Stoked to see this book mentioned here; it's among my favorites. Stegner's "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" is good too; IMO it has higher highs but is a weaker effort overall.
I really enjoy Scalzi, so I was surprised when I didn't know about the Interdependency series. The nice thing was by the time I finished Collapsing Empire the second book in the series was released (The Consuming Fire). I haven't started it yet, but it's next in the queue!
I found the Red Rising books to be stilted, narcissistic and implausibly Manichean, FWIW. I made it through the first one, the second one was just too plagued by characters making implausible choices and the protagonist scoring implausible successes.
Three Body Problem (this one's probably going to get mentioned a lot, and it absolutely deserves it). The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi. Red Rising (series) by Pierce Brown.
I almost gave up on Three Body Problem because it starts off a little slowly and it's difficult to see where the book is going. Absolutely worth it in the end, though. The second two are the kinds of books you can rip through quickly if you've got a little extra reading time over the holidays.
Glad to hear the trilogy was worth continuing! I tore through the first one in about 3 days – admittedly the start is very slow. Will have to pick the other two up now.
I stuck to the classics. Kafka's Castle is absolutely brilliant. I read it greedily, just couldn't stop. It doesn't look magical at first sight but I could feel the atmosphere, the temperature, even smell.
Other than that Nabokov's Lolita is just celestial. And it's not only about the wording which is beyond beauty. Sometimes I caught myself thinking that this book reads me not the other way around. It's very precise, very unabashed, very intimate. Sometimes it looks surprisingly like your own reflection. Can't recommend enough.
Permutation City by Greg Egan - Hard sci-fi about what might happen if we could scan human minds in sufficient detail to simulate them in computers. Best treatment of this topic I've ever seen.
Diaspora by Greg Egan - Takes the idea much, much further. What might happen to humanity if virtualized "human" minds embodied in robots or not embodied at all became the two most common ways for people to be. Also, fascinating and surprisingly rigorous diversions into math and physics.
It's from a couple of years ago, but his Clockwork Rocket series is incredible. It's about a universe in which the spacetime metric is Riemannian instead of Einsteinian.
Stormlight series by Brandon Sanderson. This is my first foray into high fantasy, and i absolutely loved these books. I also enjoyed sci-fi novel, The Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Lies of Locke Lamora. Not a new book, but I read it this year and as a fan of the thief/conman type in fiction, I found it fun. Will probably pick up the next one next year.
The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie (the Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and the Last Argument of Kings). They're quite dark but surprisingly funny and maybe the most readable novels I've ever read. Absolute page-turners.
I tried to read it previous year and found the books incredibly boring - most of the characters are exaggerated and flat, the story is really nowhere to be found after 300 pages and the use of English language was simplicistic.
I only got through ~300 pages before giving up though, maybe a plot arises and takes the lead but I never reached it.
I read a lot of fiction (30+ novels a year) and this book really blew me away.
Oh and by the way, it's not about Samurai or Japan or anything like that. If you're interested in thinking about the nature of intelligence / learning while reading some beautiful prose, get this book.
Foundryside from Robert J. Benett - it's a fantasy novel where magic system is based upon reverse engineering power words and jealusly keeping them secret from other trade organizations. Magic in that world is literally intellectual property and is compiled into huge dictionaries which aren't far from being programs. The whole "feel" of the world is very victorian - something akin to Dishonored if anyone played this.
The prose is very readable, the characters pretty awesome and it's just such a very fresh take on fantasy.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread- Vengeful and Vicious by VE Schwab - Collapsing Empire by Scalazi (late 2017, but close enough to 2018)
Not released in 2018, but still fun and new to me this year. - The Red Rising series by Pierce Brown
I almost gave up on Three Body Problem because it starts off a little slowly and it's difficult to see where the book is going. Absolutely worth it in the end, though. The second two are the kinds of books you can rip through quickly if you've got a little extra reading time over the holidays.
Other than that Nabokov's Lolita is just celestial. And it's not only about the wording which is beyond beauty. Sometimes I caught myself thinking that this book reads me not the other way around. It's very precise, very unabashed, very intimate. Sometimes it looks surprisingly like your own reflection. Can't recommend enough.
Diaspora by Greg Egan - Takes the idea much, much further. What might happen to humanity if virtualized "human" minds embodied in robots or not embodied at all became the two most common ways for people to be. Also, fascinating and surprisingly rigorous diversions into math and physics.
Incredible voice acting, gripping storyline, and hilarious dialogue.
I only got through ~300 pages before giving up though, maybe a plot arises and takes the lead but I never reached it.
It was a historical fiction about Irish independence and has become my favorite book.
- Chocky - John Wyndham
- Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
- The Eight Mountains - Paolo Cognetti
- The Executioner Weeps - Frederic Dard
- The Invisibility Cloak - Ge Fei
- The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars
- Ms Ice Sandwich - Mieko Kawakami
- Such Small Hands - Andres Barba
- The Thief - Fuminori Nakamura
- Ties - Domenico Starnone
- Trick - Domenico Starnone
The Forbidden Door - Dean Koontz
The Crooked Staircase - Dean Koontz
The Outsider - Stephen King
Sleeping Beauties - Stephen King & Owen King
The Fallen - David Baldacci
Zeroes - Chuck Wendig
The Supernatural Enhancements - Edgar Cantero
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
I read a lot of fiction (30+ novels a year) and this book really blew me away.
Oh and by the way, it's not about Samurai or Japan or anything like that. If you're interested in thinking about the nature of intelligence / learning while reading some beautiful prose, get this book.
The prose is very readable, the characters pretty awesome and it's just such a very fresh take on fantasy.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37173847-foundryside?fro...
And The Verge ("Foundryside is a cyberpunk adventure wrapped in an epic fantasy novel"): https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/23/18148907/foundryside-rob...