This list sucks and everyone NPR listens to sucks, which wouldn't be a problem if NPR didn't suck so hard. The problem is the list reflects the trends in publishing, which are pretty much "harlequin romances only stupider." - It's overwhelmingly fantasy. There is no "what if" in fantasy - it all boils down to "what if the middle ages had dragons and wizards and we could disguise our racism by turning black people into elves or some shit." That's Ian M Banks' Culture series, which aren't great. That's The Years of Rice and Salt which isn't a great book either. ...steampunk bullshit, fantasy somewhere other than Europe bullshit, "Urban Fantasy" bullshit, that awful third body problem book... Okay sure I'm glad there's now fantasy that happens somewhere other than "within a week's walk of Paris" but fantasy has always been a thunderously derivative genre for underachievers which is why it's so generic. Sure, put a djinn in there instead of a balrog, whatever. Yay Nigerian-american authors, I'd rather see them get the work than privileged white men. But Ndede Okorafor isn't a great writer. Sorry. No. NK Jemesin winning three Hugos back-to-back says a lot about how awful the marketplace is out there. These books are unreadable. This book is improbable and poorly written. It's got Dan Brown-grade prose and a "fucking magnets how do they work" understanding of politics, strategy and human nature. It's been a useful litmus test, though - I've killed no less than three newsletters because their authors couldn't stop jizzing their pants over this book. books on this list that don't suck The Martian is pretty good. Not masterful? Entertaining and okay. The Expanse series is good for two or three books. Much like the series, it's really fucking tough to care once they've opened the space wormhole or whatever. It all eventually becomes Black Bart twisting his moustache and a bunch of cowboys in a mexican standoff. nobody gives a fuck The Goblin Emperor is... I mean, it's fucking King Ralph. "Things would be different if I were in charge" is always going to be an easy sell. There is nothing, however, in The Goblin Emperor, that requires goblins. Or airships. Or bridges. Or anything else. It's a bunch of palace intrigue. Real palace intrigue is generally better than fake palace intrigue because at least there are stakes. I liked Goblin Emperor? And I hated Wolf Hall? But Wolf Hall is a better book. Books not on this list that don't suck Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities and The Water Knife are all within the past decade. Robert Charles Wilson's Vortex is within the past decade, although the first two books in the series are not. William Gibson's The Peripheral and Agency are within the past decade. Agency is within the past year. Most any Gibson is a noir but at least he writes good fucking noir. Richard K Morgan's Thin Air beats anything on this list except The Martian. Also a noir, really. Thirt33n was better but that was 2008.Breq is a human now — but once she was a starship.
What a wonderful world P. Djélì Clarke has created here — an Arab world never colonized, where magic-powered trams glide through a cosmopolitan Cairo and where djinns make mischief among humans.
Do you love space opera? Alternate history? Silent film?
N.K. Jemisin deservedly won three back-to-back Hugo awards for these books, which use magnificent world building and lapidary prose to smack you in the face about your own complicity in systems of oppression.
This was judge Tochi Onyebuchi's personal pick — a devastating portrait of a post-climate-apocalypse, post-Second Civil War America that's chosen to use its most terrifying and oppressive policies against its own people.