It’s the first Thursday of the month. You know what that means, ’cause we do this on the first Thursday of every month! Time to report!
What is the best book you read in October 2017 and why did you love it? It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF. We just want to share some great reading material. Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.
(And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our Fanlit Faves page and our 5-Star SFF page. And we’ve also got a constantly updating list of new and forthcoming releases.)
As always, one commenter will choose a book from our stacks.
We’re updating our theme, so things may be a little messy or slow until we’re finished. Thank you for being patient with us!
I am kind of ashamed to admit this but I just read Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy. It had been on my TBR list for years! I can’t believe it tock me so long to get to it. The trilogy has a whole was really good and I can’t wait to read the rest of her work, though I’m devoting most of this month to Oathbringer!
Sethia, this is one of my all-time favorite series.
I thouraly enjoyed it. It was recommended everywhere for such a long time, I’m sad it took me so long to read it. Though now I get the pretty new covers for my library!
I recently finished M.T. Anderson’s “Landscape with Invisible Hand”, and once again he did not disappoint. An engaging take on future dystopia, made even more chilling as it contained no zombies, no civilization leveling plagues, and no catastrophic environmental maelstroms, just a sudden shift in socio-economics that will change life as we know it, and possibly soon. Scary, but oh, so human.
Finally read The Fifth Season. I loved the use of second person perspective. It’s the only time I’ve seen it done so well.
I just got The Fifth Season at the library yesterday. Can’t wait to get into it!
Dark Fever by Karen Moning. This book is obviously intended for women by I really enjoyed the plot and writing. In a nutshell, a young woman from Georgia goes to Ireland to find her sisters murderer. She ends up in a dark world of fae and forces she never expected.
Kevin S., I was surprised by how much I enjoyed that series.
Me too! It was a little too Buffy the Vampire Slayer (fashion updates of what the main character is wearing on every other page) but it is a really good story.
I really enjoyed Margaret Killjoy‘s The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion.
In the last week or so I have been reading almost all of the “Bad Kitty” children’s books. I don’t like them as much as other children’s books, but I feel compelled to read the last few I haven’t read. Because there’s a “bad kitty,” it’s supposed to be fun and wicked, but all the books teach lessons and are a bit preachy. I think they’re probably best for reading aloud to very young children, no more than six or seven.
Scott Lynch’s Red Seas Under Red Skies, the second entry in the “Gentleman Bastards” series, was my best read in October. I had read the first book quite some time ago, amd don’t know why it took so long to get around to this one. It was just as well written as the fitst, and portrayed an amazing friendship and partnership of confifence men embroiled in a complicated plot that develops not only the lead characters but a number of others over several hundred exciting pages.
Cloudbound by Fran Wilde is the only book I started and finished in October, so I guess that has to be it. I actually enjoyed it more than your reviewer here and liked seeing things from Nat’s POV, but there were a couple of places where things got a bit murky and didn’t seem to be progressing much. The ending was certainly mind-boggling though! Will be interested to see how the final volume ties things up.
I started the month finishing off Isabelle Hoving’s The Dream Merchants, which was sort of a YA “follow the map to the next quest item” story. But it was pretty likable, and gave very little hint of having been translated from Dutch (all the modern scenes took place in the UK).
Am part way through Max Gladstone’s Ruin of Angels now and not progressing as fast as I usually do with the Craft novels. Partly my distraction and partly that it feels like there is more setup, due to the greater number of characters and the fraught emotions in some of their interactions.
The most interesting book I read was non-fiction. It was Paperbacks From Hell: The Twisted History of 70s and 80s Horror Fiction. There were a lot of books I had read and totally forgotten about and a lot that I had never heard of.
My favorite read for the laughter it brought me was Ben Aaronovich’s The Hanging Tree.
My favorite series ending book was One Fell Sweep by Ilona Andrews.
My favorite first book of a new series was Cold Welcome by Elizabeth Moon.
And my favorite next book in the series was The Brightest Fell by Seanan McGuire.
And finally, my favorite independent book for October was The Flaw in All Magic by Ben S. Dobson. This was a fun read, well thought out and with compelling characters. I could have wished it was a bit longer but it is the start of a series so I’m sure to get more of the story soon.
In honor of Martha Wells being toastmaster at World Fantasy, I reread the last 3 books in the Raksura series plus the novella, The Tale of Indigo and Cloud. That’s probably my favorite of the shorter works.
I also read Abounding Might by Melissa McShane and had much the same reaction that Tadiana did.
Probably my favorite this month (besides the Wells’s books) was the Prisoner of Limnos, another Penric and Desdemona story. Penric has to rescue someone from an island religious slash prison-for-hostages.
I also read Charles De Lint’s new The Wind in his Heart. Set in the American southwest, it follows several major characters and multiple minor characters. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of his work and had no problem finishing this, I thought it was long (~560 pages).
Outside SF/F, I finally read The Far Country by Nevil Shute. It’s the story of an English girl visiting relatives in Australia and a former Displaced Person, a doctor, from Czechoslovakia. I hadn’t known that Australia took in DPs post-WWII. In exchange for basically menial work for a few years, they could get permanent residency. Anyway, a nice, sweet story. I wish he’d written a sequel as I really wanted to know what was going to happen next with Jennifer and Carl.
Working on Deathstalker. Definitely different. Has a 90s comic vibe to it.
It’s a toss-up between Autonomous by Annalee Newitz or Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Sharon Browning, if you live in the USA, you win a book of your choice from our stacks.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!