Best and worst reads of 2023
Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted here! Things have been busy, and I haven’t had the energy for doing longer discussions here AND Goodreads posts. But an end-of-the-year wrap-up seems like a good one for a long-format location.
This was a pretty successful reading year for me, with most things I picked up being at least OK and quite a few new favorites! The standout highs and lows:
Best of the year (mostly 5-star books)
“This feels like it was written for me” SFF
One Piece (Omnibus 1-Omnibus 16) – The new obsession I’ve been telling everyone about, because it has everything l like: Adventure, magic, found family, exploration of serious real-world-relevant themes but also tons of humor, anti-authority/military vibes (I mean, duh, it’s about pirates…but it doesn’t just coast on that!), well-written characters, a surprising amount of queerness, etc. (Rep: Japanese author; characters of varying ethnicities, queer rep that’s a bit up and down but overall friendly-feeling. I will note that the DRAWINGS – including of female characters - don’t always look promising in terms of sensitivity, but the character writing absolutely won me over; no one is just a caricature.)
A Natural History of Dragons - First in a series about a Victorian-ish lady naturalist who wants to study dragons. The autobiography style works well and feels authentic to adventure narratives of the period.
Shards of Earth – First in a sci-fi series by one of my favorite new authors of last year, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Has a lot of the same elements I like in One Piece. (Rep: Some casual queerness, though it isn’t centered)
Blackfish City – Climate fiction set in a “floating” city in the Arctic that is governed by AI. Nano-bot bonded animal companions. Critiques of capitalism. (Rep: Gay author. POC, gay, and nonbinary MCs)
Dead Collections – A vampire archivist is such a good concept I’m surprised I haven’t seen it before. Excellent nerdy queer romance (Rep: trans man author and MC, another nonbinary/genderfluid major character)
“Can’t believe I waited this long to read this!” SFF
Interview with the Vampire & The Vampire Lestat – The basis of one of my all-time favorite movies…and the books give you SO much more! (Rep: Bisexual vampires. Pretty much everyone is white and rich, though, so I’m curious if that will change in future volumes)
Dark Lord of Derkholm – Simultaneously a spoof of ‘sword and sorcery’ story conventions and a critique of what distant capitalists running tourism operations can do to a ‘destination’ location. Also some really fun family dynamics between middle-aged wizard Derk, his wife, and his human and griffin teenage children.
Journey to the West (volumes 1-3) – OK, so this is technically a Buddhist allegory for the journey of the soul to enlightenment, not SFF…but this Chinese classic is such a clear model for MOST fantasy-adventure anime, from the 5-man-band including over-powered magical powerhouse character to the ‘tune in next week to find out!’ chapter endings, that it scratches the same itch!
“Real world” adventures
The Bandit Queens – A woman in an Indian village is vaguely suspected of having murdered her drunken, no-good husband. She didn’t…but now one of her neighbors wants help offing hers for real! Darkly funny, with a surprisingly cute romance subplot. (Rep: Indian author and characters)
In the Name of Salome – Historical fiction about a Dominican poet who became an inspiration in her country’s struggle for independence, and her daughter, who years later tries to understand her mother through poetry and through joining the Cuban revolution in her 60s (Rep: Dominican author and characters, lesbian MC)
Best nonfiction
Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America – A very interesting history of indigenous concepts of gender and sexuality through time – and how those concepts were deliberately suppressed as a part of colonization. Provides excellent context for contemporary discourse on LGBTQ+ identities.
Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed For You – This book focuses on women’s experiences of neurodivergency and the common thread of sensory sensitivity that connects a lot of different versions of that. Has some useful suggestions, though it could have talked a bit more about how activism can create accommodations and space for difference.
Shinrin-Yoku: The Art and Science of Forest Bathing – Just reading this book is relaxing because of all the beautiful nature photos. Could use clearer references, but “going outside is good for you” is pretty well supported as a general concept, so I’m not going to argue!
Honorable Mentions (mostly 3.5-4 star books)
Diverse SFF
Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction – A very interesting sample of mostly SF stories (Rep: What it says on the tin!)
Manhunt – A wonderfully angry and bloody post-apocalypse novel following two trans women and one trans man trying to survive zombies and a TERF army (Rep: trans woman author; trans MCs, Sapphic characters. Also a NB side character – though they don’t get to do much – and an indigenous MC – though that isn’t very story-relevant for him)
The Fox Maidens – Graphic novel based on legend of fox-demon woman Gumiho (Rep: Korean-American author, ancient Korean lesbian MCs)
Sorrowland – Body horror fleeing-from-a-cult story that delves into Solomon’s main themes of racism, gender, and queerness plus more - arguably too many themes for one book, TBH. Not my favorite of their books, but still good. (Rep: Black NB author, albino black MC, Sapphic characters, and indigenous major characters, including one who is two-spirit)
Triad Soul – A good follow-up to ‘Triad Blood’, which likewise mixes genuinely good worldbuilding and character stuff with the wizard-demon-vampire polycule spice - in fact, there’s only one sex scene in this one! I have to applaud that (unlike a certain middle grade wizard series that I feel had a subtle influence on this) the story is very much pro changing-shitty-magical-society-rules, but also realistic about how that is a slow process that requires solidarity/coalition building. (Rep: Gay author and MCs, as well as mixed-race side character – where that actually intersects with magic-family prejudices in an interesting way!)
The House of Rust – This has kind of an unconventional structure for a novel, but has some beautiful writing and if you think of it as a 3-part episodic story about the adventurous girl at its center and her family, it works well (Rep: Author & MCs black Muslim Hadrami people from Kenya)
Trouble on Triton – A book with a deliberately unlikeable MC, a man who is living in a society without scarcity and where people can more or less do what they want…who is unhappy mostly because he can’t blame anyone for being unhappy! (Rep: Black gay author, several gay and/or black major characters, plus one character who is probably actually trans and one who decides to change gender for frankly bonkers reasons – because in this world you can easily change back if you don’t like it, so why not?)
Freshwater – This wasn’t 100% the book for me (5 stars at each end, 2-3 in the middle), but the writing style is creative and evocative and takes an interesting magical-realism approach to depicting feelings relating to trauma and mental illness (Rep: Black Nigerian NB author and MC)
Little Mushroom: Judgement Day & Revelations – Wonderfully bonkers and unexpectedly sweet post-apocalyptic BL story, with a MC who is a sentient humanoid mushroom (Rep: Chinese author, mostly Asian characters, gay MCs)
Dwellers – This short novel/long novella follows two cousins who have just hopped their minds into new bodies…and discover the brothers they are inhabiting were keeping a dead body in the basement! (Rep: Filipina author…and I think the MCs may be too, but I don’t quite remember)
Ninefox Gambit – Not a book to start when tired, as it drops you in the deep end of never-very-clearly-explained techno-magic. But once Jedao was introduced, I was in! (Rep: Korean American author, mostly Asian characters, “incidentally queer” MCs)
Light From Uncommon Stars – The fantasy sci-fi cross-over in this book felt like it was missing some connective tissue to me…but overall it was both darkly real in places and very enjoyable. (Rep: Trans Asian American author, mostly Asian characters including a trans girl MC and a Sapphic couple)
Literary fiction
Homegoing – A beautifully written multi-generational story that explores the legacies of slavery on both sides of the Atlantic. However, because the characters change every chapter, it can be easy to stall out in between them if you like more continuity (Rep: Black author born in Ghana and Alabama, reflected in the 2 family lines and one character in particular.)
Classics
Northanger Abbey– A delightful Jane Austen romance in which the MCs are big gothic novel fans, which works into the story in funny ways.
Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic– Stories of creepy plants from quite a range of authors, many such as Nathanial Hawthorne being well known for other things.
Orlando – Plus side: a very queer novel about a person who lives for several hundred years and magically changes gender in the middle, which allows for interesting musings on how societal ideas do or don’t affect our experience of our own gender. Minus: WAY more racism than I was expecting! (Rep: I think bisexual author & MC? Plus the involuntary gender changing stuff that I’m not sure how to categorize.)
The Lais of Marie de France – Written by 12th century woman, with some interesting twists on chivalric “romance”, including a sympathetic portrayal of a werewolf
The Last Unicorn - This book is overall charming, but has a bit of a tone-and-language-inconsistency problem that threw me off in places.
Non-fiction
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Engagingly-written history mainly focusing on details of the lives of the passengers of the doomed ship and of the submarine crew that sank her.
Gathering Moss: A Natural & Cultural History of Mosses – While I prefer Kimmerer’s other book, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, this is quite good too. (Indigenous author)
OK…but disappointing relative to what I hoped it would be! (mostly 3 star books)
The Wolf of Oren Yaro – This started out so well, and I liked the MC’s voice and the Filipino/other-Asian-inspired fantasy world…but by 60% point just wanted it to be done due to not liking the personal drama aspects (Rep: Filipina author, Asian characters)
The Black Tides of Heaven & The Red Threads of Fortune– The world-building and “gender-building” is intriguing, but ultimately these books were too short to fully flesh out that or the characters; felt a bit like reading fan fiction of an IP I wasn’t familiar with! (Rep: Asian NB author, Asian characters, including trans & NB ones)
Poso Wells – This book is best described NOT as a “feminist eco-thriller” (as I was told) but a satirical novella. There are many bits of sharp commentary and dark humor, but needed more length, IMO. (Rep: Ecuadorian author, Latine characters)
Dread Nation– The idea of Black girls fighting zombies in an alternate reconstruction era was intriguing. However, it ended up feeling oddly tedious. And I don’t know how we can be in the bisexual MCs head – a character who is fully aware of this facet of herself, supposedly – and not know that until the very end! (Rep: Black author and characters. Plus some of the laziest indigenous, bi, and asexual rep I’ve ever seen)
The Murmur of Bees – This started off well, and had beautiful writing. But after a while I realized this was something I’d never seen before: Latin American magical realism that feels conservative! As such, while I thought we were getting an interesting indigenous, disabled (cleft palate) main character…instead he ended up being the brown magical savior to the rich white boy. Sigh. (Rep: Mexican author and characters. And…see above.)
Most disappointing (1 and 2 star books)
The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires From Nosferatu to Count Chocula – Not as informative about vampires as I hoped, AND felt a bit like prejudiced-statement-bingo!
Every Heart a Doorway – I like portal fantasy, so I was disappointed that this A) didn’t sell me on the appeal of the hidden worlds, B) seemed to lean into “if you don’t fit in, try to re-find another world rather than try to fix THIS one”, and C) in particular gave the impression the trans boy couldn’t find a place in EITHER world.
