Order "The Soul Mirror" HERE
INTRODUCTION: "The Spirit Lens" was the first novel by the author that I read completely and I quite liked it. Towards last January's review of it, I said:
"After I got into the style of the novel and its happenings started hooking me, its main attraction were the twists and turns and the characters about whom slowly we start having quite different impressions than at the start. Revelations from the past coupled to traits that come at fore only after a while mean that what we believe at the beginning will be quite changed by the end. This unpredictability raised The Spirit Lens most in my estimation since in so many genre books the characters are marked: "the destined one, the sidekick, the love interest, the villain, the noble but doomed one", while here there is much more subtlety and even at the end when we seemingly know a lot more, there is a lot of uncertainty at least with regard to the big picture."
As time passed, The Spirit Lens stayed much more in memory than other books I seemingly enjoyed more on first read, so it got a place in my recommended books of 2010, while its sequel "The Soul Mirror" became a high expectation novel for 2011. And it delivered!
The following part will have spoilers for The Spirit Lens, so beware if you have not read it so far.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The first thing to know about "The Soul Mirror" is that while a first person narration as The Spirit Lens, it switches narrators from Portier to Anne du Vernase who was a relatively minor character in the first novel, though her actions are quite important at the end of it.
Four years after the end of The Spirit Lens, 22 year old Anne du Vernase, goddaughter of King Philippe is trying hard to keep her family estate going with a disappeared father condemned in large part by her testimony as murderer and traitor, a mad mother now in keeping of her brothers far away, an imprisoned brother and a magician younger sister whose discoveries kill her just before the novel starts - at the magical College at Seravain where the 17 year old was studying. And they don't even let Anne inside when she goes to collect her sister's belongings.
The hated Portier, the investigator who broke open the big treason/necromancy case in The Spirit Lens and was the prosecutor in the King's name at the trial in-absentia of her father and his accomplices, arrives with a royal warrant demanding Anne to come as a maid of honor - aka "noble servant" - to Queen Eugenie's palace in Merona while also announcing the dispossession of the Vernase estates for the treason of the king's former bosom friend.
Portier is now the chief of the Queen's household administration, his former friend/helper Dante is the Queen's magician and a figure of dread and darkness, Ilario is still playing the fool, and the Queen's (adopted) mother and former Regent, Antonia is playing an "I want power" manipulation game with the Queen and her semi-estranged and pretty much always away husband King, while portents of dread and magic are continually seen in Merona.
Anne is thrown into the fray where nothing is at is seems, friends and enemies are hard to discern, while the Aspirant (supposedly her vanished traitor father) and his clique are ready to take the final step in the plans laid so long ago and that were only partly thwarted in The Spirit Lens...
If this description does not hook you let's talk about the other strengths of the novel.
The narration of Anne is pitch perfect and seemed to me much smoother than Portier's from the first page. It may just be that I got used with the author' style in this series, but the pages really turned by themselves and the book hits no narrative walls.
The characters of The Spirit Lens are now seen through Anne's quite different perspective and I greatly enjoyed the glimpses we got of Portier and Ilario, while Dante becomes the truly dominant character - even as an object of fear and dread for Anne - that Portier's narration could not really portray him. We encounter other old friends and sometimes quite different facets of them than in The Spirit Lens, while the nasty and power-hungry Antonia is enjoyably loathsome and naive new Queen's physician Roussel, a kindly middle-aged commoner may be Anne's only friend at the court, or at least this is what she believes...
The Soul Mirror takes place in a shorter period of time than The Spirit Lens - as in there chapters are named by day/time - and the tension builds inexorably towards a powerful action filled last part that is awesome. Twists and turns abound and while some are of "could it really be?" far-fetched ones that experienced fantasy readers always enjoy guessing, others are more easily discernible, though all-in-all they keep the reader on his or her toes all the time.
The only minor niggle I has was that the author truly puts a lot on Anne's shoulders and at some point, I was thinking, enough, let the girl have a break, though she proves more than adept to handle her known enemies.
The world building is even better than in the first novel - again familiarity helps, but The Soul Mirror brings quite a lot of new things to what we know from The Spirit Lens - and there are quite a few moments that make one want to revisit the book quite a few times.
A novel that stakes an early claim to my Top 10 list of 2011 - currently at #2-#3 - The Soul Mirror (A++) takes the Collegia Magica series to the next level with a gripping tale that essentially ends all the threads from The Spirit Lens, though enough loose ends are left so new series books can follow. Magic, science, family feuds, a kingdom and maybe even a world - or at least its laws of nature - in peril, a great heroine with a superb cast and traditional fantasy does not get better than this!
3:00 AM | 
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Here I plan to link all posts on the theme of 2010 releases and reads and index this post on the "Best of" widget. As of today January 3, 2011, I plan to add one more post discussing non-2010 releases I read.
I will include the two Goodreads comprehensive lists dealing with this subject, while for some books I tried and did not care for to continue, a general list is HERE, with books I have and may read at any time listed HERE and HERE.
I am including also the final 94-book list of 2010 Anticipated books of which I finally have/took a look at all. Of them 81 are read so far, 11 are on the reading pile and two I decided I do not want to read.
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1. More-or less comprehensive list of books I read in 2010 HERE
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2. 2010 releases read by me whatever the year read in (2009-10-11) HERE
this will be updated automatically as needed
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3. 2010 reads in covers - up to early December actually but close enough; full list 1 above
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4. Top 55 Novels in Covers; top 25 ranked, the next 30 in more or less chronological order of listing them as obtained on Goodreads; to those 30 I would add one more book I finished on December 29
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4a (added Jan 2011). Top Independent Novels of 2010; 6 highly recommended and 6 more discussed
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5. 10 Disappointing 2010 Novels - not necessarily the worst, just the ones I had high expectations which did not pan out; see post for more novels I did not care for but for which expectations were not that high either
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6. Top 5 2010 releases versus Top 5 older novels read in 2010 - up to late November; some changes may appear in my final list of older books read in 2010
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7. Top 10 expected novels from the rest of 2010 - with updated comments as they came; original post in May, updates along the way, final version in October
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8. 2010 at Half
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9. 2010 Anticipated Final Post which I will update anytime I read/discard any of the remaining 11/94 books there still on my pile
I will include the two Goodreads comprehensive lists dealing with this subject, while for some books I tried and did not care for to continue, a general list is HERE, with books I have and may read at any time listed HERE and HERE.
I am including also the final 94-book list of 2010 Anticipated books of which I finally have/took a look at all. Of them 81 are read so far, 11 are on the reading pile and two I decided I do not want to read.
********************************************************
1. More-or less comprehensive list of books I read in 2010 HERE
********************************************************
2. 2010 releases read by me whatever the year read in (2009-10-11) HERE
this will be updated automatically as needed
********************************************************
3. 2010 reads in covers - up to early December actually but close enough; full list 1 above
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4. Top 55 Novels in Covers; top 25 ranked, the next 30 in more or less chronological order of listing them as obtained on Goodreads; to those 30 I would add one more book I finished on December 29
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4a (added Jan 2011). Top Independent Novels of 2010; 6 highly recommended and 6 more discussed
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5. 10 Disappointing 2010 Novels - not necessarily the worst, just the ones I had high expectations which did not pan out; see post for more novels I did not care for but for which expectations were not that high either
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6. Top 5 2010 releases versus Top 5 older novels read in 2010 - up to late November; some changes may appear in my final list of older books read in 2010
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7. Top 10 expected novels from the rest of 2010 - with updated comments as they came; original post in May, updates along the way, final version in October
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8. 2010 at Half
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9. 2010 Anticipated Final Post which I will update anytime I read/discard any of the remaining 11/94 books there still on my pile
This month we are featuring 42 books. There were considerably more new sff releases but we tried to limit ourselves to a reasonable number and we chose the books most in tune with what's discussed here.
The release dates are US unless marked otherwise, though for books released in the UK and US in the same month but on different dates we use the earliest date without comment and they are first edition unless noted differently. The dates are on a best known basis so they are not guaranteed; same about the edition information. Since information sometimes is out of date even in the Amazon/Book Depository links we use for listings, books get delayed or sometimes even released earlier, we would truly appreciate if you would send us an email about any listing with incorrect information.
Sometimes a cover image is not available at the time of the post and also sometimes covers change unexpectedly so while we generally use the Amazon one when available and cross check with Google Images, the ultimate bookstore cover may be different.
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(click through for bigger image)“Agatha H. and the Airship City” by Phil Foglio & Kaja Foglio. January 1, 2011.
“Demonstorm” by James Barclay. January 1, 2011 (US Debut).
“Cowboy Angels” by Paul J. McAuley. January 1, 2011 (US Debut).
“Tempest’s Legacy” by Nicole Peeler. January 3, 2011.
“The Lost Gate” by Orson Scott Card. Release Date: January 4, 2011.
“House Name” by Michelle West. Release Date: January 4, 2011.
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(click through for bigger image)“The Soul Mirror” by Carol Berg. Release Date: January 4, 2011.
“Puttering About in a Small Land” by Philip K. Dick. January 4, 2011 (Reprint).
“The Hammer” by K.J. Parker. Release Date: January 5, 2011.
“The Demi-Monde: Winter” by Rod Rees. January 6, 2011.
“Rivers of London” by Ben Aaronovitch. UK Release Date: January 10, 2011.
“Gryphon: New and Selected Stories” by Charles Baxter. January 11, 2011.
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(click through for bigger image)“Across the Universe” by Beth Revis. Release Date: January 11, 2011.
“Timeless” by Alexandra Monir. Release Date: January 11, 2011.
“Warped” by Maurissa Guibord. Release Date: January 11, 2011.
“Harbinger of the Storm” by Aliette de Bodard. UK : January 12, 2011.
“Death's Disciples” by J. Robert King. UK Release Date: January 12, 2011.
“Home Fires” by Gene Wolfe. Release Date: January 18, 2011.
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(click through for bigger image)“Among Others” by Jo Walton. Release Date: January 18, 2011.
“Farlander” by Colin Buchanan. January 18, 2011 (US Debut).
“God's War” by Kameron Hurley. Release Date: January 18, 2011.
“Never Knew Another” by J.M. McDermott. January 18, 2011.
“Of Blood & Honey” by Stina Leicht. Release Date: January 18, 2011.
“The Witch's Daughter” by Paula Brackston. January 18, 2011.
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(click through for bigger image)“The Children of the Lost” by David Whitley. Release Date: January 18, 2011.
“The Cypress House” by Michael Koryta. Release Date: January 24, 2011.
“While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction” by Kurt Vonnegut. January 25, 2011.
“The Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures” by Robert E. Howard. January 25, 2011.
“Bloodshot” by Cherie Priest. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
“The Warlord's Legacy” by Ari Marmell. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
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(click through for bigger image)“The Sworn” by Gail Z. Martin. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
“The Griffin’s Flight” by K.J. Taylor. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
“The Sentinel Mage” by Emily Gee. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
“Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories” edited by John Joseph Adams. January 25, 2011.
“The World House” by Guy Adams. January 25, 2011 (US Debut).
“God of War 2” by Robert E. Vardeman. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
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(click through for bigger image)“Drought” by Pam Bachorz. Release Date: January 25, 2011.
“The Heroes” by Joe Abercrombie. UK Release Date: January 27, 2011.
“The Fallen Blade” by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. January 27, 2011.
“The Alchemist” by Paolo Bacigalupi. Release Date: January 31, 2011.
“The Executioness” by Tobias S. Buckell. Release Date: January 31, 2011.
“Brayan’s Gold” by Peter V. Brett. Release Date: January 31, 2011.
As 2011 has been dawning all over the world, we wish everyone:
Happy New Year 2011!
(our regular January Spotlight returns on January 2-3)
KJ Parker at WikipediaRead KJ Parker' story Amor Vincit Omnia HERE
Order The Hammer HERE
Read FBC Rv of Blue and Gold
Read FBC Rv of The Folding Knife
Read FBC Rv of Purple & Black
Read FBC Rv of A Rich Full Week
Read FBC Rv of The Scavenger Trilogy
INTRODUCTION:Pseudonymous author KJ Parker has made a name in fantasy with 12 novels, 2 long novellas/short novels and 2 short stories of which you can read Amor Vincit Omnia free online at the Subterranean site and get a flavor of the author's work.
I have talked about The Scavenger trilogy, while the standalone The Folding Knife is one of my top five novels of 2010. The author's books share some characteristics: setting in a generic pre-industrial society with Roman/Byzantine overtones and naming conventions, dark humor, detached narration, love of details especially about metal working, sword fighting and pre-industrial engineering, themes of betrayal, civilization versus "barbarians", group of extraordinary friends and family feuds that spill into the larger picture.
The Hammer expresses some of these themes to perfection, using a far-off colony island of an unnamed aristocratic republic whose population is rigidly divided into three: an isolated exiled noble family, the met'Ocs and their patriarch whose shadow looms over the novel, though we mostly see his three sons in action, the subsistence-level farmer colonists who regard the met'Ocs with a mixture of fear, resentment and jealousy and the enigmatic and remote natives who seem to be incomprehensible to the mainlanders and with whom the colonists thinks they have an unspoken truce. Crossing the implied and sometimes formal boundaries, Gignomai, the youngest met'Oc tries to fulfill what he perceives to be his destiny...
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: For readers familiar with KJ Parker's work, The Hammer can be summarized as the family drama of The Fencer series, the driven hero of The Folding Knife and the setup of The Company.
On a big island, there is a small subsistence 70 year old colony of farmers and shopkeepers mostly indentured, taxed and generally kept at that level by Home on the mainland through a charter to The Company which brings them the needed goods in return for large amounts of beef and animal skins/pelts; the colonists are allowed no weapons and no ships.
But on a nearby plateau - The Tabletop - impregnable from 3 parts and walled on the 4th - an exiled noble family from Home, the met'Ocs made their - illegal as far as Home is concerned but nobody bothers since they still have friends in power - estate/fortress and they are armed and pretend to keep Home's traditions, though they are poorer than the colonists in many respects, except in books, some more advanced stuff from Home and weapons; of course most of them are dreaming of being recalled and reinstated if their allies manage to gain control Home. The current generation, third since their exile, consists of 3 brothers and a sister, while their father is the patriarch with absolute powers - including life or death - and their mother imported from Home is negligible.
Stheno(mai) the elder and a huge man is the "farmer" in charge with feeding and clothing them and is continually harried by this or that. Luso(mai) the second son is the hunter/warrior who keeps the peace and leads a "gang" recruited from the no-gooders of the colony with occasional cattle raids - the colonists do not mind that since all cattle is Company's - but sometimes for other stuff like pigs or chickens about which the colonists care but can do little not having guns...
Gignomai the youngest is more or less surplus so he has no definite role which allows him to "break out" often to the colony where his best friend Furio Opello is the son and nephew of the most important men there by some accounts since they run the monopoly store that sells Company's goods.
We see Gig at age 7, mysteriously called "Seven Years Before" when he solves a problem with an animal eating the chickens, at 14 in the "Year When", in charge of some pigs, his "first command" and finally from age 21 on - "Seven Years After" - when he decides to leave Tabletop and make a living for himself away from his weird family; or maybe he has different and more momentous plans...
Then there are the "savages", the original nomadic inhabitants of the island who had so far left the colony in peace. And of course things will never be the same...
The Hammer is more personal and intimate than the author's earlier books and in some sense it is the "cheeriest" of all, though of course the term is relative. The novel also asks some of the questions that the author has been exploring in his fiction: how far does one go for "justice", how far does one go for a "noble cause", can a "bad" person do considerably more "general good" than a "good" person, what is civilization?
The Folding Knife treated the same themes at a more impersonal, state politics level, but here everything is close and personal with no quarter given. The dark humor and superb style of the author are on display continually through the novel, while the twists, turns, jaw dropping moments characteristic of a KJ Parker novel materialize often, sometimes in ways familiar from other novels though with enough of a change to read anew, sometimes in ways that confounded my expectations as a "veteran" KJ Parker reader.
We also have the occasion to meet a remarkable set of characters including a mainland aristo cousin of the met'Ocs who is on a "temporary" trip to avoid trial for "sort-of murdering" her husband as she charmingly puts it to Gig, all for his or at least his family's own good by the way, though understandably said family does not quite see it that way, a shopkeeper who finds himself in charge of more than his store and tries to "do good", an elderly native who is quite weird to say the least and a girl shipped from Home to her uncles on the Island and who dreams to become a doctor in a staunch patriarchal society, though the always enigmatic Gignomai, the good natured Furio and the other two met'Oc brothers are center stage throughout.
While in The Folding Knife, "the knife" was clear from page one though of course its true significance had to wait a little to be uncovered, here "the hammer" is more ambiguous since there are a bunch of them, literal in several incarnations - usual hammer for nails, huge hammer in a forge, hammer of a gun - and figurative that play important roles...
As a big fan of the author's work, I had the highest expectations for The Hammer (A++ and provisional top novel of 2011) and they were surpassed because in addition to the usual great stuff I expected and got - characters, memorable moments, prose style, twists and turns - the novel has great balance and offers a truly complete and satisfying experience you want to revisit often.
After the previous list of Top 25 + 30 more excellent 2010 Novels, as well as some older titles read in 2010 that impressed me a lot, here comes the list of the 10 most disappointing novels from this year.There were a lot of books I read or fast-read and I did not care that much for, but in many instances they were books that came with little expectations (middling debut fantasies like Spellwright, Conqueror's Shadow and the like), were sequels to series debuts that I was surprised I enjoyed a lot, so the expectations reversed to the mean so to speak (Prospero in Hell, All That Lives Must Die, Thirteen Years Later, Freedom) or were books where the series weight or lack of caught up with them (Echo, Deceiver, The Hypnotist) as I expected to sooner or later, so I was not that surprised.
The above on the other hand were almost all potential candidates for top-ten novels of mine based on previous experience with the author's work, content, vibe or hype ("the best debut" since, well you know the spiel) and they all did not work that well for me though in degrees, since despite all I still enjoyed Michael Flynn's Up Jim River but far from the superb The January Dancer since the combination of archaic language and Vancian travelogue on strange worlds degenerated into farce quite a few times, Alastair Reynolds' Terminal World is still better than most sf out there despite being essentially a combination of two books without almost any relation between them - each could have been magnificent on its own but together they are a jumble - and Adam Roberts is still mostly entertaining despite committing the sin he railed against Greg Egan in his (in)famous review of Incandescence, but with lit-grad musings that would be quite appropriate in a discussion after a drink or two and which otherwise take down New Model Army badly, rather than with the "too much science" of Incandescence...
Both Absorption and The Orphaned Worlds suffer from too much ambition in too little pages, trying to be epics with tons of threads in 3-400 pages and both fail as incoherent, though I plan to read the sequel to Absorption hoping that there will be a better balance.
Engineman wears its age badly and is annoyingly parochial to boot (the 2010 edition is a revised and expanded version of the 1990's original), while The Dervish House's world building is a tourist postcard one showing the author's lack of understanding of Turkish culture.
The Horns of Ruin is a comic book novelization with a ridiculous straight-faced earnestness and lacking the humor that make such palatable even in small doses for me, while C is the epitome of pretentious drivel that made me eschew a lot of what passes for "literary" for so long - though once in a while it's good to be reminded why sff is still the most interesting and relevant literature of our age and C is a good such reminder.
The Quantum Thief is a reasonably entertaining debut, though it's only slightly more interesting and "serious" than the usual Scalzi/Sawyer B-grade of sf and it lacks the panache of some such like Old Man's War being a far cry from the hype pumped relentlessly on the web about it. Without said hype I actually may have enjoyed it more and I definitely plan to read the next book in the series since there is potential there. On the other hand 20 years of heavy sf reading accustomed me with the discarded remains of "debut/series of the age" hype (anyone remembers the Plenty books of the 90's or more recently the Will McCarthy novels of the 00's, both series having the same vibes for me as this one) so only the future will tell where this series will go.
The Dream of Perpetual Motion is a book I *really* wanted to like - its subject seemed tailor made for my taste; sadly the author' style just did not work out for me and the novel read flat and lifeless, while Tome of the Undergates was almost so bad as to be funny at the level of the North Korean movies of my childhood that were unintentionally quite hilarious; not there though, the all-caps words and philosophical discussions about potty habits do not reach the epic level of the farmer who shook hands with Kim Il-sung some decades in the past and the hand in question became an object of worship in the village, not ever to be washed so not to dispel the Great Leader's touch, so the author has a way to go until he reaches those heights...
Sunday, December 26, 2010
My Top 25 Novels of 2010 in Covers; 30 More 2010 Highly Recommended Novels in Covers (by Liviu Suciu)
(click through for a larger image)I recently did a cover post with the books read in 2010 up to early December. Now I will present my personal list of top 25 novels published in 2010 in ranked order as a collated cover post. For the titles on the list, you can go HERE, while all but one have FBC reviews indexed HERE. I have read some of them in 2009 as advance review copies, so not all will appear in the 'read in 2010' cover collage.
Actually this list has 28 titles since I consider two pairs of series books (both #4 and #5 for that matter) published in 2010 as two combos for ranking purposes and I wanted to include the much controversial The Left Hand of God after all...
With 17 more-or-less fantasy titles, 6 sf titles, 4 historical fiction titles, though three of them have also literary overtones, only one being closer to genre and a contemporary literary one, the books above are the ones that most reflect what I appreciate and enjoy in fiction - first and foremost "interesting-ness" in content, second flowing prose without narrative walls and finally "literary-ness" in aspects different from the narrative flow. While the list itself is of course a personal choice one with no claim to anything beyond, some of the choices are even more personal so to speak...
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Actually this list has 28 titles since I consider two pairs of series books (both #4 and #5 for that matter) published in 2010 as two combos for ranking purposes and I wanted to include the much controversial The Left Hand of God after all...
With 17 more-or-less fantasy titles, 6 sf titles, 4 historical fiction titles, though three of them have also literary overtones, only one being closer to genre and a contemporary literary one, the books above are the ones that most reflect what I appreciate and enjoy in fiction - first and foremost "interesting-ness" in content, second flowing prose without narrative walls and finally "literary-ness" in aspects different from the narrative flow. While the list itself is of course a personal choice one with no claim to anything beyond, some of the choices are even more personal so to speak...
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Here is the cover collage of 30 more highly recommended books of 2010 with the title list HERE. The order is though random since I do not see any point in making finer distinctions. We have reviews of 27 of them again indexed HERE. This list was a bit more surprising for me since I started with some extra 50 2010 titles I enjoyed and would recommend but I wanted to pare down to the ones that stayed the best in my memory, so I left out some titles I was more enthusiastic on reading them but which faded somewhat as time passed.
There are 19 more-or-less fantasy titles, 6 sf titles, 4 historical fiction titles, though here 3 are pure genre and one with literary overtones and a contemporary literary one, so the distribution of the first 28 titles continues. This is no surprise since after all my first criterion is "interesting-ness" in content and that one scales as in "like with like".
There are 19 more-or-less fantasy titles, 6 sf titles, 4 historical fiction titles, though here 3 are pure genre and one with literary overtones and a contemporary literary one, so the distribution of the first 28 titles continues. This is no surprise since after all my first criterion is "interesting-ness" in content and that one scales as in "like with like".
Last year I prepared a long post about expected 2010 novels, originally split into three and then later collated and updated. This year I discussed some anticipated books in six posts so far (I HERE, II HERE, III HERE, IV HERE, V HERE, VI HERE). I have read the following five all off which would have been candidates for the list in this post. Reviews will come in due course, starting soon with the two early January novels by Carol Berg and by KJ Parker, while a dual review with Robert for The Fallen Blade is scheduled for mid-January.
1.The Hammer by KJ Parker (A++ and starting as #1 2011 novel)
2.The Book of Transformations by Mark Newton (A++ and starting as #2-3 2011 novel)
3.The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg (A++ and starting as #2-3 2011 novel)
4.The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (A++)
5.The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (B)
The first three are just awesome novels guaranteed a spot in my best of 2011, the Abercrombie is excellent too but as military fantasy - subgenre I like less than others - it has a ceiling in my preferences, so while it may make my Top 25 of 2011, it will depend on how much I like other books - a battle is still a battle, so to speak - while The Fallen Blade was a minor disappointment for surprising reasons (no, not for vampires, but for narrative walls and contrived plotting), though I am still in the series and hope future installments will be better.
I decided to do only a Top 5 Expected SFF Novels for now, though I will start soon a continually updated post with 2011 novels read. I thought a lot about what to include here and I had to make some hard choices, but overall I would say that right now these are the novels I would take over anything else known to come out in 2011 and of course excepting the ones above already read. They also tend to reflect well my preferences - "different" epic, strange sff, sense-of-wonder sf and finally "new school epic" fantasy.
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1. The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Shadows of the Apt is my ongoing #1 fantasy series and it almost got at the level of my top 2 ongoing series in terms of expectations. (As anyone who follows my posts knows, those are Honor Harrington and Safehold by D. Weber, sadly none having a story advancing book in 2011 - HH has an anthology and a YA back-story novel, and while I read one and will read the other, neither are that important for me).
For more about why and all, check my review of The Scarab Path (beware of spoilers though) and go from there.
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2. The Last Four Things by Paul Hoffman
After 4 reads of the book and perusing quite a few reviews that trash it, I still believe that The Left Hand of God is a very entertaining novel with a lot of narrative energy, but one that is such a mix of stuff that resists any classification beyond being sff. I am still undecided if it's more sf-nal than fantasy-nal, or if it's just a big (bad) joke played on the readers as some reviewers more or less argue. I still love it though I chickened out of putting it in my top 25 2010 novels so I am giving it a "huge personal favorite" label for now.
The Last Four Things should give me a better understanding and if I find it as refreshing as TLoG, that one may give even The Hammer a run for the #1 spot in 2011 in sff. Will see, but the above make this one my #2 expected sff novel of 2011.
And if you wonder, these expectations are double-edged since for example The Horns of Ruin was my top expected book of the last half of 2010, only to badly disappoint me, so much so that even the author's Dead of Veridon - follow-up to a top novel of mine in 2009 - moved lower on my expected 2011 list.
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3. Embassytown by China Mieville
I was so-so on City/City and I am still stuck at page 200 in Kraken but in both cases that's because I find hard to suspend disbelief in a modern world with magic. For a book that's in the same narrative space as City/City and that truly blew me away and became my top novel read in 2010, check the 1951 Goncourt prize winner The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq which has none of the credibility issues I had with the Mieville novel.
In Embassytown it seems we will be in pure speculative fiction world-building so I expect no issues with that and the novel is another contender for #1 in 2011.
4. The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
Nobody writes better mind-blowing sf than Greg Egan and while I had occasional issues with the literary aspects of his work, The Clockwork Rocket is another potential #1 2011 novel and the only other "core-sf" must for me.
While there is a chance the book will be published in 2012, the author has a great introduction to its universe HERE and I strongly believe that with Alastair Reynolds turning to mundane sf (I dislike that but will see how the master of hard sf handles it), The Clockwork Rocket is the one "universe as sense of wonder" novel we will hopefully have in 2011.
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5. The River of Shadows by Robert Redick
The Chartrand Series is a big time favorite, but the almost 18 months lag between The Rats (still not present in the USA) and the Ruling Sea and this one, makes The River of Shadows lack somewhat the immediacy of say the Kinden novels. I am also curious to see if the magic of the first two books is still there for me since recently there were a bunch of series that faded for me or at best still remained on my "series reading" list but with less urgency.
With the new Brent Weeks expected for 2012 - that one will have otherwise been here in the "epic" spot - the Chartrand is the one more-or-less traditional fantasy series I want first, just beating the Rothfuss, Lynch, Bakker, Morgan or for that matter Martin if 2011 offerings.
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Edit 12/23 Despite my mild skepticism it seems that there are good chances that How Firm a Foundation (Safehold #5) by David Weber stands a chance of being published in Fall 2011.
The author has started writing it at the end of November 2010 so things will have to happen fast as publishing timetables go, but I guess that an A list author gets priority, so it's clearly possible. How Firm a Foundation would be of course my number one expected book of 2011 since I know for sure the new main Honor novel A Rising Thunder written and delivered is scheduled for 2012 since as mentioned 2011 has 2 Honorverse books already and the other two sf authors I would include there PF Hamilton and IM Banks do not have new novels for 2011 as far as I know (PFH has a collection and Iain Banks may have a non-M book).
Incidentally despite being technically sf, Safehold is the most traditional fantasy series I am reading today with an embodied AI-wizard called Merlin for good measure, good and bad kings, evil or corrupt religious hierarchy with miracles on show, a huge evil in the distant past that almost destroyed humanity and led to today's world and so on...
And the way I see it there is a destined child - dynasty in this case since the series is sf so things will take a while to get solved - with the first book essentially starting when the wizard (Merlin) comes and saves the destined one, young Prince Cayleb from certain death in the nick of time and starts instructing him in his (line's) destiny...
You love traditional epics, try this one despite its sf trappings...
1.The Hammer by KJ Parker (A++ and starting as #1 2011 novel)
2.The Book of Transformations by Mark Newton (A++ and starting as #2-3 2011 novel)
3.The Soul Mirror by Carol Berg (A++ and starting as #2-3 2011 novel)
4.The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (A++)
5.The Fallen Blade by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (B)
The first three are just awesome novels guaranteed a spot in my best of 2011, the Abercrombie is excellent too but as military fantasy - subgenre I like less than others - it has a ceiling in my preferences, so while it may make my Top 25 of 2011, it will depend on how much I like other books - a battle is still a battle, so to speak - while The Fallen Blade was a minor disappointment for surprising reasons (no, not for vampires, but for narrative walls and contrived plotting), though I am still in the series and hope future installments will be better.
I decided to do only a Top 5 Expected SFF Novels for now, though I will start soon a continually updated post with 2011 novels read. I thought a lot about what to include here and I had to make some hard choices, but overall I would say that right now these are the novels I would take over anything else known to come out in 2011 and of course excepting the ones above already read. They also tend to reflect well my preferences - "different" epic, strange sff, sense-of-wonder sf and finally "new school epic" fantasy.
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1. The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Shadows of the Apt is my ongoing #1 fantasy series and it almost got at the level of my top 2 ongoing series in terms of expectations. (As anyone who follows my posts knows, those are Honor Harrington and Safehold by D. Weber, sadly none having a story advancing book in 2011 - HH has an anthology and a YA back-story novel, and while I read one and will read the other, neither are that important for me).
For more about why and all, check my review of The Scarab Path (beware of spoilers though) and go from there.
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2. The Last Four Things by Paul Hoffman
After 4 reads of the book and perusing quite a few reviews that trash it, I still believe that The Left Hand of God is a very entertaining novel with a lot of narrative energy, but one that is such a mix of stuff that resists any classification beyond being sff. I am still undecided if it's more sf-nal than fantasy-nal, or if it's just a big (bad) joke played on the readers as some reviewers more or less argue. I still love it though I chickened out of putting it in my top 25 2010 novels so I am giving it a "huge personal favorite" label for now.
The Last Four Things should give me a better understanding and if I find it as refreshing as TLoG, that one may give even The Hammer a run for the #1 spot in 2011 in sff. Will see, but the above make this one my #2 expected sff novel of 2011.
And if you wonder, these expectations are double-edged since for example The Horns of Ruin was my top expected book of the last half of 2010, only to badly disappoint me, so much so that even the author's Dead of Veridon - follow-up to a top novel of mine in 2009 - moved lower on my expected 2011 list.
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3. Embassytown by China Mieville
I was so-so on City/City and I am still stuck at page 200 in Kraken but in both cases that's because I find hard to suspend disbelief in a modern world with magic. For a book that's in the same narrative space as City/City and that truly blew me away and became my top novel read in 2010, check the 1951 Goncourt prize winner The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq which has none of the credibility issues I had with the Mieville novel.
In Embassytown it seems we will be in pure speculative fiction world-building so I expect no issues with that and the novel is another contender for #1 in 2011.
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(not a cover obviously!)
(not a cover obviously!)4. The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
Nobody writes better mind-blowing sf than Greg Egan and while I had occasional issues with the literary aspects of his work, The Clockwork Rocket is another potential #1 2011 novel and the only other "core-sf" must for me.
While there is a chance the book will be published in 2012, the author has a great introduction to its universe HERE and I strongly believe that with Alastair Reynolds turning to mundane sf (I dislike that but will see how the master of hard sf handles it), The Clockwork Rocket is the one "universe as sense of wonder" novel we will hopefully have in 2011.
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5. The River of Shadows by Robert Redick
The Chartrand Series is a big time favorite, but the almost 18 months lag between The Rats (still not present in the USA) and the Ruling Sea and this one, makes The River of Shadows lack somewhat the immediacy of say the Kinden novels. I am also curious to see if the magic of the first two books is still there for me since recently there were a bunch of series that faded for me or at best still remained on my "series reading" list but with less urgency.
With the new Brent Weeks expected for 2012 - that one will have otherwise been here in the "epic" spot - the Chartrand is the one more-or-less traditional fantasy series I want first, just beating the Rothfuss, Lynch, Bakker, Morgan or for that matter Martin if 2011 offerings.
**********************************************
Edit 12/23 Despite my mild skepticism it seems that there are good chances that How Firm a Foundation (Safehold #5) by David Weber stands a chance of being published in Fall 2011.
The author has started writing it at the end of November 2010 so things will have to happen fast as publishing timetables go, but I guess that an A list author gets priority, so it's clearly possible. How Firm a Foundation would be of course my number one expected book of 2011 since I know for sure the new main Honor novel A Rising Thunder written and delivered is scheduled for 2012 since as mentioned 2011 has 2 Honorverse books already and the other two sf authors I would include there PF Hamilton and IM Banks do not have new novels for 2011 as far as I know (PFH has a collection and Iain Banks may have a non-M book).
Incidentally despite being technically sf, Safehold is the most traditional fantasy series I am reading today with an embodied AI-wizard called Merlin for good measure, good and bad kings, evil or corrupt religious hierarchy with miracles on show, a huge evil in the distant past that almost destroyed humanity and led to today's world and so on...
And the way I see it there is a destined child - dynasty in this case since the series is sf so things will take a while to get solved - with the first book essentially starting when the wizard (Merlin) comes and saves the destined one, young Prince Cayleb from certain death in the nick of time and starts instructing him in his (line's) destiny...
You love traditional epics, try this one despite its sf trappings...
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