Top 5 Books 2013, and a Few Thoughts on 2014

Welcome to 2014 everyone! I am sure many of you have resolutions planned, or already in action. Some of you may have decided to skip the resolutions this year. 

A Memory of Light - my favourite novel of 2013

Last year, I resolved to read more. While I probably didn't read as many as I had hoped to (including some of the more ambitious of them: The Metamorphoses, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Art of War), whether from resolution or from being finished with tertiary study, I did chew my way through quite a few. 

My top five books for the year (taking only one from each author):

1. A Memory of Light (Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson) - Wow. Was this only last year? One day I may try and review the whole of the Wheel of Time series, but needless to say it is an epic work that sadly outlasted its author. The climactic chapter, 'The Last Battle' (in length longer than some other books) was breathtaking from start to finish, and the final chapter (written by Jordan before his death) was a perfect conclusion with a satisfying tying off of loose threads, but which also raised a number of nagging questions.
2. The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) - There is little that can be said here that has not been said elsewhere. This book took a long time to write, and it shows. It is excellently crafted, a gritty fantasy (becoming so popular of late). Well worth a read, though its focus on one character means it is not as gripping as other fantasy series have been. Some claim it to be an adult Harry Potter because of its protagonist's attendance at an Oxford-style school of magic, but thereabouts the similarities end.
3. Abbadon's Gate (James SA Corey) - Final book in The Expanse series, this book felt so short in story, but its page count remained lengthy. I absolutely love its authors' (for there are two despite the pen-name) take on hard sci fi. The lack of artificial gravity, the deadliness of space and its fast-flying projectiles (go watch Gravity if you still have doubts on this point) and the Firefly-esque attention paid to a small freighter crew all combined to make a realistic sci fi with some pertinent points about humanity and our place in the cosmos. I very much look forward to the fourth in the series, Cibola Burn.
4. Railsea (China Mieville) - This, rather than The City & The City, ended up in my top five for 2013
   
   
   because it is, on the surface, a young adult novel. It is a coming of age story of a boy seeking to leave home, who (in Mieville's style) is swept along on his adventure by forces beyond his control. The book is essentially a sci fi adaptation of Moby Dick, set on a planet with rails covering a 'railsea' inhabited by giant burrowing creatures mutated and deadly. My favourite part of the book is how Mieville plays with his reader, chapter to chapter, talking about genre expectations and playing around with language. (You see this from the beginning, where he replaces all 'and's with & - a symbol just as tangled as the railsea.) The ending is, in Mieville spirit, completely depressing.
5. Poison Study (Maria V Snyder) - At first I thought this book very childishly written. And it is. Its teenage protagonist is everything you might expect from a stereotypical teen character in a bad fantasy novel: whingey, surly, falling in love in a slightly masochistic way. If I hadn't been stuck on a bus with nothing else to do, I probably wouldn't have read it. I'm not entirely sure I'm glad that I did. This book is here for one reason: a rape scene hinted at through the whole of the book, and so emotive in its own hollow-souled way that it has left me feeling tarnished ever since. I can't recommend this book. But I can't bring myself to call it badly written either.

And honourable mentions to:

• Magician (Raymond E Feist)
• The Prince (Machievelli)
• Storm Front (Jim Butcher) (Full review here.)
• The Innocent Mage (Karen Miller)
• The City & The City (China Mieville)
• The Wise Man's Fear (Patrick Rothfuss)

My hopes for this year are for this blog to continue in a more frequent fashion than in previous years. I will be focusing mainly on books, though with the time it takes to read one of those huge speculative fiction novels, I will be mixing it up with films and perhaps the occasional video game review.

Gorgeous cover art done
by Jeffrey Alan Love

In particular for books, I am looking forward to:

• Red Rising (Pierce Brown) - Red shares connotations with Soviet uprisings and with Mars. Which is perhaps why such a story (uprisings on Mars) has been done over and over (the original Total Recall film, Red Faction). I will be looking forward to Brown's treatment of Red.
• Wolves (Simon Ings) - By the name (before I saw the author) I assumed it a sequel to Wool, but it seems I was completely and happily wrong. A cyberpunk style tech-heavy sci fi of alternate reality, I am looking forward to what Ings will do here. Plus, its cover (done by artist Jeffrey Alan Love, who also redid Ings' back catalogue with some amazing art) is to die for.
• The Gospel of Loki (Joanne M Harris) - Selling itself as an 'unofficial history of the world's ultimate trickster' this is surely capitalising on the success of Thor. But who cares? I love a good trickster.
• Words of Radiance (Brandon Sanderson) - Book Two of the Stormlight Archive. I have just finished The Way of Kings and plan on putting up a review soon. Needless to say I loved it.
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) - Gaiman is a brilliant writer. One need only read American Gods for proof of that. This upcoming novel looks like Gaiman-meets-Lovecraft: a match I need to read.

It's going to be an excellent year!

(p.s. I can't seem to get 'Let It Go' from Frozen out of my head. It gets better every time I hear it. Perhaps it will be as timeless a classic as Disney's second golden age songs.)