I read lots of great books this year, but have whittled it down to my favourite five. If you have any recommendations for books I should read in 2023, I’d love to hear them, so please drop me a note in the comments, and as always, don’t forget to sign up for future blog updates.
My top five reads from 2022, in no particular order…
Best space opera: A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Overflowing with wonderful characters, a charming love story, elegantly rendered intergalactic politics and some fascinating philosophical questions to boot, this is an exciting, glorious book and you should read it.
Best sci-fi: This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
I can’t stop recommending this to everyone who’ll listen. A heart-wrenching story of love, friendship, and solidarity, staged against an ideological cold war for the fate of the universe. I doubt you’ve read anything like it before and you should absolutely read it now.
Best historical fantasy: She Became The Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan
An epic story of human will, set in 1300’s China. The heroine is irresistible, the world achingly real and the story of a peasant monk’s mission to rewrite their own fate is and change the world is utterly captivating, you won’t be able to put it down.
Best speculative detective: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton
If you’re a sucker for a classic whodunnit and you’re down for some speculative genre-bending, you will absolutely adore this book. Everyone I know who’s read it has raved about it, so if you’re looking for something gripping and eminently readable, get ready to be charmed.
Best novella: Agua Viva, by Clarice Lispector
An absolute flying gut punch of a book. To say it’s a novella is slightly misleading, but I don’t know what else to call it. It’s an immersive experience in which you enter the current of another’s mind; a mind painfully astute, exquisitely poetic, and utterly consuming. Brace yourself, breathe deep and dive in.
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