Mid-year book freakout, 2022
Best book of 2022 so far: I’m going to go with the whole ‘Broken Earth Trilogy’ by N.K. Jemisin, followed by a tie between two books by Adrian Tchaikovsky: ‘Children of Ruin’ and ‘The Doors of Eden’. The former has incredibly creative world-building, some great character-writing, themes of motherhood and dealing with trauma, and ties up the twisty plot in a satisfying if bittersweet way. ‘Children of Ruin’ I describe below; ‘The Doors of Eden’ is a stand-alone book that has similarly good evolutionary world-building but with parallel earths and a fast-paced X-files-ish plot.
Best sequel: I loved ‘Children of Time’ and its spider civilization, so I was delighted to discover that there is a sequel! In ‘Children of Ruin’, the humans and spiders are joined by sentient octopuses, an AI, and a genuinely alien mind, all of which have distinct ways of thinking that make sense given their history. Plus the story is quite exciting, and you have time to get attached to all the individual characters in a way you couldn’t with the 2000-year-timespan of the first book. Also, as the last entry pointed out, ‘The Obelisk Gate’ and ‘The Stone Sky’ were great follow-ups to ‘The Fifth Season’.
Biggest disappointment: I re-read ‘The Three Body Problem’ at the start of 2022 and didn’t like it as much as I did on the first read, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that I found ‘The Dark Forest’ disappointing. But I was surprised to be so disappointed that I didn’t want to continue the series! Basically, without the intriguing mystery structure of the first book the dull character writing stands out more. In addition, we got almost nothing from the perspective of the aliens (the most interesting bit of book, and the way the resolution happens kind of negates the entire (otherwise very unnerving) philosophical idea the book is named for!
Possibly a bigger slap in the face was ‘Daughter of the Forest’. I expected to love this book, and there were bits that were gorgeous. But it felt like the author was torturing the main character to an unnecessary degree (did we REALLY need that rape scene, let alone need to FEEL it?), the villains were distinctly mustache-twirling, and I felt zero chemistry between Sorcha and her love interest.
Biggest surprise: Several books pleasantly surprised me. ‘Triad Blood’ is a M/M/M urban fantasy that actually puts some really interesting twists on the lore of wizards, demons, and vampires. While there is some good spice, it doesn’t slow down the plot. The characters are distinct and play off each other really well too.
‘The War with the Newts’ is a 1930s Czech sci-fi novel about humanity finding and trying to exploit a race of large intelligent amphibians, which eventually and justifiably turn on us. It is a satire of many things, including colonialism, fascism, and mass media, and was in fact weirdly prescient about some of the coming events of WWII.
‘The Worm and His Kings’ also didn’t go quite how I initially expected…but in a very satisfyingly creepy way! It was also unusually “dense and filling” for a book that short.
New Favorite author: OK, so my rule for this category is that I have to have read at least the two books (not in the same series) by an author to confirm that I like their work in general! Given that constraint, I have to go with Rivers Solomon and (surprise, surprise) Adrian Tchaikovsky. Solomon’s ‘An Unkindness of Ghosts’, ‘The Deep’, and the short story ‘Blood is another word for hunger’ are all amazing and explore deep themes, with the trauma of slavery/racism and life as a black, queer, neurodiverse person being recurring ones…but each in different genres! I’ve mentioned Tchaikovskys books above, but I’m really loving his brand of optimistic evolutionary sci-fi.
Latest fictional crush: Normally it is fairly rare for me to get a crush a book character so I usually answer this as “Which characters do I ship with each other the most.” But dang if there weren’t multiple cases this year! Reading a lot of illustrated works (mainly manga) probably helped.
‘The Case Study of Vanitas’ presents excellent opportunity both for shipping characters with each other, and for selecting potential waifus and husbandos. I mainly just want all four MCs to marry each other, sedoretu style. But, failing that…dang, Dominique de Sade and Noe are both just ridiculously gorgeous and intriguing in their own ways! Noe, as described below, is just such a ray of sunshine. His pale hair, violet eyes, and darker skin make a handsome contrast, and he’s strong without being overly muscled (as unnecessarily but beautifully illustrated in the anime’s opening number). Domi can sweep anyone of any gender off their feet with her courtliness and silver tongue, her flowing dark hair paired with a slightly masculine Sun-King-era outfit is just style goals, and…look, given that name and the whole collar incident, we all know she’s probably a bit kinky, right? And, while they’re both vampires, they don’t technically need blood, so the risk of actually being exsanguinated would be manageable.
Runners up include ‘Blue Flag’s Masumi, who – much as I loved that manga - just didn’t seem to be getting quite the page-time or relationships she deserved, and the stoic badass swordswoman Vei from ‘Phoenix Extravagant’.
New favorite character: There were so many – Where do I start?! Noe, from ‘A Case Study of Vanitas’ is such an unusual vampire character. Sure, he’s super strong and can read people’s memories by drinking their blood, but his real charm comes when he’s enthusing over the beauties of Paris, the delights of tarte tatin, and the power of friendship. I really enjoyed and related to two probably-neurodivergent scientist characters: Tonkee from ‘The Broken Earth Trilogy’ (I really wanted more of her in book 3 than we got) and Disra Senkovi from ‘Children of Ruin’. Sure, the latter nearly breaks his own spaceship by teaching octopuses how to hack computers…but, then again, that ends up being accidentally a good thing!
In terms of character dynamics… I related hard to the way several characters in 'Blue Flag' struggle with learning the difference between attraction and admiration, and also really enjoyed how friendship was valued as much as romance by the story. The way the sophisticated Luc, earthy Anders, and nerdy Curtis play off each other in ‘Triad Blood’ is a delight – though Curtis is my favorite! Both Jovis and Mephi from ‘The Boneshard Daughter’ and Jebi and Arazi from ‘Phoenix Extravagant’ have a great “somewhat hapless accidental rebel meets unexpectedly intelligent magical creature” thing going on. And I found myself feeling fond and protective of all five main characters of ‘The Doors of Eden’ within a page or two of meeting them!
Book that made you cry: Assuming we’re not counting any ‘Seraph of the End’ fan fiction, the only book I remember actually crying over was ‘Hollow Kingdom’. Yes, the one about a zombie apocalypse seen through the eyes of a sarcastic crow! That was mainly because I’d just lost my eldest dog, but I suspect many other dog lovers will also tear up over the good boys and girls in this book, not all of whom make it through.
Book that made you happy: There were so many books that made me happy in different ways.
For pure “warm hug” energy, I recommend ‘The Witch Boy’. It is a charmingly illustrated graphic novel about a boy who has a talent for witchcraft even though the men in his family are supposed to be shapeshifters instead.
‘The
Invention of Nature’ was a surprisingly uplifting non-fiction read
about the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. I think it was because Humboldt
came across as the rare historical figure I’d love to be friends with – not
just outgoing, endlessly curious, and ahead of his time in his scientific
ideas, but ahead of most of his European and white American peers in social
ideas as well. Indeed, unlike with some of his contemporaries, I could have
attended his lectures. And there was clearly no ulterior motive in welcoming
women – perhaps to the disappointment of some ladies of his time Humboldt was pretty clearly NOT interested in any of them in a
romantic sense! It was also encouraging to be reminded of the amount of influence one person can have on the world even if they aren’t directly involved in politics.
I was also really happy to discover ‘Otherside Picnic’, because I’d begun to despair that I could find “Something like ‘Seraph of the End’ or ‘Heaven Official’s Blessing’, but with girls” – by which I meant “An adventure/fantasy manga with female main characters and Sapphic vibes. And then I found this, a tale two girls exploring a parallel world full of monsters and slowly falling in love. Now I guess I need to read the light novels to find out what happens next!
Most beautiful book: The mask design on ‘Black Sun’ is gorgeous and mysterious. The “swans that are also roses” cover design of ‘Blanca & Roja’ is also really pretty – as is the nature imagery in the text.
Books you need to read by the end of the year: Since my physical TBR pile is getting WAY too big, I’m going to go with the 5 of those I’m most excited to read:
- ‘Spirits Abroad’, by Zen Cho (19 tales inspired by Asian – mostly Malaysian – mythology)
- ‘Mongrels’, by Stephen Graham Jones (A tale of working-class werewolves)
- ‘Journey of the Pink Dolphins’, by Sy Montgomery (Nonfiction about the biology and mythology of Amazon river dolphins)
- ‘A Long Petal of the Sea’, by Isabel Allende (A tale of two people in a ‘fake’ marriage fleeing the Spanish civil war to Chile)
- ‘The Color Purple’, by Alice Walker (Historical fiction about black women in early 20th century Georgia, which includes a Sapphic sub-plot)
