Fantasy Book Critic: A Few Announcements and Lists (by Liviu Suciu)

Due to a recent heavy workload as important deadlines approach, I will have only sporadic posts here at least until mid-April and the few reviews I was planning - full review for Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright by Justine Saracen and shorter reviews for The Quiet Twin by Dan Vyleta, The Great Game by Lavie Tidhar and The Master of Heathcrest Hall by Galen Beckett, may or may not be done till then, though you can read my raw thoughts on Goodreads for now.

I will also keep posting on Goodreads raw thoughts about any book I finish; recent English language novels read include China Mieville's superbly inventive Railsea, Alan Furst's ultra-atmospheric Mission to Paris and the very good but lighter than expected The Black Opera by Mary Gentle, all upcoming later in the year and all hopefully to have full reviews here in due course.

I also revamped a little my ranking shelves on Goodreads with three - all positional - annual recommended categories (starting from 2008 of course when Goodreads appeared) and I added a few more authors/titles to my all time favorite list that now contains 49 entries. The entries selected are mostly for the respective author's body of work and/or a series, with very few standalone novels as such and covering 48 authors with the one exception for two very different series by David Weber that both rank in my top three ongoing ones.

As an aside, sff occupies 22 of the 49 entries, 16 sf series/author's oeuvre and 6 fantasy series/author's work, with the first one being Use of Weapons (and the Culture series) by IM Banks at #7, while the first fantasy and 4th sff overall being A Game of Thrones at #11; the Honorverse is #9 and Night's Dawn (and generally Peter F. Hamilton's work) #10.

The other fantasy authors included are Jacqueline Carey, China Mieville, Adrian Tchaikovsky, K.J. Parker and Sean Russell, while in sf, Alastair Reynolds, Christopher Priest, Greg Egan, William Barton, Adam Roberts, Jules Verne, George Turner, Jack Vance, Eric Flint, Lois Bujold, Neal Asher and Neal Stephenson are in there in addition to the three mentioned above.