Books - 2024 review
I was able to stick to my 1 book a month goal this year, squeezing in 2 extras. This was my first year of really seriously using the ebook library app, Libby, since I was able to get it to finally sync with my Kobo. This makes for really random book consumption as what you’re reading at any time completely depends on when holds come in. But it also cutely led to me and my wife reading a lot of the same books.
In the last few years I’ve had a bit of focus to my book selection. For a while I wanted to wrap up all the series I had started. And then for a few years I had a growing number of water focused novels I wanted to read. I no longer have any large goals like that and am actually out there trying to find new authors to follow or catch up on. With the death of Twitter I no longer follow as many writers and readers so my to-read list hasn’t been growing all that quickly. The only serious source I go to for new stuff is K. A. Doore’s yearly roundup of Queer Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy Books. I’m hoping library access will help make discovery easier going forward, but it’s a real shame how barely usable Libby is. An insult to app designers and librarians everywhere.
But on to the books. I tried writing this blog post a few times but found it was hard to talk about each one. So here are my top 3 and also my scoring (out of 3) for the rest.
Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis
Floating Hotel was a surprise read of this year, I wouldn’t have read it if it weren’t for my wife hyping it up. It’s kind of a cozy murder mystery in space. Its setting and writing are cozy while the characters and central story are more dramatic. A high end hotel well past its prime, travels between planets hosting celebrities and the rich. It’s also a home to its staff, outcasts who can’t return to their world or people running from their past. There’s also a whole evil emperor and repressive education system thing going on but that’s not really what things are about (but also is).
He Who Drowned The World by Shelley Parker-Chan
He Who Drowned The World is the sequel and conclusion to She Who Became the Sun. These two books are a powerful duo and have probably one of my favourite leading characters ever. The duology is rather violent and graphic which makes me hesitate to recommend it to people. But the main character is so driven and the villains merciless. So much backstabbing and betrayal but also loyalty and commitment to people and causes.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
It was nice to return to Becky Chambers after a few years. I loved her first 3 books but then I started to fall behind on her one-off releases. I really only got around to this one because our hold came up at the library. Compared to her other novels, which often take place in space, this one is set on a single planet (which I don’t think is earth) where the people are recovering from near disaster. They had accidentally created AI. The society had been supported by robot labour for a long time, and then the robots gained sentience and they didn’t want to labour for humans so they walked into the woods to disappear for a few decades. Just from that premise I was intrigued. Love the idea of a population of robots just peacing off to the woods, a common millennial wish.
The rest
| Book | Thoughts | Rating out of 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Siren Queen by Nghi Vo | Historical rise of movies in a slightly magical world where making deals with a devil figure is the norm. Not nearly as many sirens as I was hoping for, way too slow and prose-y for me. | 1 |
| Squid Empire by Danna Staaf | Non-fiction book about squid. Lots of good facts but I didn’t love the overall structure and flow. | 2 |
| The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang | A decent alt-history & magic adventure story. Has some similar vibes to things like She Who Became the Sun or The Poppy War but way less brutal. | 2 |
| Flux by Jinwoo Chong | Had no idea what this was when I got into it. Was more sci-fi than expected and I liked how the main character was grappling with their childhood hero being exposed as a terrible guy. | 3 |
| Blood Ink Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs | A fun adventure about magical books and those who can do magic. Got your classic rich boy and bodyguard duo, family members who haven’t spoken in years, and many, many family secrets. | 3 |
| The Bookeaters by Sunyi Dean | I was surprised at how dark this one started off for a book about a secret group of people who need to eat books to live. | 2 |
| Perséphone Station by Stina Leicht | Ragtag team of ex-soliders protects secret, peaceful aliens. There was a lot of world building going on here that I wish the author showed more of in the story. But a solid space adventure overall. | 2 |
| The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon | Huge robots are gods and human interfaces are needed to… feed them? Control them? Power them? A very cool world but I wish the story had been divided into 2 books because So Much Happens. | 2 |
| The Cat Who Saves Books by Sosuke Natsukawa | Kobo kept recommending this one to me so I finally bought it. Cute but a little childish and simple. I’m kind of confused about who the intended audience is as it features high schoolers who go into alternative worlds to defend the value of books. The arguments are fairly basic but I think meant to be taken like a big deal. | 2 |
| The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo | I worry I have too high of expectations for Bardugo as I haven’t really liked what she’s done since Six of Crows. This was well done but felt more formulaic than her previous work. Wanted it to be a book about women surviving men but still ended with what I felt was a boring couple. | 2 |
| Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki | A bit wild in its combo of student sacrifices and aliens who are running away from a cataclasm that threatens to end the known universe who are now running a doughnut shop. But its development and execution put it rather firmly in the “nothing really bad will happen here” camp. | 2 |
| The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan | Another non-fiction, but I didn’t finish this one as it was just way too long. | Did not finish. |
| Hum by Helen Phillips | So while I hated the ending (like a 2 page epilogue that nearly ruined the whole book for me. Just don’t read the epilogue maybe?), this book did grip me from the start due to the way the main character acted and just had me on edge the whole time. Doesn’t deserve to be called an “AI” book but does say some stuff about the current state of the world. | 2 |
Conclusion
I rated a lot of the books a 2, and looking back on the year, it fits. There were few like, standout, amazing books that I read this year. But there was a general good enough consistency which helped me keep up my reading pace.
There were a lot of robots in books this year and I suspect that will continue as everyone is writing about AI now. I really loved the books I read in the last like 7ish years that had central AI plots or characters but now it feels a bit more like the “trendy thing” and I suspect the median quality of AI stories will be lower. And with Muderbot being turned into a TV series I worry more.
The other night I started reading To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose and I saw that there were 2 other books on the K.A. Doore list that mentioned dragons so now I’m kind of hoping 2025 is about dragon books. Feel those nostalgic Dragonriders of Pern feelings. Though I should probably assume that a new dragon trend is more likely brought about from Game of Thrones / House of the Dragon being huge TV hits. But as a kid who grew up obsessed with dragons, it’s always nice to see more of them.