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