In which I jump on the "NPR's 50 Best Scifi/Fantasy Books of the Decade" bandwagon

[lebateleur]

And why not? It's Sunday night, I'm procrastinating, and this stuff is fun. It was pretty clear from even a quick glance that the list was probably driven more by marketing considerations than by fans' votes. (How else to explain the inclusion of Ishiguro's The Buried Giant if not to nudge readers toward Klara and the Sun, which NPR could not believably have claimed had made the cut.)

The "How We Built This" sections, in which NPR confirms that they gave themselves a free hand to ensure that any book they wanted to make the final cut, would make the final cut, are pretty fascinating to pick apart. Even so, I was still surprised to find that some of the titles I assumed would be shoe-ins didn't make the cut; for instance, Naomi Alderman's The Power and Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy are nowhere in evidence.

It got me thinking, what books would I have put on the list. Wonder no more.

• The Hazel Wood series – Melissa Albert


• Rivers of London series - Ben Aaronovitch: On the strength of the fabulous, fabulous audiobooks.


• Mermaid Moon - Susann Cokal: Cokal is an unrecognized great


• Desdemona and the Deep - C. S. E. Cooney: The Devourers lite. I still love it.


• Ka - John Crowley: This is the elegiac book about memory, grieving, and mortality that should have replaced The Buried Giant on NPR's list.


• The Devourers - Indra Das: I love this book.


• The Shadow Skye trilogy – Joseph Elliott: The found family series of my dreams. Let Elliott show you how neurodivergent characters should be done.


• The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman: I agree with NPR that Gaiman is “well known enough not to need our help,” but by that criteria, surely N.K. Jemison, with five Hugos to her name, is too?


• The Magician King and The Magician’s Land - Lev Grossman: Two of the best fantasy novels from one of the best fantasy series in existence.


• Angelmaker - Nick Harkaway: Shem Shem Tsien is the scariest scifi/fantasy villain of the past decade, hands down.


• Followed by Frost - Charlie Holmberg: I'd put Holmberg's whimsical The Paper Magician on the list too, if not for NPR's rule that no author can be listed more than once.


• The Graces series – Laure Eve: Subtle, understated, razor sharp...it's a crime this series isn't better known.


• The Shades of London series – Maureen Johnson: With the caveat that it's been somewhat downhill from book 3 on.


• The Bone Key - Sarah Monette


• Under the Pendulum Sun - Jeanette Ng: This book blew me away and it is a crime it didn't make NPR's list.


• Clariel - Garth Nix: A return to excellent form for the Old Kingdom novels.


• The House on Vesper Sands - Paraic O'Donnell: The plot is fabulous. The characters are fabulous. The fantastic elements hit my Victorian Era ceremonial magic/spirituality sweet spot. And all of that before Inspector Cutter takes the stage.


• The Captive Prince trilogy – C. S. Pacat: Nope, this would never make NPR's list, but here it is on mine.


• I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett


• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley: Definitely one of the best fantasy novels of the past decade. Definitely not for the demographic NPR's list targets.


• Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders: Runner-up to Crowley's Ka for the book that should have replaced Ishiguro on the list.


• The Greenhollow Duology – Emily Tesh: I love these books for their beautiful language and perfect fantasy imagery.


• Thick as Thieves - Megan Whalen Turner: Even as a standalone, this belongs on NPR's list.

So what did get any particular book onto NPR's list? These factors seemed to help:

• Being published by Tor. Fully 32 percent of all the books on NPR's list are from Tor. Orbit was a distant second, having published 14 percent of the books. Three other publishers each had 6 percent of the slots, and the rest, one.


• Having been a Tor giveaway, as 22 percent of the books on NPR's list were.


• Having a Hugo Award-winning author. Thirty-six percent of the authors on the list have done so: one of them five times, one 4 times, one 3 times, and eight 2 times.


• Having been a Kindle/Kobo/ereader deal: At least 22 percent of the books were available at some point in the past few years for $1.99 or less; the real number is probably higher.

And, because after all that, I can't very well not, here's my reading tally of NPR's original list:

KEY:
Read it and loved it.
Read it.
Read it and disliked it.
Own it but have not read it.

WORLDS TO GET LOST IN

- The Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie: On page one, Leckie drops readers into an unexplained setting with fundamentally unfamiliar cultural norms and leaves readers to either sink or swim with nary an As You Know, Bob in sight. I love it, I love it, I love it. (Own all three books.)

- The Dead Djinn Universe (series) by P. Djélì Clarke: Tor freebie.

- The Age of Madness Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie

- The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee

- The Expanse (series) by James S.A. Corey

- The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty: Disappointing, primarily due to its cast of informed-attribute characters who think, speak, and act like 21st century teenagers despite the awesome early modern alternate-fantasy Middle East setting, and a plot that runs on YA romance tropes. (Owned, read, and Little Free Library’ed the first book in hardback.)

- Teixcalaan (series) by Arkady Martine: Tor freebie.

- The Thessaly Trilogy by Jo Walton: Tor freebie.

- Shades of Magic Trilogy by V.E. Schwab: Tor freebie in 2019 or 2020, although I read it in 2015. My review from that time, in full: I finished it. The writing was mediocre at best and often simply bad. I have no desire to read the sequel. (Own in ebook)

- The Divine Cities Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett: I think I might like this, but try as I might, I have yet to push past the first chapter of City of Stairs. (Own all three books.)

- The Wormwood Trilogy by Tade Thompson


WORDS TO GET LOST IN

- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: Stunning. (Own in hardback.)

- Circe by Madeline Miller: A much quieter book than The Song of Achilles, that takes place on a personal versus epic scale. I really liked this one. (Own in hardback.)

- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

- The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories by Ken Liu

- Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik: I love certain scenes and chapters, but found it an uneven book overall. (Own in signed hardback.)

- Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

- Olondria (series) by Sofia Samatar

- Her Body And Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado: Some of the stories in this volume I can definitely leave, but when they’re good, they’re very, very good. “Especially Heinous” is a freaking tour de force. (Owned and Little Free Library’ed soft cover; own in ebook.)

- The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro: This was the first Ishiguro I ever read and I disliked it so intensely I will never read anything else by him. Plodding, self-indulgent pap. (Little Free Library’ed my hardback with alacrity.)

- Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente


WILL TAKE YOU ON A JOURNEY

- The Changeling by Victor Lavalle: I was very excited to read this, only for the Washington Post to spoil the big reveal in an unrelated article. ::stares daggers:: So now I’m sitting on it in the hopes I’ll forget enough about it to make it worth reading.

- Wayfarers (series) by Becky Chambers: I 100 percent agree with the novel’s values and 100 percent despised having them spoonfed to me. (Own and read the first book in ebook; Little Free Library’ed my hard copy.)

- Binti (series) by Nnedi Okorafor: I grew more disappointed with each book, largely due to Okorafor’s increased focus on giving Binti All The Powers instead of examining questions of identity and belonging. The multitude of typos didn’t help either. (Owned, read, and Little Free Library’ed all four novellas.)

- Lady Astronaut (series) by Mary Robinette Kowal: Tor freebie.

- Children of Time (duology) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

- Wayward Children (series) by Seanan McGuire Tor freebies. I liked the quadrant schema for magical worlds, but disliked everything else about Every Heart a Doorway’s superficial characters and shallow, inconsistent plot. (Own all the volumes; read Every Heart a Doorway.)

- The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson


WILL MESS WITH YOUR HEAD

- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James: Rapey.

- Southern Reach (series) by Jeff Vandermeer

- The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

- The Locked Tomb (series) by Tamsin Muir: I liked parts of Gideon a lot and the novel stuck with me for a long time after I finished it, even though I didn’t particularly like it as--or even think it was a--coherent whole. (Read Gideon the Ninth.)

- Remembrance of Earth's Past (series) by Cixin Liu: Tor freebie. I started The Three-Body Problem but the Cultural Revolultion material was too heavy for my state of mind. (Own all three books.)

- Machineries of Empire (series) by Yoon Ha Lee: I enjoyed the worldbuilding and concept of math-based magic, but found the characters genre-typically one-dimensional. (Own and read the first two volumes; will probably read the third at some point.)


WILL MESS WITH YOUR HEART

- The Broken Earth (series) by N.K. Jemisin: The flat characters and didactic worldbuilding left me cold. (Own the first volume in hard copy and ebook.)

- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

- The Poppy War Trilogy by R.F. Kuang

- The Masquerade (series) by Seth Dickinson: Tor freebie.

- An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

- The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson: I love this book. Complex characters, great plot, and beautiful narrative description. (Own in hardback.)

- American War by Omar El Akkad

- Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi: Tor freebie.

- On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu


WILL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD

- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: The Goblin Emperor is one of my Forever Books. (Own in hard copy and ebook.)

- Murderbot (series) by Martha Wells: Tor freebies. I enjoyed the settings, characters, and humor, but despite the author's informed-attributes insistence, there is nothing particularly “other” about Murderbot. (Own the first four Murderbot books in ebook; have read All Systems Red.)

- The Interdependency (series) by John Scalzi: Tor freebie.

- The Martian by Andy Weir: I believe readers actually voted this one onto the list.

- Sorcerer to the Crown/The True Queen by Zen Cho: These were fine airplane reads, but I'd hoped they’d be better than they were. I liked The True Queen much more than Sorcerer, so will continue checking out this author's subsequent books on the assumption that she'll keep improving. (Owned in hard copy and Little Free Library’ed after reading.)

これで以上です。

Comments

[flemmings]

Rivers of London started in 2011, may be why it's excluded from this list. Everyone raves about the audiobooks but they drove me up a wall within three minutes. The diction was so slow, and of course it wasn't how I hear Peter in my head, though I'll happily admit my Peter doubtless has totally the wrong London accent.

[lebateleur]

Any book that came out after the last NPR poll was eligible, and there are a few (The Martian and The Expanse) from 2011 on the current list.

That's interesting. I slogged through Midnight Madness and had no desire to continue on until I listened to the audiobook--it was the only offering in a "get-one free" trial I was remotely interested in--and it absolutely clicked for me in that format. It's very much an outlier for me; I vastly prefer reading books than listening to audiobooks.

[under_the_silk_tree]

The Imperial Radch Trilogy is one of my all time favorite series. Although I think the first book is my favorite, just because of how disorienting it was at first and of course because of the interactions between Berq and Seivarden were so good.

[lebateleur]

i definitely agree! But what I appreciated about the subsequent volumes is that they were each very different in scope and focus. I imagine the temptation to just rewrite the same book you had success with before must be very strong for authors, so kudos to Leckie for resisting that urge.

[lirazel]

which NPR could not believably have claimed had made the cut.)

Why wouldn't this have been believable?

- The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty:

I just could not get into the first book despite really liking the setting. You're the first person I've heard from who also wasn't crazy about it.

100 percent agree with the novel’s values and 100 percent despised having them spoonfed to me

Totally understandable. I like them well enough to read them for free from the library, but that kind of spoonfeeding is definitely enough to keep me from loving them.

liked the quadrant schema for magical worlds, but disliked everything else about Every Heart a Doorway’s superficial characters and shallow, inconsistent plot.

SAME. I think I gave that book one star. The title was the best thing about it.

[lebateleur]

Why wouldn't this have been believable?

So I looked at a whole bunch of stuff I didn't end up including in the post (there was a lot of procrastinating going on that day XD), and Klara would have been an outlier in all sorts of criteria that the other books share: publisher, publication date, Hugo award status, cross promotion, "also read" clouds on Amazon and LibraryThing, etc.

You're the first person I've heard from who also wasn't crazy about it.

I am glad I'm not alone! I liked the concept, and really liked the setting and worldbuilding...which was why I was so disappointed by the superficial characters. In fact, I would have liked it a lot better had it been a modern fantasy. But when novels are set in historical or imaginary settings, I really want to the characters to think and act accordingly, because much of the appeal for me is seeing how people deal with the same problems in period- or setting-specific ways.

I like them well enough to read them for free from the library

I probably should have gone this route, but these came strongly recommended on the strength of The Imperial Radch and other favorite series in common, so I was expecting more overarching plot and subtlety (or maybe trust?) that readers will suss out the implications of what's happening for themselves.

SAME. I think I gave that book one star. The title was the best thing about it.

Ahaha, THANK YOU. I really tried to like it given that many people do, but it was just Not For Me. (The thing that moved me the most about EHaD was thinking about the confusion and heartache Nancy's parents must have felt suddenly losing their daughter, and I'm pretty sure that was not that takeaway McGuire intended readers to have.)

[lirazel]

That's really interesting! But it kind of makes me sad that outliers wouldn't be included.

because much of the appeal for me is seeing how people deal with the same problems in period- or setting-specific ways.

Ooh, I've never thought about it quite that explicitly, but I totally agree.

The thing that moved me the most about EHaD was thinking about the confusion and heartache Nancy's parents must have felt suddenly losing their daughter, and I'm pretty sure that was not that takeaway McGuire intended readers to have.

Probably not, but I'm the same way!