Favorite Reads 2019

And so here are my favorite reads from this past year. As usual very few of these books are recent books. Some like the Westlake and the Pohl I’d been meaning to read for years. One delight from the past year was reading Tanith Lee. I wish I had gotten to read her work sooner. One thing I didn’t read much of this past year was non-fiction. Maybe only two or three other books beside the Machiavelli one listed below.

The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake 

The first of Westlake’s novels featuring his jinxed crook protagonist Dortmunder. This is a great fun heist novel where a simple jewel heist turns into something so much more complicated. Westlake writes a world that bends not simply crooked but cussed.

The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot

A thriller novel about a doctor and his family who become drawn into the vampire subculture of Victorian Europe. It’s a mess of breakneck events, that is a lot more entertaining than it needs to be.

The Compleat Guth Bandar by Matthew Hughes

I am susceptible to the occasional Jack Vance itch

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

Chambers might be my favorite for writing mac&cheese comfort food science fiction.

The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall

Hallucinatory secondary world adventure fiction that’s like a Spaghetti Western version of the Planescape setting.

Gateway by Frederick Pohl

A classic of 1970s science fiction that digs into the grot and grit of fabulous technology. Humans discover a cache of alien ships and the desperate start piloting them around the galaxy at much risk to life and limb.

Embers by Sandor Marai

A tense little book about two old man confronting their past relationship and the dark secret that binds them. One of those books that’s basically about two people eating dinner atop a roiling sea of subtext and back story.

Gates of Ivriel by CJ Cherryh

Eternal champion style immortal swords woman awakens from her eternal sleep and throws the world in turmoil as she attempts to complete the mission that brought her to the world in the first place. Told from the perspective of the eternal sword woman’s companion, a barbarian warrior bound to the woman by a debt of honor.

Faces Under Water by Tanith Lee 

An alternate renaissance Venice full of intrigue, alchemy, and a good bit of skullduggery as a scholar discovers a cursed mask beneath a mysterious woman’s window one night. Gets downright hallucinatory by the end.

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World by Erica Benner

An oddly uplifting book about a republic in crisis due to the overweening pride and arrogance of a few men, and the dedicated man of principle who must walk a narrow path through the era. Hard to say why I loved this book, but I pretty much recommended it to everyone I knew at some point.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

The kingdom of Iraden houses many secrets as Eolo the warrior discovers as they assist their friend in reclaiming his position as the Raven’s Lease. Interesting world building here in part constrained in focus and scope to all the plot occurring in one location.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Straight forward fantasy novel about a group of adventurers tasked with stealing an artifact to aid a kingdom. This earns its spot here by its attention to detail and the depth it goes in developing its small cast of characters and slim plot.