#also the craft sequence by max Gladstone)

[obi-wann-cannoli]

Fantasy writers PLEASE start including some sort of ‘previously on’ intro chapter to your sequels. Not just a cast of characters (though that is also helpful). I can’t remember shit about my own life much less the political situation of the fictional fantasy world from the first book.

[virginiaoflykos]

What to read after Light Bringer? (Series similar to Red Rising)

August 2023 update!

Red Rising is my favorite series of all time, and since I first read it, I have sought series and books similar in both spirit and execution. Some of these recs are books I haven’t read personally, but have often come up in discussions with other users!

1. The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Status: ongoing, expected 10 books in total, 4/10 out at the moment

Book 1: The Way of Kings. The Way of Kings takes place on the world of Roshar, where war is constantly being waged on the Shattered Plains, and the Highprinces of Alethkar fight to avenge a king that died many moons ago.

2. The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone

Status: finished, 6/6 books out.

Book 1 (in publication order): Three Parts Dead. Comprised of 6 standalone books set in the same universe, the Craft Sequence tells the tales of the city of Alt Coulumb. The city came out of the God Wars with one of its gods intact, Kos the Everburning. In return for the worship of his people, Kos provides heat and steam power to the citizens of Alt Coulumb; he is also the hub of a vast network of power relationships with other gods and god-like beings across the planet. Oh, and he has just died. If he isn’t revived in some form by the turn of the new moon, the city will descend into chaos and the finances of the globe will take a severe hit.

3. Hierarchy by James Islington

Status: ongoing, 1/3 planned books out

Book 1: The Will of the many. The Will of the Many tells the story of Vis, a young orphan who is adopted by one of the sociopolitical elites of the Hierarchy. Vis is tasked with entering a prestigious magical academy with one goal – ascend the ranks, figure out what the other major branches of the government are doing, and report back. However, that isn’t quite as easy as Vis or anyone else thought it was going to be…

4. Suneater by Christopher Ruocchio

Status: ongoing, 5/7 books out

Book 1: Empire of Silence. Hadrian is a man doomed to universal infamy after ordering the destruction of a sun to commit an unforgivable act of genocide. Told as a chronicle written by an older Hadrian, Empire of Silence details his earlier adventures and serves as an introduction to the characters and the setting.

5. Dune by Frank Herbert

Status: completed, 6/6 books out

Book 1: Dune. Set in the distant future amidst a feudal interstellar society in which various noble houses control planetary fiefs. It tells the story of young Paul Atreides, whose family accepts the stewardship of the planet Arrakis. While the planet is an inhospitable and sparsely populated desert wasteland, it is the only source of melange, or "spice", a drug that extends life and enhances mental abilities.

6. The Expanse by James S A Corey

Status: completed, 9/9 books out

Book 1: Leviathan wakes. Set hundreds of years in the future, after mankind has colonized the solar system. A hardened detective and a rogue ship's captain come together for what starts as a missing young woman and evolves into a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

7. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

Status: completed. 3 books in the original trilogy + 3 standalone books + 3 books in the newest trilogy

Book 1: The Blade Itself. The story follows the fortunes and misfortunes of bad people who do the right thing, good people who do the wrong thing, stupid people who do the stupid thing and, well, pretty much any combination of the above. Survival is no mean feat, and at the end of the day, dumb luck might be more of an asset than any amount of planning, skill, or noble intention.

8. Cradle by Will Wight

Status: completed, 12/12 books out

Book 1: Unsouled. Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path

9. Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons (one PB’s favorites)

Status: completed, 4/4 books out

Book 1: Hyperion. The story weaves the interlocking tales of a diverse group of travelers sent on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. The travelers have been sent by the Church of the Final Atonement, alternately known as the Shrike Church, and the Hegemony (the government of the human star systems) to make a request of the Shrike. As they progress in their journey, each of the pilgrims tells their tale.

[literallymechanical]

What should I read next?

Tumblr help I keep not knowing what to read next. Here is a complete and comprehensive list of the qualities I'm looking for:

It should be a good book

The plot, characters, and setting should be good too

The writing should also be good

Here are a few books that I have found to be good in the past couple of years, roughly in reverse chronological order:

Children of Time and Dogs of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky (high-concept speculative biology scifi)

Exordia and the Baru Cormorant series by Seth Dickinson (Obama-era foreign policy scifi and colonial british empire fantasy, respectively)

Murderbot by Martha Wells (zippy space opera action novellas)

The Zoe Ashe series by Jason Pargin (splashy near-future scifi comedy satire)

The Terra Ignota series by Ada Palmer (scifi taxi voltaire with god's favorite unreliable narrator)

The Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone (necromancy + courtroom drama + science fantasy horror)

Empress of Forever, also by Max Gladstone (Gender-Swapped Journey To The West, In Space)

This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar

I just really like Max Gladstone okay

The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir (we all know this one)

A Memory Called Empire by Arkadiy Martine (science fiction political thriller written by a scholar of Byzantine history)

I'm willing to branch out of my extremely obvious genre preferences, though I've been reading a lot of horror novels lately and might want something less horrifying.

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 56 – Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone

I consider myself a pretty big fan of Gladstone’s, but until now I’d only ever touched his standalone works – I was previously a bit put off by the length of the Craft Sequence and so never actually tried it. So, thank you to the people who recommended I give it a try anyway! Despite being the first in a series, Three Parts Dead is a perfectly fine self-contained story and not relying on you reading the sequels to finish anything important. While it’s not the best thing of Gladstone’s I’ve read (Last Exit my beloved), it’s not the worst, either.

The book takes place in an industrial fantasy setting about a generation out from the apocalyptic, centuries-long war between the old gods and the ‘deathless kings’ – human sorcerers who had learned to master magic such that they could face them and tear the world apart in the crossfire. Tara, the hero, graduated from basically-Hogwarts entirely because there’s a binding preventing the school from doing bodily harm to its students – the next second they literally threw her out a window at 10,000 feet. The story follows her as she’s hired as a junior associate helping a world-famous lawyer/archmage as she’s hired by the church of Kas Everburning to investigate the sudden and mysterious death of their god. What follows are several hundred pages of convoluted scheming, legal proceedings, forensic accounting, and bloody magical duels and assassinations.

There are a few twists I genuinely didn’t see coming, the plot overall hangs together very well, and the pacing was just about perfect for the kind-of pulpy mystery/adventure story it was. Overall just a great time reading it.

That said, the setting’s probably the main thing to really sell people on this book. It’s just fun, and actually pretty damn original. The basic conceits are that a) magic is real, and b) so is capitalism. Kas Everburning is the beloved god and protector of the city, and also a highly leveraged legal entity loaning power across the globe whose death would catastrophically destabilize the global financial/metaphysical/political system. Mages can fly and raise zombies and enscroll people, but it’s all done in the idiom and with the vocabulary of contract law.

Beyond the basic conceit, Gladstone just clearly delights in layering weirdness on weirdness. Vitally, he does actually have a bit of restraint with the exposition – the book’s full of off-hand comments about different places and institutions that make you (me, anyway) incredibly curious about what the hell their deal is, but the actual explanations are restricted to what’s actually relevant to the plot and what the characters actually need to know. I still really want to know what’s up with King Clock or the Iskari or a half dozen other things, though. So, top-tier worldbuilding.

The themes are not exactly subtle, but I very appreciate that Gladstone lets them mostly remain as worldbuilding subtext and manages to make them feel like they emerge very naturally. I appreciate the slight restraint it takes to let the reader draw their own conclusions about the fact that the city’s police force is so empowered by strength and lack of need for doubt when on the clock that it’s literally addictive, or that one of the main antagonists is a brilliant older academic whose masterwork is a system where his star pupils (including a disproportionate number of attractive young women) are magically networked together to achieve incredible results he can take credit for while their lives and personalities are drained away to nothing. Being able to literalize the subtext a bit is half the fun of secondary wrld fantasy, after all.

Anyway, yes, very fun read. Four stars.

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: great, unique and creative worldbuilding in fantasy books

A note: this is very much a subjective list. I typically do not care much for historical medieval-esque settings (though seeing as I'm a big critical role fan, obviously there are exceptions), but rather prefer settings that mix up historical and modern, fantastical and scientific, and make up entirely new things and societal structures not based on our world.

Other book rec posts:

Really cool sci-fi worldbuilding

Mermaid books

Dark sapphic romances

Vampire books

Without further ado, let’s go!

The Unspoken name by A.K. Larkwood

Honestly there's so much going on in this one worldbuilding-wise that it's kind of hard to explain. Portals, flying ships, orcs, elves, creepy snake gods, cults, immortal evil mages who traumatize teens as their hobby. It's also very queer!

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèli Clark

Set in an alternate 1910's steampunk Cairo, where djinn and other creatures (among other things, creepy steampunk angels) live alongside humans. We get to follow an investigator as she races to catch a criminal using a powerful object to control djinn and stir unrest. Fantastically creative and fresh, and also features a buddy cop dynamic between two female leads as well as a sapphic romance.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Urban fantasy on a level of its own, where dangerous magic exists alongside humans. It keeps you guessing and much is left unexplained; if you want clear answers and explanations to everything you might be disappointed, but if you want a world that feels mysterious and dangerous and lived in you'll probably like it. It follows a baker who, after getting kidnapped by vampires, gets embroiled in a dangerous struggle.

Radiant (Towers Trilogy) by Karina Sumner-Smith

A strange mix of fantasy, sci-fi and post apocalyptic, Radiant follows a girl without magic in a world where magic is currency. Those with much of it live in magically floating towers, while everyone else scrambles to survive in the ruins of an old city left devastated from an unknown cataclysm. The setting is creepy and mysterious and leaves me itching as I want to dig for more. Also there are ghosts.

Three Parts Dead (Craft Sequence) by Max Gladstone

This is one of those books where you just kind of have to let go and go along as it throws you all over the place. I started reading it expecting an urban fantasy, but it is much more and wholly unique. It features a world where gods and magic are deeply enmeshed with society at large, and a base of much of its technology and progress. It doesn't quite feel historical, but also not modern, but rather like you took a fantastical world and let it develop naturally into its own contemporary era.

Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer duology) by Laini Taylor

One of my favorite things is when the mysteries of the world and how it works become part of the plot, with characters trying to figure out their own world. Strange the Dreamer is beautiful and complex and will hurt your heart. Personally I didn't care much for the central romance, but the wonderful characters, themes, mysteries and world make up for it.

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

Like Three Parts Dead, The Dawnhounds is a book where you just kind of have to let the story and the world wash over you. It skirts the line of scifi and fantasy, with a futuristic world of environmentally friendly mushroom houses and deadly fungi bio weapons next to literally god-given superpowers and near-immortality. It's really cool and unlike anything else I've ever read. Bonus: it’s also sapphic!

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin

Another example of a world that feels wholly like its own organically developed thing, with societal structures developed around the magical aspects and a presence of gods and demi-gods, many of whom walk the streets and will smite you if you piss them off.

Dead Witch Walking (The Hollows series) by Kim Harrison

Okay, here we have an actual urban fantasy. While I got a bit worn out by the many, many love interests throughout the series, the worldbuilding is simply phenomenal and relies heavily on a well-developed alternate history. Basically, magical beings such as vampires, werewolves, elves, fairies, witches, etc, used to exist secretly alongside us, but when humanity delved into genetic research instead of the space race during the cold war, an engineered virus ended up wiping a good chunk of us out and the magical beings stepped in to stop us from going extinct. Now in the modern day, we co-exist but tensions remain. Our main character is a witch who, alongside her roommates (a vampire and a fairy) solve mysteries and crime and end up unveiling secrets about their world centuries in the making.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Another urban fantasy, this one aimed at young adults and featuring indigenous mythology alongside creatures such as vampires and ghosts. We follow a young apache girl with the ability to raise ghosts as she works to solve the murder of her cousin.

Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor trilogy) by Mark Lawrence

Honestly, most of what I've read by Mark Lawrence so far could be featured on this list (special shoutout to his Broken Empire trilogy!). We follow a young girl training to become an assassin in a slowly dying world, where ice is overtaking the land and only a small band along its middle is habitable, kept alive by a mirror in the sky sharpening the dying sun's light. Question is, how long will this machine last, and what even is it? Very dark but very good.

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin

Listen, N.K. Jemisin gets to have two books on this list, okay, she is very good at what she does. In a world regularly torn apart by natural disasters, a big one finally strikes and society as we know it falls, leaving people floundering to survive in a post apocalyptic world, its secrets and past to be slowly revealed. We get to follow a mother as she races through this world to find and save her missing daughter.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez

AKA the book the killed me. Two boys travel throughout their land with the body of a god as her horrible, horrible children try to hunt them down. It's hard to explain more than that, but trust me when I say the narrative voice and literary techniques are incredibly unique in how they blend past and present, reality and story, lead and bystander. Truly an experience. Bonus: gay romance!

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Master of slightly fucked up romance, Octavia Butler knocks it out of the park in this story featuring two immortals struggling throughout the centuries. What do you do when there is only one other person remotely like you, and you simultaneously can't stand them and can't live without them? Apparently, you turn yourself into a dolphin for a while.

Birth of the Fire Bringer by Meredith Ann Pierce

Cards on the table, it has been a great many years since I actually read this, and just as many years spent meaning to read the sequels (I have a lot of stuff on my tbr okay, don’t judge me), but I do remember it making a great impact on me back in the day. Our main character is a unicorn! Fighting wyverns and gryphons! How cool is that!

Bonus AKA I haven’t read these yet but they seem really cool

The Surviving Sky by Kritika H. Rao

From Goodreads: This Hindu philosophy-inspired debut science fantasy follows a husband and wife racing to save their living city—and their troubled marriage—high above a jungle world besieged by cataclysmic storms.

High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. In these living cities, architects are revered above anyone else. If not for their ability to psychically manipulate the architecture, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below.

Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

Urban fantasy but the vampires are aliens? Sign me the fuck up

The Gaslight Dogs by Karin Lowachee

From Goodreads: At the edge of the known world, an ancient nomadic tribe faces a new enemy-an Empire fueled by technology and war.

[servantofclio]

Favorite books I read in 2023

I saw @asaara-writes missing my book posts, and looked back through my tags, and indeed I haven't done any in a while.

Also I seem to have kind of gotten out of the habit of posting on tumblr at all? I'm not sure what's up with that, I am definitely here pretty much every day!

It looks like I talked about books in some meme responses at Christmas, so let's go with:

THINGS CLIO READ: 2023 EDITION

Here are brief notes on things I read and enjoyed (not a complete list of things I have read this year):

Fonda Lee, Jade Legacy: Sequel to Jade City and Jade War and concludes the trilogy, and what a conclusion! The world and timeframe of the series just keeps expanding and delivers character arcs and an ending I found immensely satisfying.

T. Kingfisher, Illuminations: The author in young-adult mode, featuring a family who create magic through painted images. When a long-hidden family secret gets out, it could mess up everything, unless they can put their heads together and figure out a solution. Charmingly quirky and lovable characters, highly enjoyable.

Max Gladstone, Dead Country: I am totally here for more Craft Sequence always. This book takes our original heroine Tara Abernathy home again, older and more experienced. Really interesting to return to her close first-person perspective after several multi-perspective books, and very cool to see her now in a mentoring role.

Fonda Lee, The Jade Setter of Janloon: Novella set in the Green Bone universe, this gives us a great look at the world from the point of view of someone on the edges of the Green Bones' conflicts.

Kate Elliott, Furious Heaven: The second volume of her "gender-flipped Alexander the Great in space" series. I feel like I never see anyone talking about this, and I think she's doing great things with the characters and a sprawling space opera setting. This book left me really curious how far she's going to follow Alexander's historical career.

R. F. Kuang, Babel: This book is incredible. Magic here revolves around translation, and so a young Chinese boy is adopted by a British scholar and raised to be fluently bilingual; eventually he is sent to the great translation center in 19th-century Oxford. Here he and his peers, however, find themselves at the core engine of British imperialism, with all the ethical dilemmas that come with it. The book really captures the joy and camaraderie that can come through scholarship, but also has very sharp things to say about imperialism and exploitation. Intensely emotional, I'm happy to provide warnings/spoilers if desired.

Ann Leckie, Translation State: A much lighter take on translation, this is set in the Imperial Radch universe and, to my delight, explores what's up with the incredibly weird Presger translators. I don't really want to give anything more away; this was a really fun ride.

Arkady Martine, Rose/House: Super creepy novella involving a famous architect's AI-controlled house. Tons of mood and atmosphere.

Katherine Addison, The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones: Two books picking up one of the side characters from The Goblin Emperor (which is also wonderful) and following his new routine. Thara Celehar's ability to touch a dead person and see their memories puts him in a role of problem-solver and sometime-investigator. These books are wonderfully humane and surround the protagonist with an array of compelling friends, colleagues, and clients.

All of these are recommended!

[emcandon]

SURPRISE. I AM COMING TO THE MAINLAND. For THE ARCHIVE UNDYING. For a BOOK TOUR.

And also I will be hanging out with some authors whose work I have been insane about for YEARS!! Max Gladstone of recent Bigolas Dickolas/This is How You Lose the Time War fame (plus the superlative Craft Sequence and more!!) and Cassandra Khaw, master of all varieties of genres but WOW their horror (Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a recent fave of J-horror goodness but my big intro to their stuff was Hammers on Bone, which features an eldritch entity in the shape of a human that's calling itself John Persons; are you KIDDING me that's BRILLIANT)! I'm intimidated! I'm fine! Don't worry about it!!

Also it seems my first official convention as an author is going to be San Diego Comic Con, which is WILD but VERY COOL? Schedule still in development but will involve a couple panels and some signings.

Uh anyway if you're in any of these areas, please do come by and say hi! I will be grateful for it and will say at least one nice thing about you!! It will be profoundly heartfelt!!

(And if you're interested in pre-ordering The Archive Undying, my queer mecha book that's kind of Pacific Rim meets Nier: Automata, heeeere's a link! Tho if you're interested in ordering a signed copy, stay tuned and I'll let you know what stores to look for!!)

[gefdreamsofthesea]

I've been watching some leftists argue back and forth about how we will take care of X issue in a post-capitalist society and it's just reminding me of the entire premise of the Craft Sequence series by Max Gladstone where humans overthrow the gods and then realize oh fuck someone needs to actually manage all this infrastructure that the gods were managing.

(Also sometimes the Deathless Kings are worse.)

ETA: Also the interactive ficton games are some of the best I've ever played (particularly Choice of the Deathless)

[torpublishinggroup]

ICYMI—Max Gladstone revealed the cover of Dead Country, book one of his new Craft Wars trilogy, a series which will determine the fate of the fast-dealing world of ambitious lawyer-necromancers and deposed deities that so many fans have fallen in love with! 

😎 Check it out 😎

Discover the destiny of the Craft in Dead Country, the beginning of the end of Max Gladstone's beloved fantasy epic.

BOOK ONE OF THE CRAFT WARS TRILOGY

Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city, twice. She thought she'd left her dusty little hometown forever. But that was before her father died.

As she makes her way home to bury him, she finds a girl, as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was. Saving her from raiders, twisted by a remnant of the God Wars, who haunt the area, Tara changes the course of the world.

Max Gladstone's world of the Craft is a fantasy setting like no other. When Craftspeople rose up to kill the gods, they built corporate Concerns from their corpses and ushered in a world of rapacious capital. Those who work the Craft wield laws like knives and weave chains from starlight and soulstuff. Dead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Trilogy, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point for this incomparable world.

╔═══════ ❀•°❀°•❀ ══════ ❀•°❀°•❀ ═══════╝

Also Available by Max Gladstone

The Craft Sequence

Three Parts Dead

Two Serpents Rise

Full Fathom Five

Last First Snow

Four Roads Cross

The Ruin of Angels

Interactive Novels

Deathless: The City’s Thirst

Choice of the Deathless

Standalone Novels

Last Exit

Empress of Forever

This is How You Lose the Time War (with Amal El-Mohtar)

[lgbtqreads]

hii do u have any recs for adult queer books with hopeful/ bittersweet ending? with trans characters if possible (they dont have to be the main characters i just want to read books that acknowledge that trans people exist lol) (also i'd love some urban fantasy + not too much romance but idk if this is getting too specific, so it doesn't matter that much :D)

also anything by rromani authors?

thank you in advance!

WELL the only Rromani author I know of also happens to have written an adult queer Urban Fantasy, so let's start there: Snake Eyes by Hillary Monahan

A personal fave Urban Fantasy that was sexy but not super romantic is Deadline by Stephanie Ahn, and if you want with trans rep, try Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence series, specifically the sixth book, The Ruin of Angels, and in YA, A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth.

But going back to your original request, try Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie, Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour (I don't recall trans rep, but I do feel like the ending hits just the right note), and Body Grammar by Jules Ohman (ditto, but there are some quiet gender feelings).

[abronzeagegod]

Tech support was so great once again you blow me away with your writing. Also what’s the Darkness Between the Stars? Also could I bribe you using animal pictures to write more tech support? Also what’s your personal experiences with tech support oh mighty Bronze Age god.

I'm glad you enjoyed! And these floofs are incredible.

The Darkness Between the Stars is a reference to Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence books (highly recommend, start with Three Parts Dead which best described as steampunk necromantic legal thriller which has more to say about belief and the nature of faith than most things i've read) where one of the belief systems say that there are demons in the night sky and they aren't in the stars, they are in the empty blackness between them.

But also it's part of the weird nebulous mythology and framework of the stories I wrote under the umbrella of Cold Black Iron and Green Fire: 1) Reversed Knight of Swords, 2) The Heriophant where all myths and religions kind of co-exist along side many monsters and strange things like magic and strange eldritch beings. It's a world I like to use a lot because there is no overarching lore or worldbuilding since there's a place for everything even if they compete or contradict each other as that's the point of the world. So this tech support might be slotting in nicely with the much longer and darker stories of Detective Saint Felix.

[coraniaid]

3, 6, 17 & 25 for the book ask thingy :)

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Fiction only, and in no special order (well, in the order I read them):

Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The Night-Bird's Feather by Jenna K. Moran

6. Was there anything you meant to read but never got to?

Slightly embarrassed to admit that I still haven't started The Locked Tomb. 

I also want to read R. F. Kuang's Babel next year.  If I’d been reading more in the autumn I’d have read that a couple of months ago.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Really wasn't expecting to like Persuasion as much as I did. I’d read most of Austen’s novels when I was much younger, but somehow I'd never gotten to this one until this year.

Also, while it didn't quite make my top 5, I really liked Max Gladstone's The Ruin Of Angels after finding the earlier Craft Sequence books a bit hit-or-miss.

25. What reading goals do you have for next year?

Not sure I'm going to set an overall numerical target this year.  I usually do, but I'm not convinced it works well for me.  (I normally end up setting a goal that’s too low and meeting it easily, or setting one that’s too high and then intentionally reading shorter books at the end of the year just to meet it.) 

More generally I'm hoping to try to read more outside my comfort zone (meaning both more challenging work, and more prize-winning literary fiction, but also other genres than the ones I usually read).

For specific books: I will read the books I mentioned in my answer for #6 next year.  I'm also looking forward to Kate Elliott's Furious Heaven and to Samantha Shannon's A Day of Fallen Night, both of which I think are out next year.

I’m also going to have another attempt at Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren and Marion James' A Brief History of Seven Killings. (I stopped reading both about halfway through earlier this year, for reasons that had very little to do with the books themselves).

(End of year book asks.)

[pinkcupboardwitch]

Pls consider this your open invite to put together a list of those 'good immortals' by which we mean complex as hell stories you mentioned in tags on the Devourers book review! (sending via ask instead of message b/c I don't think I'm the only one who would find this fascinating.)

Ahhhh it’s a much shorter list than you or I would hope! It’s so rare to find something that ticks that box in a way I like. Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence is phenomenal just all around, and the King in Red would be the closest to this character type, although he’s still a relatively young immortal. The new Interview with the Vampire series with Jacob Anderson also nails this (I haven’t read the Anne Rice originals, so can’t speak to those). Lastly Catherynne Valente’s Deathless - I know it’s gotten quite a few critiques from people familiar with Russian history and culture, so take this recommendation with a grain of salt. But I loved the book, and forums her Koschei an absolutely elemental, terrifying force of nature.

The antithesis of what I like in stories with immortals, as I’ve complained often to @dr-dendritic-trees, is The Old Guard. Three thousand years and you’re still soldiers of fortune? Weakly nodding at “were we good guys or bad guys? Depends on the conflict” but not really doing anything with that? Phooey.

This is part of the reason I love tabletop role playing games like Vampire: the Requiem, because that way I get to work out what it means to have immortal characters at my own table. A solo game you may like (and that I really love myself) is Thousand Year Old Vampire, where loss of memory is built in and journal prompts let you play as that immortal across time yourself.

[the-mad-bird-diaries]

❓What was the last series you started? Did you enjoy it?   Dead Country by Max Gladstone follows a craftswoman Tara who returns to her home village to bury her father. The village and Tara have a really complicated past and both feel endangered by the other. We meet raiders and old friends, ghosts of the past and new opportunities, reasons to give up, and things to die for.   The premise sounds really intriguing and promising. And I think that the story was crafted rather well. But sadly it didn't work for me.   One thing that didn't work for me is a vast and overwhelming world. Maybe it's my fault. I knew that it was a new series in an already existing world. So maybe if I read the previous series, things would work out better for me.    The other thing maybe has the same reason – I wasn't attached to the characters too much and that is why I didn't care. Maybe it is because I didn't know Tara before this book(she was a character in the previous series too). Or maybe it's due to the book's length – it's relatively short and it's hard to build new relationships in such a short time. I can't be sure.   Nonetheless, the world and the magic system in Dead Country seemed fascinating to me – it's rather hard, but there was something poetic about it as well.   The prose is polished and exquisite(it's rather similar to the one I encountered in another Gladstone's book – This Is How You Lose The Time War). I think it will not work for everyone, but there will be definitely many readers who will appreciate it.   All in all, it seems like an interesting start for a new series and I can recommend it to readers who love hard but abstract magic systems and flowery writing style. (Also, maybe if you're intrigued, your best starting place is the first book in raft Sequence - Three Parts Dead)   I'm grateful to @netgalley and @tordotcompub for providing me with this advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest review. #maxgladstone #deadcounty #craftwars #netgalleyreview #tordotcompublishing https://www.instagram.com/p/CqQK3y1IfUP/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[idiosyncreant]

OK, considering that I was in school for half this year and reading very little, I’m really thrilled with this! I had about 46 listed when I last checked but I both added some I’d never moved from TBR and ran through the suggestions of books with no finished dates, and it stacked up quite a bit further.

I want to use StoryGraph more, but now I have 3 reading trackers in my life that have slightly different utilities and they tend to get spotty attention...

How I Read This Year

I read through whole author catalogs or whole series a lot this year, particularly romance both category and fantasy. For instance, I found out about Olivia Dade and Helen Hoang, and have ended up actually rethinking my neurodiversity status based on some of that. I also read through most of T. Kingfisher’s catalog and followed it up with The Sharing Knife which is so clearly an ancestral series to the Kingfisher Paladin books it was startling and fun. I needed the comfort of familiar voices and familiar books.

Also started reading manga again, would like to have some more current recommendations for the store. None of my multiple rereads of Murderbot or Ilona Andrews or Laurie R. King books are included in this either...

Goals for 2023

Hilariously, because of my job I actually have books I have put in my calendar so I get them read in advance. (Next step, writing in their Indie Next recommendation deadlines!)

I’m super looking forward to Shannon Chakraborty’s next book since finishing her last series, and thrilled that Max Gladstone’s got another Craft Sequence series starting this year, too.

I have a lot of catch-up in some categories: there’s a lot of newer voices in SF/F I have been meaning to check out. I finally read some Neon Yang but just started a Nghi Vo book for the first time, and there’s a lot of space opera that I haven’t been getting to, either.

I want to actually get real about how diverse my reading is, because my comfort zones have expanded but I haven’t necessarily been reading much outside that to continue the expansion.

I also want to be more knowledgeable about fresh books in middle grade and YA. My faves are now quite dated!

[northern-passage]

Do you have any book recommendations?

oh boy... i'm probably not the best person to ask because i haven't finished a book in over a year (lol) but i can give you some that i remember fondly (but take it with a grain of salt since i haven't read them in years)

sharp objects by gillian flynn

annihilation / southern reach trilogy by jeff vandermeer

not my father's son by alan cumming

universal harvester by john darnielle

on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong

wishful drinking, the princess diarist, shockaholic & postcards from the edge by carrie fisher

the luminous dead by caitlin starling

the night circus by erin morgenstern

the revenant by michael punke (there is something about the way this story ends that keeps me up at night)

umm now for more recent books, aka books i have bought and may have started but have not finished 😶 but to give you an idea of my ever growing stack of books lmao....

i'm actually currently reading a cloak of red by brenna gawain and really enjoying it (it's what i've been reading over the holidays during travel) i haven't read any of the other books of the underrealm but i can definitely recommend this one and if you're into fantasy (i'm assuming if you're here... you are lol) then definitely check out the publisher and the other books, they focus on diverse fantasy and i'll definitely look to them in the future whenever i get another fantasy itch.

crying wolf by barbara truelove (this is next on my to-read list and if you've read blood moon it's by the same author :-))

sharks in the time of saviors by kawai strong washburn

the left hand of darkness by ursula k le guin (sorry i'm showing up late with starbucks to le guin's work but i cannot recommend her stuff enough)

the last duel by eric jager

the only good indians by stephen graham jones

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon

elatsoe by darcie little badger

three parts dead / the craft sequence by max gladstone (coincidentally this is a CoG author though i did not know it at the time of purchasing this book which has been on my bookshelf for years... but he also wrote choice of the deathless)

the girls by emma cline

the way through the woods: of mushrooms and mourning by long litt woon

h is for hawk by helen macdonald

pachinko by min jin lee

umm now are these recommendations... idk i haven't read them yet LOL but idk maybe you'll see something you like. the last time i was actually consistently reading i read a Lot of non-fiction, i like memoirs and i like historical non-fiction but i know not a lot of people vibe with that (the last duel i expect most people to not care for but i saw the movie trailer and was curious about the story behind it bc that stuff interests me)

i read alan cumming's not my father's son in college but it really stuck with me and again all of carrie fisher's books.. she is a great storyteller and really fucking funny. i've read a lot of books on environmental history ie the national parks and the forest service in the US because i worked for them for a few years, and i've tried to read a lot of indigenous authors as well - braiding sweetgrass by robin wall kimmerer is essential reading at this point.

anyways sorry if you were coming here for fantasy recs i don't really read fantasy surprisingly :-( and i've read a lot of horror but not a lot of GOOD horror lmfao. stephen graham jones i definitely recommend tho he has quite a few other horror books as well, the last final girls by him is also on my to-read list. when i was younger i read all of danielle vega's books as well but for the life of me i cannot remember if they were like... good. lmao. a lot of times i start reading a horror book and it becomes very clear they are going to go down the "scary mentally ill person stops taking their medication" route and so i have a lot of half-read and abandoned horror books... if you all have any horror recs i will GLADLY take them pls