Top Ten of 2017!

Even though I didn't do the full Dust Cover Dust-Up this year, I still came up with a Top Ten list. As with every year, very few if any of the books on the list came out in the last year - since I get most of my books from the library, I'm always at least a few years behind. Still, no matter when they came out, these books are worth your time and attention. There are links to the full reviews if you want to read more of my thoughts on the matter.

10. World of Trouble by Ben Winters

I read this whole trilogy last year, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. But of the three, I think it was the last that struck me the most. It didn't flinch as the trilogy ended off, but Winters strung interesting ideas throughout about how the  world would react to an imminent end, and peppered through bits of hope and conspiracy that were powerful. It's the last few pages, though, that really elevate the whole damn thing.

9. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

This was the big classic I read this last year, after trying and failing to get through Don Quixote and The Brothers Karamazov. Moby Dick was the book I responded to, with all the varieties of obsession on display, including encyclopedic whale lore. I'd read it again, I really would.

 



8. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

I think of the two books in these companion novels, I liked Life After Life the best, but it got knocked out of a previous Dust-Up due to an unlucky matchup. Still, I have no problem putting A God In Ruins in my top ten this year. The story of Teddy, the brother of Ursula, and the parts of his life told all out of order, always circles back to the war and his experiences as a pilot. It is riveting, and the end is brutal.

 
7. Planetfall by Emma Newman

Wow, I did not see this book coming. For some reason, I thought it was YA - probably because it was in and amongst a bunch of other YA books on my library list. What it is instead is really insanely good science fiction, paired with an unsettling look at trauma and mental illness. It's set on another planet in the shadow of a huge building that the settlers below think was made by God. I can't even begin to explain why it is so good, but this book haunts me.

 
6. Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

I just loved this whole series, and can't wait to read the related book. Of course, a language with only one gender, and that one translated into English as feminine, is interesting, but the books are so much more - about power, empire, inequality, and identity. We keep on following the ship in the body of a person as she tries to stay alive and fight off the woman who's trying to kill her.

5. The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon

I am sort of a sucker for noir mysteries paired with science fiction, although I'm not convinced this is science fiction. Alt-history, absolutely, and I guess the two tend to get lumped together. Either way, this is a mix of a detective trying to solve a murder in the last days before Sitka gets returned to Alaska from its time as a temporary Jewish homeland, to a conspiracy around the return, family drama, and a whole bunch more. It was so up my alley it wasn't funny.

4. My Real Children by Jo Walton

Oh dear, this was a year for books that just about destroyed me, and Jo Walton's My Real Children left me with tears running down my face. I guess we're sort of in alt-history again, as we follow a woman through two versions of her life. But this avoids the trap of the "good life" and the "bad life," and gives us something nuanced and difficult about individual action, and the way we live.

 

3. The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates

This was the first Oates book I have ever read, and it won't be the last. On the surface, it's a Gothic horror, set in Princeton against a backdrop of familiar historical figures. Underneath that, though, lie the horrors of gender, of race, of class, and violences done in the name of each. I was enthralled. It's another book I want someone to read just so I can discuss it with them.

2. The Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler just about always knocks me on my ass, with her skill at delving into deeply uncomfortable power dynamics without ever being didactic. In fact, I've found that I disagree with some people on interpretations in ways that creep me out. In this second Parables book, we see the continued story of Lauren through the lens of her estranged daughter, as she struggles against the worst that fundamentalist Christianity can throw against her and Earthseed, her fledgling religion, both.

And that brings us to the book that knocked my socks off this last year, the book I have run out and buttonholed everyone I know to tell them to read it right freaking now. You should do the same.

1. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Just...read it. This is so good and so complex and so difficult. We are in another world where frequent cataclysms have created groups that are more or less protected during unstable periods, and many are cast out. In and among them are the orogenes, able to control seismic activity, potentially dangerous and therefore tightly controlled. This is all about power, of many sorts, and women who navigate tightly restricted worlds. It's so, so amazingly good.