Top Five Overall:
1. The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton2. Sharps by KJ Parker3. The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng4. The Hydrogen Sonata by IM Banks5. (tie) The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks5. (tie) Blood Song by Anthony Ryan
Comments: - the actual split is top 3 as any of those could have been my #1, then #4 and Banksian sense of wonder in an ok but not great story that is less than the sum of its occasionally outstanding parts and then the 2 fantasies where the extraordinary talent of Anthony Ryan in a traditional tale versus the exuberant, cannot put down, twists and turns style of Brent Weeks makes it hard to choose.
- coming back to 1-3, we have the stunning book of Kate Morton which is the first book in quite a while to truly surprise me and acquire a completely different meaning once you know what's what, while being otherwise her usual past-secrets fare, well written but somewhat limited as scope goes, versus the multifaceted Sharps with its own twists, versus the beautifully written The Garden of Evening Mists (2012 Booker shortlisted) which has its own share of surprises. Ultimately the lack of one dominating character in Sharps in the mode of Gignomai or Basso, and the missing 50-100 pages in The Garden of Evening Mists which would have made it a masterpiece for the ages, left me with The Secret Keeper as #1 for truly surprising me in a novel is hard and very rarely achieved, while otherwise the novel is well written too.
- since I started keeping more detailed records in 2008, this is the first year #1 is not an epic story of some kind (2008 right now #1 is By Schism Rent Asunder which is another book with a stunning surprise though it is also an epic sff, 2009 it's either The Kindly Ones (English edition - as I read the French in 2007, so it's a bit of cheating) or The Children Book, 2010 Surface Detail and 2011 Parallel Stories and its 1000 pages and many threads...)
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Top Five Fantasy:
1. Sharps (#2) by KJ Parker2. (tie) The Blinding Knife (#5/6) by Brent Weeks2. (tie) Blood Song (#5/6) by Anthony Ryan4. The Air War (#8) by Adrian Tchaikovsky5. Princeps (#11) by LE Modesitt
Comments: in addition to the top 3 discussed above, another winner from Adrian Tchaikovsky in a novel that I feared would be marred by the lack of my favorite characters who starred in Heirs of the Blade (taking place simultaneously) but actually surprised me with lots of great stuff, especially from Seda and her storyline which is outstanding, while the Imager second series and a prequel at that keeps getting better and better, and this while knowing the general outline of what will happen to boot...
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Top Five SF
1. The Hydrogen Sonata (#4) by IM Banks2. The Sacrifice Game (#8) by Brian D'Amato3. Jack Glass (#10) by Adam Roberts 4. In the Mouth of the Whale (#12) by Paul McAuley5. The Eternal Flame (#13) by Greg Egan
Comments: another winner from Brian D'Amato where Jed the narrator (well it's more complicated than that but too much detail would be spoilery) makes a run of the mill thriller a huge favorite though of course the outstanding Maya storyline helps a lot; the usually superb books from Adam Roberts, Paul McAuley and Greg Egan round the top 5 sf.
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Top Five Series Debuts:
1. Blood Song (#5/6) by Anthony Ryan2. (tie) The Red Knight (# 14/15) by Miles Cameron3. (tie) Mage's Blood (# 14/15) by David Hair4. The Red Knight (#23)by KT Davies5. Dark Eden (#28) by Chris Beckett
Comments: here I will refer to the earlier post on the top 3 debuts, while adding that KT Davies' debut (titled Red Knight too while as mentioned earlier, here the knight is a lady and the love interest is a prince rather than the more usual the other way around) stayed with me much more than I expected, while Dark Eden has great style in an otherwise fairly standard sf piece - the author has just signed a contract for the sequel so the series part.
I woud also want to add that Blood Song with its mainstream hc Ace release in July 2013 (though of course you still can buy the ebook today) is one of the debuts that has the chance to be remembered the way The Lies of Locke Lamora or The Name of the Wind are, namely as a book that automatically catapults the author to the first rank of today's fantasists.
And just in - on a post on his website, Anthony Ryan has just announced that the success of Blood Song allowed him to quit his day job and dedicate himself to full time writing!
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Honorable Mentions (sff):
1. The Night of the Swarm by Robert Redick2. A Rising Thunder by David Weber3. The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham4. Midst Toil and Tribulation by David Weber5. Red Country by Joe Abercrombie6. Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair Reynolds
All top 25's of mine and simply the fact that in the top 5 there have to be 5 books so to speak prevented them from being there.
The Night of the Swarm has what I consider the perfect ending for a sff series and I would love to see something like this more often; this ending made the rather boxed-in first 500 pages - with some interesting stuff and twists but way too predictable and with the feel of "gotta cover this" as opposed to the exuberance of the first 3 volumes - acceptable and raised the novel to my top 25.
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Major unread/unfinished 2012 books:
The Rise of Ransom City by Felix GilmanThe Fractal Prince by Hannu RajaniemiCelebrant by Michael CiscoEmpty Space by MJ HarrisonThe Twelve by Justin Cronin
Opened all and read some pages from them, but I put them down for various reasons and will come back to them eventually as these are books I do not want to rush just to check a box.
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