Press "Enter" to skip to content

Novels You Should Have Read Since Chicon 7

Quick notes from the 1 PM Novels You Should Have Read Since Chicon 7 panel. Any errors are wholly mine. Panelists: Elizabeth Bear (moderator), Willie Siros, and Jess Nevins.

  • Any really outstanding books?
    • Siros: Sea Change, S. M. Wheeler
      • fairy tale fable, internal logic, compared to The Last Unicorn
    • Nevins: Brian Catling's The Vorrh
      • fantasy that avoids the usual fantasy tropes
    • Bear: Cassandra Rose Clark, The Mad Scientist's Daughter
      • SF, robot civil rights, riff on “Bicentennial Man”
      • issues of climate change, peak oil, global cultural change as background elements
  • Siros: Iain Banks, The Hydrogen Sonata
  • Nevins: Selvedin Avdic, Seven Terrors
    • Horror, post-war Bosnia
  • Bear: Toh EnJoe, The Self-Reference Engine
    • picaresque novel – vignettes revealing greater story
  • Siros: Shaman, Kim Stanley Robinson
    • In dealer's room – Larry Smith
  • Bear: The Drowning Girl
    • last year, but still good
  • Nevins: Nick Harkaway, Angelmaker
  • Siros: Peter Hamilton, The Great North Road
    • Tighter than other recent Hamilton
  • Bear: new Tales of the Beanworld hardcover, Larry Marder
    • makes a good entry point into the series
  • Nevins: Anna Tambour's Crandolin
    • medieval cookbook novel?
  • Bear: Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series
    • Good Man Friday
    • historical detective novels
  • Siros: Karen Joy Fowler: We Were Completely Beside Ourselves
    • mainstream/slipstream
  • Bear: American Elsewhere, Robert Jackson Bennett
    • weird small town with small things going on that add up to something bigger
    • Austin writer, writes books that are hard to summarize
  • Nevins: Lauren Beukes, Shining Girls
    • time travel, serial killer
  • Bear: Ian Tregillis has finished his Milkweed trilogy
    • Bitter Seeds, Coldest War, Necessary Evil
    • alternate WW2, Nazis create super soldiers and UK turns to necromancy
  • Siros: Neal Gaiman, Ocean At The End Of The Lane
  • Bear: Karen Lord, Best Of All Possible Worlds
    • planetary romance, not plot-driven, reminds Bear of Bradbury
    • “a very relaxing book”
  • Nevins: Koji Suzuki's Edge
    • quantum horror about California falling into the sea, Greg Egan-esque
  • Bear:
    • Seanan McGuire's cryptid books
      • lighthearted fun
    • Jim C. Hines Libriomancer and Codex Born
      • magicians who can pull things out of books they're written in
      • some books are locked off… the One Ring
  • Nevins: The Last Policeman, Ben Winters
    • policeman doing his job in a small town before the meteor hits
  • Nevins: Deb Taber, Necessary Ill
  • Siros: Devon Monk, Cold Steel and sequels
    • steampunk Wild West, brothers who are lycanthropes
  • Bear: Merrie Haskell's Handbook for Dragon Slayers, middle school
    • to write a handbook for dragon slayers, one must slay a dragon…
  • Bear: Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson
    • far future post-apocalyptic YA, set in Brazil
  • Siros: Brandon Sanderson, Rithmatist
    • math based magic, YA
  • Bear last thoughts:
    • Wesley Chu, The Lives of Tao
    • Ramez Naan, Nexus and Crux
    • The Incrementalists, Skyler White and Steven Brust
      • coming in September
    • Max Gladstone, Three Parts Dead
      • epic fantasy constructed like an urban fantasy which is a courtroom drama
  • Siros last thoughts:
    • Steven Gould, Impulse
      • next in Jumper series
    • The Thousand Names, Django Wexler
      • historical fantasy/alternate world
    • Evening's Empire, Paul McAuley
  • Nevins last thoughts:
    • Hannu Rajaniemi, The Fractal Prince
  • Audience
    • Mira Grant, Blackout (Newsflesh trilogy)
    • Lois McMaster Bujold, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
    • David Levithan, Every Day, YA
    • Daryl Gregory, Raising Stony Mayhall, YA zombie POV
    • James S. A. Corey, Abaddon's Gate, third in the Expanse series
    • Allen Steele, Apollo's Outcast, compared to Heinlein's juveniles
    • Anthology: Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, John Joseph Adams edited
    • Paul Cornell's London Falling, London urban fantasy verging on horror
    • Year Zero, Rob Reed, humor
    • The Golem And The Jinni, Helene Wecker, literary fiction set in 1899 NYC
    • The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, sequel to The Long Earth

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *