2018 Reading Year 2019-01-02 I didn't do this last year, for various reasons, and I think that failure has a lot to do with why I allowed this journal, meandering though it always has been, to lie fallow for most of the year. I haven't been posting reviews of books here in quite some time - the last time I did so was in September 2017 - and the why of that would be long in the telling. I began to receive preview copies of books from publishers, unprompted, and this set off some of the anxiety I've written about in the past. Essentially, being someway successful at judging other people's work doesn't sit well with my brain chemistry. Sigh. I have still been reading though, and posting whenever I started a new book. I stopped using Goodreads in 2017, but have been keeping decent records of my reading in my own way. Thanks to that, I have a full list of all the books I read in 2018 on its own page. Some of these books deserve special mention, so here are my Awards from Ascraeus, 2018 edition! Best Science Fiction Novel Space Opera, Cathreynne Valente There really isn't much of anything coherent I can say about this book. It is glorious, wonderful, hillarious, sad, thrilling, terrifying, filled to the gunwales with snark and devilment, glam rock, odd eurovision vibes. I simply adore this book, and to hell with the begrudgers who deride this as overwritten while writing paens to Douglas Adams. Valente is one of my favourite writers in any genre, and this book is simply amazing. Life is Beautiful. Life is Stupid. Honorable Mentions Its hard to believe that the author of 84k, Claire North, is just 32, but then again, she first became a published author aged 16. I heard an interview with her on the Imaginary Worlds Podcast, and found her so engaging that I sought out this book. It simply blew me away. Like some wildly successful drug dealer, I've been pushing it on people ever since. Yes, this is Yet Another Dystopia, but dystopias rarely come as well conceived and constructed as this one. Emma Newman's Before Mars was another stand-out novel for me this year. Every time she returns to this world she unpeels another layer of herself, and I feel privileged to share in that journey. This is the third in her Planetfall series, and you probably should be familiar with the universe before tacking this one. It won't disappoint. Best Fantasy The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang Fantasy fiction has really been on a journey of creativity in recent years, moving sharply away from the Medieval European stereotypical churn of people like Robert Jordan and G.R.R.M., exploring other cultures and ideas as part of the fictional experience. Of these, Kuang's book was an utter revelation this year, swooping through the norms of the genre, smashing them to pieces and assembling them like a Kintsugi masterwork. There are elements of grimdark in these pages, but not too much; there are elements of "magic school" here, but not too much; dense politics, yes, but not too much. There are hints, here and there, that this is a debut novel, some of the characters could be realised a bit better, but those are nitpicks. This is a great book, and I look forward to the sequel. Honorable Mentions Almost any of the other Fantasy Books I read this year deserve mention, from Martha Wells ridiculously under-appreciated The Element of Fire, Katherine Arden's well-regarded russian-inspired The Bear and the Nightingale, S.A. Chakraborty's brilliant djinn-fantasy debut City of Brass, all the way to Rati Mehrotra's Markswoman. I've had a great year of fantasy reading thanks to these women and many others. Best Non SF/F Genre Gather the Daughters, Jennie Melamed The book that I tell people should just be called "Trigger Warning". This is one of the two books that have just stayed with me all year. I read this back in June, and I still think of it regularly. It defies categorisation, much as Scott Hawkins Library at Mount Char does, and like that novel this is one tough read. I'm not joking about the Trigger Warning, this one needs them for Rape, Child Abuse, Rape, Institutionalized Savagery, Rape, Incest, and Rape. Unlike so many dystopian works though, these are never presented in any sort of prurient or voyeuristic fashion, you really believe that these terrible things are being done to real women, real girls. Melamed writes with confidence, incredibly this is her debut novel, and with professional experience and expertise (she's a psychiatric nurse who works with traumatized children). This book is dark, darker than any grimdark, it often makes for difficult, uncomfortable reading. It is ominous, it is disturbing, but it is brilliant. I couldn't put it down, I didn't want it to end. Its that good. Honorable Mentions Jaroslav Kalfar's Spaceman of Bohemia is technically sf, but it really isn't. Nominated for this year's Clarke Award, I broke my reading pattern for the year for this, and I'm glad. This is a delightful, weird novel, kind of like "The Martian" except well written and emotional featuring believable people. I guess you could describe it as a rumination on loss, identity and love. In ways it reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Aurora", but I found this even better. I ploughed through this book, and loved it to pieces, finding it almost cathartic. Worst Book of the Year None. Not one. I have a few DNFs, but I don't consider either of those books bad, they just weren't for me. I'm far more interested in celebrating what I read. And Finally There are incredible works out there, these are just a tiny sampling. Take a look at the full list, see if anything there takes your fancy, tell me about it if you do. I despair at the sort of Year End Lists which serve up genre as some sort of White Male extravaganza, and chose my reading this year as some sort of personal reaction to that, which I found so prevalent at the end of last year. This has been a great years reading, and my TBR is positively brimming with books for 2019. Now that publishers have stopped sending me books, I'll even start writing proper reviews again (hopefully). +++ENDS+++