December Site Update and 2022 Reading Year in Review

December's reviews have been archived and cross-linked at the main Brightdreamer Books site.

And, once again, another year ends, which means it's once again time for a Reading Year in Review post.

January started on a decent note, as I wrapped up reading Seanan McGuire's excellent Ghost Roads trilogy with Angel of the Overpass. Other highlights of the month were Nicole Glover's postbellum historical fiction/fantasy/murder mystery The Conductors, John David Anderson's imaginative take on wishes and the fairies who grant them in Granted, and Joe Hill's short story collection Full Throttle. The top book of the month turned out to be Leigh Bardugo's dark fantasy heist novel Six of Crows, a marked improvement over her Shadow and Bone (and incentive to some day go back and finish off the first Grishaverse trilogy; to be honest, I mostly gave Crows a try because Kaz's crew was retconned into the Netflix show and they were my favorite parts). It was also a month with some disappointments; Penric's Demon is the second swing-and-miss for the much-vaunted author Lois McMaster Bujold, enough for me to decide I just plain do not get her appeal and never will (though I've read worse), and Matt Wallace's Envy of Angels, a culinary romp through forbidden foods at a catering company with decidedly unusual clientele, left me with no appetite for further courses.

I kicked off February with Terry Pratchett's standalone tale Nation, a solid enough start in a month that would include several highlights: Christopher Buehlman's darkly humorous fantasy The Blacktongue Thief, Nghi Vo's The Empress of Salt and Fortune in the Singing Hills Cycle, and the conclusion to Leigh Bardugo's excellent Six of Crows duology, Crooked Kingdom. Seanan McGuire continued her impressive Wayward Children series with Where the Drowned Girls Go, and Catherynne M. Valente presented a dystopian nightmare twist on a familiar creation tale in Comfort Me With Apples. Another surprise delight was the audiobook presentation of Brent "Lt. Commander Data" Spiner's Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir ("inspired by true events"), a tale elevated by his narration and cameos from fellow Star Trek: The Next Generation cast members. I also greatly enjoyed Gary Paulsen's autobiographical Gone to the Woods, read after the iconic author's passing. There were a few lowlights, of course, but more in the "meh" category than actively aggravating.

March brought some memorable titles, including Brian McClellan's French Revolution-inspired flintlock fantasy Promise of Blood, the Expanse novella collection (and final print entry in the franchise) Memory's Legion by James S. A. Corey, and the surprisingly enjoyable fairy tale/space opera mashup How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason. Adrian Tchaikovsky impressed with his flintlock fantasy examination of war in Guns of the Dawn, while Marie Brennan wrapped her five-book series of the lady dragon scientist Lady Trent in Within the Sanctuary of Wings. I also was unexpectedly impressed by the middle-grade ghost tale The In-Between and enjoyed the thrillers Alone (Megan E. Freeman) and The Girl in the Well is Me (Karen Rivers). I even found time for a fun little picture book at work, Tara Lazar's 7 Ate 9, and finally got around to Stephen King's classic The Shining. As a counterpoint to that title, the month's clear low point was another hotel-based tale of suspense, Shari Lapena's An Unwanted Guest, a story so generic and bland that I found myself forgetting it even before I'd finished.

I got quite a lot of reading (and listening, though audiobooks count as reading) done in April, starting with the graphic novel/picture book Captain Raptor and the Space Pirates by Kevin O'Malley and Patrick O'Brian and ending with the dark near-future vampire tale Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Highlights in between included Darcie Little Badger's indigenous-inspired tale Elatsoe, Adrian Tchaikovsky's space opera Shards of Earth, and Rebecca Coffindaffer's lively space adventure, the Crownchasers duology. I was disappointed by Charles Martin's tale of wilderness survival and broken hearts, The Mountain Between Us, though, and thought a few - such as Margarita Montimore's time travel tale Oona Out of Order and Karen Mascarenhas's The Psychology of Time Travel - could've done more with their promising setups.

May started with an audiobook version of the classic Beowulf, translated by Stephen Mitchell, and also Italo Calvino's parody of medieval chivalry (and numerous other topics) The Nonexistent Knight. Katherine Applegate impressed me yet again with her story of ecological imbalance and a young outcast finding her voice in Willodeen, and Martha Wells's memorable SecUnit Murderbot returned in Network Effect. Unfortunately, despite the potential in the premise, Rachel Bach failed to impress me with her space adventure Fortune's Pawn, and after initial interest the final parts of Natalie Zina Walschots's deconstruction of superheroes and villains, Hench, left me cold and more than a little repelled.

June was my most prolific month, with fifteen reviews posted. From classics including Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and Other Stories, John W. Campbell Jr.'s horror classic Who Goes There?, and E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops to near-new titles like A. Deborah Baker's Along the Saltwise Sea (second in the delightful Up-and-Under series) and the children's urban fantasy tale Dragons in a Bag by Zetta Elliott, I managed a range of tales and ratings. Top titles included Zeno Alexander's middle-grade tale of a fantastical library under attack from all too real threats in the Library of Ever duology, Jessie Mihalik's somewhat predictable but still enjoyable space adventure/romance Hunt the Stars, and the finale of Jeff Lemire's Descender/Ascender graphic novel series in Ascender Volume 4: Star Seed. Despite enjoying the first installment of Sarah Beth Durst's Queens of Renthia series in Queen of Blood, I was disappointed in the sequel, The Reluctant Queen, enough that I don't see myself continuing. I also mostly enjoyed Rainbow Rowell's first entry in her fantasy/queer romance Simon Snow series, Carry On, a deconstruction of Harry Potter-style hidden world fantasies, yet find myself on the fence as to whether I'm interested enough in the world or characters to read on; it felt more like a self-aware deconstruction than a world and characters in which to become invested for their own sakes, if that makes any sense.

Though July was one of my less impressive months in terms of numbers, there were no outright clunkers among them. I was very pleasantly surprised, impressed, and absorbed by Robert Jackson Bennett's City of Stairs, I book I never would've picked up on my own had it not been part of a "mystery box" online offer. Stephen King also kept me interested in the non-genre Billy Summers, and I enjoyed Mishell Baker's Borderline, an urban fantasy romance steeped in Los Angeles film culture, more than I expected. I even wrapped up K. Eason's excellent Thorne Chronicles duology with How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge. (I also discovered the first of a follow-up duology or series at a bookstore, Nightwatch on the Hinterlands, but unfortunately haven't gotten to it in the To Be Read pile yet...)

August wasn't too bad, but it had a nadir in S. Kaeth's dragon story Windward; despite some very interesting ideas about dragon culture and the role humans might play in their world, I just could not connect at all with the characters or their motivations, which kept me from enjoying it. Top reads of the month were Elizabeth Bonesteel's space story The Cold Between and Angeline Boulley's contemporary thriller Firekeeper's Daughter. I checked another classic off with John Milton's poetic take on the Biblical fall of Satan and man in Paradise Lost, and got to a more recent classic in The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub, as well as Robert Silverberg's retelling of perhaps the oldest known epic in Gilgamesh the King. C. L. Polk impressed me with Witchmark, but I felt let down by Stephen Brust's Good Guys, especially given how I've enjoyed other titles of his.

September kicked off with an imaginative young adult tale of flying ships and dragon hunters in Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies, and ended with the excellent, if intense, fantasy slant on Chinese history in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun. Between were a few older titles, such as Ursula K. Le Guin's first entry in her lauded Hainish Cycle, Rocannon's World, Theodore Taylor's tale of island survival and overcoming prejudice in The Cay, and the classic short stories collected by BBC Audio's Great Classic Science Fiction, some of which aged better than others. I wrapped up (at least for the time being) two series with Peter Brown's The Wild Robot Escapes and Nicholas Eames's Bloody Rose. Elizabeth Acevedo's free verse prose in Clap When You Land translated decently to audiobook, though I found myself let down after high hopes in Vivian Shaw's tale of contemporary monster medicine in London, Strange Practice.

I opened October with an audiobook version of Neil Gaiman's short story (and poetry) collection, Fragile Things, which mostly impressed. (As a side note, while listening to this at work, at home I was wrapping up Netflix's silly little animated musical confection Centaurworld, where one character's theme song is also titled "Fragile Things". This made for some truly bizarre juxtapositions of moods and mental images and earworms, I can tell you that much... and, dang it, just writing this up brought back some earworms from that show...) Another classic got checked off with Bram Stoker's somewhat lackluster tale of Egyptian curses and English grave robbers, The Jewel of Seven Stars. Christopher Buehlman made two impressive appearances this month, with the post-World War I tale of a cursed Southern town in Those Across the River and a gruesome yet absorbing story of France's plague years as the backdrop for Lucifer's army rising up against Heaven and an indifferent or absent God in Between Two Fires. Adrian Tchaikovsky managed the difficult task of making me interested in spider protagonists in Children of Time (more interested than in the human characters, honestly), while Alix E. Harrow excellently deconstructed the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale in A Spindle Splintered. The recent Netflix adaptation prompted me to take another crack at Neil Gaiman's classic graphic novel series with The Sandman Volume 2, but alas I still just do not seem to click with these, for all that I mostly enjoyed the show and keep feeling that, given their themes and mythic roots and impressive artwork and such, I really should enjoy them. (I think I liked the show better because it reworked some of the things that kept me from being absorbed in the comics, such as the heavy tie-ins to the greater DC hero universe that act as gatekeeping against casual engagement and constantly remind me why I don't read more "big name" comics. One of the coldest shoulders I ever got was one time I went to a comic book store just to see if anything caught my eye, a dark-side-of-Pluto-level silence and stares from the small clump of customers and employees at the counter that as good as pushed me back out the door without a penny spent. Which is yet another reason why I only read comics via hoopla and my library's online offerings these days... but I digress.) The true lowlight of the month, though, was the thrill-less "thriller" The Stranger in the Mirror by Liv Constantine.

November started with another clunker, Emily Henry's When the Sky Fell on Splendor, which started out like a solid early-season X-Files episode in a small town and ended like... a late, post-shark-jump show that may or may not have ever been tangentially related to The X-Files (so, basically, a late-season episode of The X-Files). When Ruby Dixon's shamelessly smutty sci-fi romp Ice Planet Barbarians produced stronger characters and a better overall story, that says a lot... Yet another classic turned out to be not quite my cup of cocoa (not helped by aging around the edges and all-around preachiness), Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. The month's clear highlight was Catherynne M. Valente's middle-grade fantasy adventure, Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods. I also got a kick out of The Poodle of Doom, by Susan Tan, an impulse read at work.

December was an unproductive month, especially on the reading front, due to holidays and due to various weather-related work outages (since a good chunk of my reviews come from audiobooks listened to at work; it's much harder to get alone time at home to listen... or read, too much of the time). I had high hopes for the space elevator-themed sci-fi/action tale The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough in December, but was left disappointed. I had a better experience with Charles Portis's classic story of revenge in the Old West, True Grit, though I remain among the few on the planet who still hasn't gotten around to watching any film adaptation. Ed Greenwood's old-school fantasy adventure The Kingless Land earned marks for wholeheartedly embracing what it was, though at some point I couldn't help expecting something more out of it (and that whole weird obsession with naked women and snakes...). Popular novelist Nevada Barr's Track of the Cat, first of the national parks and wilderness themed Anna Pigeon murder mystery series, was decently entertaining, though I'm not sure I'll seek out more titles any time soon. J. S. Dewes's The Last Watch kept me entertained with its action-filled story of a ragtag crew of misfit soldiers at the literal edge of the universe... a universe that is suddenly contracting at an alarming rate, just as ancient enemies of humanity have re-emerged to throw civilization into disarray. I finished off the month, and the year, with the highly enjoyable and thought-provoking How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur, creator of the TV series The Good Place (a favorite of mine), which explores ethics and morality and why we should really be thinking more about both.

And there it is, a quick (and admittedly not exhaustive) rundown of my reading year. 2022 could've easily been worse, but I'd be lying if I said it was a great time in general. Hopefully, 2023 is a better year in more ways than just reading (though right now I'd settle for no more expensive surprises, especially car-related ones...).