2015 Hugo Best Novel Longlist Discussion Thread

By JJ: We’ve spent a lot of time over the last several months reading and discussing the Hugo Best Novel finalists. This thread has been created to give us the opportunity to discuss the rest of the entries on the longlist.

Please employ your best judgment, and use rot13 to encrypt anything especially spoilery, in consideration of those who may not have gotten to read all of the entries yet.

To make a JavaScript bookmarklet for your browser that handles rot13 – so that all you have to do is highlight some text and click the bookmark to encrypt/decrypt it — go here, click on the “file suppressed” message, copy the one line of code to your clipboard, and save it as the target/URL of a Bookmark/Favorite. (Thanks to Rev. Bob for the neat trick.)

[First in a series. See also — Hugo Best Novella Longlist Discussion Thread and Hugo Best Novelette Longlist Discussion Thread.]

181 thoughts on “2015 Hugo Best Novel Longlist Discussion Thread

  1. @Astra “Phew. I may be giving up on this series in Book 2. I like Sanderson in general but this is juvenile, simplistic, and predictable. (Does anyone die??) ”

    Does anyone die? Does anyone die?!

    Read the last chapter! Hah! I don’t know about everyone else, but I didn’t see that coming.

  2. Matt Y, on the Southern Reach trilogy: Only the mystery isn’t so much the focus of the books as is the internal struggle of the people faced with something so truly bizarre that there’s no frame of reference while they try to hold their sanity together.

    It’s also kind of like Lost where fans argue their different theories about what is going on.

    That might have just sold me on checking out the trilogy, which I haven’t read yet. I loved Lost and cared absolutely zero about the explanations for what the characters were going through since I was more interested in the characters themselves. I still like Lost, for that matter, even though I know a lot of people soured on it after the end when they never got the answers they were hoping for.

    So that description of the SR trilogy has me quite intrigued.

  3. Okay, since everyone is feeling Bracket Withdrawal with Kyra’s absence, I’m going to go with junego’s suggestion and post:
     

    The Unofficial File770 Best Novel from 2014 Bracket

    1) Rank up to 5 choices, in order of preference. Any listed after the first 5 will be discarded.
    2) No ties allowed.
    3) Write-ins are allowed, but must be novels first published in 2014.
    4) This need not match your Hugo nomination list; it can be changed to include eligible entries you’ve read since nominations closed, or to match your change in preferences since nomination or voting.

    Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    The Chaplain’s War, Brad Torgersen
    City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor
    Lines of Departure, Marko Kloos
    Lock In, John Scalzi
    The Martian, Andy Weir
    The Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley
    Monster Hunter Nemesis, Larry Correia
    My Real Children, Jo Walton
    Skin Game, Jim Butcher
    The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer
    The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
    Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon
    Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson
     

  4. Wow. Rank my top five? With the caveat I’ve read only eight of these, so I may be leaving off worthy works I haven’t read yet (City of Stairs, I’m looking at you…)

    1) The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Nominated it; voted it number 1. Still wish it won….

    2) My Real Children, Jo Walton
    Nominated it. Thought about it for weeks after I read it.

    3) The Martian, Andy Weir
    Didn’t read it until after nominations closed. Good, gripping SF adventure. Kept me up far too late on a worknight to finish it. Weir may be getting a Campbell nomination from me on the strength of this book.

    4) Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    Loved the first one; loved this one. Not ranking it higher mostly because I’m not sure how well it stands on its own.

    5) Lock In, John Scalzi
    A clever SFNAL mystery with interesting things to say about disabilities.

    The ones I read but didn’t vote for, in order of preference:

    With The Three Body Problem; the sophon hand-waving lost me. I was impressed by it right up until the last couple of chapters. But my suspension of disbelief snapped at that point. (Just one example: something huge, virtually massless, and perfectly reflective makes an excellent solar sail and should have been instantly accelerated away from the primary…) It’s a pity I couldn’t buy it, because the worldbuilding was intriguing.

    Skin Game was a better-than-average installment in the Dresden Files; it was a fun read. But I don’t think it stood alone (there are parts that I doubt would make much sense if you hadn’t read the preceding fifteen or so novels), and it just wasn’t mind-blowing enough to be Hugo material. I like a good beach read, and this was a good beach read. But it didn’t blow my socks into orbit (as someone elseweb described a good Hugo nominee).

    The Dark Between The Pages Stars… well, I couldn’t finish it. I tried. I really tried. Heck, I ran a book discussion of it. And nobody in the discussion, myself included, actually cared what happened to any of the characters.

  5. @JJ: In fairness, you should leave voting open till Kyra returns and votes. 😉

    Anyway, this is tough because I’m reading The Martian right now, but I fear “current book is best book” syndrome, so I’m putting it 4th. And I’m torn on flipping the first two! Don’t overthink, don’t overthink . . . okay, I guess:

    1. The Goblin Emperor (originally #1 on my ballot)
    2. Lock In (now alternate-universe-ballot eligible, yay!)
    3. Ancillary Sword (originally #2 on my ballot)
    4. The Martian (now alternate-universe-ballot eligible, yay!)

    Ask me again in a week and I might rearrange things to LI/TGE/TM/AS order; who knows! 😉 Sadly, I haven’t read a 5th book from the list yet.

  6. Kendall: In fairness, you should leave voting open till Kyra returns and votes.

    Oh, absolutely.

    Also, just to mention that any of you should feel free to do what Cassy B did, and list other books after your first 5 with comments as to why they didn’t make your Top 5.

  7. *excited Kermit-flail* Finally a category where I’ve read enough to feel like I can weigh in!

    1) The Goblin Emperor: Loved it SO much. I disagree that the protagonist was passive or that it lacked action or magic. To me the main character was one of the most deeply humane, sympathetic, trying-to-be-good-and-decent characters I’ve read in ages. All my stars plus big sappy hearts on top.

    2) City of Stairs: yes, I’m one of the reflexive “ugh, present-tense” folks, but this sneaked right past that and made me love it.

    Into the “not ranked” range: Ancillary Sword was a good successor to Ancillary Justice, but suffered in comparison (because unlike Justice it didn’t keep making me look up and remark to nobody but the cats “wow, this is SO GOOD!”). I liked My Real Children but it didn’t hit me hard.

    Lagoon, Lock In, and The Martian are all on my TBR list/stack. And I read The Three-Body Problem in preparation for voting this year and (despite finishing the book) bounced, with no intention of reading the follow-ups.

  8. 1) The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Still my favorite

    2) Annihilation, Jeff Vandermeer
    I didn’t read this until after nominations had closed, but as much as it wowed me, I prefer TGE.

    3) Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    I liked this fine, but not as much as the first one or the other two novels on this list above it.

    4) The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
    Fine. But uneven.

  9. OK….

    1) The Goblin Emperor. I guess others might have higher literary quality, but I like this one the most.

    2) Southern Reach trilogy. OK, fair enough, this definitely has the literary quality thing. And I like it a lot, too.

    3) The Three-Body Problem. Flawed but fascinating.

    4) Ancillary Sword. Not as good as Justice, but that still leaves plenty of room for it to be very good indeed.

    5) City of Stairs. I don’t mind present tense, honest.

    Some of the rest would rate honourable mentions… some wouldn’t… eh, I’ll just leave it there.

  10. I haven’t read a lot of these, so bearing that in mind

    1) City of Stairs
    2) The Goblin Emperor
    3) Ancillary Justice
    4) The Martian (if it were eligible)
    5) Lock In

    I also read Mirror Empire, Annihilation, Three-Body Problem and Skin Game but am not so enthused about them for various reasons.

  11. 1. City of Stairs (hadn’t read it until after the vote, but it’s brilliant)
    2. Mirror Empire (but I had to read it twice – first time through was tough, second was great)
    3. The Goblin Emperor
    4. Three Body Problem
    5. The Martian.

    I admired the Southern Reach books but didn’t really like them enough. I also really liked Lock In but feel it needs to be read with Unlocked to get the most out of it. Sword felt a bit too much like the middle book of the series for me to put it in the top 5.

  12. 1. Southern Reach
    2. Ancillary Sword – big fan of these books, this was my Hugo #1
    3. Three Body Problem
    4. Goblin Emperor

    TBP was very interesting for a variety of reasons and I’m glad I read it but I’m not interested in the sequels. Goblin Emperor was very enjoyable. So I could easily flip those 2.

    Also read Skin Game and it was good enough to get me interested in the series, but not good enough to rank with the others.

    I intend to read some of the others in the list, but so far that’s it.

  13. 1. The Goblin Emperor for the technical brilliance of its construction.

    2. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (Clair North) for a different look at time travel, and for asking (and answering) the question, if you knew someone was going to grow up to be a monster is it justified to kill him before he exists?

    3. Annihilation, for not answering the questions it raised, and for its Lovecraftian aura

    4. The Three Body Problem, for showing an alien to many Western readers society

    5. Ancillary Sword, for continuing the story in IMHO in a more accessible way than its predecessor

  14. Well, from the list above my top 5 would be:

    1. The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer
    2. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    3. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    4. Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson
    5. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    But if you put those in the context of “every book I read published in 2014”, that set would look a good deal more like:

    1. The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer
    2. Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge
    3. The Sea of Time, P. C. Hodgell
    4. City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    5. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
    6. The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Genevieve Valentine
    7. The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell
    8. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    9. The Widow’s House, Daniel Abraham
    10. The Lost, Sarah Beth Durst
    11. Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones
    12. The Dark Defiles, Richard Morgan
    13. Smiler’s Fair, Rebecca Levene
    14. Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson
    15. The Girl With All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
    16. Fiendish, Brenna Yovanoff
    17. The Unbound, Victoria Schwab
    18. Dreams of the Golden Age, Carrie Vaughn
    19. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

  15. @Kyra: Gah, I should’ve done a write-in for The Girl With All the Gifts. It was excellent – very well-done and quite heart-wrenching, though IMHO it dragged a little here and there in the middle-to-late parts of the book. Still, definitely one of my favorites from laste year. I broke my ebook-with-DRM-for-full-price buying rule ‘cuz the sample pulled me in and wouldn’t let go.

    I’m surprised it wasn’t one of the top-17 nomination-getters for the Hugos! (The stats show 17 since two declined their noms.)

    @JJ: Can you make The Girl With All the Gifts my #5 as a write-in, pretty pleeeeease? 🙂

  16. Girl with All the Gifts was SF so it wouldn’t work with Kyra’s current brackets.

    ETA: Ah, never mind. I see these are not Kyra’s current brackets. And Girl with All the Gifts was cool.

  17. I still haven’t read nearly everything published in 2014 that sounds possibly Hugo-worthy (City of Stairs and Cuckoo Song, I am looking at you, but Cuckoo Song might have a 2015 US publishing date?), but…

    1. The Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer.
    I really have to nominate the three books as a single work, given the way they interlace.

    2. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    3. Afterparty, Daryl Gregory
    This didn’t get as much love, but I found the near future of print on demand designer drugs, including one that gives you your own, personal Jesus fascinating. He pokes at it the idea from neurological and theological angles while telling an action laden story.

    4. Lagoon, Nnedi Okorafor

    5. The Three Body Problem

  18. Kendall: JJ: Can you make The Girl With All the Gifts my #5 as a write-in, pretty pleeeeease? 🙂

    Can do. I haven’t started tallying yet. I’d like to see more people participate in The Alternate Universe 2015 Best Novel Hugo. 😉

  19. I just looked over the Kyra Long List above 😉 out of curiosity. While some don’t interest me for various reasons (YA, sequels to books I haven’t read, and/or seem too litSFF for me) . . . I’m intrigued by a couple of titles on the list. So thanks, Kyra! My “books to check out” folder really needed some more bookmarks. 😉

    I’m watching the rest of the voting in case any other long lists or write-ins show up. I mean, you can’t swing a stuffed cat around here without hitting a book rec, of course. . . .

  20. JJ, my version looks like this:

    1. Ancillary Sword

    2. The Goblin Emperor

    I had a lot of difficulty deciding how to rank these two on the Hugo ballot. Ancillary Sword was one of the three “A”s that I nominated for Best Novel from 2014. The Goblin Emperor is one that I only read because of its Hugo nom.

    3. Lagoon

    Complex, brimming with life. It annoyed me at first until I realized what she was doing, and then my opinion shifted. When I finished reading it, I immediately wanted to re-read it and write an analysis. (THIS NEVER HAPPENS WITH ME). It is still the #1 thing on my ballot for next year (due to its 2015 US publication date).

    4. The Martian, Andy Weir

    It was a fast read, fun, and (as far as I could tell) the science was all on the up-and-up. He *did* get a Campbell nomination from me. And will again, if eligible. I know several people who would give this their enthusiastic #1, but none of them are here.

    5. Area X (The Southern Reach) or Afterparty? They were the other two Best Novel nominations that I had for the Hugo this year. Area X is on your list above, so I will throw my 5th vote to that.

  21. I’ve only read five of the works on this list. Of those five, I’d only vote for:

    1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (forever, for love), and
    2. The Martian, Andy Weir

    I liked but did not love Ancillary Sword, Lock In, and Skin Game. If I were to add a write in, I’d put The Girl With All the Gifts, M. R. Carey, in second place.

    Harry Dresden is my popcorn, but over the many books I’ve found that the increasing complexity is ever less rewarding. Ancillary Sword, unlike its predecessor, did not have me exclaiming at how good it was and Lock In tailed off disappointingly.

    I want to love Kameron Hurley’s fiction, but I don’t. City of Stairs, the first book of Southern Reach and Daughter of Mystery are cued up in my TBR mountain range.

  22. I’ve read, or attempted, 9 of the books on the list. The following would be my rank-worthy entrants

    1. The Goblin Emperor
    2. The Martian
    3. Three Body Problem
    4. Lock In
    5. Ancillary Sword

    The gap between 2 & 3 is fairly wide. The gap between 3 & 4 is not.

    I don’t think any of the other’s are rank-worthy, despite some of them being quite good reads. Honorable mentions – ie, Hugo-worthy, but not on the list – would be Station Eleven, and perhaps The Girl with All the Gifts.

  23. I think I’ll have to keep my original ballot of: The Goblin Emperor, Ancillary Sword, The Three-Body Problem. I suspect that in time my opinion of TGE will be affected by whether the sequels make sense of it all or not. I’m then going to thrown in Lock In as the fourth. Too many of the others are TBR’d to make any further decisions.

  24. @Mark: According to the FAQ on Addison’s (Monette’s) site, TGE won’t have a direct sequel, and there may or may not be other books in that world in the future.

    http://katherineaddison.com/faq.html

    In other news, I just finished The Martian and loved it. Possibly I should put it 3rd on my Alt Universe Ballot, but I’ll leave well enough alone. Anyway, I was going to do more last-year’s-Hugo remedial reading, but the thing I’m most interested in tackling from the list is the Southern Reach Trilogy, and I need something shorter right now. 😉 I will look for something from 2015. 😉 It’s about time I made it into this year!

  25. Kendall: I need something shorter right now. I will look for something from 2015.

    These are all fast, good reads:

    Dark Orbit, Carolyn Ives Gilman
    The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
    The Affinities, Robert Charles Wilson
    First Light (2014) and The Trials, Linda Nagata
    Corsair, James L. Cambias
    The Buried Life, Carrie Patel
    Zer0es, Chuck Wendig
    The Doomsday Equation, Matt Richtel

  26. @Kendall

    Too many acronyms! I meant to say 3BP re sequels.

    One of the things I liked about TGE was that although it was definitely capable of having sequels, it was written as a complete novel that didn’t require a series to resolve the plot.

  27. Thanks, JJ – and sorry, in editing I left out the part about looking at what I already owned for 2015 . . . but I always like recs! (Why Which turned out to be a PITA because the database I use for some reason is missing a lot of copyright dates! (I’m running an update and it seems to be filling in the blanks – not sure why it didn’t before.) (See, I ramble – that’s why I cut that part out. 😉 )

    Anyway, thanks for the rec list. I was interested in The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet already, but had forgotten about it; maybe I should pick it up anyway, especially if it is fast and good. 🙂 Also, The Buried Life sounds good – I haven’t heard of that. Some of the others in your list don’t grab me (a couple I’d heard of).

    I’d been interested in The Affinities, but it’s not on my to-buy list, making me think the sample didn’t do it for me or something I heard made me decide to skip it. But it sounds like I should give it a second look. (FWIW, I hated Spin and didn’t even finish it, but I don’t mind giving Wilson another shot.)

    I also thought about reading Daryl Gregory’s We Are All Completely Fine (pre-2015) in preparation for 2015’s Harrison Squared.

    BTW did you read Cambias’s first novel, A Darkling Sea? That intrigued me more than Corsair, but I never bought it.

    Sorry to ramble!

  28. Thanks, JJ – and sorry, in editing I left out the part about looking at what I already owned for 2015 . . . but I always like recs! (My database of books owned is missing copyright dates for a chunk of books, which makes “what to read next from this year” decisions more tedious; I’m running an update. . . .)

    Specific items on your list: I was interested in The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet already, but had forgotten about it, so thanks; that’s a strong possibility. 🙂 The Buried Life sounds good – I haven’t heard of that. Some of the others in your list don’t grab me (a couple I’d heard of before).

    I’d been interested in The Affinities, but it’s not on my to-buy list; possibly the sample didn’t do it for me or something I heard made me decide to skip it. But it sounds like I should give it a second look. (FWIW, I hated Spin and didn’t even finish it, but I don’t mind giving Wilson another shot.) Maybe I should take notes on books-I-decided-to-skip so I don’t get confused (am I alone in having this problem?).

    I also thought about reading Daryl Gregory’s We Are All Completely Fine (pre-2015) in preparation for reading 2015’s Harrison Squared. The former looks like a novella, the book’s so slender.

    Re. Cambias, did you read/like his first novel, A Darkling Sea? That intrigued me more than Corsair, but I never picked it up.

    Sorry to ramble, and thanks again!

  29. Sorry, somehow double-posted.

    @Mike, you can delete the first version, if so inclined (or leave it as testament to my late-night/early-morning incompetence 😉 ).

  30. @Mark: That makes more sense, thanks – and agreed re. TGE. It’s refreshing to find a good stand-alone fantasy novel. It’s probably not as rare as it seeeeeems. . . . 😉

  31. Shoot, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is only available on this side of the pond as a DRM’d ebook (boos, hiss, HarperCollins) or I can order it in hardback across the ocean. ;-( I’m gonna sleep on it.

    On the plus side, here are 10 reasons to read it:

    http://hodderscape.co.uk/10-reasons-read-the-long-way-to-a-small-angry-planet/

    Everyone should take note of reason #2: “Because it’s all about diversity without shouting about it.” In light of the puppy “SJW CHORF OMG!” meme (isn’t it a meme now?), reason #2 made me grin.

  32. Kendall: did you read Cambias’s first novel, A Darkling Sea? That intrigued me more than Corsair, but I never bought it.

    I did! I really liked Corsair (space pirate adventure), but I loved A Darkling Sea. If I’d read it in time, it would probably have been on my Hugo shortlist. I recommend trying to get hold of it. It has some of the most well-done “alien” aliens I’ve ever read (along with Philip Mann’s The Disestablishment of Paradise, which is a Stephenson-level doorstopper, but an easier read than Stephenson and well worth it).

    I’m a big RCW fan, so you may want to take that into account. I have yet to read a book by him that I did not think was really good — especially Burning Paradise, Blind Lake, Julian Comstock, and Spin.

    The Buried Life is a detective story set in a post-catastrophe Earth where people live mostly underground. It has excellent characterization and it’s got some good plot twists which I think elevate it above the usual SF detective story.

    The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is like a SF Goblin Emperor. People who loved the latter book who also like SF will likely love it for the same reasons. It’s really good, but I don’t necessarily think I’d call it Hugo-worthy. But I would definitely say it’s a “must-read”.

    I just finished Matt Richtel’s The Doomsday Equation. I think it’s a solid near-future techno-thriller with an intriguing, realistic plot. The protagonist is one of those brilliant, arrogant assholes who is very unlikeable, but he gets a shot at reformation and redemption.

  33. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    (very close between these two)
    Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    My Real Children, Jo Walton
    The Martian, Andy Weir

    Nearly made the top 5:
    The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
    The rest, haven’t read or didn’t rate so highly.

  34. #1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    #2. The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer
    #3. My Real Children, Jo Walton
    #4. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin

    I’ve been thinking about Three-Body Problem, and I’ve decided that if I don’t let profoundly bogus science disqualify a lot of otherwise good sf I love from decades gone by, I’m not going to let it do so here. (I’ve been re-reading some Clarke as comfort food, and have been recommending some Zelazny and some Vinge just recently, for instance.) The heart of the story, for me, is people wrestling with the question “What if humanity is just no damn good?”, and the loopiness of the last few chapters does not (for me) detract from that.

    I have no #5 pick because at least three books are here in my to-read queue indicating that they _might_ be the one, but it’s all aspirational.

  35. LunarG on September 20, 2015 at 7:38 pm said:

    I still haven’t read nearly everything published in 2014 that sounds possibly Hugo-worthy (City of Stairs and Cuckoo Song, I am looking at you, but Cuckoo Song might have a 2015 US publishing date?), but…

    IIRC, Cuckoo’s Song was published in the UK in 2014 and in the US in 2015, making it eligible for a Hugo both years.

  36. 1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    2. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    3. Daughter of Mystery, Heather Rose Jones
    4. My Real Children, Jo Walton
    5. Zero Sum Game, H. L. Huang

    The Martian, Andy Weir (not eligible for 2015 Hugos)

  37. @Kendall, We Are All Completely Fine is, in fact, a novella. It is also good, if the notion of a therapy group for the survivors of horror movies sounds intriguing to you. Very much what it says on the tin; damaged people who know that the world is more terrifying that we ever dreamed learn to move forward and support each other and struggle against eldritch horrors.

    There’s a lovely twist that is subtly foreshadowed in multiple places… I did not see it coming, but in retrospect, I was all, ” Oh, of course! ” and srsly impressed.

  38. 1. The Goblin Emperor
    2. Ancillary Sword
    3. Words of Radiance
    4. Sea of Time, P.C. Hodgell
    5. The Martian

  39. ULTRAGOTHA: The Martian, Andy Weir (not eligible for 2015 Hugos)

    ULTRAGOTHA, this is The Alternate Universe 2015 Hugo Best Novel ballot, and in this universe, The Martian is eligible. Feel free to revise your ballot if you’d like to put it in your Top 5.

  40. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    The Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff Vandermeer
    Lines of Departure, Marko Kloos
    City of Stairs (reading right now!)
    Lock In, John Scalzi

  41. 1: Goblin Emperor
    2: Southern Reach
    3: Ancillary Sword

    I did rather like the Dark Defiles, but it lost major points for that ending, which was gross and gratuitous both. It wasn’t quite as bad as the way Broken Empire wrapped up, but it was pretty bad.

  42. I’ve organized my books so I know what I own from 2015 so far (or so it seems)! W00t! Hopefully I can start an actual book in a couple of days. 😉

    @JJ: I’m bumping up A Darkling Sea on my to-buy list, thanks; it turns out it was pretty high anyway (not sure why I haven’t bought it already). Your description of The Long Way… (plus comments in the other thread) are moving me towards “if I like the excerpt, I’ll buy it regardless of DRM.” It sounds right up my alley! I enjoyed TGE a lot, and I like SF & fantasy pretty equally. So, cool! Re. RCW, despite your obvious bias 😉 I’ll re-read the sample from The Affinities.

    Hmm, I’d bookmarked The Buried Life already, so someone else rec’d it or I read a positive review; I must read the sample soon. (BTW I love the cover.)

    I recently said here that I should probably try more near-future stuff, but The Doomsday Equation just doesn’t appeal to me, sorry.

    @LunarG: We Are All Completely Fine is going high on my list to read, though The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet may beat it out. These two will be my next two reads (then Harrison Squared – part of why WAACF is going high on the list).

    It’s a plan(ish)! Till I’m distracted by something else.

  43. 1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    2.The Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), Jeff Vandermeer

    3. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie

    4. The Peripheral, William Gibson

    5. Galapagos Regained, James Morrow

  44. Am I in time for this?

    1) Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel
    2) The Peripheral, William Gibson
    3) Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie
    4) The Martian, Andy Weir
    5) Lock In, John Scalzi

    Two write ins, and I am baffled that few people seem to have shared my admiration for Station Eleven and Gibson on good form.

    I liked Ancillary Sword a lot but it’s the follow-up to an outstanding book.

    The Martian just works, I think, in terms of narrative voice and structure. A good read.

    Lock In is a well-executed thriller with some extra depths.

    Of the others that I have read, I liked the TGE but didn’t find the plot very propulsive. And I don’t get the tidal wave of hype for 3BP: high concept but thin characters and dodgy science.

    These ones are on my TBR pile:

    City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett
    Lines of Departure, Marko Kloos
    My Real Children, Jo Walton
    Trial by Fire, Charles E. Gannon

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