2013: Novels

And finally, the last few books from 2013.


Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Magnificat

What would happen if, following the death of the Pope, the Conclave met and somehow unanimously elected someone whose name they had never heard or seen before? Who was everything a Pope should never be - a middle-aged magistrate from communist China, an atheist, a woman? Yarbro imagines it, and it is quite wonderful to read.


Simon Clark, The Night of the Triffids

A quite enjoyable sequel/homage to Wyndham's classic The Day of the Triffids, which begins 30-odd years later among the human survivors on the Isle of Wight. The narrator and protagonist, David Mason (son of the narrator of the original novel) is a pilot who hopes to find evidence of other surviving colonies to unite in the face of increasing indications that the triffids are intelligent and have plans to destroy the remaining humans. In the course of his quest, Mason, like his father before him, is harshly reminded that triffids are not the only threats to the survival of humanity.


Ellen Galford, Queendom Come

Galford's satirical, feminist, woman-centred view of the world is in high form in this novel. Set in Scotland during Thatcher's Blue Reign, the narrative focuses on the sudden appearance of an ancient Caledonian war-queen, called upon, like Arthur, to return in the hour of her nation's greatest need, and the near immortal seer/sorceress who was the queen's counsellor centuries ago and has awaited her return. Funny as hell.


R. A. MacAvoy, The Third Eagle

MacAvoy is a brilliant fantasist, but this foray into space opera is, while pleasant reading, not among her masterpieces. The protagonist, Wanbli Elf Darter, a skilled member of a clan of bodyguard/assassins who traditionally serve the landed classes on the planet of Neunacht, leaves his people and culture behind to travel in space. After many picaresque adventures, he ends up on the "revivalist" ship Commitment, which is crewed by survivors of generation starships sent out centuries before. The crew of the Commitment have adopted a mission to hunt down other such sleeper ships drifting through space - whereupon they decant a few of the frozen people aboard. The rest they kill, because there is no place for them to go - the colonised planets won't accept them, and the Commitment can only take on enough to replace crew lost to injury, illness or old age. Wanbli, of course, finds an answer that allows the sleepers to live. Despite the grim situation of the sleepers, this novel is mostly light-hearted and fun.

2013: summary

Well, this is probably the latest i've been in finishing up the prior year's reading. i'll try to catch up faster this year.

In any event, hhere are my favourite reads of 2013, and the 2013 statistics.

Best Works I Read in 2013

Elizabeth Bear, In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns
Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons
N. K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms
N. K. Jemisin, Kingdom of the Gods
Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
Jack Womack, Random Acts of Senseless Violence
Johanna Sinisalo, Birdbrain
Jo Baker, Longbourn
A. S. Byatt, Possession
Drew Hayden Taylor, Fearless Warriors
Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage



In 2013, I read 185 books or novellas 161 fiction and 14 non-fiction; 12 of these were re-reads. A total of eight of these were anthologies, and so have been excluded from the demographic analysis of authorship.

By gender:
Books written by women: 86.9%
Books written by men: 14.1%
One book was written by multiple authors, male and female.

By nationality:
American: 52.2%
British: 31.8%
Canadian: 10.2%
Other: 5.1%

Books by writers of colour: 12.9%

We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling

Brit Mandelo's momgraph, We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling, is yet another of the wonderful volumes of feminist sf criticism and history published by one of my favourite small publishing houses, Aqueduct Press.

In this study, Mandelo examines what she sees as one of Russ' primary foci in both fiction and non-fiction - the telling of the truths that lie beneath, and are obscured by, the mystifications of sexism (and heterosexism), and by doing so, bringing those truths into everyday life.

It's hardly a secret to anyone who's followed this blog that Russ is one of my favourite wrtiers, both for her groundbreaking fiction and for her fierce and uncompromising feminist criticism (How To Suppress Women's Writing should be on the reading list of everyone who chooses to engage with the printed word/world). Mandelo's exploration of Russ's development as a radical truth teller deepened my appreciation and understandingof her work - and what more can one ask for in a work of criticism?