Kalanadi

This is the long, long awaited companion to The Goblin Emperor and I adored it. I did a whole review of this where I talked about it in relation to The Goblin Emperor and how I think it is very different, but still just as satisfying.

As much as I adored this book and I really wanted to talk about how it was similar but also different from A Memory Called Empire which is one of my favorite books of all time.

This is the long, long awaited companion to The Goblin Emperor and I adored it. I did a whole review of this where I talked about it in relation to The Goblin Emperor and how I think it is very different, but still just as satisfying and I'm so, so happy that there's already a sequel announced for it. This was another one that was a very emotional story, very touching and one that gave me all the feels and I felt so comfortable while reading and I think that says so much about last year, basically.

I feel like it's the kind of story that a lot of people really, really need to hear. , it was touching, it was satisfying. It was really good historical fiction and I loved it.

Nezhukumatathil is a poet and these little essays on things that she found beautiful or noteworthy in nature, they read like prose poetry in many places. I was so impressed. I loved this.

I'm so glad that I picked up this series and stuck with it because it started out as just kind of sweet, almost too saccharine and I wasn't sure if it was going to be super original and then with every volume, it has gotten more and more interesting. I am so engrossed in it now and it's just been one of those bright spots that I look forward to. By far, probably the most beautiful thing that I read this past year.

It is also surprisingly some really beautiful nature writing and that's one that I really appreciate about this book is that while it very much teaches about nature and how things can change and heal and surprise us, it's it's also like viewing some of the devastation and also the beauty in some of these places and the eeriness of some of these places. It was a really, really fascinating read. I read this, I think back in November, so it hasn't been that long ago and I think it will take a while for me to know how long this one is actually going to stick with me, but it made such an impression on me while I was reading it.

This is, in my opinion, the best thing I've ever read by Zen Cho. I haven't read all of her work before, but this was such a good novel, such a good standalone and I was impressed by pretty much every aspect of it. It was such a satisfying story and I loved getting so into this different mythology and culture in the setting in Malaysia and everything.

So this is a fantastic book that really dives into how textiles drove innovation in technology just in general. We tend to think of textiles as just sort of this industrial thing on the side these days but the fact is that it was pretty much a foundation of all civilizations until very recently and I loved how Postrel framed this rather than just diving into individual types of textiles and like the civilization that they're most highly associated with like linen and Egypt and silk and China and wool in England.

I've never been disappointed by any of the Graceling books they've always been so good and to get another one after such a long wait after Bitterblue I was super excited about this and I loved the book. Maybe I had some reservations about one of the characters who I thought was a little bit unlikeable but I feel like these books always have something good to say a message and something that I take to heart and Winterkeep was no exception.

So I obviously really enjoyed it and I had to put it on this list of favorites because I keep thinking about it throughout the year. I read it twice this past year and I want to read it again and again. It's not the most amazing thing but I think as you might tell from a lot of the books that are coming up on this list it was a year of reading things that made me feel good and that's exactly what this book did.

This is a book that I found initially kind of slow and challenging to get into and it turned into a really interesting experience where I felt like I love the story I love this world this alternate history. This is the kind of science fiction I love but I was like interrogating my own experience reacting to the main character throughout the whole story cuz I tend to find this main character unlikeable but this was such a good example of a book where the unlikeable character makes it more interesting in a way. Anyway I'm always going to love the Lady Astronaut novels and this is another one where Kowal just knocked it out of the park.

So yes once more my kind of science fiction about linguistics and communication and interspecies communication and first contact and different states of consciousness. It's it's great. I love this cannot wait for more by Martine.

This is probably the biggest shocker on this list because this is mostly dark fantasy and horror and that is not my thing most of the time but this collection was just magnificent. Every story in this was so good even if even if a few of them weren't exactly to my taste they were interesting. They were well written like Isabel Yap knows how to work within the short story format and puts this little twist on everything.

I loved it. I mean I love Murderbot in just like investigative mode and complaining about humans while helping them. It's so good all the time. I just once again never disappointed by Murderbot.

I admit I was a bit surprised how much this one touched me. I wasn't really expecting that. I was expecting like IKEA style interdimensional portal hijinks and then I got this story which is very much about realizing one's identity and it was so good.

This book shaped a lot of how I viewed the science non-fiction that I read this year. There This was a discussion that I really needed to be exposed to and I kept thinking about it throughout the year and I'm so grateful that I read the book when I did. I needed to hear what this book had to say.

So, I loved it. I want so much more. I want many, many continuing adventures with the monk and the robot.

the first one ancestral night was also one of my favorite books of last year

this one was incredibly solid sometimes you just find a collection where almost every single story is really good this is one of those

it was really well written and i loved knowing more about pollock's life and her kind of reflections on her own art

this is another science fiction novel that i've done a review on and it's one of the most hard-hitting science fiction books i've read that was extremely relevant to the modern day

i loved the world building of this just so much care and attention to the details was put into this and it was just so cool the reason it didn't make my favorites list you know the thing that kind of cut it from that list is that while i enjoy the world building and a lot of the characters and relationships the plot has evaporated from my mind a little bit

the book of questions is the one that resonated the most with me for some reason it made me laugh out loud it also made me more emotional and contemplative