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