Some notes, first: This includes books I, personally, have read this year, not books published this year or anything so silly. (There may be a few of the latter, but I can virtually guarantee you that they are library books.) Also, all value judgements in here("good", "bad", "totally awesome", etc.)are my opinion alone.
There was one runner-up to the top ten that I will mention briefly here despite a)it being non-fiction, and b)my having finished it in 1994. That book is 13th Gen by Neil Howe & Bill Strauss, a very insightful examination of the generation of Americans born between 1961 and 1981. It's changed the way I look at a lot of things, and if you ever wondered just how these people's minds work(even if you're one of us)I highly recommend it.
Now, the list proper:
#10--Pat Cadigan:Synners. I probably wouldn't have read this had Pat not come up to Calgary for NonCon, and obviously I'm glad I did. If I'd read it closer to 13th Gen, I think my brain would have exploded. (Obviously Pat doesn't need to read that book.) The fact that there were plot points I never did quite understand didn't detract from my enjoyment much at all...
#9--Robert Anton Wilson:The Earth Will Shake. After reading the Illuminatus! and Schrodinger's Cat trilogies, this book caught me totally off guard. It's almost sensitive in many ways, as it examines the youth of Sigismundo Celine (whether any relation to Hagbard, I have no idea). Now I suppose I should try to find the rest of the series...
#8--Mary Renault:The Mask of Apollo. A great book. Pamela Dean recommended her to me after I raved about Karen Wehrstein(see #2), and I enjoyed this one immensely. A historical set in ancient Greece(and Sicily), which really conveys the flavour of the society.
#7--Joan D. Vinge:World's End. This book, which comes between
The Snow Queen(see #3)and The Summer Queen,
was not especially recommended to me. I believe I was told that it
didn't measure up to its predecessor. Well, I guess I have to
disagree(mostly--if it was equally as good, it should be tied with it,
right?
#6--C.J. Cherryh:Chanur's Legacy. I'm a Cherryh fan and a definite
sucker for Chanur, so I read this one when I saw it in the library. A
worthy successor to the earlier books in the series--sort of a "Chanur:
The Next Generation"...
#5--Spider Robinson:Lady Slings The Booze. I'm a Spider partisan, so YMMV,
but I liked this book just as well as its predecessors. What can I say, I
just like the way this man writes.
#4--Charles de Lint:The Little Country. Four years after hearing him read
from it at ConText '89, I finally got to read the silly book. It's a
story-within-a-story, and surprising in that the "real-world" storyline is
more engrossing than the inner story. I think it's his best so far, but hey,
I haven't read Moonheart yet... [At least I hadn't when I
wrote this review...]
#3--Joan D. Vinge:The Snow Queen. A wonderful book, epic in scope and all
that. Very memorable characters, lots of exciting scenes...aw, hell, what can
you say. A great book.
#2--Karen Wehrstein:Lion's Soul. The only reason its predecessor,
Lion's Heart, isn't on here is that I read it in '92.
This one is equally as good, though it probably wouldn't stand alone.
Wehrstein's chronicle of the life of Fourth Chevenga in the world of
the Fifth Millennium is beautiful on many levels, and always seems to
pull one more surprise out.
#1--Guy Gavriel Kay:Tigana. Possible the best fantasy novel I've ever
read(possibly the best novel period); has some very moving and
memorable scenes, lots of great characters...yeah, just like The
Snow Queen.
Okay, you got the good news, now the bad news. It's...
Alfvaen's Bottom Ten of 1993
See above for disclaimers, et al. Further, I wish to state
that the primary factor in my putting a book on this list is disappointment.
If I wasn't expecting much and didn't get much, I'd be more likely to put it
here than if I expected much and got little.
Honourable Mention here goes to The Wabeno Feast by
Wayland Drew, which suffers from nothing more than being CanLit when I
expected SF...
#10--Keith Laumer: Bolo. I tried one of the Retief books a few years
ago, and discovered I really didn't like it. As in, I really disliked
it. But after reading Five Fates, I decided to give
Laumer another try. Well, this was it. One Retief story(whom I still
don't like)and two or three stories with essentially the same plot. I
guess I don't need Laumer cluttering up my queue anymore...
#9--Robert A. Heinlein: The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Yes, I know,
sacrilege, but as a book that I've heard widely considered Heinlein's
best, I didn't like this one nearly as much as I Will Fear No
Evil. I guess this puts me solidly as a late-Heinlein fan, from
the samples I've read so far...
#8--John Brunner: Interstellar Empire. Little wrong with this one, but it's
old Brunner and far too space-opera for my tastes.
#7--James Blish: Titan's Daughter. Blish isn't in my favourite authors
anyway, and this is certainly one of his weakest. I can see why I've never
heard it mentioned when people recommend his work.
#6--Barbara Hambly: Song of Orpheus. I guess with this book, I was expecting
some Hambly writing; what I got was a collection of three Beauty & The Beast
episodes, with all the blatant telegraphing of TV scripts.
#5--Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath: The Prometheus Design. Well, Pamela
Dean warned me... Truly does take some Star Trek cliches to their logical
conclusion, but it was lacking something that distinguished their Phoenix
books.
#4--Michael Moorcock: The Blood Red Game. Ew. Very early
Moorcock, if I'm any judge, and full of just plain bad writing. Some
mildly interesting ideas, though.
#3--Piers Anthony: The Colour of Her Panties. I swore at first that I would
never read it, with that title. Then I gave in and read a library copy. I
don't think I'll ever buy it. His writing at its worst. (Unfortunately, my
current read, Firefly, is almost as bad. I may yet give up on it.)
#2--R.A. MacAvoy: The Book of Kells. I'm not sure what I expect of MacAvoy,
and I will concede that from what I've read of hers she's pretty uneven, but
this was a definite low ebb. Much too meandering plotwise.
#1--John Myers Myers: The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter. The book I gave
up on. A sequel to Silverlock written(or at least
published)several decades later, and should have stayed unpublished. I
don't even care what it was about--something about Babylon and poetry,
full of horribly overdone writing. I'll still give The Harp And
The Blade a try, just out of morbid curiosity...
And that's it. Click here to go back to my review
page, or here to go back to the Den.