106 Books
This year I managed 106 books (and I'm halfway through another). Some of them were fluff and need not be mentioned, but here are some I enjoyed, more or less in the order I read them.
Hearts of Darkness and Hearts of Shadow (later) - Kira Brady. These are really paranormal romance novels, so if you don't like that kind of thing these are not for you. What I liked about these are two things. First, they are set in Seattle with a lot of detail, and I've always liked the Seattle area. Second, the world building that is a backdrop to the romance story is very cool. There are two supernatural shape-shifting races that are fighting each other (or have an uneasy peace, depending on the book), a gate to the world of the dead is found while trying to dig the tunnel for the interstate under downtown (something that is really going on right now, but has been suspended because they hit an "unknown object" and can't get through it) and is opened by the Bad Guy, and zombies are the result. Cool.
Argeneau and Rogue Hunter series - Lynsay Sands. These are also paranormal romance novels. I read the entire series this year...19 of them, I think. They got a bit repetitive after a while, but I really like the premise. They are vampires, but only because they have nanos in their blood that are continuously keeping their bodies in peak condition. The nanos use blood to do this, more than their bodies can make, hence the vampirism. The writing is pretty witty and the situations the characters get into are entertaining. These are just fun, easy reads.
Guardians of Ga'hoole: Book 1 - Kathryn Lasky. I listened to this on audio book. It was okay, but I don't think I'll read the rest.
Skulduggery Pleasant Books 2 through 4 - Derek Landy. I still love this series. It only gets better. Magic, evil, incredible odds, secret identities...and a wise-cracking magical detective that is an animated skeleton. All set in Ireland. Super awesome.
Dresden Files: Books 1 through 9 - Jim Butcher. I've been wanting to read these for a while, but just never got around to them. Then I found the first book on audio book narrated by James Marsters. He did a great job, and I listed to the next three as well. Each book follows a case investigated by Harry Dresden, private investigator and wizard. There are also underlying story arcs advanced by each book and characters from previous books come back. The writing is beautiful - great descriptions and metaphors and Harry is extremely funny, although the other characters sometimes don't think so. I was listening to the second book in my car on the way home from Grad Nite in Disneyland last May, with three teenage boys sleeping (so I thought). Harry was talking about how he's struggled with the temptation to use black magic ever since he was a teenager. He says something like, "Black magic is too easy, and too fun. Like Legos." I started laughing, and so did all of the boys in my car. Unbeknownst to me, they were all awake and listening, but trying not to show it...because books aren't cool, I guess. But one of them said, "That's it, I'm buying all these books!" and they didn't pretend to be asleep after that :)
Son- Lois Lowry. This is the fourth and last book of the quartet that begins with The Giver. I was mostly confused for this one. It follows the story of Gabe's mother.
The Replacement - Brenna Yovanoff. I listed to this on audio book simply because I needed an audio book, but it turned out quite interesting. This is the story of a teenage boy that turns out to be a changeling. He was a sickly faerie child used to replace a baby stolen for a sacrifice. Usually such replacements die soon because of their allergy to iron, but he survived. In the book he discovers what he is, meets the other members of faerie, and learns why such replacements like him exist. There is a lot of teenage angst against a background of a dark magical world. Not bad.
The Book of the New Sun: Book 1: The Shadow of the Torturer - Gene Wolfe. This is some epic science fiction, bordering on fantasy because it is set so far in the future everyone has sort of regressed and the technology that makes certain things possible seems like magic. It is also very dense writing. Totally worth it, but I didn't quite make it through the second book. There are four total, and I intend to finish it...but later.
The Lunar Chronicles: Book 2: Scarlet - Marissa Meyer. Loved the first one, and this one just continues the story. It introduces a new female protagonist, with the protagonist of the first book as a sort of sub-plot of this book. The first book loosely followed Cinderella, but with a cyborg, and this one loosely follows Little Red Riding Hood, but Red is quite capable and brave, the grandmother was basically a secret agent in retirement, and the wolf is a genetically altered Lunar that switches sides and falls for Red. I'm looking forward to the next one.
The Runaway King - Jennifer Nielsen. This is the second book in the trilogy that began with The False Prince, which I LOVED. This one continues that story, and although I enjoyed it it was not as amazing as the first. Still, I love the main character and this book ended with his kingdom under attack and a tentative truce with his betrothed. I want to see what happens next.
Dahak series - David Weber. I've read these before and I still love them. In the first book an astronaut is sort of kidnapped by an ancient, intelligent spaceship disguised as the moon. 40,000 years ago there was a mutiny and the whole crew got stranded on Earth and the ship locked itself down. It spent most of that time repairing itself and the crew became humanity. Now the ship needs a captain and there is a clandestine war going on down on Earth between the mutineers and some loyalists. There are lots of battles and some spy stuff all using col technology. Excellent military scifi. In the second book that captain leads a defense from an invading ancient enemy. This enemy has swept through the galaxy and killed off empires for thousands of years. In the third book, there is an attempted coup against the captain, now Emperor of a new empire, while his children are stranded on a primitive planet and have to fight a series of battles to get to the last remaining high-tech base to get home. More awesome battles, but this time with pikes and stuff.
The City of Ember and The People of Sparks - Jeanne DuPrau. These are some books I missed out on as a kid, but I am glad I've picked them up now. Post-apocolyptic fiction has always been a favorite of mine, but the twist here is that the characters don't know they are living in a post-apocalyptic world. Two kids have to use incomplete clues to find the way out of Ember, not knowing that it is underground or what might be outside. In the second book, they've made it out, but their society doesn't know how to survive outside.
Divergent and Insurgent - Veronica Roth. Interesting. Lots of teen angst sprinkled with political maneuverings. And mind control. Worth reading, although the second book wasn't as interesting since the world building was pretty much finished in the first book.
Will Sparrow's Road - Karen Cushman. I picked this out simply because Katherine Kellgren read the audio book, and she is my favorite audio book performer. It's an interesting story about a boy in medieval England that runs away and eventually joins up with a travelling curiosities show.
The Android's Dream - John Scalzi. This was crazy, but funny. An interstellar incident can only be averted if this mid-level bureaucrat (that also happens to be a sort of war hero, but doesn't advertise it) can find a certain breed of electric-blue genetically modified sheep for a ceremony. But someone wants that interstellar incident, so all those sheep have been killed. But he finds a woman that has some of that breed's DNA because of a weird animal-human hybrid prostitution/blackmail scam someone was running decades ago, so he has to run around keeping her safe...like I said: crazy, but funny, and it makes more sense if you read it. I read this one during our Missouri River trip this summer, and I left my copy on a bench at the end.
Spellsinger: Book 1 and 2 - Alan Dean Foster. This is the kind of book you get when a witty writer decides to make fun of fantasy books. A student in California is smoking pot when he gets yanked into a parallel universe by a turtle wizard. In this world all the mammals and insects are large and intelligent while only the cold-blooded creatures (like lizards) and a few other species are the beings used like horses and cattle here. The student (Jon-Tom) discovers that he is a spellsinger - he can do magic through music, and he, the turtle wizard, and some others set off on a quest first to warn others of and then to gather allies against a looming evil.
Monstrous Beauty - Elizabeth Fama. This jumps back and forth between a teenage girl in the present and a mermaid that falls in love with a human hundreds of years ago. The two stories are wonderfully woven together, with lots of teen angst, magic, and mystery. Warning: very dark in places.
A Confusion of Princes - Garth Nix. This is a great stand-alone space opera. I think I may have written about this already, so I'm keeping it short: thousands of princes competing and trying to kill each other to become Emperor of a future empire that includes thousands of star systems. The story follows the life of one such prince.
Sixth Column - Robert A. Heinlein. I've read this many times before. It's one of Heinlein's earliest novels, and if you can ignore quite a bit of racism and sexism (it feels like the former is part of the characters only but the latter is due the author), a fun read. Basically, the US has been invaded and taken over by the "Panasians." There is a small, secret base in the Rocky Mountains somewhere that has discovered entirely new fields of physics that allow them to basically do magic. The Panasians have completely cracked down on everything...except religions (which "keeps the slaves happy" in their minds). So this little group sets themselves up as a new religion, using their new tech to do miracles while at the same time using their "church" buildings as recruiting and training bases, infiltrating all of occupied America until they're ready to fight back.
The Accidental Time Machine - Joe Haldeman. This is a fun little time-travel story in which an MIT (stalled) grad student accidentally creates a device that jumps forward in time by increasing intervals. It can only go forward. His first jump forward lands him in trouble, so he jumps again. And again. And again. Like any good time travel story, we get to see new, weird societies that humans come up with. Just fun.
Hearts of Darkness and Hearts of Shadow (later) - Kira Brady. These are really paranormal romance novels, so if you don't like that kind of thing these are not for you. What I liked about these are two things. First, they are set in Seattle with a lot of detail, and I've always liked the Seattle area. Second, the world building that is a backdrop to the romance story is very cool. There are two supernatural shape-shifting races that are fighting each other (or have an uneasy peace, depending on the book), a gate to the world of the dead is found while trying to dig the tunnel for the interstate under downtown (something that is really going on right now, but has been suspended because they hit an "unknown object" and can't get through it) and is opened by the Bad Guy, and zombies are the result. Cool.
Argeneau and Rogue Hunter series - Lynsay Sands. These are also paranormal romance novels. I read the entire series this year...19 of them, I think. They got a bit repetitive after a while, but I really like the premise. They are vampires, but only because they have nanos in their blood that are continuously keeping their bodies in peak condition. The nanos use blood to do this, more than their bodies can make, hence the vampirism. The writing is pretty witty and the situations the characters get into are entertaining. These are just fun, easy reads.
Guardians of Ga'hoole: Book 1 - Kathryn Lasky. I listened to this on audio book. It was okay, but I don't think I'll read the rest.
Skulduggery Pleasant Books 2 through 4 - Derek Landy. I still love this series. It only gets better. Magic, evil, incredible odds, secret identities...and a wise-cracking magical detective that is an animated skeleton. All set in Ireland. Super awesome.
Dresden Files: Books 1 through 9 - Jim Butcher. I've been wanting to read these for a while, but just never got around to them. Then I found the first book on audio book narrated by James Marsters. He did a great job, and I listed to the next three as well. Each book follows a case investigated by Harry Dresden, private investigator and wizard. There are also underlying story arcs advanced by each book and characters from previous books come back. The writing is beautiful - great descriptions and metaphors and Harry is extremely funny, although the other characters sometimes don't think so. I was listening to the second book in my car on the way home from Grad Nite in Disneyland last May, with three teenage boys sleeping (so I thought). Harry was talking about how he's struggled with the temptation to use black magic ever since he was a teenager. He says something like, "Black magic is too easy, and too fun. Like Legos." I started laughing, and so did all of the boys in my car. Unbeknownst to me, they were all awake and listening, but trying not to show it...because books aren't cool, I guess. But one of them said, "That's it, I'm buying all these books!" and they didn't pretend to be asleep after that :)
Son- Lois Lowry. This is the fourth and last book of the quartet that begins with The Giver. I was mostly confused for this one. It follows the story of Gabe's mother.
The Replacement - Brenna Yovanoff. I listed to this on audio book simply because I needed an audio book, but it turned out quite interesting. This is the story of a teenage boy that turns out to be a changeling. He was a sickly faerie child used to replace a baby stolen for a sacrifice. Usually such replacements die soon because of their allergy to iron, but he survived. In the book he discovers what he is, meets the other members of faerie, and learns why such replacements like him exist. There is a lot of teenage angst against a background of a dark magical world. Not bad.
The Book of the New Sun: Book 1: The Shadow of the Torturer - Gene Wolfe. This is some epic science fiction, bordering on fantasy because it is set so far in the future everyone has sort of regressed and the technology that makes certain things possible seems like magic. It is also very dense writing. Totally worth it, but I didn't quite make it through the second book. There are four total, and I intend to finish it...but later.
The Lunar Chronicles: Book 2: Scarlet - Marissa Meyer. Loved the first one, and this one just continues the story. It introduces a new female protagonist, with the protagonist of the first book as a sort of sub-plot of this book. The first book loosely followed Cinderella, but with a cyborg, and this one loosely follows Little Red Riding Hood, but Red is quite capable and brave, the grandmother was basically a secret agent in retirement, and the wolf is a genetically altered Lunar that switches sides and falls for Red. I'm looking forward to the next one.
The Runaway King - Jennifer Nielsen. This is the second book in the trilogy that began with The False Prince, which I LOVED. This one continues that story, and although I enjoyed it it was not as amazing as the first. Still, I love the main character and this book ended with his kingdom under attack and a tentative truce with his betrothed. I want to see what happens next.
Dahak series - David Weber. I've read these before and I still love them. In the first book an astronaut is sort of kidnapped by an ancient, intelligent spaceship disguised as the moon. 40,000 years ago there was a mutiny and the whole crew got stranded on Earth and the ship locked itself down. It spent most of that time repairing itself and the crew became humanity. Now the ship needs a captain and there is a clandestine war going on down on Earth between the mutineers and some loyalists. There are lots of battles and some spy stuff all using col technology. Excellent military scifi. In the second book that captain leads a defense from an invading ancient enemy. This enemy has swept through the galaxy and killed off empires for thousands of years. In the third book, there is an attempted coup against the captain, now Emperor of a new empire, while his children are stranded on a primitive planet and have to fight a series of battles to get to the last remaining high-tech base to get home. More awesome battles, but this time with pikes and stuff.
The City of Ember and The People of Sparks - Jeanne DuPrau. These are some books I missed out on as a kid, but I am glad I've picked them up now. Post-apocolyptic fiction has always been a favorite of mine, but the twist here is that the characters don't know they are living in a post-apocalyptic world. Two kids have to use incomplete clues to find the way out of Ember, not knowing that it is underground or what might be outside. In the second book, they've made it out, but their society doesn't know how to survive outside.
Divergent and Insurgent - Veronica Roth. Interesting. Lots of teen angst sprinkled with political maneuverings. And mind control. Worth reading, although the second book wasn't as interesting since the world building was pretty much finished in the first book.
Will Sparrow's Road - Karen Cushman. I picked this out simply because Katherine Kellgren read the audio book, and she is my favorite audio book performer. It's an interesting story about a boy in medieval England that runs away and eventually joins up with a travelling curiosities show.
The Android's Dream - John Scalzi. This was crazy, but funny. An interstellar incident can only be averted if this mid-level bureaucrat (that also happens to be a sort of war hero, but doesn't advertise it) can find a certain breed of electric-blue genetically modified sheep for a ceremony. But someone wants that interstellar incident, so all those sheep have been killed. But he finds a woman that has some of that breed's DNA because of a weird animal-human hybrid prostitution/blackmail scam someone was running decades ago, so he has to run around keeping her safe...like I said: crazy, but funny, and it makes more sense if you read it. I read this one during our Missouri River trip this summer, and I left my copy on a bench at the end.
Spellsinger: Book 1 and 2 - Alan Dean Foster. This is the kind of book you get when a witty writer decides to make fun of fantasy books. A student in California is smoking pot when he gets yanked into a parallel universe by a turtle wizard. In this world all the mammals and insects are large and intelligent while only the cold-blooded creatures (like lizards) and a few other species are the beings used like horses and cattle here. The student (Jon-Tom) discovers that he is a spellsinger - he can do magic through music, and he, the turtle wizard, and some others set off on a quest first to warn others of and then to gather allies against a looming evil.
Monstrous Beauty - Elizabeth Fama. This jumps back and forth between a teenage girl in the present and a mermaid that falls in love with a human hundreds of years ago. The two stories are wonderfully woven together, with lots of teen angst, magic, and mystery. Warning: very dark in places.
A Confusion of Princes - Garth Nix. This is a great stand-alone space opera. I think I may have written about this already, so I'm keeping it short: thousands of princes competing and trying to kill each other to become Emperor of a future empire that includes thousands of star systems. The story follows the life of one such prince.
Sixth Column - Robert A. Heinlein. I've read this many times before. It's one of Heinlein's earliest novels, and if you can ignore quite a bit of racism and sexism (it feels like the former is part of the characters only but the latter is due the author), a fun read. Basically, the US has been invaded and taken over by the "Panasians." There is a small, secret base in the Rocky Mountains somewhere that has discovered entirely new fields of physics that allow them to basically do magic. The Panasians have completely cracked down on everything...except religions (which "keeps the slaves happy" in their minds). So this little group sets themselves up as a new religion, using their new tech to do miracles while at the same time using their "church" buildings as recruiting and training bases, infiltrating all of occupied America until they're ready to fight back.
The Accidental Time Machine - Joe Haldeman. This is a fun little time-travel story in which an MIT (stalled) grad student accidentally creates a device that jumps forward in time by increasing intervals. It can only go forward. His first jump forward lands him in trouble, so he jumps again. And again. And again. Like any good time travel story, we get to see new, weird societies that humans come up with. Just fun.