50. What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher
Crawling dread! Trans/nonbinary protagonists! Mushroom horror! An alt-history Poe retelling! All these things are my jam. Not sure if novel or novella but I don't think this story is hurt by brevity. Spooky, full of voice, absurdly readable.
49. Consider Phlebas, by Iain Banks
I know a lot of folk who consider this the roughest of the Culture novels, but that also holds a lot of charm for me. It's the Banks that feels to me the most like a classic adventure, while still retaining Banks's trademark depth and complexity of theme.
I still think it's the best. The fact that our first view of the Culture is from an outsider who hates them because they've given their lives over to machines? That says something
48. The Black Corridor, by Michael Moorcock
I've bounced off a lot of Moorcock's work but this one just HITS. Psychological paranoiac deep-space horror that leaves you feeling grimy and, in a few cases, genuinely shivering with fear. It packs an immense amount into a very short space.
47. Leech, by @hironennes.bsky.social
An incredibly unique setup---gothic post-apocalyptic hive-mind parasitic bio-horror---which soon became one of my fave novels on account of its vivid characterisation, intricate worldbuilding, and extremely tight prose. Lean, muscular, compelling.
46. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.
Hey, do you like grim explorations of 21st century feminism and surviving abusive relationships? Do you enjoy being emotionally devastated by some of the most beautiful prose ever printed? Do you like gore, gore, gore? I have a book for you.
45. Railsea, by China Mieville
This Moby Dick retelling is, imo, the purest fantasy of all of Mieville's work. The tightest story, the most compelling mystery, and one of the only times he's stuck the landing. Plus, the coolest (but most obvious, in retrospect) final reveal. I adore this book.
44. Hench, by Natalie Zina Walschots
POV: a temp worker in a world where superheroes (and villains) are part of the 9-5. When a data-entry position for a supervillain puts her in the sights of some very nasty heroes, she's forced to graduate from nobody to henchman. Clever, funny, gruesome as hell.
43. The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by @ajfitzwater.bsky.social
A little outside my usual dark fantasy/body horror wheelhouse, but as a childhood Redwall fan, adult-me absolutely loved this book. Earnest, heartfelt and hopeful without ever becoming saccharine. Made me want to be a pirate.
42. Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett
I love the Watch novels. The most traditionally plotty of Pratchett's catalogue but ALSO somehow the ones with the most character. Feet of Clay is peak police procedural but also a rumination on how we qualify humanity and how we oppress the voiceless. Top-tier.
41. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
Do you remember the first time you read Neuromancer? Like you'd been afforded a glimpse through a keyhole into a fully realised future and to understand it you needed to dissect, devour, inhale that amazing prose over and over? Yeah. The Mountain in the Sea.
40. Strange the Dreamer by @lainitaylor.bsky.social
I first read this book on my wedding night, so perhaps that's why it carries such potent memories of romance and empathy, of being transported, uplifted, swept away. Or maybe Laini's prose is just that damn good? Because it IS damn good.
39. The Good Soldiers, by David Finkel
Throwing in some non-fic for a change, The Good Soldiers is an embedded journalist's chronicle of the 2007 troop surge in Iraq. It's raw, honest, extremely unsympathetic, and covered the July 12 Apache Heli massacre a year before Chelsea Manning's leaks.
38. Children of Time by @aptshadow.bsky.social
I discovered my passion for scifi as a 6-7yo browsing my Dad's bookshelf: Clarke, Niven, Simak. CoT transported me in the same way as all those classic authors, but goes above and beyond in one critical area: humanity. It will make you love a spider.
37. The Gone-Away World, by @harkaway.bsky.social
I've recc'd a few books that I adore on account of their audacity, and TGAW is very audacious. It has Voice with a capital V. It sweeps you up, it digresses, it reveals knives hidden up sleeves. It's baffling until the moment it becomes revelatory.
Agree. It was a fantastic introduction to the author. Still, Angelmaker remains as my favourite. Give me badass Sapphic grandma any day! And the Elephant!
36. The Gulp by @alanbaxter.bsky.social
Of all Alan's work, this is the one that nestled into the fear centre of my brain most deeply. A very Aussie take on the cosmic horror "mysterious town where folk vanish and spore-people go bump in the night" trope. Genuinely scary stuff that I revisit often.
35. Pattern Recognition by @greatdismal.bsky.social
On the short list of books that changed the way I write and appreciate fiction:
The Book of the New Sun.
Blood Meridian.
The Forever War.
And, Pattern Recognition.
This book made me feel dislocated in time. Upended the way I see. I adore it.
34. The Dawnhounds by @understatesmen.bsky.social
A queer fantasy crime procedural where it turns out that all cops are, in fact, bastards. I love weird fungal fantasy (see my previous Vandermeer rec) so it's no surprise that The Dawnhounds hit all the right notes. One hell of a debut.
32. A Gentleman's Game (& sequels) by @gregrucka.com
Rucka is a firehose of exceptional storytelling-imho one of the best comic writers in the field-but I find myself returning to his Tara Chase thrillers over and over. I have literally forgotten to breathe once or twice while reading these books.
33. The Summer Hikaru Died by @mokmok-len.bsky.social
Let's mix it up with a manga! This small-town horror story is about a young man struggling to deal with the appearance of an eldritch critter that's taken the shape of his dead friend. Wonderful naturalistic dialogue, creepy as fuck, super queer.
31. Empress of Forever by @maxgladstone.bsky.social
If you enjoyed Some Desperate Glory, you'll also love Empress of Forever. Scifi with colossal scope and some truly outrageous approaches to structure and storytelling, but with a quiet, human center. It swung big and nailed the execution.
30. Flotsam, by RJ Theodore
A steampunky sci-fantasy swashbuckling mashup that balanced found-family shenanigans with pedal-to-the-metal piratical action. Rekka passed shortly after completing their Peridot Trilogy, and I'd love to see it find a new, wider audience.
29. The Jasmine Throne by @tashasuri.bsky.social
I was drawn in by the promise of fantasy politicking and gay shenanigans, but DAMN, this book blew me away in every department. The prose is sumptuous. The slow-burn relationship is perfectly paced. The reveals hit HARD. And the sequel! My god!
28. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
Choosing a fave Chambers between this and A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is tough, but I feel ACACO's tighter focus on the relationship between a lost and suffering child and a bewildered but loving AI juuust wins out. Beautiful and heartbreaking.
27. The Book of Accidents by @chuckwendig.bsky.social
Wendig always manages to take huge concepts that could feel ponderous and instead tune them into something super-tight and propulsive. The Book of Accidents is a horror novel the size of a Honda minivan but I demolished it in two nights.
Easily one of my favorite stories in a long time. I loved the balance between the heartfelt and the creepy. Characters that I loved and wanted to win and others that I hated and wanted to pay.
I find it very hard to sum up how this and Black River Orchard hit me. They read like memories of classics that you've built up in your mind for years but they're *already like that on the page*
Same, inhaled it. Shades of both Joe Hill and Lauren Beukes to it, ranging across lifetimes, but it was so easy to get lost in and read in one great rush.
Okay, it's a new day. Let's keep going.
26. Norylska Groans by @cw-snyder.com and Michael Fletcher. Hardboiled grimdark noir in the bleakest, most miserable Russian-inspired shithole of a city, with a workplace memory-swapping twist that beat Severance out of the gates. Nasty, brutish, compelling.
25. The Fealty of Monsters by @ladzwriting.bsky.social
I am paying this queer-political-vampire-dark-fantasy the highest of compliments when I say I have NEVER been pushed this far out of my comfort zone while remaining so totally enthralled. Ladz only gets better with every release.
24. Repo Virtual by @cjwhite.bsky.social
A cyberpunk novel where the cyberpunkiness felt like a true response to the state of the world in 2020, as opposed to reflexively imitating the classics. An age-old setup - let's go steal an AI! - turns out to only be the first act in a wild, breakneck ride.
23. The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson
This book could've been a fun little "party of misfits on a mission in a fantasy wilderness" but instead decided to outdo Gene Wolfe at his own game & married layer upon layer of surrealist storytelling to deep character work. I was transfixed.
22. Aching God, by @mikeshel.bsky.social
Do you remember when Puella Magi Madoka Magica asked, "What if being a cutesy anime magical girl actually sucked and left everyone with crushing PTSD?" and we all said "This is genius!" The Aching God is that, but for D&D dungeon crawling. It's brilliant.
21. Ship of Magic (and the whole Liveship Trilogy) by @robinhobb.bsky.social
Yes I KNOW all of you go wild for Fitz and the Fool (I do too!) but I will maintain until my dying breath that the Liveship trilogy has some of the greatest character work in the entire fantasy pantheon. It's spectacular.
20. The Light Brigade by @kameronhurley.bsky.social
A true successor---not a loving imitation or homage, but a brazen, no-holds-barred leap over and beyond---the classic military scifi I grew up on. Much like Some Desperate Glory, this book does some audacious stuff I didn't think possible in prose.
19. Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
Conspiracies, mysteries, bleakness, all set in a strange city governed by the power of language. Much like Vandermeer and Mieville, this book got deeply surreal but also deeply engaging. I think it rewrote sections of my brain.
18. A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki, translated by
@zackdavisson.com
This colossal manga series is half an intensive dive into the social, political, economic and military history of Japan throughout the 20th century, and half whimsical, endearing, gut-wrenching autobio. Essential reading.
17. No Gods, No Monsters by @cadwellturnbull.bsky.social was sold to me as an urban fantasy that dove into the social & political ramifications of a paranormal/monstrous community being outed but what it ACTUALLY was was 300+ pages of having my heart torn from my chest and stamped into the pavement.
16. Between Dragons And Their Wrath by @devinmadson.bsky.social
Devin is a master of that magical balancing act between complexity and devourability. BDATW heaps on the worldbuilding, piles character intrigue up to the ceiling, but never overwhelms. The sort of moreish fantasy I wish I could write.
It's *so fucking good*. And then to slip in a metafictional little game with (x) warning (clueless colonial y) that not everyone is owed every part of every story and then withholding key story beats from the reader? Chef's kiss.
(also feels very much a piece of fiction v much influenced by our part of the world; I hope these beats will come through to everyone but I can say they definitely are legible from across the Tasman!)
15. Cryptonomicon, by @nealstephenson.bsky.social
Snow Crash was my first Stephenson but Cryptonomicon is the book I return to most often. How can a historical thriller still feel so prescient, so... now? How can a bunch of nerds chasing sunken treasure be so laugh-out-loud funny?
14. She Who Became the Sun by @shelleyparkerchan.bsky.social
Oh look, Ruz enjoyed another military/historical fantasy with a heaping of political intrigue, what a surprise.
Yes, but also, SWBTS is pure poetry. The prose in this novel could nurture me through a drought. Gorgeous stuff.
Plus, fisting.
my favorite part is that this book appeals to at LEAST two separate crowds. Number 1 is "oh wow, political historical military events what FUN" and number 2 will inevitably get recruited by DID YOU KNOW THAT FISTING---
13. Between Two Fires by @buehlmeister.bsky.social
While I adore Buehlman's latest books (Blacktongue Thief & Daughter's War) this is the one I keep finding myself drawn back to. Historical horror/fantasy that is DARK, like DARK DARK, like I AM PHYSICALLY TERRIFIED OF SOME PARTS OF THIS BOOK DARK.
12. Savage Legion by Matt Wallace
You might've noticed a theme in this thread. Stories that marry high-octane fantasy warfare and anti-colonialist rebellion with clever politicking tickle me juuuuust right, and @mattfnwallace.bsky.social's Savage Legion trilogy was a killer example of the genre.
11. The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez.
I mean, wow. The scope of this book. Storytelling within storytelling within storytelling. The grandeur of an epic legend passed down through oral tradition married to the closeness and intimacy of a modern love story. Exceptional.
10. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.
I've read most of PKDs catalogue and this is the one that always stuck with me. Accessible but not shallow, confusing but never vague or unintentional, very very dark but also not without hope. I re-read it every few years and marvel.
9. The Unbroken by @clclark.bsky.social is peak fantasy. Putting aside the (well deserved) fawning over Touraine's arms, this book captures the turmoil of being drawn into a simmering revolution where everybody's motivations are obscured and ethical lines will need to be a) drawn and b) shattered.
8. A Little Hatred, by @joeabercrombie.bsky.social
I adored Joe's First Law trilogy, but his follow-ups reach even greater heights. A Little Hatred is one of those rare fantasy gems that manages to fuse rip-roaring adventure and sociopolitical commentary without a single stumble. Exceptional.
7. 20th Century Ghosts by @joe-hill.bsky.social
This is, with zero exaggeration, one of the greatest collections I've ever read. It says horror on the box but swings between pure scares, dreamlike surrealism and character-centric heartbreakers. This book revitalised my love of short-form fiction.
6. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Another one of those books that made me stop and go, ah, yes, the incredible potential of language. Poetry and power from the first page to the last.
5. Some Desperate Glory by @emilytesh.net
It's difficult to explain just how audacious this novel is without giving the game away. I walked into it expecting an action-packed space opera and yes, I got that, but I also left with my head spinning and my heart torn out. It deserves all the awards.
Without ever feeling arbitrary or forced. *And* utterly unlike her fantasy duology, which I also loved. An almost infuriating amount of talent, if she wasn’t so personable as well.
I dunno if you saw the movie Central Intelligence with the Rock and Kevin Hart - it was fine, don’t rush out if you haven’t - but there is a scene where Hart’s character asks Dwayne’s how he got so ripped and anyway I think about that whenever I get jealous of someone’s talent.
It broke me. It was so good that on finishing it, I had to look up the poem that inspired the title. And then *that* broke me. A great novel, with a very apt title.
4. City of Saints & Madmen, by @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This was one of those books that made me re-evaluate the power and potential of the written word. Endlessly inventive and packed with moments that kept me rolling around in bed like a rotisserie chicken long after lights out.
3. How High We Go In The Dark, by @sequoian.bsky.social. This collection of pre, mid and post-climate collapse stories was a masterclass in prose. I have never cried as hard over a book as I did here. This is one of those titles I put back on my shelf when it was done and thought, *perfect*.
The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree by @sahuntbooks.com (and the excellent sequels) was one of the first books I'd read since The Gunslinger that truly transported me. Stripped back prose takes you on a journey through a violent, psychedelic portal fantasy leagues above anything else in the genre.
1. Jade City by @fondalee.bsky.social is peerless. A sprawling multigenerational epic crime fantasy so compelling that I was only halfway through the first book when I drove back to the store to get the sequels (which were just as good, if not better). I still wake up thinking about this book.
Comments
Crawling dread! Trans/nonbinary protagonists! Mushroom horror! An alt-history Poe retelling! All these things are my jam. Not sure if novel or novella but I don't think this story is hurt by brevity. Spooky, full of voice, absurdly readable.
I know a lot of folk who consider this the roughest of the Culture novels, but that also holds a lot of charm for me. It's the Banks that feels to me the most like a classic adventure, while still retaining Banks's trademark depth and complexity of theme.
I've bounced off a lot of Moorcock's work but this one just HITS. Psychological paranoiac deep-space horror that leaves you feeling grimy and, in a few cases, genuinely shivering with fear. It packs an immense amount into a very short space.
An incredibly unique setup---gothic post-apocalyptic hive-mind parasitic bio-horror---which soon became one of my fave novels on account of its vivid characterisation, intricate worldbuilding, and extremely tight prose. Lean, muscular, compelling.
Hey, do you like grim explorations of 21st century feminism and surviving abusive relationships? Do you enjoy being emotionally devastated by some of the most beautiful prose ever printed? Do you like gore, gore, gore? I have a book for you.
This Moby Dick retelling is, imo, the purest fantasy of all of Mieville's work. The tightest story, the most compelling mystery, and one of the only times he's stuck the landing. Plus, the coolest (but most obvious, in retrospect) final reveal. I adore this book.
POV: a temp worker in a world where superheroes (and villains) are part of the 9-5. When a data-entry position for a supervillain puts her in the sights of some very nasty heroes, she's forced to graduate from nobody to henchman. Clever, funny, gruesome as hell.
A little outside my usual dark fantasy/body horror wheelhouse, but as a childhood Redwall fan, adult-me absolutely loved this book. Earnest, heartfelt and hopeful without ever becoming saccharine. Made me want to be a pirate.
I love the Watch novels. The most traditionally plotty of Pratchett's catalogue but ALSO somehow the ones with the most character. Feet of Clay is peak police procedural but also a rumination on how we qualify humanity and how we oppress the voiceless. Top-tier.
Do you remember the first time you read Neuromancer? Like you'd been afforded a glimpse through a keyhole into a fully realised future and to understand it you needed to dissect, devour, inhale that amazing prose over and over? Yeah. The Mountain in the Sea.
I first read this book on my wedding night, so perhaps that's why it carries such potent memories of romance and empathy, of being transported, uplifted, swept away. Or maybe Laini's prose is just that damn good? Because it IS damn good.
Throwing in some non-fic for a change, The Good Soldiers is an embedded journalist's chronicle of the 2007 troop surge in Iraq. It's raw, honest, extremely unsympathetic, and covered the July 12 Apache Heli massacre a year before Chelsea Manning's leaks.
I discovered my passion for scifi as a 6-7yo browsing my Dad's bookshelf: Clarke, Niven, Simak. CoT transported me in the same way as all those classic authors, but goes above and beyond in one critical area: humanity. It will make you love a spider.
I've recc'd a few books that I adore on account of their audacity, and TGAW is very audacious. It has Voice with a capital V. It sweeps you up, it digresses, it reveals knives hidden up sleeves. It's baffling until the moment it becomes revelatory.
Might be time for a reread.
Of all Alan's work, this is the one that nestled into the fear centre of my brain most deeply. A very Aussie take on the cosmic horror "mysterious town where folk vanish and spore-people go bump in the night" trope. Genuinely scary stuff that I revisit often.
On the short list of books that changed the way I write and appreciate fiction:
The Book of the New Sun.
Blood Meridian.
The Forever War.
And, Pattern Recognition.
This book made me feel dislocated in time. Upended the way I see. I adore it.
A queer fantasy crime procedural where it turns out that all cops are, in fact, bastards. I love weird fungal fantasy (see my previous Vandermeer rec) so it's no surprise that The Dawnhounds hit all the right notes. One hell of a debut.
Rucka is a firehose of exceptional storytelling-imho one of the best comic writers in the field-but I find myself returning to his Tara Chase thrillers over and over. I have literally forgotten to breathe once or twice while reading these books.
Let's mix it up with a manga! This small-town horror story is about a young man struggling to deal with the appearance of an eldritch critter that's taken the shape of his dead friend. Wonderful naturalistic dialogue, creepy as fuck, super queer.
If you enjoyed Some Desperate Glory, you'll also love Empress of Forever. Scifi with colossal scope and some truly outrageous approaches to structure and storytelling, but with a quiet, human center. It swung big and nailed the execution.
A steampunky sci-fantasy swashbuckling mashup that balanced found-family shenanigans with pedal-to-the-metal piratical action. Rekka passed shortly after completing their Peridot Trilogy, and I'd love to see it find a new, wider audience.
https://www.amazon.com/Flotsam-Book-One-Peridot-Shift-ebook/dp/B09MSXJ3ND
I was drawn in by the promise of fantasy politicking and gay shenanigans, but DAMN, this book blew me away in every department. The prose is sumptuous. The slow-burn relationship is perfectly paced. The reveals hit HARD. And the sequel! My god!
Choosing a fave Chambers between this and A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is tough, but I feel ACACO's tighter focus on the relationship between a lost and suffering child and a bewildered but loving AI juuust wins out. Beautiful and heartbreaking.
Wendig always manages to take huge concepts that could feel ponderous and instead tune them into something super-tight and propulsive. The Book of Accidents is a horror novel the size of a Honda minivan but I demolished it in two nights.
26. Norylska Groans by @cw-snyder.com and Michael Fletcher. Hardboiled grimdark noir in the bleakest, most miserable Russian-inspired shithole of a city, with a workplace memory-swapping twist that beat Severance out of the gates. Nasty, brutish, compelling.
I am paying this queer-political-vampire-dark-fantasy the highest of compliments when I say I have NEVER been pushed this far out of my comfort zone while remaining so totally enthralled. Ladz only gets better with every release.
A cyberpunk novel where the cyberpunkiness felt like a true response to the state of the world in 2020, as opposed to reflexively imitating the classics. An age-old setup - let's go steal an AI! - turns out to only be the first act in a wild, breakneck ride.
This book could've been a fun little "party of misfits on a mission in a fantasy wilderness" but instead decided to outdo Gene Wolfe at his own game & married layer upon layer of surrealist storytelling to deep character work. I was transfixed.
Do you remember when Puella Magi Madoka Magica asked, "What if being a cutesy anime magical girl actually sucked and left everyone with crushing PTSD?" and we all said "This is genius!" The Aching God is that, but for D&D dungeon crawling. It's brilliant.
Yes I KNOW all of you go wild for Fitz and the Fool (I do too!) but I will maintain until my dying breath that the Liveship trilogy has some of the greatest character work in the entire fantasy pantheon. It's spectacular.
A true successor---not a loving imitation or homage, but a brazen, no-holds-barred leap over and beyond---the classic military scifi I grew up on. Much like Some Desperate Glory, this book does some audacious stuff I didn't think possible in prose.
Conspiracies, mysteries, bleakness, all set in a strange city governed by the power of language. Much like Vandermeer and Mieville, this book got deeply surreal but also deeply engaging. I think it rewrote sections of my brain.
@zackdavisson.com
This colossal manga series is half an intensive dive into the social, political, economic and military history of Japan throughout the 20th century, and half whimsical, endearing, gut-wrenching autobio. Essential reading.
Devin is a master of that magical balancing act between complexity and devourability. BDATW heaps on the worldbuilding, piles character intrigue up to the ceiling, but never overwhelms. The sort of moreish fantasy I wish I could write.
Snow Crash was my first Stephenson but Cryptonomicon is the book I return to most often. How can a historical thriller still feel so prescient, so... now? How can a bunch of nerds chasing sunken treasure be so laugh-out-loud funny?
Oh look, Ruz enjoyed another military/historical fantasy with a heaping of political intrigue, what a surprise.
Yes, but also, SWBTS is pure poetry. The prose in this novel could nurture me through a drought. Gorgeous stuff.
Plus, fisting.
While I adore Buehlman's latest books (Blacktongue Thief & Daughter's War) this is the one I keep finding myself drawn back to. Historical horror/fantasy that is DARK, like DARK DARK, like I AM PHYSICALLY TERRIFIED OF SOME PARTS OF THIS BOOK DARK.
You might've noticed a theme in this thread. Stories that marry high-octane fantasy warfare and anti-colonialist rebellion with clever politicking tickle me juuuuust right, and @mattfnwallace.bsky.social's Savage Legion trilogy was a killer example of the genre.
I mean, wow. The scope of this book. Storytelling within storytelling within storytelling. The grandeur of an epic legend passed down through oral tradition married to the closeness and intimacy of a modern love story. Exceptional.
I've read most of PKDs catalogue and this is the one that always stuck with me. Accessible but not shallow, confusing but never vague or unintentional, very very dark but also not without hope. I re-read it every few years and marvel.
I adored Joe's First Law trilogy, but his follow-ups reach even greater heights. A Little Hatred is one of those rare fantasy gems that manages to fuse rip-roaring adventure and sociopolitical commentary without a single stumble. Exceptional.
This is, with zero exaggeration, one of the greatest collections I've ever read. It says horror on the box but swings between pure scares, dreamlike surrealism and character-centric heartbreakers. This book revitalised my love of short-form fiction.
It's difficult to explain just how audacious this novel is without giving the game away. I walked into it expecting an action-packed space opera and yes, I got that, but I also left with my head spinning and my heart torn out. It deserves all the awards.
This was one of those books that made me re-evaluate the power and potential of the written word. Endlessly inventive and packed with moments that kept me rolling around in bed like a rotisserie chicken long after lights out.