It’s that time of year again… the annual consumer frenzy, blink-and-you-miss-’em hours of daylight, snow and ice, freezing rain, then more snow and ice, and freezing rain, rinse and repeat, temperatures below -10…
One of the things I do during this period, besides trying to maintain an expression of good cheer despite the weather, darkness and general bah humbug-ness, is look back over the books I read during the previous twelve months. Was it a good year of reading? Was it a year of reading good books?
I identify as a science fiction fan, but I’m a fairly catholic reader… so my book choices tend to cover a wide range of genres. However, I’m not a fan of the word “best”… and “enjoyable” is near to useless as a yardstick as there are many books I enjoy but think are quite bad.
I’ve considered “notable” as a criterion for inclusion in this end-of-year post— but Samantha Harvey’s Orbital (2023, UK) won the Booker Prize a couple of months ago, which certainly makes it notable, but I didn’t actually find it all that impressive. I also read (or re-read) a number of so-called classics of science fiction, and found them either disappointing or embarrassingly bad. Nothing “notable” there, either.
But let’s start with science fiction… Conquest (2023, UK), Nina Allan, and The Actual Star (2021, USA), Monica Byrne, were the two stand-out sf novels I read in 2024. The Allan is probably her best book to date, and she has a very strong oeuvre. Byrne was new to me, but her novel is fascinating and well-researched. A close second is Aliette de Bodard’s The Red Scholar’s Wake (2022, France), which turned me on to her Xuya universe. I subsequently bought her other books set in it. CJ Cherryh, and her partner Jane S Fancher, kicked off a new series in Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe, Alliance Rising (2019, USA), and it’s solid stuff, and a welcome reminder of how bloody good Cherryh is — and has been for near enough fifty years. Bethany Jacobs’s These Burning Stars (2023, USA) is an OTT space opera that was more fun than I’d expected, and had a kick-ass twist reveal at the end. It’s the first of a trilogy, so here’s hoping Jacobs keeps it up for all three books.
Some also-rans: Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade (2019, USA) is a super-smart riff on Robert A Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959, USA) and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974, USA), and packed full of Easter eggs. It was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award. Lauren Beukes continues her string of well-crafted high-concept sf thrillers with Bridge (2023, South Africa). Ned Beauman’s Clarke Award-winning Venomous Lumpsucker (2022, UK) is darkly funny and topical, and Hervé’s Le Tellier’s Clarke Award-nominated The Anomaly (2020, France) is erudite sf of the sort only the French really know how to do (think Houellebecq but not nihilistic). Rian Hughes followed up his very good and graphics-heavy XX: A Novel (2020, UK) with The Black Locomotive (2021, UK), which is less graphically-inventive but has a more original story.
On the fantasy front, the two clear front-runners are The Green Man’s Quarry (2023, UK) by Juliet McKenna, which won the BSFA Award, and is the sixth book in an excellent folkloric fantasy series; and M John Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (2020, UK), which is both beautifully-written and enigmatic, and produces something new and strange from a previously-unexplored branch of late nineteenth-century English fantasy. Also worth mentioning is Lavie Tidhar’s The Hood (2021, Israel), which throws together the legend of Robin Hood, and just about anything adjacent to it, to produce something that is as hard to categorise as it is to describe. Typical Tidhar, in other words.
And finally, non-genre reads… Or as some people call it “mainstream fiction” or “literary fiction”. There are those who say literary fiction is a genre itself, and while it certainly has its own awards, and is distinct in both prose style and, usually, subject from airport best-seller type novels, I prefer to think of “literary” as describing a book’s quality of prose. But I’m probably in a minority there. And I don’t really read airport-bestseller type novels anyway.
Reads in 2024 in this “category” worth mentioning include Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009, UK), which was a tough read, but the prose was masterclass, and I’m going to have to read the two sequels to get more of it. Even though Thomas Cromwell, and the reign of Henry VIII, interests me not at all. Another masterclass writer is William Faulkner, whose Intruder in the Dust (1948, USA) I read in 2024. Very much of its time and place — so much so, it revels in it — and uncomfortable in that respect to a 21st century reader, but it remains an amazing piece of literature.
And finally, three books to round out this list… The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies (2023, Australia) by Alison Goodman is a crime novel set in Regency England, but unusually for books set in that period its heroines are all middle-aged women. A welcome antidote to Heyer (and Bridgerton!), but just as much fun. Anna Biller branches out from movies (her The Love Witch is excellent) to literature with a novel that is entirely on-brand, Bluebeard’s Castle (2023, USA). It’s a reworking of the French legend, set in present-day UK, and while it’s a little wobbly on setting, it’s an excellent feminist take on the story. Welcome to Dorley Hall (2024, UK) by Alyson Greaves is a trans take on a forced femme story, and it’s smart, well-characterised, and punches well above its weight. It’s the first of a trilogy and I’m looking forward to the sequels.
There you have it: a handful of recommended reads in 2024. Some of which were the starts of trilogies, or parts of series which have more instalments scheduled. Which means more good reads to look forward to, at least, from: McKenna, Cherryh, Jacobs, Greaves and Goodman…
Enjoy.
