Books of 2023

A quick round up of the novels I read last year:

Maggie Stiefvater - Greywaren 

 

Third installment of the Dreamers trilogy in which different people, some with mythological powers, some not, try to prevent a catastrophe caused by resentment and megalomania. It takes place in the same universe as the Raven Cycle books (which I have not read). Unfortunately, I found the conclusion to the trilogy disappointing as especially the way some characters’ arcs ended fell flat for me. This might, however, not be a failure of the book per se as I’ve noticed my tastes changing over the last year and a half. Maybe YA just isn’t for me anymore. Over the trilogy I have found myself gravitating to the older characters and I truly cannot blame Maggie Stiefvater for not concentrating on them in her YA series.

3/5

 

Becky Chambers - To Be Taught If Fortunate

I love Becky Chambers’ novels. She is one of my favorite Sci Fi writers and so I was excited to start this novella. In it, a quartet of astronauts is sent out to seek out distant planets and catalog the life they might house. The story is, in my opinion, a beautiful and poetic look at space exploration and the inner life of the people who do it. Despite it being shock-full of intricate descriptions of possible new worlds out there it feels very grounded in reality due to its basis in science. And in fact, it achieves what I find so appealing about space in the first place, the connection of logic and emotion and how there’s beauty in science.

5/5

 

This is in retrospect my favorite book I read in 2023.

T.J. Klune - The House in the Cerulean Sea

 

A very sweet story about a middle-aged man stuck in his dead-end job as supernatural orphanage inspector given the opportunity to experience joy and love and make a difference when he is sent to inspect a secret orphanage inhabited by only the most dangerous of supernatural children. I enjoyed the world building here very much as well as the characters and their relationships to each other. Writing children is very tricky but all the kids here - despite their supernatural nature - felt like actual children. A story about difference and the beauty that comes from it.

4.5/5



The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022

I read these every year and I do indeed plan on doing more top 4 stories from these. This year was a reminder on why I can basically ignore amazon reviews because despite the reviews for this year’s collection being largely negative I enjoyed many of the stories within greatly and the collection as a whole much more than the one that came before. The theme with this one was hope and resilience and that appealed to me much more than last year’s focus on grief. Anyway, included some bangers and generally solid.

4/5


Susanna Clarke - Piranesi

I went into it not knowing what to expect at all. It simply caught my eye at a train station book shop. There is a man who lives in a House. The House is eternal and provides him with all he needs, he has never left the House and does not know anything outside of it, but then one day mysterious happenings start to heap up and all he knew may crumble down. My favorite part of the novel was getting into Piranesi’s mind and his world. Susanna Clarke has a beautiful way with words that drew me right in and let me experience the House in the way Piranesi did. The conclusion and the explanation gives context to what was disconnected before and though it does reduce the dreamy quality of mysticism that reigned before it furthers the main character’s arc and struggle with identity.

4/5


Margaret Atwood - Hag-Seed

This is an installment of a - sadly discontinued, I would have loved to see Gillian Flynn’s interpretation of Hamlet - collection of Shakespeare retellings. This one was a gift from a friend who knows well how much I like Shakespeare and Margaret Atwood. This is her take on The Tempest. A play I have studied in university and watched in the theater (and I like it, that, too). I really enjoyed her approach of centering the theatrical aspect of the play and having it revolve around a production of this same play as this telling’s Prospero is an unfairly ousted theater producer who puts on a production of The Tempest in a prison to get revenge on those who wronged him.

4/5


Claire Kohda - Woman, Eating

What attracted me to this book first, was the cover. Not the one here, because this one is the one I did end up buying and it’s a different one.) And of course, themes of women and food/eating are very dear to me. Khoda tells the story about a young woman, half vampire on her mother's side, who moves to London to pursue a career in the arts. Away from her overbearing mother for the first time in her life, she struggles with her identity and sustenance, which is inextricably linked to the former. It’s all tied together with her mixed heritage (her dad was Japanese, her mom is half Malaysian and half white), womanhood, budding romantic feelings, morality and artistic self-expression. I always enjoy stories about people struggling with and discovering their identity and this is no exception. I especially like that the novel deals with the difficulties and set-backs self-discovery can have.

4/5


Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - This Is How You Lose the Time War

This novel became an internet phenomenon which ironically made me reluctant to read it. Given tags such as ‘time travel’ and ‘enemies to lovers’ it didn’t exactly sound promising to me. Then I picked it up in a bookstore and read a couple of pages and was intensely intrigued. It is a sci-fi epic of love and connection and how it has the power to change our world view and who we are. El-Mohtar and Gladstone employ beautifully lyrical language to explain their esoteric concepts of the time traveling spies of two warring factions and how they begin to communicate, grow closer and ultimately form a bond like no other.

5/5

 

TJ Klune - In the Lives of Puppets

As I had read and enjoyed another TJ Klune novel this year and because I do love living robots as a general rule, buying this book was a no-brainer. After robots took over the earth a robotic inventor lives a peaceful life with his human son, a nurse-bot and a roomba in the forest. When the son finds a humanoid robot in a garbage pile and the father gets kidnapped, a journey of exploration begins. I loved the different characters and the world Klune created in this coming-of-age story, but I couldn’t quite get into it as I had with his other novel.

3.5/5