant you, and B: if Samina [think that's how you spell her name, Yeine's sadistic, bondage-happy cousin] was the only Erimeri I'd agree their characterization wasn't very mature, because she's pretty much a cardboard cutout. But there's also Decarta, the grandfather, and I think he's a more nuanced portrayal of the imperial patriarch. Not that he's particularly sympathetic, but we get a very comprehensive look at his need to be able to own and control things -- particularly his daughter, the spiteful woman who ultimately chose to rise above simple bitchiness and abandon the Erimeri for real, who though we only get her tale in backstory sounds a more interesting character than Yeine. He can't deal with something having slipped from his grasp; his need to be the top dog is almost pathological.

I agree that Yeine is ridiculously passive and that this does the book considerable damage. Based on interviews and some of the descriptions of her role in Dar's culture in the book, it's clear that Jemisin considers Yeine an assertive warrior figure, and, given that, her characterization contains some pretty major mistakes I feel. She's out of her depth in Skie, and so I suppose it's realistic for her not to be as assertive as in her home context, but she just drifts along saying "um" for too much of the book. She never gets to control the story, which I think may be a first novel thing. But there's a place where even Yeine gets to contribute to the exploitation-of-magical-power-as-colonial-dominance metaphor, specifically when she takes control of Nahatoth [the godporn instigator] to go and lay down the law with some of the people invading her homeland Unless I'm remembering this wrong and making shit up, she's tempted, she feels the lure of using someone else's power as a resource when given the means to do so. And she does use that power, does join in the exploitation for a moment, but then she steps back, which I suppose on the story's moral scale is what makes her better than the rest of them in a nutshell. This is also what gives the godporn scene at least a bit of thematic gravitas for me: it too is about Yeine rejecting the position of invincible dominance her Erimeri status would give her, coming to the gods without the colonizer's whip in her hand and taking her chances. And it hurts, and it's dangerous, but losing control often is, even when that control was unhealthy.

I agree that the logical next step would've been watching the now-freed world struggle with its varied identities post-Erimeri, trying to figure out what bits of pre-empire culture no longer fly, etc, and it's disappointing to hear The Broken Kingdoms doesn't do much on that score. I'm hoping to read it soonish, so I may have more thoughts afterward. And I agree that THTK's morality's pretty simple and could have been developed in much more sophisticated ways, and that the book overall tends toward being melodramatic rather than introspective. But I think the concepts and how they tangle the exploiters and exploitees up in vengeance, and drive them to do more and more terrible things, and use each other in more and more terrible ways [a god burns out the soul of a servant of the Erimeri in order to attack his own sibblings, don't forget; the whole business gets loyalties pretty tangled up, and all over power] is pretty interesting stuff.

And, personally, I don't think friendly debate about this kind of thing is OT at all here, in fact it makes the thread better: we're not just listing what we each thought were the best books of the year, we're debating the why of it too.