2017 Year in Review - SF/Fantasy Reading, Part 1: Basic Summary

To celebrate the new year, I'm going to be spending a few posts looking back at what I've read over the past year throughout this whole week.  Post 1, which you're reading at this very moment, features a summary of what I've read and some basic facts.  Post 2, which will come out either tomorrow or the next day will go over some of my favorite novels from this year.  Post 3, coming out after that, will go over briefly my least favorite works - the novels I completed and didn't like and the ones that I began but failed to complete.

So what did I read this year?

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Tiger's Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera

SF/F Review: The Tiger's Daughter by @ArsenaultRivera https://t.co/fY0fyGfXkv Short Review: 10 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 29, 2017

Short Review (cont): A love story in an Asian-Inspired Epic Fantasy world, The Tiger's Daughter tells the story of two girls/women who are destined for great things as their love blossoms and is tested by beasts/demons/other-humans. Just Incredible all-around. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 29, 2017

The Tiger's Daughter is a fantastic example of the Fantasy Romance genre.  It's a complete fusion of both genres - this is clearly a fantasy novel - featuring demons, divinely gifted rulers, and incredible warriors - but the main focus of the story is of the journeys of the two main characters and their attempts to try to make their love work despite their differences and the troubles that come their way.  And god did I love the two main characters.  As I've said before, a good romance plot will have moments where the reader will both want to stop reading because the reader doesn't want to see the characters get hurt but also not want to stop because the reader wants to know what happens to those characters anyway - and the Tiger's Daughter has those moments in spades.

Please note that the plot summary/description on Amazon is totally misleading - as noted above, this is more of a fantasy love story than a fantasy adventure story, which the summary would have you believe.  If you're looking for an adventure story, you're looking in the wrong place.  But if you don't mind a love story in the fantasy genre, you will love the Tiger's Daughter.

Final Note:  The Tiger's Daughter is clearly a Chinese/Mongolian fantasy world, though the author is Puerto Rican/American.  I think the setting/characters are done tastefully, but as my heritage is neither of those cultures, it's possible I'm missing something.  That's all I'll say about in this review as that's all I'm able to contribute on this topic.  

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Emperor's Blades (Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne #1) by Brian Staveley

SF/F Review: The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley (Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne #1): https://t.co/oKu5EV9rqn Short Review: 6.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 27, 2017

Short Review (cont): The first in an Epic Fantasy trilogy following the 3 children of a murdered emperor as they confront conspiracy and ancient forces returning has a great world with lots of potential, but struggles with pacing and characters. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 27, 2017

The Emperor's Blades is the first in Brian Staveley's epic fantasy trilogy, Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne.  I didn't come into this series without any foreknowledge, as I read and reviewed (see HERE) Staveley's prequel novel, Skullsworn earlier this year.  I liked Skullsworn a lot - it was a nicely done gray world with some really interesting characters - and have been looking forward to reading the trilogy for a while to see more of this world.  Alas, The Emperor's Blade fails to live up quite so much to the standards of its later prequel, as it suffers from some fairly solid pacing issues.  There's definite potential here in the worldbuilding, but the book takes too long to get to obvious places to really fulfill that potential:

More after the jump:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Tongues of Serpents (Temeraire #6) by Naomi Novik

SF/F Review: Tongues of Serpents (Temeraire Book #6) by Naomi Novik - Short Review: 7.5 out of 10 (1/3) https://t.co/ep6D7yAV5Y

— garik16 (@garik16) December 25, 2017

Short Review (cont): The Temeraire series shifts to Australia as Laurence and Temeraire are essentially in exile. More Dragon interactions make this enjoyable despite the lack of much of an overriding plot. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 25, 2017

Tongues of Serpents is the sixth Temeraire novel, taking place after the events of Victory of Eagles.  Victory was the high point of the series, featuring fantastic character work (as I've stated repeatedly, the series is best with more dragon interactions and it had plenty) as well as a well paced plot that worked really well. Tongues of Serpents is a weird follow up in that it....doesn't really have much of a plot.  What it does have is more new dragons to interact with the main character and an expansion of worldbuilding.

Note:  Unlike some other long-running series (like Seanan McGuire's series that I've reviewed on this blog), Tongues of Serpents makes zero attempt to try to be a starting point for new readers in the series.   If you haven't read the first five books of this series, you will be well and truly lost - the main antagonist, to the extent there even IS one, in this book is a character who has basically been absent since Book 1.  This is an entertaining book if you have knowledge of the prior books in the series, even if it's not the best of the series by a long shot, but it is not a starting point despite being the start of what could be seen as a new arc.

Also, I read this book as an audiobook - the first one of the series that I've read in that format, and the audio-reader is pretty good.  So if you like that format, the series isn't a bad choice for the format.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Magic for Nothing (inCryptid) by Seanan McGuire

SF/F Review: Magic for Nothing (inCryptid) by Seanan McGuire: Short Review: 9 out of 10 https://t.co/CUHpNxpnTW (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 22, 2017

Short Review (cont): Magic for Nothing is the 1st inCryptid book to feature Antimony Price, as she attempts to infiltrate the monster hunting Covenant of St. George to save her family & the cryptids (monsters) of North America. My favorite of the series-Antimony is the best (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 22, 2017

Magic for Nothing is Seanan McGuire's sixth inCryptid novel, but the first in a new arc following the last of the Price kids, Antimony Price.  It's also the first novel in the series following a major change in the status quo, and as such it's not quite as beginner friendly as the start of the last new arc (Book 3, Half-Off Ragnarok).  You COULD start the series here - I think it would work, as again, this is the start of a new arc and McGuire does a decent job at the beginning of each book recapping what you need to know to start here.  But I wouldn't advise it, as the conflicts in the book work better if you have some background coming into this story.*

*You probably should read all of Verity's Books, which are Books 1, 2, and 5 (Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-Light Special, and Chaos Choreography) before this book, with the Alex Price books (Half-Off Ragnarok and Pocket Apocalypse) being optional.  But as I like the Alex Price books, you might as well read them.

But here's the thing:  This is easily my favorite book in the series, and Antimony is easily my favorite character in the Novels (I think Francis Brown from the short stories is my favorite inCryptid character still, but Antimony comes close).  Whereas Verity and Alex, the protagonists of the prior five novels, are clearly adults with adult concerns, Antimony is more of a Young Adult heroine (even though at 22 I guess she's old for traditional YA) - she's still looking for what to do with her life and has never taken or even attempted to take steps toward traditional adulthood (such as finding a job or moving out of her parent's place).  Naturally her trying to find herself is a major part of this book, and it works tremendously well.

Warning: Spoilers for Chaos Choreography's ending are below - there's no way to avoid them here:

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Chaos Choreography (inCryptid) by Seanan McGuire

SF/F Review: Chaos Choreography by Seanan McGuire (inCryptid) https://t.co/ONMgQDXRw7 Short Review: 7 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 21, 2017

Short Review (cont): The inCryptid novels return to original protagonist Verity Price, as she enters the all star season of a reality dance show, only for dancers to begin being murdered. Fun as usual, but very duplicative of prior books. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 21, 2017

Chaos Choreography is the fifth inCryptid novel, but resides in an odd place in terms of it's potential to be read as the first in the series.  Both Books 1 (Discount Armageddon) and 3 (Half-Off Ragnarok) are the starts of arcs centered around different characters and thus can be used as a new reader's introduction to the series  By contrast, Chaos Choreography returns after a two book absence to Verity Price (the protagonist of Book 1), even if it takes place in a different city, and thus kind of serves as a third book in an already completed plot arc (and a continuation of that plot arc in some ways can be found in a bunch of fun short stories on McGuire's website).

This wouldn't matter too much if this was a stronger book - but for reasons I'll lay out after the jump, Chaos Choreography is the weakest inCryptid novel.  It's still a well-paced read with several fun moments (despite you know, people being horribly murdered).  But it feels oddly duplicative of the first book in the series, Discount Armageddon, even though it ends in a way to set up a drastically new status quo for the series.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Pocket Apocalypse (inCryptid) by Seanan McGuire

SF/F Review: Pocket Apocalypse (inCryptid) by Seanan McGuire https://t.co/9jnYhpMIAX Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 19, 2017

Short Review (cont): The second inCryptid book to follow Alex Price shifts the setting to Australia, where Alex and his girlfriend Shelby Tanner hope to contain a werewolf infestation. As usual, fun solid urban fantasy. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) December 19, 2017

Pocket Apocalypse is the fourth inCryptid book and the second book to follow Alexander "Alex" Price.  I reviewed the first book to follow Alex, Half-Off Ragnarok, yesterday HERE.  As I mentioned in the last review, you could have started the inCryptid series with Half-Off Ragnarok without any problems - but I would not recommend starting the series with this book, as it is basically building upon HOR (McGuire plants enough context in this book to allow a new reader to try to start here, but it seems inadvisable).

However, if you enjoyed Half-Off Ragnarok, you should enjoy Pocket Apocalypse.  Whereas the second inCryptid book (Midnight Blue-Light Special) with Verity delved deeper into the world built by the first book, this book moves the main characters wholly to a new part of the world: Australia.  Oh and it deals with werewolves.  Because things couldn't be dangerous enough for Alex Price.  But the end result is yet again a fun book.