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I always hesitate to indulge in these listicles, primarily because my reading habits are so eclectic. However, if you’re like me and enjoy reading across a broad range of topics and books, you might find something new to like.
Ah, 2020. You’ve taken so much from us and yet at the same time I’ve never seen our world more clearly. I’ve also never been more grateful for the people in my life and all the media that gave me a momentary respite from a fraught election and the pandemic’s grim drudgery. It was hard for me personally to find my creative spark at various points this year, and I often took refuge in other creator’s worlds as a result. This is how I filled those moments.
Comfort Reads: I read a lot of historical romance growing up, and I found myself craving a return to that during the spring when the magnitude of the pandemic became clear to the public. I re-read books by Meredith Duran and Sherry Thomas. I also re-read all of Sarah MacLean’s regencies in preparation for Daring and the Duke’s release this summer, book three in the fun and unapologetically feminist Bareknuckle Bastards series.
Catching Up on Classics: I finally got around to reading Jacqueline Carey’s sensuous Kushiel’s Dart and Megan Whelan Turner’s twisty The Thief. I also started Martha Wells’ Books of the Raksura, and I’m really enjoying her worldbuilding based on insect collectives.
Recent Releases: I read a number of Tor.com novellas, notably Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby, a powerful accounting of Black history distilled down into a slim volume demanding a better future; Emily Tesh’s Silver in the Wood, a sinewy story dense with fantasy foliage; and Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune, a compelling look at female-centered mythology in the making. I snatched up the latest collected volumes for both Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga and Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress. I enjoyed returning to the Locked Tomb trilogy in Tamsyn Muir’s Harrow the Ninth. Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun was also another bright spot in a dark year.
Video Games: I love love love playing video games, although I’m usually a console and half behind new releases. Sometimes I play to procrastinate or to relieve stress or to simply enjoy an immersive story with lots of endorphin-generating collectibles to grab. I started the year off with Death Stranding which really set the tone for 2020 even though I didn’t realize it at the time. After that, I finally got into the Borderlands series and played my way through the main titles. The melee violence can be a bit much, but I enjoyed the stories of obsession, alien archeology, and colonization gone wrong. Plus the low-gravity and freaking laser beams in the prequal were awesome. I also really enjoyed playing Control which felt like a mashup of Fringe, X-Files, and a first-person shooter with really unique game mechanics and a brutally fun interactive environment. I’m currently playing Shadow of Mordor, and besides my inability to last-chance finish anything, I’m really enjoying the stealth aspects of the game.
What I’m Looking Forward To In 2021: I can’t wait to get my hands on Broken Web, Lori M. Lee’s follow-up to her amazing YA fantasy Forest of Souls. The Best of Walter Jon Williams from Subterranean Press is another book I have preordered along with Fran Wilde’s Ship of Stolen Words, a MG fantasy where you don’t know how important what you say is until you lose the ability to say it.
As for me personally, I’m chipping away at a few different writing projects, some closer to achieving their final form than others. This year has given me so much to chew on, intellectually and emotionally, and I’m curious to see how that will inform my writing to come. Stay tuned!
Lauren C. Teffeau is a speculative fiction
author based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her short fiction can be found in a
variety of professional and semi-pro magazines and anthologies. Her novel Implanted
(Angry Robot, 2018) mashing up cyberpunk, solarpunk, adventure, and romance was
shortlisted for the 2019 Compton Crook award for best first SF/F/H novel.
Please visit www.laurencteffeau.com to learn more.
2020 Review/2021 Preview
I keep a
notebook in which I list the books I’ve read, and flicking back through it now
reminds me that it’s been a great reading year, probably because I unashamedly
used books during 2020 as an escape from reality. The strange thing is that I
never feel the need to escape to better worlds. No utopias for me this year:
violence, fear, dystopia, and post-apocalyptic nightmares all kept me hooked.
Being fictional was the only requirement.
Having said
that, I did find Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song a little too close to
reality at times, but that’s because it’s got a wonderfully upsetting killer
virus at its heart that destroys normal life, fills hospitals, and leads to a
hugely tense final fifty pages that I had to read in one sitting. If you can
handle virus-based literature right now, I really recommend it.
A calmer
escape came in the form of Rym Kechacha’s Dark River, which uses dual
narratives split over many thousands of years. Following the essential journeys
of two mothers, one living in 6200BC and the other in 2156AD – both fleeing the
effects of climate change – it finds many parallels and makes interesting
reflections on how we can’t escape our landscapes. The writing is beautiful.
K&R:
Kidnap and Ransom
by James Smythe was just brilliant at creating suspense with a fantastical
twist that really draws you in. He’s one of my favourite contemporary writers.
I read some
wonderful collections this year, too. Gary Budden’s impressive London
Incognita features stories of the big city that come together to create a
London that feels layered, secretive. And M. John Harrison’s Settling the
World: Selected Stories 1970-2020 shares a few of his stories from a fifty
year span. What’s amazing is how clearly his voice, so aware, so far-reaching,
comes across no matter what page you turn to.
Looking
Ahead to 2021
I’ve been
lucky enough to already read some amazing books that will be turning up
throughout 2021. Look out for Oliver Langmead’s Birds of Paradise, which
is so stylish and involving. It’s the story of Adam, the first man, travelling
across continents to find the things he’s lost along the way while humanity has
changed beyond comprehension. Equally gorgeous, but with its eyes fixed on the
near future and an Earth upon which sea monsters are thriving and much of
humanity has fled to space, is Marian Womack’s elegant novel The Swimmers.
And if you’re a Jack Vance fan then try Tim Stretton’s Bitter Sky, which I think is going to be published early in 2021. It’s the first in a series of fantasy novels set in a world of wars, steamships, air balloons, military honours, and demons. It’s a heady combination told in a dry, fantastically entertaining voice.
On The
Horizon for Aliya Whiteley
I’m delighted
that my novel of alien contact and clashing cultures in the near future, Skyward
Inn, will be published by Solaris in March, and I’ll also have a short
story collection called From the Neck Up published by Titan Books in
September. That will contain some of my weirdest stories from the past ten
years, and I’m excited to see it out there. Happy 2021, everyone.
About the Author
Aliya Whiteley writes across many different genres and lengths. Her first published full-length novels, Three Things About Me and Light Reading, were comic crime adventures. Her 2014 SF-horror novella The Beauty was shortlisted for the James Tiptree and Shirley Jackson awards. The following historical-SF novella, The Arrival of Missives, was a finalist for the Campbell Memorial Award, and her noir novel The Loosening Skin was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award.
She has written over one hundred published short stories that have appeared in Interzone, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Static, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction.
She also writes a regular non-fiction column for Interzone.
The Things That Saved Me From The Worst of 2020
Look, 2020 has been the year of kicking us while we're down. It has been the year of everything burning both literally and figuratively, and it has been the year of so many of us getting punched in the jaw only to guard our heads and then get socked in the genitals. It has not, in short, been a great year.
But, if you're like me, you've probably taken solace in a lot of art these days. Be it streaming shows and movies, or listening to music, playing video games, reading books, staring at paintings and posters, or creating your own artwork, art has saved so many of us this year. My other solace has been the wilderness, what little bits of it I've been able to escape to now and again in the midst of everything else. But as many of us are unable to escape to the woods with any frequency, art really is the thing that has probably been there for most of us.
So, if I'm going to talk about the "Best of 2020," I am definitely going to talk about art. There have been many well-known shows/movies I've watched (The Witcher, The Mandalorian, Dragon Prince, She-Ra, Sex Education, The Old Guard, etc.) but they get lots of attention on their own, and while I love shows and movies I don't spend nearly as much time watching them as I do reading, so I'm not going to talk about them too much.
Instead, I'd like to talk about books. I'm not going to specify indie or trad. I am just going to give you my favorites fantasy reads from 2020, bullet point a few reasons to pick them up and let you sort out the rest. (After all, who doesn't love a good listicle, eh?)
In no particular order (my brain is far too chaotic a place to put books into some kind of hierarchy) I give you my favorite books of 2020 (with massive apologies to the other favorites I'm sure I'm forgetting my memory was never great and it has not been improved by the 2020 hellscape):
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
- coolest world building I've read maybe ever
- a mix of stabby and non-stabby female leads, soft bois, and just generally awesome characters
- a sea voyage!
- CROWS
- satisfying ending but holy shit I cannot wait for the next book, please buy this one so we can make sure the sequel happens
Sword of Kaigen by ML Wang
- stabby lead female
- gut wrenching emotional stakes
- Japan-inspired fantasy world
- elemental magic
- so many tissues
The Bone Ships by RJ Barker
- THE MATRIARCHY
- SHIPS
- MADE OF BONES
- LUCKY FREAKIN' MEAS
- ahem. if have always wanted a fantasy rendition Mid-Shipman Hornblower, look no further
- stabby lead female (I may have a type, ok?)
- Australian inspired fantasy world!
- creepy AF antagonists
- dark fantasy/horror vibe, but still hopeful
- I hate horror but I still loved this book
- lesbian space necromancers
- did you read the first point? why are you still here?
- you should have bought this book already
- there is also a murder mystery
- the lesbian space necromancers have swords. I rest my case.
- sloooooooooooowww burn
- very stabby lead female
- cast of characters that you will never want to leave
- emotional wreckage (both you and the characters)
- excellent representation of grief and healing
- I just want to go live with this cast (four books was not enough!)
- a very stabby lead female (yeah, well, at least you know what to expect from me now)
- a freaking amazing Alice in Wonderland retelling
- so many bicons I can't even
- this is the sequel to A Blade So Black make sure you read that first
- again we need the third book so please make sure you buy this one, please and thank you!
- stabby lead female (yes, I know, I just really like stabby women, ok?)
- excellent action sequences
- detailed and gorgeous world building
- love the main characters & supporting cast
- also SLOOOOOOOOOW burn
- the second book is coming in 2021 and I am struggling to wait
- this book is the opposite of grimdark
- there are still some dark things that happen, but the MC is definitely trying her best at all times
- an interesting world full of honest characters that I loved getting to know
- fairy tale retelling!
- slow burn, non-physical romance
- medium stabby lead female
- very stabby lead/supporting males
- TALKING BADGER PEOPLE!
- interesting twists on magic and pantheons
- slow burn romance
- swift pace, humorous banter, warm fuzzies despite all the carnage
- regency romance WITH ELVES AND SORCERY!
- telling polite society to grow a pair and do something about injustice
- medium slow burn romance
- very witty banter
- characters I want to have tea with
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