NPR top 50 SF/F of last decade

[silverflight8]

NPR posted a Top 50 SF/F books list. Some discussion went round meme critical of the list, but I think it's a pretty decent list of the highlights. Yes, I think I've heard of either the authors or the works listed, but I like SF/F and I hang around people who like and talk about it! If I wanted to know of new books to check out, I wouldn't be going to NPR-writing-for-a-general-audience to ask for it. And thank goodness it's not yet another list where it's the Three Fathers of SF and Lord of the Rings taking up all the slots yet again.

Anyway please see my babbling about the books I have read of the below. Though wow when I actually go through these, I hated a whole bunch of them. I still think it's a good list!


Worlds To Get Lost In
- The Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie [judge]
I absolutely love the first book and I think the other two are very good. I've re-read the first many times and there's a lot of things that really gripped me when I first read it - that first realization when you understand how the story with Breq and the story with Justice of Toren + Lt Awn linked up was genuinely so good. I loved the translation convention with the pronouns, I loved how alien the Presger were, I loved the AI oversight.

I think the other two books suffer because they are a change from what the first book is; the scope changes very dramatically. And more importantly, I think Ancillary Justice itself is like lightning in a bottle - even good books find it hard to stand next to them. Personally, while I enjoyed them, I did feel like some traits/objects had become almost flanderized throughout - the custom of tea and gloves and all that, started intruding on the story.

- The Dead Djinn Universe (series) by P. Djélì Clarke
- The Age of Madness Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie

I read Best Served Cold many years ago and hated it so much it kicked Abercrombie all the way to the bottom of the list of "people's books I should read", so that was a no from me. I haven't heard anything to change this opinion in the intervening uh...decade, I think.

- The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee [judge]
- The Expanse (series) by James S.A. Corey
- The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
- Teixcalaan (series) by Arkady Martine

Read this, loved it. Again, loved the space opera aspect, I always love a good culture clash, the interesting new tech + conditions of living on station and how it had influenced or interacted with culture. The naming was quite human in a way that SF/F often misses - instead of creating foreign-looking words by inserting letters and implying unusual sounds, it used a different scheme of naming, foreign to English but not elsewhere.

- The Thessaly Trilogy by Jo Walton
- Shades of Magic Trilogy by V.E. Schwab
- The Divine Cities Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett
- The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson

Words To Get Lost In
- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
- Circe by Madeline Miller

I thought this was a good book but I didn't enjoy reading it very much. I wouldn't have read it except my boss read it, liked it (not an SF/F fan at all) and lent it to me, as he thought I'd enjoy it. I don't really enjoy retellings. I think there's joy to be gotten out of recognizing the myth being re-seen through a different lens, but I usually find them frustrating. It feels like the characters are puppets being moved across a stage by a clumsily-hidden hand.

- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories by Ken Liu
- Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
- Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang
- Olondria (series) by Sofia Samatar
- Her Body And Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente

I tried to read this for book club and although I often push through for those, DNF.

Will Take You On A Journey
- The Changeling by Victor Lavalle
- Wayfarers (series) by Becky Chambers
- Binti (series) by Nnedi Okorafor
- Lady Astronaut (series) by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Children of Time (duology) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Have DNF'd this for now, although not angrily. It was very slow starting and I kept feeling like it was a not-very-interesting written up D&D game. But I know it's about interesting arthropods and I really enjoy alien life forms not based on humans and mammals, and I'm planning to attempt this again. I want cool bug alien protagonists!

- Wayward Children (series) by Seanan McGuire

I read Every Heart a Doorway and hated it so much I am unable to shut up about it. Sorry to everyone who I have button-holed about this. I honestly don't understand the redeeming qualities of the book. I have a friend who has very similar taste, with whom I share an almost completely overlapping venn diagram of tastes when it comes to SF/F, actually, and this is the rock we split on. Another book I hated so much I've kicked McGuire all the way to the bottom of the list of books to read (which means, in essence, never again, because of how TBR works).

- The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Will Mess With Your Head
- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
- Southern Reach (series) by Jeff Vandermeer
- The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
- The Locked Tomb (series) by Tamsin Muir
- Remembrance of Earth's Past (series) by Cixin Liu
- Machineries of Empire (series) by Yoon Ha Lee

Will Mess With Your Heart
- The Broken Earth (series) by N.K. Jemisin
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar [judge] and Max Gladstone
- The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang
- The Masquerade (series) by Seth Dickinson

Really good, really heartbreaking. I love Baru, she's pragmatic to a fault and absolutely dead-set, and I love ruthless protagonists like that, especially female ones. I do wonder if Dickinson and I shared a somewhat similar educational overlap, although he's gone farther than me and is older; some of the cases, concepts, etc, are very familiar, even though we are very different otherwise. These book dance right on my personal limit for grimdarkness. Every decision has to be the most agonizing one, which can get a bit tiring, but I do enjoy that Baru's rather throwing herself at this nigh-impossible mission, so I guess she is setting herself up for it.

- An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
- The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson
- American War by Omar El Akkad
- Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi [judge]
- On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu

Will Make You Feel Good
- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

I did not like this at all and found Maia to be a very frustrating protagonist to inhabit headspace with for however many pages this book went on. I just could not care for him. I mean, I know what it's like to be like that, but that's not enjoyable and I get impatient. I don't really enjoy pitying the protagonist, and I'm sure Maia would also hate to be the object of pity. It felt like so much of the interesting worldbuilding or plot was being missed out on because Maia was just miserable all the time in his head. OK great thanks that's definitely why I read SF/F.

- Murderbot (series) by Martha Wells

I do love Murderbot. I enjoy Murderbot's clear uncomfortableness with humans coupled with still caring about them (while still trying to deny it cares about them, even though this is all in Murderbot's head). I love that Murderbot is invisibly facepalming and then attempting to actually fix the situation, I love the different political setups, incorporating more than just the usual empire or monarchy. It's terrifically fun. I've read probably a full dozen of Martha Wells' books and I can't think of one I did not enjoy. I loved Raksura and Fall of Ile-Rien too.

- The Interdependency (series) by John Scalzi
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- Sorcerer to the Crown/The True Queen by Zen Cho

Comments

[ambyr]

I am always up for listening to people hate on Every Heart!

[morbane]

I found it interesting to read your Goblin Emperor and Murderbot thoughts in quick succession because the main character being deeply miserable is true for both of them. But of course there are significant differences - Maia is rather distrustful of his own agency, and deeply worried about harming others, and Murderbot is far more confident in its actions and also furious. I enjoyed both, and every time a new Murderbot novella comes out I am confident of a pleasant few hours reading it, but have a kneejerk cantankerous reaction to anyone who praises either to the sky. Lately that's been more Murderbot.

I am not sure how I judge the list overall but I've enjoyed seeing reactions and discussions to it on my friends list.

Hating on Every Heart a Doorway is its own fandom! I read the first page but this merely confirmed my instincts from reading others' reviews that it was not for me.

[hamsterwoman]

I read Every Heart a Doorway and hated it so much I am unable to shut up about it. Sorry to everyone who I have button-holed about this.

Heh! I'm pretty sure we've talked about this already (probably more than once) but yeah, it's nice to encounter other people who don't love this series / Seanan McGuire's work. I've come to the conclusion that whatever people get out of her work is happening on some wavelength that I can't discern, and that's why it doesn't do much for me.

[delphi]

I appreciate the links, and the reviews! I haven't read much SFF in/from the last decade, and this seems like a good jumping off point for getting back into it. I think the only two I've read are Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which I found a thought-provoking and interesting on a level of craft and storytelling, even if it wasn't necessarily an emotionally enjoyable read, and The Goblin Emperor, which as with most of the author's work was just a bad match for me based on what I want out of characters and their relationships.

[silverflight8]

I don't want it to become a thing like hating Eragon became a thing, but man, I just don't understand.

[silverflight8]

That is an excellent way to put it. Sometimes I'm able to split the scoring along the lines of "enjoyableness" and "merit", and I definitely have read books that skew opposite ways on the two axes, but this one I just didn't even understand why it was good, much less why it was enjoyable.

[silverflight8]

I'll have to try Black Leopard, Red Wolf! I'm willing to read not-super-enjoyable books if there's other things they offer.

Yeah I don't think I'll read other Addison. There is a sequel apparently, but I just don't think we're a good fit.

[silverflight8]

That's a good observation actually! I think you've nailed it why I find one frustrating and the other interesting, and it comes down to just my personal taste (I couldn't hack Fanny Price either, even though I think Austen writes excellent novels).

I do have some criticisms of Murderbot but not big enough ones to put into a one paragraph-ish babble. I think a lot of the institutions are kind of skim-level and good/evil (corporations: bad. universities: good. Dr Mensah's government: good). I do feel that while Murderbot kinda has a struggle with some things, like its coming to terms with its new identity, it's sometimes too easy and ultimately this refusal to engage with stuff means the book is just enjoyable instead of something that has more weight and staying power. It's just fun is all. Which is okay!

[sherrilina]

Thanks for posting the list, I get bored at slideshows, lol. I have read almost nothing on this list (Station Eleven is the only one you posted), and have only heard of a few more...Circe, Spinning Silver, Broken Earth, and American War are the only ones I see here that were already on my list of things I wanted to read. (I have a copy of American War from a used book sale, but unfortunately I feel like we are now too close to civil war in real life for me to bring myself to read it).

Were you just listing the ones you have read, or were the ones you have read the ones you wrote paragraphs after? Definitely read Station Eleven if it is the latter...so fantastic.

[helicoprion]

Your thoughts on the Imperial Radch are basically the same as mine! Ditto Murderbot (although I haven't gotten to the novel yet). :D

Out of the things on this list that I've read, it's an interesting mix of books I liked, books I thought were flawed but interesting, and Shades of Magic (which was genuinely awful, l o l). I might have to look into a few others!

[silverflight8]

I'm with you, I hate it when websites make you click through all of them. Please just give me a text list! Also, I associate it with sites that pad out stuff because they've got no reporting, and the kind that are just there to support ads. Blaeh.

I've only read the ones I wrote about. Station Eleven is on the list!

[silverflight8]

:D

I feel like the list is also representative of the books I've heard about as interesting/good over the past ten years, even if I personally didn't get them. Like Seanan McGuire, even though I don't like her books, would probably have to go on the list because shes' talked about a LOT.

LOL Shades of Magic is one series I keep swapping with something else, or maybe I'm confusing the author with someone? No plans to read it tho.

[tani]

FWIW, I really loved the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, but when I moved on to Best Served Cold, I found it far inferior. So, he may be worth a second shot? I like his characters a lot, and I thought the first book was actually a pretty successful satirical take on quest-centered fantasy.

I really need to read the second and third in the Imperial Radch series, but I'm so bad at continuing with series...I think I'm also subconsciously worried that it won't stand up. I didn't love the first book, but I enjoyed it a lot because of how character-focused it was, so the bigger scale seems worrisome.

I also love Teixcalaan. So good! Also Murderbot.

But I am kind of sad to hear that you didn't like The Goblin Emperor. I can see where you're coming from because Maia is so very unhappy, but I love how he has the strength to do better than was done for him, and I enjoy the hope that he'll be able to build something better going forward. Always so interesting to see where opinions diverge!

[silverflight8]

Heh, good to know! I do like quest fantasy and probably deconstructions too.

I liked them, and I thought they were good and worth reading. Leckie's 'mediocre', if you can call it that, is better than some authors' best, honestly. And she tries some really cool new ideas and it's so refreshing to read.

There's the not liking Maia, and I also kept having my suspension of disbelief kicked out because I kept feeling the whole thing was so tumblr-y, or rather essence of the internet from about 2015 or so. So it was distracting. (Honestly I just don't like very internet-y attitudes in most of my fiction.) Though I will say for The Goblin Emperor I can see how people would like it, even if it's really not my thing.

[tani]

I don't know if the deconstruction aspect is really intended (maybe?), it's just how I read the whole thing. But I do think that Best Served Cold is kind of divisive. Some people really love it, and I feel like they tend to when they've been underwhelmed by the original trilogy, and then some people are in the opposite camp, like me.

I do think I'll like them. I'm just slow to continue with series at the best of times, and when I feel a bit worried about where it's going, it's definitely worse.

That's totally fair. I've had the same kind of reaction to some things myself, especially some comics that I've read over the past year, but for whatever reason, The Goblin Emperor just didn't ping me that way. It's just so interesting to see how interests can align really closely in some areas, and then be completely divergent in others. :)

[silverflight8]

It's been a whole decade so I can't remember either - only that it was boring and it made me mad. LOL

Yeah, I also don't like it when series change a lot between volumes. My least favourite is when the POV character switches, and especially when it skips generations. Nooo I wanted to read more about the character I liked!

Agree. There's no one who has the exact same preferences as you except you :P