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: The Brilliance Saga by Marcus Sakey

Marcus Sakey is the author of an entertaining and exciting series of books, called The Brilliance Saga. This series consists of the three books Brilliance, A Better World and Written in Fire. It is set in an alternate timeline where starting in 1980 a small, constant percentage of children are born with special abilities. These kids are called "Brilliants" (or abnorms) and as they grow older and their abilities start to manifest our world begins to change as Brilliants make their mark. Society reacts by coming up with ways to identify and quarantine abnorms; people gifted with special abilities are denigrated and shunned by the 99.9% of the population who fear and (are envious of) them.

I think I would rate the Brilliance series overall at 4.5 stars (out of 5). If you liked the first two books (Brilliance and A Better World) you will probably also like the concluding book Written in Fire. All three books share the same aspects: action-packed fight sequences, stunning plot developments, surprising character deaths and thought-provoking moral dilemmas.

The main character in all three books is a former secret agent named Nick Cooper whom we are introduced to in (the first book) Brilliance as someone who uses his abnorm talents (of being able to predict anyone's motions from their body language) to work for a special, secretive agency called the Department of Analysis and Response (DAR) to find and capture other gifted individuals who are using their abnorm abilities for self-enrichment or unsavory ends. Cooper is divorced, with two kids, a company man and seemingly average good guy. However, his loyalties are tested  after he meets (is bested by and attracted to) an abnorm whom he calls The Girl Who Walks Through Walls who is working for a government-declared abnorm terrorist called John Smith who believes that abnorms should take over the world and will use his enhanced strategic abilities to stop at nothing to achieve his vision. Slowly, Cooper starts to realize that DAR, the group he has been working for, may not in fact be the good guys after all.

In A Better World (the second book) Cooper is now completely caught between multiple forces competing for his loyalty and attention as the world slowly comes apart. For example, it becomes clear that his daughter is also gifted, while the government becomes increasingly regimental about how abnorm children should be treated. At the same time, Cooper gains an even higher profile as he becomes a special advisor to the president of the United States on abnorm issues as well as meeting Erik Epstein, an abnorm who is the richest man in the world, who is trying to form a better world by creating an abnorm sanctuary in Wyoming called New Canaan Holdfast. All this happens while he and Shannon (The Girl Who Walks Through Walls) are becoming closer and closer, but he's also having increasingly tender feeling about his ex-wife who is raising his kids. There are a lot of balls in the air, but Sakey controls all the multiple plot twists with aplomb.

The stakes are raised even higher in Written in Fire (the third book). The World is really on fire, with the White House destroyed, the President killed and civil war has broken out between the 1% of the population that are abnorms and the rest of the population (norms), with neighbor killing neighbor and most aspects of civilization grinding to a halt.

A key flashpoint occurs at New Canaan Holdfast when a vigilante army of ex-military norms is amassing to get revenge for the events that occurred at the end of A Better World in order to exterminate the brilliance phenomenon once and for all. Some of the key questions Sakey is not shy about asking are "Is genocide ever acceptable?" and "Do the ends ever justify the means?" He also does an excellent job of providing twists in the story so that just when you think the plot is going to zig, it sags, and vice versa.

Eventually (of course) an abnorm invents an artificial way of making any humans  gifted and both sides (John Smith and the DAR) are searching for the scientist(s) who created it, with one side trying to find it in order to destroy it and the other hoping to get it to as many people as possible, despite the side effects, which appear to be more serious (and potentially fatal) the older you are because the less flexible and/or resilient your brain is to rewiring to develop amazing new talents.

The author does an excellent job of putting our characters in situations where there are no easy ways out and where bad things often happen to the good people. This is one of the best parts of the book because the moral quandaries that the characters face are very thought-provoking and are a source of the deep emotional impact the books have on the reader. He also does an excellent job of creating a sense of verisimilitude by including creative content between chapters (like mock advertisements, news reports and television transcripts) that bring liven the story and make it tangible for the reader.

I don't want to reveal the ending of the series but it seemed like the author wanted to have it both ways. To me Written in Fire ends in a way in which it is not completely clear as to which side  actually is victorious in the end; in fact it's not clear to me which side I wanted to win. (One side says abnorms should take over the world because they are the next evolutionary step of humanity and the other side says abnorms should be microchipped and exterminated to preserve humanity as we know it.) I can see the benefits of both sides and although we definitely get a resolution of most of the central conflicts by the end of Written in Fire we also get a prologue which implies that the side that we thought lost might have actually found a way to win in the end.

Overall, the Brilliance saga is based on a compelling (but pretty familiar) premise about the widespread development of fantastic powers, set in a contemporary and immediately recognizable world and told in an action-packed, thrilling style.

Title:  Brilliance.
Author: Marcus Sakey.
Paperback: 439 pages.
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer.
Date Published: July 16, 2013.
Date Read: May 1, 2015.

GOODREADS RATING: *****.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

Title:  A Better World.
Author: Marcus Sakey.
Paperback: 390 pages.
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer.
Date Published: June 17, 2014.
Date Read: May 4, 2015.

GOODREADS RATING: *****.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

Title:  Written in Fire.
Author: Marcus Sakey.
Paperback: 345 pages.
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer.
Date Published: January 12, 2016.
Date Read: June 17, 2016.

GOODREADS RATING: *****.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A+.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Fifth Season (Broken Earth, #1) by N.K. Jemisin

I almost gave up on N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season while reading the first fifty pages but, encouraged by the extremely positive reviews (rated over 4.3/5 by 7500+ people on Goodreads) and widespread critical acclaim (nominated for multiple awards like the Nebula and Locus) I persisted, and I'm very glad that I did. (This was not the case with Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I gave up on rather quickly several years ago, and I don't regret that decision. That being said, having previously given up on a book of hers probably made me want to give The Fifth Season the benefit of the doubt. That and the fact that she, like me,  is on the side of the good guys in the Puppy brouhaha over representation in speculative fiction.)

The story follows three characters, Damaya, Essun and Syenite as they navigate their lives in a world which is accustomed to regular cataclysmic disasters, called a "Season." The world has gone through four of these events so far (each of which has been slightly different) and when the story begins it's not that obvious if the current situation is bad enough to be a fifth Season or not. The occurrence of catastrophes is so regular that the populace is always on edge, and prepared to flee at a moment's notice.

Related to the fact that earthquakes (called "shakes" in the book) occur so often is the existence of orogenes, people who have the power to manipulate the energy found in nature around them to move objects, freeze or heat the air and generally disrupt the world around them. One side effect is that without control, an orogene can remove all the energy from the volume of space "near" them, which can be fatal to anyone too close to the orogene. For this reason they are feared and hated by most civilized people, and hunted and controlled by another group called Guardians.

By following the stories of a young inexperienced orogene (Damaya), a mid-level orogene (Syenite) and an older, experienced orogene (Essun) the reader gets a multifaceted view of Jemisin's society, which is engrossing and diverse. The book is told via interspersed chapters following Damaya, Syenite and Essun (similar to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and James S.A. Corey's The Expanse.)
I particularly liked Damaya's story the most and particularly looked forward to reading her chapters. I also appreciated the inclusion of an openly gay main character in the book (and there's a bisexual character and a transgender character that play pivotal roles later on). I was not prepared for the somewhat explicit sexuality between these characters, but it was handled well, and it was a plus for me. There is also clear descriptions of hair and body types which make it clear that the vast majority of the characters in The Fifth Season would be racialized as non-white in our world. And that gives me another way to connect with the book. That being said, although I was very interested to see where the story goes I was not actually enthralled with the book as a whole--it misses some elements (humor, suspense, wonder, that "wow" factor), but it is a well-written and intriguing read.

Overall, I'm glad I read The Fifth Season and I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in the The Broken Earth trilogy. The second book, The Obelisk Gate, is coming out next week, Tuesday August 16, 2016. (You can read the first chapter for free!)


Title: The Fifth Season.
Author: N.K. Jemisin.
Paperback: 468 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: August 4, 2015.
Date Read: January 26, 2016.

GOODREADS RATING: **** (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.58/4.0).

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

BOOK REVIEW: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Last year The Three-Body Problem became the first book not published in English to win the Hugo award, the most prestigious award in science fiction and  fantasy last year. The sequel to The Three-Body Problem is The Dark Forest. This book builds more slowly than the first one and parts of it did not resonate for me. However The Dark Forest ends very VERY strongly. The last section of the book rescues it from being in the 3-4 star range and brings up to the 4-5 star range (on the Goodreads five-star scale).

The Dark Forest is a very different story from the first book. The central character, Luo Ji is a much more interesting main character than any of the main character(s) from the first book (except for the despicable Ye Wenjie of course).

In The Dark Forest there are other characters we get to know and identify with whose fates are known by the end of the book and whom the reader becomes invested in and sympathetic towards.

The author does an excellent job of portraying the far future in The Dark Forest and depicting what world reaction would be as human extinction became more and less certain depending on events that are revealed in The Three-Body Problem.

One of the key ideas of The Dark Forest is the idea that despite what is usually believed, alien intelligences in the galaxy are actually not sparsely  distributed and may actually  be malevolent towards humanity. Liu Cixin explains the  idea like this:

The universe is full of life. Life in the universe functions on two axioms : 1. Life's goal is to survive and 2. That matter (resources) are finite. Like hunters in a dark forest, life can never been sure of alien life's true intentions. The extreme distances between stars creates an insurmountable 'Chain of Suspicion' where the two civilizations cannot communicate fast enough to relieve mistrust, making conflict inevitable. Therefore, it is in every civilizations best interests to preemptively strike any developing civilization before it can become a threat.

This is such a unique and interestingly original idea that it makes the book a compelling read in my eyes. I look forward to seeing what will happen in the next one, called Death's End.

Title: The Dark Forest.
Author: Cixin Liu.
Paperback: 512 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: August 11, 2015.
Date Read: September 19, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A-/B+ (3.50/4.0).

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

2016 NEBULA AWARDS: Naomi Novik's Uprooted Wins Best Novel In All-Female Sweep

The 2016 Nebula Awards for the best writing in science fiction and fantasy released in 2015 were announced this weekend and all of the winners in the main categories (Novel, Novella, Novellette and Short Story) were women!

Novel

• Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Novella

• Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

Novelette

• ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s 6/15)

Short Story

• ‘‘Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers’’, Alyssa Wong (Nightmare 10/15)

Additionally, Fran Wilde's Updraft won the Young Adult Nebula award, i.e. Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. Mad Max: Fury Road deservedly won the Outstanding Dramatic Presentation category.

The big kahuna is the Novel category, and this year there are three books that have been nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula: Naomi Novik's Uprooted (which I have not read yet and since I was not a fan of her Temeraire stories I may not get around to), Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy and N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season (both of which I have read). If I were voting, I would have picked Jemisin, and the SFF award prognosticator at Chaos Horizon did just that as well. However, we were both wrong. Does that mean Novik is now the front runner for the Hugo? I doubt it, but I do think it means that voters may not split as many votes among Leckie, Jemisin and Novik, which could make it harder for Neal Stephenson's Seveneves to win the award (which I think it is going to do).

2016 LOCUS AWARDS: Nominations Announced

The Locus Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel were announced this week. These awards are selected via an open online poll conducted by Locus magazine online between February 1 and April 15 every year.

This year there is a significant overlap between the Locus awards and the Hugo award nominations and the Nebula award nominations.

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy has been nominated for the Locus, Hugo and Nebula. It is the third book in a series which began with Ancllary Justice which won every single possible science fiction award there is (Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Clarke and BSFA). Two other books which have also been nominated for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula are N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season and Naomi Novik's Uprooted.

Other notable books of 2015 include Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, which has been nominated for the Locus and Hugo, and Aliette de Bodard's The House of Shattered Wings which has been nominated for the Locus award and won the British Science Fiction Award.

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

• The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi (Borzoi; Orbit UK)
• Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Seveneves, Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
• A Borrowed Man, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

FANTASY NOVEL

• Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
• The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard (Roc; Gollancz)
• Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand (PS; Open Road)
• The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

2016 Hugo Awards: The Nominations Are Out!

The nominations for the 2016 Hugo Awards were announced today and the sci-fi blogosphere is verklempt about the impact of the execrable Rabid Puppies and ambiguously awful Sad Puppies.
The only category I really care about is Best Novel:

BEST NOVEL (3695 ballots)

• Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
• The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass by Jim Butcher (Roc)
• The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
• Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)
• Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

I was able to nominate as well because I was a member of the 2015 Worldcon and these were my picks:

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
• Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu
• The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley

I made these selections because I was pretty sure that Seveneves by Neal Stephenson would be nominated anyway so I put Kim Stanley Robinson in instead. It's pretty amazing that Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy continues her success with each book in her Radhch trilogy being nominated for the Hugo award. 

2016 NEBULA AWARDS: Nominations Announced!

The nominations for the 2016 Nebula Award have been announced on Saturday. The most important category is Best Novel, and here are the nominees:

• Raising Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen) 

• The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK) 

• Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK) 

• The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga) 

• Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) 

• Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, Lawrence M. Schoen (Tor) 

• Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)

This list was predicted two days ago by the Chaos Horizons blog. Of these books, I have read Ancillary Mercy and The Fifth Season (and enjoyed them both). I have also read the first two books of Charles Gannon's Terran Republic trilogy and thought they were okay. However, it is very impressive that all three books in the trilogy have now been nominated for the Nebula award (has that happened before?). The two previous books in the series are Fire with Fire which lost to Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice in 2014 and Trial by Fire which lost to Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation in 2015.

I am looking forward to reading Updraft (which is a debut novel and is also nominated in the Young Adult category) as well as Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard.

BOOK REVIEW: Neal Stephenson's Seveneves

Neal Stephenson is known as a grand master of science fiction, a man who writes huge, sprawling works of speculative fiction filled to the brim with scientific facts and thrilling flights of imagination.
Seveneves is another one of Stephenson's books in this vein. Stephenson is basically science fiction royalty due to previous seminal works such as Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age: A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer and Anathem. Many of these books have been critical and commercial successes, and he has been nominated for the top awards in the fields of speculative fiction (and won several of them).

The premise of Seveneves is astonishing. The very first line of the book is "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." The inexplicable destruction of Earth's moon into seven large chunks is just the beginning of an intriguing and exciting story, because very soon it becomes clear that the destruction of the moon will lead directly to the end of life on Earth as we know it, resulting in the deaths of billions of humans as the planet becomes uninhabitable for thousands of years.

****   SPOILERS    SPOILERS  SPOILERS   ****

(Please note, there will be spoilers about the book in this review from this point on.)

****   SPOILERS    SPOILERS  SPOILERS   ****

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that the extinction event (called the White Rain in the book) is more than two years away. The bad news is that it will probably consist of several days of continuous devastating meteor strikes on the planet that will destroy every man-made structure on its surface, boil the seas and raise the overall atmospheric temperature several hundred degrees.

Seveneves is split into three sections, where the first section is a (somewhat) realistic (but emotionally resonant) depiction of how our society would react if it was known that all human life on the planet would basically end within 2 years. It's curious to me that there has been so much focus on post-apocalyptic media projects recently (AMC's The Walking Dead, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, Cormac McCarthy's The Road) when Seveneves and Ben Winter's The Last Policeman trilogy make it clear that there are several very compelling questions that are raised by considering the period before the apocalypse arrives. Maybe pre-apocalyptic fiction will become a new popular genre?

The second section of the book is even better than the first (in my humble opinion) because it focuses on the period of time when humanity is reduced to a few thousand people (living in what is known as the Cloud Ark, a structure formed in near-Earth orbit with the international space station as a central hub). This section of the book reads as an engineering/sociological thriller as Stephenson dazzles (or dulls, depending on your technical bent or interest) with his level of detail in describing outer space kinematics and the engineering problems involved in maintaining human subsistence in space after access is lost to the Earth and its inexhaustible supply of carbohydrates and fluorocarbons. To me, the most interesting part of this section (and the book overall) was the depiction of the human conflicts that arose once other societal structures (like countries, governments and laws) are obliterated. This was one of the key themes of Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora which I thought was a very strong aspect of that book. Despite the fact that there are stakes greater than the question of "who will be in charge" (literally the fate of humanity itself hangs in the balance) conflicts between the various characters play out in surprising and enthralling ways. In fact, I would say that Aurora outdoes Seveneves in the area of maintaining the reader's attention, but then again, it is almost half the length of Stephenson's bulk. It is clear to me that there is a fair amount of chaff that could have been cut from the book that would have improved it. That being said, since the stakes are literally whether humanity will survive or not, that does tend to focus the reader's attention.

The similarity with Aurora does not end there, as both books have troubling conclusions that detracted from my overall enjoyment. In the third section of Seveneves we are plunged thousands of years into the future. Again, there is bad news and good news. The good news is that humanity does have a future despite the loss of 99.999999% of the population after the Moon disappears. The bad news is that (somehow) all of humanity is descended from the seven women (hence the name of the novel) who survived the events of Section 2 of the book, and this has profound implications for the billions of humans who know populate the solar system. This section of the book is strangely ineffective, as if Stephenson had run out of ideas (although we do find out that at least two groups of humans did manage to survive on Earth after the White Rain and evolved (or did not evolve) in somewhat surprising ways over the thousands of years that it took to rebound the human population numbers from a single digit number to a ten digit number. One problem is that the tension has gone out of the story, we know humanity survives and the current plot point thousands of years in the future is about which of the seven factions of humanity arising from the original Seven Eves will be successful in gaining control of our healed homeworld, simply is not as compelling as the story that got us here, and by the necessity of the time jump we are introduced to completely new characters that we really have no compelling reason to care about. Atleast Stephenson doesn't end his book like Robinson did, with a somewhat bizarre coda that seems to argue against the feasibility (and desirability) of the endeavor his characters have been devoting their hopes, energies and lives to for the rest of the book.

****   SPOILERS   END  ****

Overall, Seveneves is a very gripping read, with an absolutely killer premise which will keep any hard science fiction fan engrossed and entertained with Stephenson's geeky intricacy of his vision of an apocalyptic human future while simultaneously delivering an emotionally resonant and psychologically complex novel about human interactions (in the context of extraordinary situations).

Title: Seveneves.
Author: Neal Stephenson.
Paperback: 881 pages.
Publisher: Harper Collins.
Date Published: May 19, 2015.
Date Read: November 14, 2015.

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

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

BOOK REVIEW: The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley

The sequel to The Emperor's Blades is The Providence of Fire. This is book 2 in The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne trilogy written by Brian Staveley. Staveley deservedly won the Gemmel Morningstar Award for Best Debut fantasy Novel for The Emperor's Blades and has since signed a new contract to write four more books set in the same Universe that this young author dreamed up.

The Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne is set in the Annurian Empire, in a world which basically has Bronze Age technology with the slight twist that there exist giant birds called kettrals which are large enough to allow a half-dozen full-grown men travel far distances riding them, And there are people called "leaches" who are able to perform magical feats (such as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, super-strength, etc) by "kenning" when they are close to the source of their power (called a "well.") Leaches are feared for their incredible powers but also socially stigmatized as evil and disgusting freaks of nature by the general public. Oh and there is a whole pantheon of gods, some of whom are actually walking around now and appear to be very interested in eliminating humans.

But enough about the setting, let's talk about the plot! As I mentioned above, this is the second book in the series (which is ostensibly a trilogy) and the story primarily follows the three children of the recently murdered Emperor Sanlitun Malkeenian: Adare, the eldest, the daughter who grew up among the trappings of royalty and knows the contours of the corridors of power in the Dawn Palace; Kaden, the eldest son and heir to the Unhewn Throne, who has spent the last 8 years or so being trained by monks to practice a form of mental discipline that will allow him to use a network of secret gates that will allow him to instantly be transported all over the Empire; and Valyn, the youngest and most physically capable of the three Malkeenian children, he has been training to become a Kettral fighter.

In Book 1, Adare appeared to be more of an afterthought as the story was told primarily from the perspective of the boys Kaden and Valyn. However in Book 2, Adare's point-of-view is front and center and this is a good thing. In fact, basically everything is better in Book 2, the plot is more intricate, the peril is more thrilling and the secondary characters are even more interesting. Some of these secondary characters are Pyrre (the matronly worshipper of the Blank God who is also a deadly assassin), Rampuri Tan (the erstwhile monk who is also incredibly skilled with a double-headed axe) and Triste (the potential concubine who may also be the earthly manifestation of a Goddess).

In fact, the question at the heart of the book involves these gods, called csestriim, and what their plans are for humanity. The plot focusses on the many plans and machinations of several players as they vie for control of the Unhewn Throne and the Annurian Empire.

Overall, The Providence of Fire is incredibly exciting, absolutely enthralling and exceedingly addictive. I can't wait until the story concludes with The Last Mortal Bond.

Title: The Providence of Fire.
Author: Brian Staveley.
Paperback: 607 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: January 15, 2015.
Date Read: July 25, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).

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