Last year was a weird old year and a pretty rubbish one for me personally. Thankfully books continue to be reliable. Most of these were published last year. All should be available from various bookshops and online.
In no particular order, here’s my 2022 books of the year, let me know what you loved in the comments or tag me on Twitter or even Instagram (which I will remember to post on one day…)
I read the Illumicrate edition which is so beautiful in black and silver. This was really interesting and current discourse shows that a lot of people really didn’t understand any of it. It’s definitely helpful to have some context – historically everything that happened in the book happened, minus the magic stuff. Britain really was the worst. Colonialism is never a good thing and honestly, Oxford (as a city and a university) benefited hugely from the evils of the British Empire.
Coming at the end of 2022, this was a delicious live story between a mindship with a beautiful avatar and her hostage turned wife bot builder. Dealing with the politics of pirates, the wholesale risk of invasion, a resentful son and the death of Rice Fish’s previous wife – the Red Scholar. The two women (is a ship a woman since they’re always female even when, as with some of the others in this book, they’re not?) must navigate all these complications and risks to survive.
I loved it, I thought I might as I really enjoyed Aliette’s alternate Paris set stories of dragons and angels. Drawing on the author’s Vietnamese heritage, it’s a space opera that just blew my mind.
The sequel to A Marvellous Light, this is an ocean set murder mystery with magic and sex and love and I adored it. I think I even liked it more than AML which was one of my favourites last year. I don’t know how the author does it but it works.
In a year when I seem to have read a lot of queer books, here’s another one! The science side of things or magic or whatever it is, is really interesting. A reader can read your mind and an architect can write your actions into you. Combine them with a sync and you have essentially one mind in 2 bodies. And then they fall in love and there’s a coup and the whole universe goes mad and they’re the ones who have to fix it! Just brilliant.
And now for something a bit different, but still LGBTQ+. This was a gut punch of a book, concerning the death of a teenage girl, her boyfriend, his mother and her bees. Absolutely beautiful in a stark, shocking and moving way. Jodi Picoult is the queen of the courtroom drama and this is just incredible. Have tissues on standby, you’ll need them. The two writers alternate protagonists and honestly it’s so well done.
I loved the trilogy before this, I love this series, the ending of this book made me cry. I don’t know how Brandon Sanderson manages to write multiple series but he somehow keeps track of it all, and the plan for the Mistborn universe is inspired. Even if it means saying goodbye to these characters.
ramblingmads 