I've logged 61 titles in my spreadsheet for 2023 so far, way up over the mid-40's of the last few years. What drove the increase? Last Christmas I got a tablet sized for comic books (mentioned at the end of last year's post) and have read a bunch of graphic novels from my library through Hoopla. Once again I was part of a Hugo awards reading group and read all the short story, novelette, novella, and novel finalists.
What stood out this year?
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Especially during Erica Henderson's run as the artist. The whole run showcases Ryan North's talent for irreverant + relevant story and dialogue, and paired with Henderson's character designs, layout, spacing... it's a beautiful thing.
The Goblin Emperor. Sarah Monette's first novel published under the pseudonym Katherine Addison is a story of court intrigue that could have taken place in any setting, but I enjoyed this slightly new look at what Faerieland could be like.
Bea Wolf. Beautiful art and a faithful retelling of the Beowulf story for kids.
Hild. As mentioned in last year's post, I had been avoiding Hild because it's a big, big, book. Then I read Spear last year and finally tackled Hild, and it is formidably rich and dense and worth every minute. As an extra benefit, Nicola Griffith published Menewood, the sequel to Hild, this year, and I have it queued up to read early in 2024.
Babel: or the necessity of violence : an arcane history of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. The winner of the Nebula award for Best Novel this year. Be prepared to spend a lot of time with it. Over the first half of the novel, it lays its groundwork very carefully, but also effeciently, spending time on certain moments that drive its points home with no passages wasted. There's a great short bit with the daguerrotype (p171-172) where Robin thinks of how the photograph is similar to their own work of translation, and a nice in-world aphorism: "Silver accrues where it's already in use" (p175) like how any kind of wealth gets funneled to the top, and great efforts are needed to unseat it. The style changes in the second half of the novel, which becomes more action-packed (we get to the stage of "the necessity of violence").
Even Though I Knew the End. There was a strong slate of novellas this year, and C.L. Polk's magical detective noir hits all the right notes as an homage and alternative to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The title comes from a moment when our protagonist is re-reading some F. Scott Fitzgerald, which made me want to re-read The Great Gatsby. I was in luck, because while looking for Nghi Vo's Into the Riverlands (another Hugo novella finalist), I discovered...
The Chosen and the Beautiful. Nghi Vo's first novel is a retelling of The Great Gatsby from the POV of Daisy's friend Jordan Baker, instead of Nick Caraway. In this version, Jordan was adopted from Tonkin by the Bakers. Loved this. Vo does a wonderful job of feeling authentically roaring 20's while doing some things stylistically that would be a no-go in publishing in the 20's. It feels like how people might actually talk and act, rather than filtered through the publishing industry of the era. I also loved the title playing on The Beautiful and the Damned.
Nettle & Bone. There was also a strong slate of novels, and Ursula Vernon (writing as T. Kingfisher) took home the rocketship. Marra has such a strong internal dialogue, and her "team" are such decent people, each struggling with their own problems but willing to work together, that it was impossible not to be charmed. It's true I took lots more notes while reading (honorable mention) Nona the Ninth, and Nettle & Bone has a more straightforward plot, but both have a great mix of laugh-out-loud moments and human drama.
