Top Ten Books Read in 2020

Coming out of book reviewing retirement to post my Top Ten of 2020! Like many people, 2020 hit my reading numbers hard, as I lacked brain power much of the time. Still, I finished 108 books. I felt like there were few books that really set me on fire, but I'm very happy with the Top Ten.

10. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

 I wasn't entirely in line with Hugo voting this year, as this came about half-way down my ranking for best novel, but that's really a reflection of how strong the category was. This interstellar look at colonialism, peripheries, and belonging (and identity and a bunch of other things) was very intriguing and had great political tension. The main character is sent from her unannexed home to the seat of Empire and finds herself pulled into immediate jockeying for the future in a culture she loves and doesn't quite belong in. 

9. The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

 In a corporate-controlled future that relies on colonized and segregated planets for essential crops, having ships move at light speed to collect the goods at the cost of the years of the lives the crew could have had with their loved ones, the creator of the system tries to remember why she's so dissatisfied with why it's the way it is, a young child has the ability to jump instantaneously between worlds, and a ship captain takes him in and wants to protect him like family. The Vanished Birds is beautifully written and engrossing.

 

 

8. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

The alchemical tale of separated twins/principles Roger and Dodger and their attempts to find their way back to each other are thwarted by parents, friends, and the master alchemist who created them and wants to sacrifice them on the altar of his power. Seanan McGuire's writing is always entertaining, and this tale is satisfyingly twisty and emotional both. 

 

 

 7. Before Mars by Emma Newman

I read several books from this series this year, and there were almost two on this list. Before Mars was the one that made it through, an examination of memory, amnesia, dissatisfaction with being a parent, art, and corporations that are perfectly willing to sacrifice many to save the members of their boards. The main character is sent to Mars to paint landscapes (and do science), but finds eerie relics that suggest she has been here before. But it could be suspended animation psychosis. Or?

 

6. In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire 

Seanan McGuire was the one author who did manage to appear twice on this list. I've enjoyed all the Wayward Children books, but this is one of my favourites. We follow Lundy, who we met previously as an adult, through her childhood in and out of the Goblin Market, where everything is about giving fair value, and the Market takes any imbalance out of those who try to cheat the system, one way or another. Somehow, this made me feel like curling up in a cozy library and never coming out. 

 

5. The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

 Oh fuck, this was good, a glorious angry rampage through a timeline that is under attack, where women and non-binary people fight off time traveller excursions from the worst bros you could imagine, who want to twist the world to a point where women have been robbed of virtually everything you can imagine. (The details are truly terrifying.)  Centered around Comstockery and the Chicago World's Fair, as well as the riot grrls of the 1990s, it's also about the main character seeing how her life became what it is, in the midst of a war where everything is on the line.

 

4. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

What the hell even was this book? Lesbian necromancers in space, in the rotting remains of recognizable technology, holding themselves together by the skin of their...bones. Narrated by an opinionated, profanity-prone narrator. It shouldn't work. It's such a mishmash. And yet somehow it does, held together by sheer force of the author's will. Follow Gideon as she goes with the head of her house and arch-nemesis Harrow to answer the call of the Emperor and try to become one of his Lyctors. Oh yeah, it's part murder mystery as well. I mean, what genre isn't it?

 

3. Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

It's no secret that I'm not that fond of a lot of YA fiction. Well, this year I found one that I wanted everyone to read, no matter their age. It's just plain good science fiction, the teenagers at the centre are believable and face real problems about sexuality, family, and being pursued by a non-custodial parent. Oh, and there's a cat-picture-loving AI who has been keeping tabs on the people who frequent their website. It's just delightful and satisfying, and one of the most interesting examinations of digital sentience I've read, full stop. 

 

2. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A young woman takes a road trip with the Lord of the Underworld through Jazz Age Mexico, in search of a way to save herself and him both. Look, if that description doesn't get you on board, I don't know what will. The characters are great, the mythology compelling, and Moreno-Garcia interweaves mythological concerns with real-world ones just beautifully. I want everyone to read this one.

 

 

1. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

If you know me in real life, this should cause negative amounts of surprise. I loved this book, I fell in love with this book, I've read it twice this year and both times found the precise point past which I could not put the book down until it was done and could not stop crying. It's beautifully written, it's just everything I want a book to be. Two opponents in a time war, Red and Blue, correspond over multiple strands of the potential timeline, finding more in common than they expected. I want everyone to read it.
 
 
 

Best of June

I finished eleven books in June, which means I'm keeping more or less on track for where I want to be at this time of year. I've read slightly more than half of my goal, and have been feeling mild itches to start writing book reviews again, although remembering how much time I devoted to it, and how bad I felt when I fell behind, I'm not sure I quite want to pick it up quite the same way.

However, I thought that perhaps a monthly post with my top three books finished in the previous month might be a nice way to dip my toes back in the book-blogging water, so to speak. Most of the books I finished in June were Hugo nominees of one stripe or another, as I pushed to get everything read by the voting deadline. (Except for trying to cram a couple more series books in, I'm pretty much done for the categories I want to vote in.)

These books were also all queer as heck, which was a wonderful synchronicity with Pride month. It's delightful to see this much diversity in sexuality and gender being portrayed pretty matter-of-factly in Hugo-nominated science fiction and fantasy.

Catfishing on Catnet by Naomi Kritzer

First up is a young adult book, which surprises the hell out of me. I am not that fond of young adult fiction - I find it too repetitive a lot of the time, with none of the challenge or surprise I'm really looking for in my science fiction and fantasy. So imagine my surprise when I found out that Catfishing on Catnet is really solid science fiction, as well as tense and all-around excellent. There's so much here - first and foremost, an examination of the emergence of AI (if the AI really liked cat pictures, but was also trying to grope its way towards ethics).

We've also got a young woman negotiating the umpteenth new place she and her mother have lived in in her life, and starting to suspect that the story her mother has been telling her about why they were constantly on the move might not hold up. (I was completely delighted by the reveal of the reasons behind, which tied in both emotional and science fiction elements beautifully.) We have a clowder on Catnet, a group of young adults who learn to be there for each other, and also figure out how to subvert a terrible high school Sex Education Robot.

It's one of those books where I'm almost reduced to making earnest hand gestures at the screen, which you cannot see, in hopes of expressing physically just exactly how much I think you should read this book. Catfishing on Catnet. Definitely my favourite book of the month.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

This novella was just a delight. It has the warm humanism I've come to expect from Becky Chambers, including a crew of an intersteller ship who genuinely like each other. Which is not to say there is never conflict, but it isn't artificial, and mostly comes from interaction with the environment. In this book, we're with one of the first crews Earth has sent out to explore the stars, on a very long return trip using suspended animation, knowing no one they know will still be alive when they get back. They're kept up to date by broadcasts from Earth, but those start to slowly peter out, and the explorers do not know why.

This is a scientific expedition, focused on documenting and exploring, while disturbing new ecosystems as little as possible. It lets Chambers come up with some really interesting planets with fascinating life forms, and then examine some of the difficulties that might arise when you have no back-up, and no information.

This wasn't the most challenging book I read this month, although the way the book ends offers some food for thought. It was, however, one of the most purely delightful. I looked forward to spending time in this universe, and was sad when it was over in a scant hundred or so pages.

The Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh

I don't love the title of this book, because I keep forgetting if it's the Silver Wood or the Silver of the Wood, or the Silver in the Wood. I do love the cover, and I ended up liking what was inside a lot. I'm a sucker for fairy stories, if they're well done, and not just humans wearing pointy ears.

The main character, Tobias, has been living in these woods for at least 400 years, guarding the dryads and making sure the more malevolent incursions do no harm to the humans who cluster on its edges. (The book feels like it happens in the late 19th century, but I can't remember if it actually ever says.)

Tobias rescues a young man who has just bought a near-by estate, and the young man will just not let him alone, looking into folklore that Tobias has been guarding for centuries. (The young man's mother makes a rather delightful appearance later, being rather more into the practical side of investigating folklore, rather than the academic inquiries of her son.)

It's not a long book, but Tesh does a great job of creating the atmosphere and the magic. This one sold me on the basis of the prose and the feel.