My Fave Reads of the Year, 2022 Edition

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Amanda Rudd

Hello all and welcome to the last Friday of the year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday week last week, and that you are excited for the new year and all the possibilities that might bring. The last year, or two years really, have been pretty rough, and I am really hoping that 2023 will be a bit kinder to us all. But I am… skeptical, let’s say. Still, I am trying to approach the new year with a feeling of cautious optimism. We shall see how it goes.

Before I jump into my fave reads list, I have several things in the works I want to mention. I have officially started my work as a freelance editor. And I am preparing to launch an etsy shop to sell the fluid paintings I’ve been making off-and-on for the last couple months. The first handful were all gifts to various family and friends, but I have a bunch now that are piling up in my office, so I’m hoping to sell them for just a bit – enough to clear out the space in my office and buy supplies so I can make some more. I’ll have the shop linked here probably in the first week of January for the curious.

I am also considering changing the name of the blog… though, I am still on the fence about that. As I mentioned in my About page ages ago, I chose the name “Night Forest Books” as the name of my hypothetical future bookstore. I’ve had the name in mind since AT LEAST 2016. It’s a reference to my favorite book, The Neverending Story, and the location called “Perilin, the Night Forest.” When I first chose the name I did a lot of research to make sure no other bookstore or related business had claimed the name already. I bought the .com domain for future use, and I claimed the IG name (@night.forest.books) and this blog title. However, I was nowhere near ready to actually register a business or LLC name as I knew it would be probably years before I was financially ready to start the bookstore.

Well, apparently in mid-2020 a brand new micro-press started in CANADA, and they named themselves Night Forest Press. Obviously, even if they did research on the name, they did not consider my teeny-tiny blog a problem, whether it had essentially the same name or not, and since I didn’t have an actual business registered under that name it was legally up for grabs. I could probably still get away with naming a bookstore Night Forest Books if I really wanted to (maybe, I’m not certain), but googling “Night Forest Books” right now just brings up the press website. And I had vague ambitions of maybe someday starting a press associated with the hypothetical bookstore, which would no longer be a viable option under the current name. So, I will need to find a new name for the hypothetical bookstore…

Of course, the blog name is still fine right now. However, as I said, googling for “Night Forest Books” right now does not remotely lead to my blog, which is really disheartening. Besides which, my initial thought was that the blog would be a good way to establish some recognition among readership in advance of opening the bookstore, and if the bookstore has an entirely different name from the blog that kind of defeats the purpose…

So… yeah… I’m on the fence about changing the blog name, or just letting it be and worrying about the bookstore name later. Maybe I’ll just go back to using my actual name for the blog for the time being. That might at least make it obvious in search engines again… maybe. *shrug* If anyone has any thoughts, please feel free to share.

OKAY! And now the thing I’m supposed to actually be writing about today. My Favorite Reads of 2022 List!

I had a really difficult time narrowing the list down this year. (Well, ok, every year). What I have ended up with is a list of 10 books. My top 5 favorite new release fiction books, released in the calendar year of 2022, plus my top 5 favorite nonfiction books, none of which were new releases for 2022 but which were all new reads for me.

My Top 5 Fiction New Releases:

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher: This book by the masterful T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) is a beautiful dark fairy tale with prose that makes me weep with awe and jealousy. I wrote a full review for Nettle & Bone way back at the beginning of the year, where I predicted that it might end up being my favorite book of the year when it was all said and done, though I conceded that Nona the Ninth might easily change my mind when it was released. But lo and behold! I stand by my initial statement! I absolutely adored this book and it remains my favorite book of the year.

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske: you can find the full review of this one and the first book in the trilogy just a few weeks back. This one is a historical romance fantasy set in Edwardian England, featuring a murder mystery, lots of magic, and some very steamy sex. I loved it (and the first one, A Marvellous Light), and I’ve already re-read it once since finishing it.

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: I know I still owe you all an actual review of this one, oops… For those still in the dark (how?) this book (and series) is a mind-bending, genre-busting, space opera mixed with necromantic magic, and one of the most complex examinations of love in all its forms (including toxic and self-destructive) that I have ever read. I’ll admit that I fully expected this one to overtake Nettle & Bone as my favorite, but though I loved it immensely, it ended up slipping down to third place. Nona the Ninth, the third of the Locked Tomb series, was excellent, and mind-boggling, but of the three it is my least favorite. Nona was a delight of a character, but the first book is still by far the most FUN. So far I love them in order, lol (Gideon, then Harrow, then Nona).

Last Call at the Nightingale by Katherine Schellman: here’s another one I read and reviewed pretty early in the year! It’s a historical murder mystery novel set in the 1920s, which is of course a good portion of what I love about it. And it features a disaster bi protagonist that I relate to rather strongly, lol! I read the whole thing in one sitting, just absolutely DEVOURED it. I fervently await the sequel!

The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews: I have not written a full review for this one yet, but I might try to put one together for it and its sequel later. This one is straight romance novel material, historical (Victorian setting), and absolutely lovely! I read it about a month ago and I am currently in a big Victorian-set historical romance brainrot mode. I also read the sequel to this one, The Belle of Belgrave Square. There will be a third one apparently sometime next year, so maybe I’ll do a double review for books 1 and 2 in time for the 3rd release. This book just really made me happy, with a headstrong intelligent female lead and a Indian-immigrant working-class love interest, and lots of witty banter.

My Top 5 Nonfiction Books:

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh: this is the last book that came out before Thich Nhat Hanh’s death in 2021. If you are unfamiliar with him, he was a very famous well-respected Buddhist monk who wrote many books on Buddhist, meditation, and finding peace in your own life. He gave lectures, met with world leaders, ran retreats, and generally just made the world a better place by his existence. He was/is one of the greatest heroes in my life, and I was absolutely DISTRAUGHT when he died last year. (And, shit, I am genuinely getting choked up just typing this.) This book is kind of exactly what the title suggests: a way of approaching the crises of our planet (ecological, political, systemic, personal) from a Buddhist perspective but also from a largely non-denominational place of deeply human spirituality and compassion. It made me cry at least three or four times, and the minute I finished it I threatened to buy a copy for every person I know to make them read it (if I’d had the funds, I really probably would have).

Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens: I have a soft-spot for self-improvement books, but more specifically I really love self-improvement books about living an authentic and creative life. For instance, I also liked Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (though I do find Gilbert a little too woo-woo and mystical hand-wavy at times). This book by Beth Pickens is about living life as an artist — and she defines “artist” very broadly — and offers real concrete advice on how to live that life to the best of your ability and with the most fulfillment you can manage, whether you are a full-time professional artist or someone trying to eke out a practice around a day job and family and other responsibilities. I found it incredibly insightful, down-to-earth, actionable, and really inspiring.

The Dragon Behind the Glass by Emily Voigt: I really love nonfiction books about history or science, and this one is kind of both. I picked it up on a whim and found it absolutely fascinating. It’s about the exotic fish trade, of all things! Specifically about a rare exotic fish called an arawona, which is allegedly the most expensive kind of collector/live fish in the world (most expensive fish of any kind in the world are, I think, some of the giant tuna caught/killed in Asia and sold by auction to high-end restaurants for sometimes millions of dollars). This book, and the exotic fish trade, includes: trips into the deepest barely-explored jungles of Asia and South America, run-ins with the black market and the mob, and devolves into fraud, betrayal, and even murder. It’s absolutely shocking and enormously fascinating!

1920: The Year That Made the Decade Roar by Eric Burns: I think I’ve mentioned before I am a bit obsessed with the 1920s Jazz Age era? So I assume no one is surprised that I picked up this book. It is pretty much exactly what it says it is: its a history book that focused on JUST the single year of 1920, and makes an argument that the events of that single year was the catalyst and predictor for everything that came after it. One of the major events the book focuses on is the 1920 Wall Street bombing, which remained the most destructive incident of domestic terrorism until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. (I found that section SO interesting that the Wall Street bombing eventually became the instigating event for the plot in my 1920s historical fiction work-in-progress). The whole book was really enlightening and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in American history.

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier: the subtitle for this book is “The triumphant, turbulent stories behind how video games are made.” It’s a really well-researched account written by a games journalist about the game industry, using an enormous amount of first-persons accounts and interviews. Each chapter focuses on the story of a different game, including (but not limited to) Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Stardew Valley. I’m not even a big gamer (just a dabbler), so I’m not 100% sure why I decided to pick this one to begin with, but I’m so glad I did! It was so cool to learn about how these games are developed and the kind of crazy sheningans that happen behind the scenes. (The dude who made Stardew Valley continues to blow my mind.) It’s also really fun now to watch the comedy tv show Mythic Quest on Apple+ and constantly go “that’s not how that works! That’s not how any of that works!” Lol…

So, that’s my list, for whatever it’s worth. I’d love to hear what books you read and loved this year! Please feel free to share in the comments!

Book Review: A Confusion of Princes

Posted on March 27, 2021 by Amanda Rudd

I apologize for the long absence! The last couple months have been…. well, they’ve been a THING. But, I have read a good number of books in the past few weeks that I keep meaning to write reviews for, so hopefully I will have plenty of things to say in the next few weeks (provided I can find the time and energy to get them written up). Some of the book reviews to expect include: Gideon the Ninth (I know I know it took me long enough!), Peaces by Helen Oyoyemi, An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris, and a couple upcoming ARCs. But first! We have a book that’s been out quite awhile that I just now got around to: A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix.

Title: A Confusion of Princes
Author: Garth Nix
Release Date: 2021
Source: owned
Stars: 2.5 out or 5

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love Garth Nix. I first fell in love with his work with Sabriel, and the rest of the Old Kingdom series, but I also own quite a few of his other works including Shade’s Children, Angel Mage, The Left-handed Booksellers of London (his newest book, which I haven’t read yet but is on the list for this year) and a bunch of his short stories. I have been meaning to read this one, A Confusion of Princes, for ages but just never got around to it. But for my 2021 Reading Challenge, this book fit the Space Opera category, and I needed a break from some of the longer/darker books I’d been reading, so I figured now was a good time.

A Confusion of Princes is a bit of a departure for Garth Nix. For one thing, its science fiction rather than fantasy (Shade’s Children is also science fiction, but it’s still not his usual fare). For another thing, the main character is a teenage boy (most, though not all, of Nix’s books tend to feature girls as the main character). It’s also a space opera, which I love, and which is not all that common in the realm of Young Adult fiction.

The basic premise is this: the main character is a young man named Khemri, a prince among hundreds of thousands of princes in an enormous intergalactic empire. The emperor rules the empire by means of the Imperial Mind, a psychic connection to the hundreds of thousands of princes, through which the Emperor makes their will known. The princes themselves (who are all called princes but can be any gender) are not from a hereditary line, but are rather chosen as young children from among the general population, and then genetically and technologically modified and trained to fulfill their roles. And for the most part the Imperial Mind leaves them to their own devices, so long as they adhere to certain rules, and they, therefore, run amok across the universe, commandeering whatever resources they desire and feuding with each other. What makes these princes even more powerful, however, is that they cannot die — or rather, they do not STAY dead: whenever they die (provided they have remained in the good graces of the Emperor) the Imperial Mind downloads their consciousness into a new body, exactly the same as the previous one.

Prince Khemri has just graduated from his training and is ready to take his place as a full prince within the empire at the opening of the novel. He is naive and arrogant and believes himself above all normal humans and all other princes. He is absolutely certain that he will be chosen as the next emperor when the current Emperor abdicates the throne as expected every 20 years. As he leaves the safety of his training ground and is sent to join the Navy, a common proving ground for new young princes, he quickly discovers that nothing is as he imagined it, the princes are often more like glorified pawns for the Imperial Mind, and someone or something has secret plans for him personally.

If I go much further into the plot than that, I will start to risk any number of spoilers, so we’ll see how well I can dance around them.

Here’s the thing: I tried to like this book. I really REALLY tried to like this book. And I did finish it, so I didn’t HATE it. BUT I nearly gave up and DNF’d it at about the halfway point because I just wasn’t FEELING it. The premise is absolutely fascinating to me, and while the writing is not Nix’s BEST, it’s hardly BAD. And yet… I think I can boil it down to two main problems, for me at least.

First, the plot felt like there was both too little and too much happening in a relatively short novel. In quick succession we move from Khemri’s intro and training, to his appointment to the Navy and year spent there, to his re-assignment to a secret installation where he trains for several months more (which takes like two chapters?), to being sent on another secret assignment that takes like half a year, to a big event at the Emperor’s main… not sure what to call it, headquarters? Home world? Whatever… and then the final big test/battle thing. A lot happens. Khemri get shuffled around a lot. And yet at the same time there were big sections of the book where I was just kind of bored. I felt that a lot of what happened would have been far more interesting if it had a) been more fleshed out, and b) probably written for an adult audience rather than a YA. And I realize that’s something of a controversial statement, but I have nothing against YA. I read plenty of YA. All of Garth Nix’s other works are YA and I have never had a problem with them before. I just didn’t feel that this particular plot/premise really WORKED as a YA. If it had been written in a more adult style/aesthetic, with a bit less “teenage ridiculousness” and a bit more realism and acknowledgement of the complexities involved, I think it would have been far better. To me it seemed like each of those different sections could almost have been their own “season” of a tv series, for instance.

The second problem for me was Khemri himself. I just could NOT like him. Now, I’m not saying every character needs to be “likable” by which most people mean: I would like this person and be friends with them if I knew them in real life. No. I have no problem with complicated, “unlikable,” amoral, main characters. But if you have a main character through which the entire story is seen/told, particularly in first-person as this one is, the main character has to be at least be TOLERABLE, right? But he just ANNOYED me. He was arrogant, he was whiny, he was insufferable. To be clear, these were obviously all conscious choices for the story, and part of the POINT of the story was to witness his transformation. Essentially, Khemri spends the majority of the novel learning to be HUMAN. I get that. That can make for interesting character development. But this time it just didn’t work for me. He was still just ANNOYING. I wanted to smack him through most of the book. And again, I think if this had been a longer adult novel, with more time spent acknowledging and wrestling with the complexities of the character and the imperialistic system that produced him, it might have worked better. But alas, I did not get that.

One last critique is the ending: I could tell about a third of the way through the novel that it was going to end one of only two ways. There were two very obvious options, and only two. And right on cue, one of those endings peaked around a corner before being like “no, just kidding, it’s the OTHER ending!” It wasn’t a BAD ending. Just very very obvious. And it felt a tad un-earned. For the same reasons stated above, pretty much.

If you are a completist who must read every book by a beloved author (as I often am), then by all means go try it! Maybe the main character will not annoy you as much as he annoyed me. But if you are just looking to try something by Garth Nix, please please please for all that is holy, go read The Old Kingdom series instead! They are beautiful and astounding and complex and wonderful! But every respected author with a lengthy oeuvre is due at least one or two misses, and this might be Nix’s.

Book Review: Sisters of the Vast Black

Posted on January 15, 2021 by Amanda Rudd

Title: Sisters of the Vast Black
Author: Lina Rather
Release Date: 29 Oct 2019
Source: bought
Rating: 5 stars

I bought this book not long after it was released, sometime in late 2019, and then never got around to reading it, even though the premise was very exciting to me. Just one of those things, of course. But now I have finally taken the time to sit down and read it (it’s a novella, it only took about three hours once I finally just SAT DOWN), and wow was it great! (This also happens to be the first book of the year to fulfill a spot on my 2021 Reading Challenge!)

Sisters of the Vast Black is a novella by Lina Rather that manages to pack all the punch of a vast epic space opera into a very small 155-page package. It follows the space-faring convent of Sisters from the Order of Saint Rita, on board their living-ship called the Our Lady of Impossible Constellations. The sisters are out in the far reaches of space, in the “third system” of planets away from Earth, several decades after a disastrous and bloody war between Earth and its rebelling colonies. Most of the sisters have never even SEEN Earth, having been born and raised on space stations or other planets and moons. They administer to the sick and spread the word of God, though they feel that proselytizing is the least important of their duties. At the beginning of the story, they are going to a small moon to bless a brand new colony and perform marriage and baptisms for several colonists. But aboard the ship, many of the sisters harbor deep secrets.

The Mother Superior of their convent took a vow of silence forty years ago, and speaks using sign language, but is the REASON for her vow of silence that she has kept a closely-guarded secret for decades. Another sister is hiding the fact that she joined the convent under false pretenses. And a third sister has been keeping up a secret correspondence that could have a huge impact on her faith and her choices.

All of these things come to head in the climax of the story, when a distress signal calls them back to the colony they had just blessed weeks before. When they arrive, they must face many things: the consequences of their actions, the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church, and the renewed strength of the Earth Central Government.

To understand why I loved this little book so much, you’ll need a tiny bit of personal background info. I was raised in a very devout Catholic family until the age of thirteen, when my mother had an enormous crisis of faith and left the church. She became agnostic, and finally atheist, while I lingered in the faith for a very long time. Up until about the age of sixteen, I was pretty sure I was going to become a nun later in life. Even in college, by which point I had started to learn doubt and become angry with the hypocrisies of the Church, I still minored in theology. Nowadays, I don’t know what I would classify myself as, religiously-speaking: spiritual but not religious, uncertain and ambivalent and more than a little angry? But I still hold a deep fascination with and love for the saints, and my Patron Saint is, in fact, Saint Rita.

Because of all this, Sisters of the Vast Black speaks to me on quite a few levels. First of all: I love a good space opera, and this is definitely a good space opera despite its small size. The science fiction elements are precise and well-written, and the ending was satisfying. But more importantly, the way the story deals with faith and doubt, with the contradictions of believing in God and messages of the Catholic faith while acknowledging and despising the evils of the Catholic Church, and with the inevitable blending between the Church and imperialist governments… all of this punched my right in the gut. All of the sisters were deeply sympathetic and complex characters that I could recognize and identify with myself or family and friends.

I do believe that anyone who enjoys a good space opera, or the compactness of a well-executed novella will like this book. But I think it will be ESPECIALLY potent for people who come from religious backgrounds in general, and the Catholic Church specifically. It will likely speak to you on a deep, perhaps even existential level. And if so, I hope you will share your thoughts with me sometime!

Book Review: Unconquerable Sun

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Amanda Rudd

Book: Unconquerable Sun
Author: Kate Elliott
Release Date: 7 July 2020
Source: ARC received through employer
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

I had meant to have this review up like two weeks ago, but life being life, things got in the way. So, my review for Unconquerable Sun comes out just in time for the official release. This book is available as of today! Read the review, and then go and buy it!

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott (perhaps best known for her YA series Court of Fives), is a massive space opera played out on an epic intergalactic scale. In this intricately-plotted narrative, ambitious Princess Sun of the Chaonian Republic, heir to the throne of a great galactic empire, must fight to survive the ire of her temperamental mother, the secrets of her foreign consort father, and the political machinations of forces within the empire who wish to remove her as heir to the throne, all while in the midst of a long-standing war with a rival galactic empire.

The Chaonian Republic has long been at war with the Phene Empire for control of vast swaths of the galaxy, where FTL intergalactic travel is made possible by an ancient system of “Beacons” built by a long-dead civilization. Now, as the efforts of Princess Sun have given Chaonia a great victory in the war, and the Phene Empire readies for a massive counter-assault, Sun must deal with an attack from within her own ranks. Her mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, is temperamental, volatile, suspicious, and under constant critique for choosing Sun’s father (a Royal of an enemy government) as one of her consorts, and therefore does not trust her own daughter. On top of that, someone among the Noble families is attempting to either kill or discredit Sun and the retinue of Companions she keeps by her side. Along the way, Sun allies herself with a diverse array of characters – including her secret lover, an unstable prisoner of war, a woman who may or may not be a spy, and the winner of a pop media Idol contest. Each of these allies, and many more besides, have secrets and goals and ambitions of their own. It is anyone’s guess who can be trusted, and who will betray the princess.

Kate Elliott is, of course, a highly respected writer of both adult and YA sci-fi/fantasy, and this novel may be her best yet. The world (or galaxy) building is detailed and immense. Because of this, the first fifty pages or so are dense and a bit difficult to push through. Elliott does not shy away from throwing a vast amount of information, terminology, slang, and names at the reader, and leaves it up to you to keep track of it all and connect the necessary dots. I personally have no problem with this kind of “throw them into the deep end and see if they can swim” kind of writing, but some might have difficulty with it. I promise, however, that the effort is rewarded by a intricate plot full of political intrigue and fast-paced space battles, which pulls much of its inspiration from the stories of Alexander the Great (indeed, one of the taglines for the marketing of the book is that it is a “genderbent Alexander the Great on an interstellar scale”).

In addition, many of the cultural details of the worlds and peoples in this novel are pulled from a variety of cultures such as ancient Greek and Roman, a few different Asian religions, and even a bit of the Romani — all mixed, combined, and riffed-off-of in unexpected ways. Perhaps my favorite aspect, however, is that the characters feature a diverse range of ethnicities, sexualities, and complex beliefs/motives. I think perhaps a good ⅔ of the characters are queer of some variety or another, and there are black, brown, and “Asian” people all over the place.

This novel is an unapologetic space opera (I saw someone calling it Space Fantasy, which I object to. Space Opera is its own genre and it’s not “fantasy” at all, even if some of the “science” is soft and unexplained). It is a grand adventure, political intrigue, and military scifi, wrapped in a space opera on an immense scale that rivals the works of James S.A. Corey, Kameron Hurley, and Lois Bujold McMaster.

I might be my favorite read of the year so far, and I absolutely cannot wait for the next one!

As I said at the beginning, this book was released today, so it is available everywhere books are sold! You can find it at any of these links (or at your local bookstore, of course – SHOP INDIE!):

Also! Author Kate Elliott will be in conversation with N.K. Jemisin about the book tonight at 7pm Pacific, through the efforts of Mysterious Galaxy Books. (I will, of course, be attending!)