BOOK REVIEW: The Empire's Ruin (Ashes of the Unhewn Throne, #1) by Brian Staveley

Brian Staveley is the author of the epic fantasy series The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne (The Providence of Fire, The Emperor’s Blades, The Last Mortal Bond.) The Empire’s Ruin is the first book in a new series called Ashes of the Unhewn Throne that is set five years after the conclusion of the previous one.

The first series was primarily a trilogy centered around the three children of the Annurian Emperor (Adare, Kaden, and Valyn) and the ways their lives change following the assassination of their father and the subsequent struggle for power and control of Annur that follows. The three Malkeenian siblings are very different from each other. Adare is the oldest and only daughter, she was closest to their father and a consummate insider, familiar with and adept at palace intrigue and royal politics. Kaden is the oldest son and heir to the throne but has been sent years ago to the distant mountains of Ashk’lan to be trained as a Shin monk. Valyn is the youngest of the family and has been training for years to be a Kettral, one of the near-mythical, elite soldiers who ride the gargantuan raptors of the same name.

In The Empire’s Ruin, Staveley uses a similar tripartite structure, with the narrative following three characters, this time ones whom we don’t know whether they have (or will have) connections to each other. Gwenna Sharpe is a Kettral who fought alongside Valyn in the battles depicted in the earlier trilogy and in the very opening scene of The Empire’s Ruin her Kettral wing suffers a devastating military failure under her command. Ruc Lankatur Lan Luc is a priest of Eria, the Goddess of Love, in Dombâng, the culturally diverse, strategically located city in which the events of Skullsworn (Staveley’s fourth and most controversial book set in the same Annurian Empire as his other works) occurred. Ruc was raised by the Vuo Ton, a tribe of indigenous people who can survive living in the swamps surrounding Dombâng which are full of literally dozens of different species of deadly fish, snakes, insects and plants. Last is Akiil, a liar/thief/con man and former Shin monk (all known living Shin monks were massacred in one of the opening sequences of The Providence of Fire) who knew Kaden, the Heir Apparent to the throne in the Chronicle trilogy. One interesting aspect of the main characters in The Empire’s Ruin that I realized in writing this review that I hadn’t noticed before was that all 3 of the protagonists, Akiil, Gwenna, and Ruc have an important/central other person they are attached to/care for very deeply. With Ruc his “person” is Bien, a fellow priest of Eria who he apparently loves, perhaps in a brother-sister way but we discover may be less chaste as the story progresses. For Akiil, his person is Yerrin, a Shin monk that Akiil rescued from Ashk’lan but who has a decidedly unusual relationship with reality. Akiil also grew up in the slums of the capital city before going to join the Shin monks and he has a definite connection to Skinny Quinn, a girl who used to be part of his close-knit friends when they were young. Gwenna was attached to members of her Wing (the name of the cadre of soldiers she commanded in the Kettral) but the primary attachment she demonstrates in The Empire’s Ruin is to a young orphan girl she names Rat and whom she does her best to raise and protect on an incredibly dangerous and harrowing journey she takes with a group of men who generally would not be sad if she (or Rat) died or if they did the killing.

After the events of the Chronicle trilogy the only remaining Malkeenian sibling who is believed to be alive is Adare, who is now the Annurian Emperor. She is desperately trying to keep the Empire together but has lost the use of the kenta gates (these are special portals that allow certain people, namely Shin monks, to travel instantaneously between gates) and thus the ability to obtain current/relevant intelligence on the state of affairs in the far-flung sectors of her empire. Since Adare was in the first series, she is a familiar character to those readers and even if this time we don’t have access to her inner thoughts as we did when she was a central protagonist she definitely drew me into the story. Gwenna is also a somewhat known quantity so I think I identified with her section(s) of the book the most, although I rooted for Ruc the hardest to succeed. It’s difficult to root for Akiil because he’s literally a crook and he’s trying to trick/swindle Adare. Why should we care about him since he’s an asshole?

One of the strongest features of Staveley’s writing is his depiction of action. There are numerous fight set pieces that are simply stunning. He has set up the story in ways that lead to his characters often being in perilous situations that lead to action scenes. For example, Ruc and Bien are literally forced to become gladiators in a kill-or-be-killed religious ceremony in Dombâng. Gwenna is on a continent where the flora and fauna are warped by the environment to become deadly monsters. Akiil is trying to steal from a ewan who has a literal army of heavily muscled well-trained men who will kill for her at a glance.

Another strong feature of Staveley’s books is what is usually referred to as “worldbuilding.” He includes a dizzying array of cultural and religious beliefs and their nuanced depiction despite how abhorrent some would appear to the reader communicates a sense of verisimilitude to Annur as a real place (for the characters). In the Chronicle trilogy we were introduced to people who worship Ananshael, the God of Death, who are both priests and assassins. (Later, Staveley wrote an entire book called Skullsworn with one of these priests-assassins, Pyrre Lankatur, as the main character.) In this first book of the Ashes trilogy we discover that public death matches are a popular cultural and religious practice in Dombâng.

In the end, I found The Empire’s Ruin, the first book in the Ashes of the Unhewn Throne, to be a worthy successor to the first series and I am very confident that I will be reading more books Staveley writes in this series. As with the Chronicle series it’s clear that in addition to the main plot(s) involving the three main characters, there’s another one involving the gods (this time it’s the Nevariim, who are even more mysterious, and potentially even more evil, than the Csestriim from the first series). I’m hopeful that more information will be revealed about both groups, and their relationship to humans before the Ashes series ends.

Title: The Empire's Ruin (Ashes of the Unhewn Throne, #1).
Author: Brian Staveley.
Format: Kindle.
Length: 624 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: July 6, 2021.
Date Read: January 9, 2022.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★  (5.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

This is Brian Staveley's first standalone novel in the same universe that his amazing Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne trilogy (The Emperor's Blades, The Providence of Fire and The Last Mortal Bond) were set in. Maybe we should start calling the universe these books are set in the Annurian Empire universe because the Unhewn Throne doesn't play much of a role in the new book. Skullsworn instead provides us with an extremely detailed backstory for one of the highlights of the Trilogy, Pyrre Lakatur, the Priestess of Annanshael (God of Death), who is simply a delight as a middle-aged, completely unflappable but often deadly female assassin in  The Last Mortal Bond and The Providence of Fire.

Skullsworn is set in the time decades before the events of The Unhewn Throne trilogy when 20-something Pyrre is still seeking to pass her Trial to become a full Priestess, and we follow her journey with two Priests of Annanshael (named Ela and Korral) and learn how the character of the person we met in the earlier books was shaped by these other priests. It also allows the reader to realize that the unflappabilty and unusual attitude towards death is not sui generis to Pyrre, but appears to be a feature of skullsworn priests.

However, this being a book written by Staveley, there is a lot of political intrigue involved in the plot, as the story takes Pyrre back to her hometown, the captured city of Dombang which has been under Annurian occupation for centuries. In addition to political intrigue, Staveley also seeks to confront the reader with thorny philosophical questions, such as "what is the nature of love?" and "why would anyone worship the god of death?" Oh and there's a lot of action and a fair bit of adult language and sexual situations.

One of the key features of the Unhewn Throne trilogy is the panoply of gods that is featured in those books and in Skullsworn religion and worship becomes an even more central aspect of life. So much so, that Skullsworn began to remind me quite strongly of the DIVINE CITIES books (City of Stairs, City of Blades and City of Miracles) by Robert Jackson Bennett. Bennett's trilogy is primarily animated by intellectual dilemmas such as the nature of faith, the horrors of colonization and the memory of cultural genocide. This is not a bad thing, but it makes Skullsworn a more serious book than the rip-roaring tales of adventure and fun with which Staveley first began his oeuvre.

Overall, my primary complaint about Skullsworn  is that it was approximately half the length of any of the books in the trilogy. But then again, if the main complaint after reading a book is that "I wanted to read more!" than that's not really a complaint, it's a compliment.

Title: Skullsworn.
Author: Brian Staveley.
Paperback: 320 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: April 25, 2017.
Date Read: May 1, 2017.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★★ (4.5/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.08/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

My Favorite Books Read In 2016 (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller)

In 2016 I read 60 books; as usual almost all of these were novels, primarily in the genres of mystery/thriller and fantasy/science fiction. Interestingly, the books that I read the in 2016 were  pretty evenly split between the genres of science fiction (19), fantasy (17), and mystery (19) with a few books falling into both categories or neither. (In 2014 mystery/thriller predominated my reading list while in 2015 more than half the books I read that year were science fiction. In 2016, surprisingly no particular genre dominated.

I was introduced to some new authors in 2016 (Adrian McKinty, Michael J. Sullivan, Deborah Crombie, Ramez Naam, Elizabeth George and Adrian Tchaikovsky) whom I look forward to reading more of their books in the future. In 2016 I read my first book by Stephen King  as an adult and was pleasantly surprised by how good the alternative-history/time-travel book 11/22/63 is. I will definitely try to read more of his non-horror work which falls into my favorite genres in the future.

Happily in 2016 lots of authors whose work has previously been some of my favorite reads released books that I read (Ben Winters, Tana French, Peter Hamilton, Daniel Abraham, Ian Rankin, Brian Staveley, Michael Connelly, Patrick Tomlinson, Peter Robinson and Alastair Reynolds). There's a notable absence from this list: for the first time in 6 years I did not read a book from The Expanse by James S.A. Corey. The sixth book, Babylon's Ashes, was released in December 2016 but I didn't read it until my Hawaii vacation in January 2017. Another favorite author, Brent Weeks published The Black Mirror (Lightbringer, #4) in 2016 but I am sav(or)ing this to be read later in 2017.

I'm always looking for more good books and authors to add to my "To Be Read (TBR)" pile! Feel free to make suggestions of books or authors you think I would like in the comments after seeing what books have resonated with me previously.

Below are my favorite reads for 2016 in the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller.

Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2016: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Reading Children of Time was one of the most exciting reading  experiences I had in 2016. Part of the emotional impact that the book had on me is that it was so unexpected. Although I had heard of the author's work before, I thought that Tchaikovsky was known for his epic fantasy works. I list space opera as my favorite genre, and usually it ends up being my favorite sub-genre in science fiction (and quite often it is a book by either Peter Hamilton or James S.A. Corey  in 2015 and 2014) but this year Children of Time just stole my heart and blew my mind.  It is an unusual story that combines two classic elements of science fiction: the depiction of the social dynamics of an arkship which presumably contains all that remains of humanity and the development of an alien civilization with quite unique cultural characteristics and social structure. What both of these plots have in common is that the book goes over multiple generations of each, so the passage of time is an important ingredient of the salience of the story's impact. Although I would love to spend more time with the characters and the setting of Children of Time it was also nice to read a completely self-contained story that does not depend on any sequels to advance or complete the story.

Runner-Up in Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2016: Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters.

I have previously discussed how since I love science fiction/fantasy and mystery/thriller that I am always looking for books that combine these two genres. In fact last year, my two favorite mysteries were also science fiction books. The first of these was the Last Policeman trilogy written by Ben Winters. This year Winters is on my list of favorites in the science fiction category even though Underground Airlines is also a police procedural and mystery-thriller. What makes it science fiction is that it is written in an alternate time line where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated soon after his election in 1861 and the enactment of five "compromise" constitutional amendments result in slavery being maintained until the 21st century in a few stubborn states in the Union (Carolinas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama). The setting is so compelling that it was easily the book that I thought about the most long after I finished it. What the premise does is allow the reader to clearly see the horrifying possibility that slavery could have been maintained for another century and a half in our world and how similar to our actual world that warped universe is. This is mordant social commentary with an exciting  plot wrapped around it.

Honorable Mention (Science Fiction):  A Night Without Stars (The Chronicle of the Fallers, #2) by Peter Hamilton.
My favorite science fiction author is Peter Hamilton so it should not be a surprise that his sequel to The Abyss Beyond Dreams, the concluding novel in another exciting duology written in the Commonwealth Universe would be on my list of favorite books read in 2016. A Night Without Stars was not as good as the first book in the series but even midrange Hamilton is a lot better than the vast majority of science fiction out there. Again, although Hamilton is known for his space opera and military science fiction a key aspect of the story in The Chronicle of the Fallers is a detailed depiction of a social revolution against a totalitarian regime where some people have telepathic and telekinetic powers and there are deadly shape-shifting aliens attempting to subsume human civilization. Lots of fun!

Favorite Fantasy Novel Read Novel In 2016: The Last Mortal Bond (The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #3) by Brian Staveley

In 2015 my favorite read in the category of fantasy was the first book in Brian Staveley's The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, The Emperor's New Blades so I am quite pleased that the concluding work in the same series, The Last Mortal Bond, ended up being my favorite read in the same category in 2016. And this was a tough category to repeat in because I read quite a few fantasy books this year. However Staveley is the real deal and I totally expect him to join the (rather short) list of my favorite fantasy authors: Brent Weeks, Peter Brett, Daniel Abraham and Michael Sullivan. The reason why Staveley is on this list at the top spit is that The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne is simply the best. The story generally revolves around three main characters: Kaden, Adare and Valyn, who are the surviving children of an assassinated emperor. However, as the story develops we see that it is really an existential battle between humanity and god-like, immortal beings. There are giant flying birds, armies of thousands fighting against each other and devotees of various gods and goddesses all fighting for power and control over the Empire. Oh and of course there is some love and betrayal as well, for good measure. And all of it is told at a thrilling pace with humor and wit which is incredibly engaging.

Runner-Up Favorite Fantasy Read in 2016:  Heir of Novron (The Riyria Chronicles, #3) by Michael J. Sullivan 

Speaking of wit and humor immediately brings us to the work of Michael J. Sullivan, who I first read in 2016. He started as a self-published author and although there's nothing wrong with that, I believe that was one of the reasons why I never picked up any of his books. But eventually, the tens of thousands of ratings on Goodreads (with an average well above 4.0 on a 5-point scale) were convincing enough to me that I decided to try the first book, Theft of Swords, in one of his series, The Riyria Chronicles. I was amazed at how funny and thrilling the books are, even if they do have wizards and princesses and swords. They simply are great books, built around two amazing characters Hadrian Blackwater and  Royce Melborn. What is so impressive about what Sullivan does is that even as he is repeating all the classical fantasy tropes he is simultaneously reinventing and disrupting them. (For example, in Heir of Novron there's a quest by a motley collection of travelers who have multiple reasons to betray each other, there's an orphaned waif who becomes the leader of the Empire, and of course there are several sets of star-crossed lovers.)  But the core of the books is the relationship between two (straight) guys who are very different but manage to forge a bond that has them surviving some quite harrowing (and sometimes hilarious) situations. Honestly, it was hard to know which of the books in the Riyria Chronicles to put on this list, but because Heir of Novron also has the added benefit of providing a pay off to thousands of pages of text I selected it to represent the runner-up best fantasy book I read in 2016. Don't make the mistake I made, read the Riyria books by Michael J. Sullivan as soon as you can--you won't regret it!

Honorable Mention (Fantasy): The Spider's War (The Dagger and the Coin, #5) by Daniel Abrahams
Earlier entries in Daniel Abraham's fantastic series about fanaticism, banking and war, The Dagger and the Coin, have made it into my list of Favorite Fantasy books of the year. (Book 4, The Widow's House, was the runner-up in this category in 2014.)  Of course Abrahams is one-half of the duo who writes The Expanse series as James S.A. Corey so it is incredible that while they were churning out a book a year in that series, Abraham has been churning out a book a year in this series as well. Both of those schedules slipped this year, but The Spider's War was released early enough that I was able to complete it in 2016. Although it is not as consistently a high-quality read as some of the earlier entries in the series, it still manages to stick the landing quite well and resolve all the myriad plot points and various story threads that have developed over the course of five books, and for doing a good job at a hard task, The Spider's War deserves an Honorable Mention.

Favorite Mystery Novel Read In 2016: The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad, #6) by Tana French

After a somewhat disappointing fifth entry into her Dublin Murder Squad Series with The Secret Place, Tana French restored her place as my favorite mystery author with The Trespasser. There are books that you look forward to and are willing to wait for at the library, and there are books that you immediately order on Amazon once you know they are available (and there are even books that you pre-order on Amazon once you hear a rumor that they may be coming out soon.) Needless to say, The Trespasser showed up on my doorstep on its day of release and although I denied myself the pleasure of starting to read it right away, it was totally worth the wait. For the first time, French deviates from using her unique method of selecting the detectives who will be protagonists in her latest book from secondary characters from previous entries in the series. The detectives that appeared in The Secret Place, Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway, also appear in The Trespasser. What makes French's mysteries so good is that the questions raised are not only about who did the crime and why did they do it, but they often involve questions about the people trying to solve the crime as well. Conway is the only female member of the Dublin Murder Squad and Moran is the most junior member, and the fact that they are paired together as partners reflect the marginality of both on the squad.  One of the key mysteries in The Trespasser is not only will Conway and Moran find out who killed Aislinn Murray, but also will Conway and Moran continue to be working together as police detectives and will both of them actually be on the police force by the end? The result is that The Trespasser rivals her Broken Harbour as the best of Ms. French's superlative mysteries.

Runner-Up Favorite Mystery Novel Read in 2016: Rain Dogs (Sean Duffy, #5) by Adrian McKinty

One of the key discoveries I made in 2016 were the Inspector Sean Duffy  books by Adrian McKinty. These are a series of police procedurals set in the suburbs of Belfast, Northern Ireland at the height of the "Troubles" in the mid-1980s. I'm already a sucker for police procedurals, having consumed several books of this type written by Ian Rankin (DI John Rebus in Edinburgh), Peter Robinson (DCI Alan Banks in Yorkshire), Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch in Los Angeles), Jo Nesbø (Harry Hole in Oslo, Norway), Jussi Adler-Olsen (Department Q series in Copenhagen), Tana French (Dublin Murder Squad) and Henning Mankell (Kurt Wallander in Ystad, Sweden). McKinty's Sean Duffy series is familiar because it is a police procedural but the setting of an all-consuming, civil war between two religious factions. Of course, Duffy is a nice Catholic boy who is a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer in Carrickfergus, a predominantly Protestant section of Northern Ireland (which also just happens to be the name of the real town that McKinty grew up in.) The Duffy books are complicated by the fact that not only is Duffy trying to solve murders in a time and place when people are getting blown up and killed horribly by faithful adherents from both sides, is that he also somehow gets involved in cases that attract the attention of M.I.5 (the British domestic counter-intelligence agency equivalent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation). The Duffy books are bit more than your everyday police-procedural murder-mystery; they have significant elements of spy thriller components, all embedded in oft-amusing commentary on the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, Rain Dogs is particularly good. I devoured all five of the available entries in the Duffy series in about a month, with each one even more enjoyable (and compelling) than the one before.

Honorable Mention (Mystery):  Even Dogs in the Wild (Inspector John Rebus, #20) by Ian Rankin and In The Dark Places (Chief Inspector Alan Banks, #22) by Peter Robinson.
I realized when I wrote this post that I have never acknowledged the mysteries of Ian Rankin or Peter Robinson as one my year-end favorites, but between the two of them I have read nearly four dozen of their books. They are somewhat similar, in that they are both police procedurals built around male detectives in Great Britain. Rankin's John Rebus is located in Edinburgh and its environs while Robinson's Alan Banks is located in Northern England (Yorkshire). The two have complicated relationships with both their underlings and superior officers. After reading so many of these stories, they are familiar, comforting and highly recommended. (Please note, each of the series gets better as they go along. If you start from Book 1, hang in there because they get really good later on. For Rebus, I would say it is the award-winning Resurresction Men and for Banks is In A Dry Season.)

Favorite Thriller Novel Read In 2016: Apex (Nexus, #3) by Ramez Naam.

I had heard of Ramez Naam's Nexus trilogy for years (at least as long as I had heard of Marcus Sakey's Brilliamce saga). The two are somewhat similar, since they are both techno-thrillers in a sense. Both depict the development of technology which tends to upend the natural balance of our world and then depicts the aftermath by following its effect on the main characters. In the Nexus trilogy, Naam's killer idea is the development of a drug called Nexus which allows one to code the human brain like an operating system, and also eventually connect to (and possibly control) these Nexus-enhanced brains remotely through a network. Naam's work is even more political than Sakey's because he raises a lot of nuanced issues about the nature of technology and the questions that the creator of a paradigm-shifting technology faces. For me, Naam's work resonates even more than Sakey's because his main character is a graduate student who has this amazing idea and dreams of academic success. Naam depicts the protocols, beliefs and cultural touchstones of the academic scientific world in a way that I immediately identified. However, additionally, the Nexus books are also action-packed, as another question that they raise is the time-honored dilemma of when (or if) the ends justify the means of achieving one's aims. The books are set about 25 years in the future, so technically they are science fiction as well as techno-thrillers which could be another reason I liked them so much. I read all three books in the trilogy, Nexus, Crux and Apex in about a week and they were an extremely fun ride, they most exhilarating reads I had in 2016.

Runner-Up Favorite Thriller Read in 2016: Beyond Reach (Grant County, #6)  by Karin Slaughter

I discovered Karin Slaughter last year, and Blindsighted the first book in her Grant County series made an immediate impression on me, grabbing an Honorable Mention for Favorite Thriller Read in 2015. I basically devoured the rest of the six books in the Grant County series in 2016 and am currently working my way through her 9-book Will Trent series in 2017. Slaughter is a crime thriller writer who also combines romantic tension between her main characters. The Grant County series is built around a trio of characters: Sara Linton, Jeffrey Tolliver and Lena Adams. Adams and Tolliver are police officers and Linton is Tolliver's ex-wife and the coroner in a very small South Georgia town. Through intricate plotting and clever deployment of point-of-view chapters, Slaughter weaves a compelling tale where the lives and loves of these main characters are intertwined with each other in increasingly complex ways. This is done while they solve always-heinous crimes (which almost always involve extremely sexualized and brutal violence against women) that often result in one or more of our main characters being placed into extreme peril (thus the thriller aspect). Beyond Reach is the most devastating of the books in this regard, with an ending which is absolutely devastating to the reader.

Honorable Mention (Thriller): World in Fire (Brilliance, #3) by Marcus Sakey.
The Brilliance series by Marcus Sakey is a very fun trilogy of science-fiction thrillers set in the near-future where 1% of the children being born are "special"--they have extraordinary mental and physical powers which could lead them to take over the world if allowed to develop unchecked. Sakey imagines how our world would react to this change and follows the story to a logical conclusion (which he provides in the third book) as time moves forward and the Brilliants and the Normals struggle for power and control. The main attractive feature of the books (besides its exciting, premise, which is admittedly derivative or reminiscent of Marvel's X-men) is Sakey's propulsive writing. The books simply zip along at a breakneck pace. Additionally, he does quite a good job of giving a realistic depiction of how the U.S. government and society would react to the presence of "Brilliants" among us. This sense of verisimilitude and the quality of the writing make the Brilliance saga one of my highlighted reads of the year.

My Favorite Books Read In 2015 (Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller)

The headline is not a typo; it has taken me almost an entire year to finally summarize my best reads of the last year. In 2015 I read 74 books; almost all of these were novels, primarily in the genres of mystery/thriller and fantasy/science fiction. By far the biggest fraction of books that I read in 2015 were in the categories of science fiction and fantasy (in 2014 mystery/thriller predominated my reading list) were mystery/thrillers. I made it through all six of Karin Slaughter's Grant County mysteries, continued reading Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series and finished making my way through Michael Connelly's Detective Harry Bosch series and Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole thrillers.

Overall, although most of my favorite reads in 2015 were from authors familiar to me (James S.A. Corey, Louise Penny, Peter Brett, Jo Nesbø) whom I had read before I was also introduced to several new authors who I am confident will become some of my favorites for years to come: Brian Staveley, Cixin Liu, Ben Winters and Karin Slaughter.

I'm always looking for more good books and authors to start reading! Feel free to make suggestions of books or authors you think I would like in the comments after seeing what books have resonated with me previously.

Below are my favorite reads for 2015 in the genres Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery and Thriller.

Favorite Science Fiction Novel Read In 2015: Nemesis Games (The Expanse, #5) by James S.A. Corey

Nemesis Games is the fifth book in the best-selling space opera series known as The Expanse. Each of the four previous books have been some of my favorites (Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn) in the year it was published and, happily, the trend continues with Book 5: Nemesis Games. The authors (James SA Corey is the nom de plume of Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) boldly move the story of a visionary future for humanity combined with non-stop action, political intrigue between planetary powers and intense peril for some of my favorite characters (Holden, Naomi, Amos and Avarasala). In Nemesis Games Corey introduces some new characters and resolves some plot points which have been developing since the very first book in the series (Leviathan Wakes). This was my favorite novel (of any genre) that I read in 2015. I totally expected that Book 6 in The Expanse, Babylon's Ashes, would be my favorite science fiction and overall read in 2016. However, since the 6th book has been postponed from it's June release to December I have decided to postpone my reading of Babylon's Ashes until January 2017.



Runner-Up Favorite Science Fiction: The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu.

The Three-Body Problem is the first book originally written in a foreign language to win the most prestigious award in science fiction and fantasy (the Hugo award). Cixin Liu has been described as the Chinese Isaac Asimov and  The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest are definitely space opera in the classic tradition of the most well-known Grandmaster of Science Fiction. Both books have ideas which are so original they are unlike anything I have read in other books. These original ideas come from the setting, which include multiple time periods set in China, including Maoist China is not only the setting, but also the story itself, which involves a slow-motion invasion of the Earth by an alien race who live on  planet called Trisolaris located hundreds of light years away in an improbable and unstable trinary star system.  There are far more details of the story which I don't want to give away here.  Basically, the tension in the plot(s) revolve around how specific people respond to the knowledge that we are not alone in the Universe by (1) collaborating with our future alien overlords and (2) coming up with brilliant strategies to defend Earth despite being technologically outmatched by the Trisolarians. The Three-Body Problem is primarily about the discovery of the Trisolarians and is dominated by the idea that there exist humans who would willingly collaborate with beings who are devoted to their species' extinction. The Dark Forest is primarily about humanity's realization that the Galaxy is a dangerous place for species once they reach a level of technology that allows them to perceive and interact with other civilizations on interstellar scales.

Honorable Mention (Science Fiction): The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell.
One of the most engrossing reading experiences I had all year was with the David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. Mitchell is most well-known for his award-winning Cloud Atlas which was adapted into a gloriously disappointing movie starring Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Halle Berry directed by the Wachoski siblings. Cloud Atlas was also one of my favorite books of the first decade of the 21st century. I will not be surprised if Mitchell's The Bone Clocks makes the list of my favorites for this decade. Bizarrely, it is one of two books I read in 2015 which has the idea of consciousness shifting between bodies (the other is Claire North's Touch). Like Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks is written as a series of interlocking chapters, some of which are long enough to be considered novellas or novellettes. Part of the delight of the book is trying to figure out the connections between the characters in the consecutive chapters as the story continues to move forward in time. However, The Bone Clocks is memorable for much more than any one particular plot device or literary trope it deploys; it is memorable because it is a stunningly original story brimming with mordant social commentary all in the service of a captivating SFnal plot.

Favorite Fantasy Novel Read In 2015: The Emperor's Blades (The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #1) by Brian Staveley

I had seen multiple references to Brian Staveley and his epic fantasy series The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne on Goodreads and Amazon due to my positive reactions to the work of Brent Weeks, Peter Brett and Daniel Abraham. In 2015, I finally got around to reading The Emperor's Blades, the first book in the series after seeing very positive reviews for its sequel, The Providence of Fire. However, what I didn't realize is that if you start a trilogy and discover that the first two books are awesome before the third book comes out then you will have months (and possibly years) of anxious anticipation ahead of you.  This is precisely what happened with The Emperor's Blades. It is the story of three siblings, Adare (the eldest daughter), Kaden (the heir) and Valyn (the spare) who are the children of the Annurian Emperor, Sanlitun Malkeenian, who has been assassinated as the story begins. We are thrust into a maelstrom of power struggles while simultaneously being introduced to three very different main characters and a well-crafted world full of magic and mayhem. This is epic fantasy operating at the very highest level of effectiveness and excellence.

Runner-Up Favorite Fantasy: The Skull Throne (The Demon Cycle, #4) by Peter V. Brett 

I think of myself as someone who likes fantasy novels, but a review of my reading list in 2014 reveals I'm much pickier about titles in the fantasy genre than in the others that I consume. If I don't get caught up by a fantasy book early I am far more likely to give up on it than I would be if it were a mystery or science fiction book. One of my favorite fantasy authors that I have discovered in recent years is Peter Brett, and the bestselling series that he is known for is The Demon Cycle, which began with The Warded Man (back in 2009) and is now up to Book 4 with The Skull Throne. The Demon Cycle is set in a world where humanity is in a state of pre-industrial technology (i.e. flintlock rifles and no electricity) terrorized by the nightly appearance of various deadly creatures (called Demons) which materialize out of the ground but can be deflected by intricately drawn symbols, called Wards. This latest book shows how rich the story has become, having expanded far beyond the confines of Leesa, Rojer and Arlen from their small town of Tibett's Brook. Now we have an entirely new set of characters from the Muslim-inspired Krasian desert: Ahmann Jardir, Inevera and Abban. In The Skull Throne the stakes are raised as high as possible as the clash between the two competing civilizations comes to fruition.  Brett surprised me (and shocked fans) by killing off one of the main characters in this latest book, while simultaneously removing the titular Warded Man for most of the story. I can't wait to see how Brett will resolve the entire tale in The Core (scheduled for release in 2017).

Favorite Mystery Novel Read In 2015: World of Trouble (The Last Policeman, #3) by Ben H. Winters.

Nearly two thirds of the books I read in 2015 were science fiction or fantasy which is much higher than it was in 2014, when about half the books I read were mysteries or thrillers. What I have been looking for for years is a really good book that combines both genres (mystery/thriller and science fiction/fantasy). Amazingly, this year I finally discovered not one but four books that meet this standard. Three of them are part of Ben H. Winters' Last Policeman trilogy, which consists of The Last Policeman, Countdown City and World of Trouble. The entire trilogy is astonishingly good, but the third and final book is (literally) earth-shattering. The situation is that these are murder-mystery police procedural books with the twist that the Earth is about to be destroyed by a collision with an asteroid in the next six months. It was a complete eye-opener to me that a pre-apocalyptic work of fiction could be just as compelling as much of the post-apocalyptic work that has pervaded popular media. All good genre works force the reader to confront questions and the questions raised by Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy are devastating. Why are people still killing each other when there are only 6 months for every human being to live? Why should the police still try to find and punish evildoers? The very nature of responsibility and the usually hidden rules and protocols by which civilization functions are exposed by the imminent end of everything. And through it all we follow Hank Palace, a tall, geeky young police detective in Concord, New Hampshire as he lives, loves and sleuths before the world is destroyed in a final fireball. It is incredibly compelling, with both the mystery/thriller (Hank is originally called to the scene of yet another suicide and realizes it is actually a murder) and the science fiction (the way Winters portrays the many little details of how civilization falls apart as the asteroid gets closer feels very realistic) aspects executed with great flair and panache.

Runner-Up Favorite Mystery: The Ark by Patrick S. Tomlinson.

After years of searching for mysteries that successfully include science fiction elements and failing repeatedly, I actually found more than one in 2015.  Following my discovery of Ben Winters' The Last Policeman trilogy and enjoying it so much I redoubled my efforts to find other mystery-scifi hybrids. I ran into Patrick Tomlinson's The Ark and took a chance on it despite the limited number of reviews and ratings it had received. However, I was blown away by how much fun it is. The setting is on an arkship containing 20, 000 survivors of an Earth that was destroyed by a collision with a black hole 200 years ago. The protagonist is Bryan Benson, a former sporting hero who is now the police chief on the ship. He finds a dead body and has to grapple with the fact that there is someone on a ship containing the last vestiges of humanity who is a murderer. And that they have a secret so important to them they are willing to kill one of the few remaining humans to keep it. The story becomes quite thrilling as the stakes are incredibly high since the ship contains all of humanity.

Honorable Mention (Mystery):  The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Gamache, #11) by Louise Penny.
The mysteries of Louise Penny have been some of my favorite reads for quite awhile. They are rather traditional: set in the mythical small town of Three Pines, with a cast of quirky characters that we have slowly been learning more and more about as the series progresses. The main protagonist is Armand Gamache who is a (former) Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec but the attraction of these books is the familiar rhythm of the interactions between the characters, which are complemented by the deviousness of the murders.

Favorite Thriller Novel Read In 2015: Natchez Burning by Greg Iles.

One of the great author finds I made in 2014 was Greg Iles, whose The Quiet Game  was an Honorable Mention for my Favorite Thriller Read in 2014. That is the first book of Iles' Penn Cage  thrillers set in Natchez, Mississippi.  I devoured all the available books in the series (Turning Angel, The Devil's Punchbowl, Natchez Burning) very quickly. Cage is a former prosecutor who becomes a best-selling author who returns to his hometown of Natchez and eventually is elected mayor. Natchez Burning is the beginning of a new trilogy featuring Penn Cage and includes a parallel time line set in the civil rights era when Penn's dad Tom Cage was a family practice doctor in Natchez who had black and white patients. There is almost non-stop action in both time lines as the race-based hate crimes, murders and other events that happened in the 1960s influence what people do and think decades later. There are so many extremely dangerous situations that Penn and his fiancee Caitlin Masters (publisher of the local newspaper) are placed in as they seek to unearth secrets and crimes that lots of people will go to extreme lengths to prevent them from being revealed.

Runner-Up Favorite Thriller Read in 2015: Phantom (Harry Hole, #10) by Jo Nesbø.

Jo Nesbø was another one of the great author finds I made in 2014, after his books were recommended to me by Amazon and Goodreads because of my positive reaction to the Kurt Wallander books by Henning Mankell (all 10 books which I have previously read). Nesbø, Mankell and Jussi Adler-Olsen are all purveyors of Nordic Noir which is starting to become one of my favorite sub-genres. For example, The Snowman (Harry Hole, #7) and The Keeper of Lost Causes (Department Q, #1) were both some of the best thrillers I read in 2014. Phantom (Harry Hole, #10) is the latest (and some think possibly, the last) Harry Hole book to be published. The significant emotional wallop that Phantom has is heightened by the fact that it is the 10th book in a series where we have followed these characters over years of fictional developments. One of the key relationships that Harry Hole has is with Oleg, the young son of the love of his life, Rakel. Harry has basically retired from being a police detective and is in exile in Hong Kong when he discovers that Oleg (now a teenager) has been arrested for murder and accused of being involved with a heroin ring. What follows next is an incredibly complex and exciting series of events which had me gasping for breath at it its (very satisfying) conclusion.

Honorable Mention (Thriller): Blindsighted (Grant County, #1) by Karin Slaughter.
Another one of the great  author discoveries I made in 2015 was Karin Slaughter. In some ways her Grant County series has a lot in common with Greg Iles' Penn Cage series: they both involve a married couple living in a small southern town trying to investigate murderous and other criminal behavior. Slaughter, like Iles, does an excellent job of placing her central characters in extremely dangerous situations which are very harrowing to the reader.

BOOK REVIEW: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

I'm glad I finally read Uprooted by Naomi Novik (primarily best known for her best-selling Temeraire series set in an alternative Napoleonic past that features telepathic dragons), especially after hearing about its many award successes and plaudits received all year long. (Uprooted won the 2016  Nebula award for Best Novel and was nominated for the Hugo award and Locus award.) Uprooted is a pretty traditional fantasy novel. It is the story of Agnieska, a simple country girl who lives in a small village located near a dangerously enchanted Wood. Nieshka's village is guarded by The Dragon, an old Wizard who selects a girl from the local village every 10 years as payment for his protective services of the people who live in the environs of the Wood. Everyone expects that Agnieska's best friend Kasia will be chosen by the Dragon but (unsurprising, at least to me) he chooses Nieshka instead. There is a lot of magic in Uprooted, as we discover that the reason Nieshka was selected is that she is an untrained Witch. (Of course she is. As usual, it just so happens that our main character just happens to have untapped resources of power  waiting to be developed and acknowledged. Isn't this the basic plot of every Marvel movie released in 2016?) There's also a lot of battles and a (surprisingly) large amount of death. The stakes are real for the people in the book. As you might have been able to tell from my parenthetical comment above, one of the main faults of the book (to me) was the inclusion of too many clichéd fantasy tropes. Here is just an abbreviated list: young inexperienced farm girl, person who discovers they have powerful magic abilities, the palace intrigue, the very small village the main character comes from, the fish out of water scenes when the rube goes to the capital city, the battle of magicians, the ancient evil of the enchanted forest, the siege of hero by a numerically superior armed force, et cetera. For lots of other people they may have gained comfort from the familiarity of these tropes but to me they were mostly just annoying. I like fantasy "well enough" but it's not my go-to genre. Examples of fantasy I have read relatively recently that I enjoyed quite a bit would includes works by Brian Staveley, Michael J. Sullivan, Robert Jackson Bennett, Daniel Abraham and N.K. Jemisin. Those books include lots of suspense, action, wonder (sometimes humor and often diversity), built around complex, memorable characters. These books use and then disrupt fantasy tropes. To me, Uprooted also uses fantasy tropes and perhaps is trying to invert them in some way but mainly ends up re-inscribing them. There is definitely action and suspense in Uprooted but I simply did not care about either of the two central characters and it is definitely lacking both a sense of fun and a diverse perspective. Additionally, I was almost driven to distraction by the young adult (YA) romantic scenes of "tension" between the young, inexperienced girl and older, emotionally distant, experienced magician. However, overall I would still say that Uprooted is a well-crafted, quite traditional fantasy novel brimming with magic and mayhem, with a somewhat bewildering ending that simply failed to resonate with me. Title: Uprooted. Author: Naomi Novik. Paperback: 464 pages. Publisher: Del Rey. Date Published: March 1, 2016. Date Read: August 8-13, 2016. GOODREADS RATING:  3.5 STARS. (Rounded down for the nearly incomprehensible but unfortunately mawkish ending.) OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0). PLOT: A-. IMAGERY: A-. IMPACT: B+. WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Spider's War (The Dagger & The Coin, #5)

The Spider's War, the fifth and concluding entry of the Dagger and the Coin series by Daniel Abraham is a delight. The story has gotten so sprawling, with the consequences for our characters so significant that it is heart-breaking at times. You can see my ratings of the first four books (The Dragon's Path, The King's Blood, The Tyrant's Law, The Widow's House) on Goodreads. I was actually somewhat surprised to discover that I had not written a full review of one of these books for this blog, because they have been on my end-of-year "favorite reads" list multiple times (2012, 2014). Anyway, since The Spider's War is the last book in the series I definitely want to include a full review this time.

The Dagger and the Coin series is populated by a rich set of characters. The main ones are Cithrin bel Sarcour, Geder Palliako, Dawson Kalliam, his wife  Clara Kalliam, Colonel Marcus Wester and Master Kit. Happily (or sadly, depending on your perspective) not all of the main characters who we get to know through the roughly 2000-plus pages of this epic tale survive the denouement in The Spider's War. (In fact, some of the characters I just mentioned don't even make it that far.)

One of the key aspects of the series, in my eyes, is its focus on economics and the verisimilitude the author brings to a fantastical tale involving multiple "races" (really different species) of intelligent, speaking animals together with priests, dragons and war. 

In fact, there is a LOT of war in The Spider's War. (I really think it should be called The Spiders' War since I believe that the  primary conflict is referring to multiple spiders in this case.) What the book does VERY well is demonstrate that along with war comes suffering and death and conquest. I like how the book doesn't sugarcoat the horrors of war. It depicts it as something horrible (but in some situations, inevitable.)

In the end, the fate of humanity comes down to an incredibly suspenseful, action-packed sequence where several of the characters I mentioned are literally trying to save the world; this sequence is very well done and is a fitting ending to not only the book, but the series as a whole.

Although I do think that The Spider's War was was probably not the most compelling entry in the 5-book series, overall I think the series ended quite well and I would recommend the series as a whole to anyone who is interested in intelligent epic fantasy and who has enjoyed the works of  authors like Brent Weeks (The Night Angel trilogy, the Lightbringer series), Brian Staveley (The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne), Michael J. Sullivan (The Riyria Revelations) and Richard K. Morgan (A Land Fit For Heroes trilogy).

Title: The Spider's War.
Author: Daniel Abraham.
Paperback: 528 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: March 8, 2016.
Date Read: June 2, 2016.

GOODREADS RATING: 4.5 STARS.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Mortal Bond (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #3) by Brian Staveley

Wow! I thought the first two books in Brian Staveley's the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne trilogy (The Emperor's Blades and The Providence of Fire) were intense, enthralling and engaging but everything gets ratcheted up several notches in The Last Mortal Bond, the third (and final) book in the Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne trilogy.

The trilogy revolves around a trio of royal siblings, Adare, the eldest child and her two brothers, Kaden (the heir to the Unhewn Throne) and Valyn (the "spare heir"). There were some critiques of the first book (The Emperor's Blades) that it was too focused on following the exploits and adventures of the male protagonists (Kaden and Valyn) while the primary female protagonist (Adare) was left at home to deal with more domestic concerns (of dealing with the ramifications of the assassination of their father, Emperor Sanlitun hui'Malkeenian). However this critique was muzzled when the second book The Providence of Fire not only increased Adare's profile in the plot considerably, but also gave increased "screen time" to awesome female characters like Pyrre, Gwenna, Triste, Huutsuu and Kegellen. In fact, one very beneficial change is that in The Last Mortal Bond has been Gwenna raised to a point-of-view character on her own (similar to Adare, Valyn and Kaden) and this is great because Gwenna is awesome!

However, what really makes the entire Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series really tick is the compelling writing by Staveley which forces the reader to care about the characters and makes the book almost impossible to put down, especially in its last third or so. In addition to the central question(s) of what will happen to our key characters (Kaden, Adare, Valyn and Gwenna) Staveley raises the stakes by adding a plot development that threatens ALL of humanity in the compelling world he has created and built. The entire series of books is action-packed and incredibly bloody and since the third book takes place while a war is devouring the Annurian Empire (or is it a Republic?) there are scenes of incredible carnage and thrilling chases.

One unusal (but interesting) aspect of the Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne series is the infusion of religion, faith and belief throughout. One would think this would annoy or repel an atheist such as myself but it doesn't. Instead, Staveley's depiction of this society's various gods (Intarra, Goddess of Light and Fire; Meshkent, God of Pain and Hate; Ciena, Goddess of Pleasure and Love; Hull, Lord of Darkness; Ananshael, God of Death; Bedisa, Goddess of Birth) provides the kind of details on which his engaging and believable world-building is based. Many of our protagonists spend a fair amount of their time delivering imprecations and exhortations to various Gods (e.g. "'Kent-kissing" is a common curse). But since this fantasy, it turns out that some of the Gods in question (particularly Intarra, Meshkent and Ciena) become actual breathing and speaking characters in the story.

But the key feature of this book is really the action and the subsequent ruminations on the nature of courage and cowardice. This mostly happens in Gwenna's section of the story as she has to learn how to turn a group of people who had been branded as cowards and failures into a deadly fighting force. Gwenna and Valyn are members of  an elite fighting force called the Kettral. They are named after giant (i.e. 50 feet long) birds called kettrals that are used to gain air superiority on their enemies. To become Kettral you have to lose all sense of fear as you become hardened killing machines and a very small percentage of people who try out to be Kettral actually make it (and a large percentage of people die during the training, or during the Last Trial). All three Malkeenian siblings are put into some terrifying situations, which each of them deal with in different, but ultimately reasonable ways. Staveley presents several different ways in which characters deal with potentially fatal scenarios and it is incredibly compelling (and nerve-wracking, because Staveley is not shy about killing off characters we care about.)

Overall, I would argue that any fan of high epic fantasy (like those written by Peter Brett, Daniel Abraham, Brent Weeks, Brandon Sanderson and Richard Morgan) will greatly enjoy the work of Brian Staveley. I can't wait to read all his future books!!

Title: The Last Mortal Bond (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, Book 3).
Author: Brian Staveley.
Paperback: 656 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: March 15, 2016.
Date Read: April 10, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.33/4.0).

PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A+.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A+.