It’s that time of year again – the season of top ten lists. Who am I to argue with tradition? 2018 has been a fantastic year for SF&F literature, which has made picking the ‘top ten’ almost impossible. Still, I’ve done my best. If you were looking for somewhere to start with books that came out in 2018, these would be a great place to start. Title links go to the relevant review.
N.B. I’ve only included books which were actually available for purchase in 2018, in case anyone’s looking for a holiday gift or two.
A barnstormer of a novel from Lawrence, picking up where the equally excellent ‘Red Sister’ left off. There’s a lot to like in here; fast paced, lethal and brutally kinetic fight scenes are interlaced with equally vicious politics. There world-building is intricately detailed and sweepingly grand at once, and the characters…well. Warrior-assassin-nuns, yes. But also determined, broken, fierce people. It’ll keep you turning the pages deep into the night to find out what happens next. This is a richlky imagined world, with heartfelt, heartbreaking characters, and a story I couldn't get enough of.
Another favourite around here, Williams has really pulled out all the stops with The Bitter Twins. This is a world of flying hives, where the long lived elf-analogues may just want to drink your blood, and where monsters and wonders are coming back in full force. Into the breach step Vintage, whose mature archaeologist persona wraps around her sharp mind and broken heart – and the rest of her gang; a witch with a penchant for setting things on fire, one of the aforementioned vampire elves, and, of course, a giant bat. Obviously. The dialogue here is whip-smart and edgy, and the emotions coming off the page are so raw they’re bleeding. Oh, and our heroes are trying to save the world, too. Definitely one to watch.
This is a selection of sci-fi short stories starring the titular Nyx. Nyx is, frankly, terrifying. She kicks serious arse, drinks heavily, is functional but broken by the things she’s done, refuses to take any crap, and absolutely, one hundred percent refuses to apologise for it. Nyx has a personality that radiates off the page, and more than likely sets about mugging the reader in a literary dark alley. These are stories jump about in the timeline of Nyx’s broken world – a world where persisten war with biological weapons has left much of the place uninhabitable, and the rest protected by gene-masters and magicians. Each is a tightly plotted standalone, which less plucks on the heartstrings and more kicks the reader in the emotional groin. These are hard-edged tales of fast-paced violence and cold blooded murder, with some fancy tech thrown in. They’re snappy, brutal, raw work, and, like Nyx, they’ll make you hurt.
The Poppy War is a multi-layered fantasy, which, among other things, wants to talk about culture, identity, and how far someone would go to protect or shape those things. It’s also a story about war. About how conflicts simmer and burn until they’re out of control, and about the hard choices conflict gets people to make. It’s a story of a young woman who deserves better, whod rags herself up by sheer bloody determination to be something, or to at least be able to decide what it is she wants to be. It’s about those terrible choices, and their consequence. The world is a living, breathing thing, and as real as the people who may end up breaking it. This one will reward multiple readings – but is also a damn fine work of fantasy the first time around.
Here we start with a heist. With a young girl called Sancia arranging to steal something in a world where magical artifice has shaped the pace of industrialisation. Where great mercantile houses squat over a city, drawing in the brightest and best, and spitting out the rest to die in the streets outside of their armed compounds. Things quickly escalate from there. There’s a lot of narrative undercurrents here – looking at inequality, at power, at the limits of personal volition – but they’re all at the service of a powerful, imaginative story.
To steal a catchphrase, this is a fairytale for grownups. It looks at several different women - a princess, a moneylender, a servant – and their goals, their needs and wants, in a world stalked by capricious, often cruel creatures of ice and fire. Each has a fierce agency and passion, and a unique voice; each has a depth of feeling and an internal strength visible to us, even as they try to save the world, or themselves. It’s not all sweetness and light in these pages, but there’s love, loyalty, heroism and cunning along with deceit and villainy in plenty. This is a book about ties that bind, and about choices, and about women who choose to be themselves. It absolutely kicks arse.
Speaking of which – the Tower of Living and Dying is also fierce, in a different way. There is, fair warning, a lot of blood. Most of the characters are terrible people. The rest are definitely skating the far end of the line toward ‘monster’. But given the Homeric cadences of Smith-Spark’s prose, they rise up, they become archetypes and avatars, they become people too. Horribly flawed, yes. Ready to burn the world? Yes. But people, unafraid. There’s nihilism here, a philosophical underpinning to some of the text – and at the same time, a kind of delicate humanity, underpinning the slow essential decay of things. There’s an empire on the decline, wrapped in the politics of quiet murde, mass starvation and popular revolt. And there are armies on the march, looking for something else – for victory, for history, for identity, and for the means to tear all those walls down. This one is a complex, thoughtful read, that will demand your attention to the intimate drama between pages splashed with blood.
Morgan has outdone himself this time. Mars is not, it has to be said, a nice place, but that’s where we are, looking at the red planet through a noir filter. There’s some fun techno-wizardry here , from bio-modified people who spend the trips between the stars asleep, to examination of Mars-made cosmetics. But there’s also an incisive social commentary here, about the role of power in society, in the lies that those in power tell to stay that way, and the lies people underneath them tell themselves. All delivered in the wry drawl of a person who’s done some terrible things, and is now just too tired to want to do more than have a whisky and be left alone. This is sharply observed sci-fi noir with an edge of politics and techno-thriller to it, and if the well-drawn characters and top dialogue don’t keep you turning pages, maybe the tautly strung plot will do instead. It’s cracking stuff.
This one is an absolutely brilliant debut. It starts as the story of a crime, as our protagonists work to discover the cause of a murder. And it’s really rather good at that. The investigation is well-plotted, each step tying into the others, with enough red herrings and double-crosses to keep the reader guessing. But it’s not just that. It’s also the story of a society, of the way that those in power have isolated and insulated themselves, and how actions which may have been seen as for the greater good can come back later in the worst way. It’s a story that wraps those ideas in sieges, in the compromises people have to make to see another day, and in magic. It’s a story of family, found and otherwise, working together to put things right. It’s about how some things are broken, and how they might be fixed. But, also, it’s a story of a murder, and how solving it might stop a war. This one’s for you if you don’t mind a murder mystery in your fantasy, if you enjoy precision crafted, time-ticking plots or well-realised, convincing characters.
We’re back in the Misery. Galharrow is an important man now, for sure, trying to prevent the fall of his civilisation (again). But he’s still the same world-weary, hard-talking smartarse he’s always been, quick with a well-or-ill-considered word, and quick with a sword, too. And the world he’s trying to save is seeping off the page, and it’s not a great place. Immortal beings are ready to shatter sections of reality to keep their selfish plans in action, sacrificing untold lives in the process – and those are the ones on our side. In a world of petty gods and byzantine schemes, Galharrow prowls, a troublesome troubleshooter with a broken heart, trying to become something more, or less than he was. Sacrifice is a theme here, backed by utter carnage and blood in the streets, An uncompromising story in a broken world, with heroes you can feel are real, because they’re just as tarnished as the rest of us.
As I say, it's been a brilliant year for SF&F all round, and these are just a flavour of all the excellent releases from 2018 - but I do think they make a great place to start.
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