My Favorite Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2023
First off, what I've been up to lately... I realized that if folks are subscribed to my newsletter, they might actually be interested in what's going on with me personally? (Maybe?) So a quick update.
I'm doing revisions on The Prodigal Mother, my next adult novel which I talked about extensively in my interview with Locus a while back. In a nutshell, it's a novel about a young woman who teaches her mother how to do magic — I've seen plenty of stories about an older person teaching a younger person magic, but never the other way around. This project is really challenging, because it's personal and messy and delves into some of the ways we can't ever really know our close family members because they assume mythic status in our personal cosmologies. I really hope y'all like it when it comes out, probably in 2025.
I'm also writing a couple of novellas, which are much more light and fun. Too soon to talk about details, but one is a fluffy romance with aliens, and the other is a straight-up zany comedy with supernatural stuff. Annd... I'm writing an original graphic novel script that I'm hoping we can sell soon. And finally, I'm dealing with a ton of Hollywood stuff that I absolutely cannot talk about, now that the strikes are over.
I just dealt with some minor edits on the paperback of Promises Stronger Than Darkness, the third book in my young adult trilogy, which comes out in paperback on April 9, 2024. I'm so proud of this trilogy and grateful to everyone who's embraced its queer, silly, dark vibe. (If you're excited about Russell T. Davies coming back to Doctor Who, these books have a very RTD spirit, and RTD himself praised the first book, Victories Greater Than Death.)
Also! I'm helping to organize fun, in-person stuff. We just had a wonderful Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl, with another one planned for March. And this Saturday is the next Trans Nerd Meetup, a gathering for anyone who identifies as trans/nb/gnc and likes to nerd out about stuff. (That's at Zeitgeist in SF, 12:30 PM until whenever.)
So I realized two things: 1) I don't have time to write a proper newsletter this week. 2) I already spent tons of time writing a giant thread on Mastodon and Bluesky about my favorite books of 2023, and many people couldn't read to the end, because threading is kind of difficult on both of those sites.
So I'm reproducing that thread below.
Before you read it, though, check out my actual roundup of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2023 in the Washington Post. (Paywall-free link!) I'm very proud of this article which provides some very good explanations of why each of these books is among the best of the year, in my view. What I'm pasting below is supplemental content, saying stuff about each book that I didn't have the space to get into in my newspaper article. So please read the Post article first, and then come back here to read more of my thoughts!
So I've reviewed roughly fifty SFF books in the past year, and I just have to start off by saying that they're all freaking great. I don't, as a rule, review books that didn't hold my attention. All fifty of those books are ones that I wanted my friends to read so we could talk about them.
But here are the ten (twelve, actually) books that I was most desperate to chat about with my friends.
First up, The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei. DANG. I really did not have space, in either my review or the year-end thing, to get into all the reasons this book rocks so much. Like I keep saying, it's a well-done murder mystery, with a very specific type of "locked room." It's also a space survival story.
But also the fact that Asuka's VR rig is malfunctioning and giving her glimpses of other crewmembers' VR environments is... >chef's kiss<. It's a lovely metaphor for boundaries getting blurred, but also a way to tell us something about a lot of characters quickly. And The Deep Sky has a lot of deep stuff to say about culture clashes, and fanaticism, and friendship. Asuka's complicated relationship with her mother, and the best friend she no longer talks to, are heartbreaking and utterly believable. This book is great science fiction, but also feels honest and personal.
Then there's Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia who was one of the two people who had this gig at the Post before me (along with Lavie Tidhar). I've been a fan of Moreno-Garcia's work since Signal to Noise, and have loved seeing how she plays with genre and keeps changing up her writing.
Silver Nitrate is probably my favorite book of hers. Mostly because I love the characters, and because she conjures such a rich, lived-in setting: 1990s Mexico City, with a whole ecosystem of film nerds colliding with occult fanatics. It's creepy horror that feels rooted in reality. There have been plenty of books featuring Nazis lately, for obvious reasons. But the links to Nazism in Silver Nitrate feel pretty sui generis. Those occult fanatics are wrapped up in a lot of colorism and mythologizing, and they feel pretty similar to the evil mine owners from Mexican Gothic.
Also, Montserrat and Tristán are terrific characters, and I got super invested in their relationship. Their somewhat messed up dynamic had a lot of tenderness and familiarity running underneath it, and I really wanted these two kids to work it out.
Rouge by Mona Awad is one book I actually got to write a fair bit about when it came out, because I gave it extra space in that month's review roundup. But one thing that's hard to discuss about Rouge is just how silly and weird it really gets. The main character, as a child, has a bonkers "romance" with a vision of Tom Cruise that comes to her through a mirror in her mother's bedroom.
One thing I didn't have space to say in my year-end review is how much Rouge feels like it's in dialogue with the other two books I just mentioned. Rouge's protagonist, Belle, has a lot of the same anxieties about being mixed-race as Asuka in The Deep Sky. And colorism becomes the root of a lot of creepy shit in Rouge, just like in Silver Nitrate. It's almost like colorism and assimilation were on people's minds.
Going into Rouge, I was really nervous that it was just going to be an on-the-nose "the beauty industry is bad" satire. But it's so so much more than that.
One other thing about Rouge: it's a weird, trippy book where everything makes sense at the end. Everything. I've seen plenty of weird books where inexplicable gonzo stuff happens, and it's just vibes or whatever. And you maybe think that the characters just hallucinated a lot? That can be fun. But Rouge was very satisfying. Everything gets a real, coherent explanation.
OK next up, White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link. It's really hard to talk about short story collections, in my experience, just bc there are too many plots to summarize. But this book left a heck of an impression. In at least half the stories, I had to flip back and see how Link had set things up with great dexterity. (Oh! The clogged toilet!) I really loved how hopeful this book was, even w/ a couple bittersweet endings.
Listen: this was a great year for books of short stories. There were so many — I did a whole roundup of short story collections back in March, all of which slapped. The short story form is versatile and packs a ton of power, and people are going to town. Even so, White Cat stood out for me.
As for The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang... they made me take out this anecdote for space reasons, but this book was supposed to come out in June 2023. It got pushed back to August and I didn't realize until I had read the first 150-200 pages. I needed to put it aside to focus on my June column.
Y'all, putting The Water Outlaws on hold so I could go read some other books was one of the hardest things I've done lately. I needed to read the rest! Seriously, I complained a lot to my friends about having to pause that book in the middle. It is so fun, and so thrilling. The action is so well done and vivid, but also conveys something about the characters and their spiritual journeys.
Huang's meditations on what it means to support the Emperor (the state) while rebelling against corrupt officials and state-sponsored abuses stuck with me. And Lin, who has a strong moral code but is forced to compromise after suffering injustice, is a compelling character.
The Water Outlaws gets pretty dark and messed up in places, but still keeps coming back to hope and a kind of generosity. It kept surprising me.
A while ago, I was in a restaurant and the person working the register (looked like a student) was reading She Who Became The Sun. I said I'd loved that book, and they asked me if I had any recommendations for similar books. I was like, YES. Read Nghi Vo's Singing Hills books and The Water Outlaws. I loved being able to rattle off other Asian fantasy/historical books that featured empires, monks, armies and queerness.
OK, so The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins. There were a LOT of apocalyptic/dystopian literary books in 2023. Like, a whole ton. The world ended due to mysterious fog, micro-plastics, pandemics, and just regular climate change. There were tons of dystopian visions of inequality run amok. The Great Transition was one of a very small number of books lately that have dealt with how we might survive climate change, and how the world still might not be perfect or ideal afterward. And just how hard work it'll be to mitigate the effects of our folly.
Call it Solarpunk, or maybe Hopepunk? Anyway, Fuller Googins makes this question personal, by showing the divide among young Emi's parents about whether to declare victory over the climate apocalypse. Emi's father wants to bury the trauma and move on, Emi's mother... can't. Emi's mom is a pretty unsympathetic character at times, kind of terrorizing her daughter because she's convinced the bad times are coming back. Eventually, you come to understand though.
OK, so Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi.
I had to read the opening paragraph of this one like three times to make sure I got everything that Talabi packed into it, which normally might throw me out of a book. Here, it hooked me. The story just keeps coming at you. Shigidi is a book that jumps around a lot, and throws a ton of ideas at the reader — I loved all the stuff about how pantheons have become corporations, competing for "market share" among human worshippers. It jumps around in time, too, going to some pretty far-flung places.
But similar to how Montserrat and Tristán kept me anchored in Silver Nitrate, the relationship between Shigidi and Nneoma was a strong anchor in this novel. That jam-packed first paragraph establishes that this is a love story, and Talabi keeps circling back to that emotional core in a beautiful way. And even though I've seen my fair share of heists lately, this one has everything. And the place that Shigidi and Nneoma are breaking into, and the reason they're breaking in there, both carry a ton of resonance. This book is the most fun, highly recommend.
Godkiller by Hannah Kaner is a huge monster hit, for good reason. Kissen is such a great character: a hardened god-slayer who has a really good reason for hating gods. People kind of depend on her to keep them safe, but also hate her for taking away the divine in their lives. It's super interesting.
Godkiller is another fantasy book that takes place in a queernormative world, featuring multiple genders and polycules and everything. (I hope this trend lasts a long time, because it's genuinely medicinal given the state of the world right now.) In this book, it's very matter-of-fact.
One thing I didn't get to talk about in either of my reviews of Godkiller is the character of Elogast, a heroic knight who's now retired to become a baker... until the King shows up asking for his help. Elogast could be your standard "just when I thought I was out" character, but his friendship with the King, and his deep regrets and bitterness about what went down during the war, make him a lot more interesting. Even on a quest, he just wants to keep baking bread! It's great.
I really loved She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, but I was nervous about how the second book of the duology would pay off that shocking ending of the first book. I needn't have worried. Everyone I know agrees He Who Drowned the World just got better.
I feel like this conclusion is where a lot of the themes of the duology come into focus — there are all these characters who have a complex relationship with manhood, in a patriarchal society. They're chasing power and revenge, and being underestimated, and using that to outfox their enemies. But that contested manhood is kind of an open wound for all of the book's POV characters, and it can get pretty ugly. Zhu, the girl-turned monk-turned would-be emperor, finds herself (themself) in situations where acknowledging the complexity of gender is the only way through.
And this plays into the book's conclusion, which was a fascinating surprise. I loved how Parker-Chan brought things around. This book never lets the characters' relationship with gender and sexuality become simple or binary, even though that would be much easier to deal with. I feel like some really great PhD dissertations are going to be written about queerness and gender subversion in 2020s SFF, and this duology will be at the dead center of that discussion.
And then there's the book I could not stop yelling at everyone I know to read: To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. I loved this book so much, and I can't wait for what's next.
Anequs is a young girl, living on the island of Masquapaug, who sees a wild dragon — the first her people have seen in generations — and then finds a dragon egg, which hatches. The baby dragon imprints on Anequs, so she has to learn to ride it. Unfortunately, that means Anequs has to go to the colonizers' dragon academy, where she must learn to be a "proper young lady" or her baby dragon will be put to death.
The stakes are there from the start, but instead of leaning on them, Blackgoose keeps just subtly nudging at them. Watching Anequs navigate the rigid, patriarchal rules of respectable "Anglish" society is a total thrill. She keeps seeking out the outcasts and the people everyone overlooks, and building alliances. It's beautiful. And super queernormative! I've said this before, but there are garden parties in To Shape a Dragon's Breath that have more white-knuckle suspense than the epic battles in most books.
And I'm here for the current spate of books where a queer underdog subverts patriarchy. Hell yeah. The moments where Anequs proves that indigenous people have their own knowledge of dragons and of the science of aethers, and uses it to outsmart her racist teacher, are so great.
Also, the alternate history in this book is so fascinating. Basically, North America has been colonized by the Anglish, who are sort of English people, but more Germanic. They don't practice Christianity, but instead worship the Norse gods. They have the exact same unearned sense of superiority as English people, but the details are weird/different.
I wanted to include Lone Women by Victor LaValle and The Reformatory by Tananarive Due on my list of the year's best books, because they slap so hard. But they were already on other "year's best" lists in the Post.
Lone Women knocked my socks off. Similar to LaValle's The Changeling, this book kept surprising me and overturning my expectations. When we first encounter Adelaide and her mysterious heavy trunk, I had some ideas about what the trunk contained. I had no clue. What I loved about Lone Women was that it works as a creepy horror/dark fantasy, but it's definitely one of those books where the real monsters are human beings. And it's a lovely meditation on community and mutual aid, and who counts as "civilized".
And not surprisingly for Tananarive Due, The Reformatory is utterly terrifying and unsettling. I want to urge everyone to also pick up Due's short story collection, The Wishing Pool, which gives some other views of her fictional town, Gracetown, FL. I had to read The Reformatory during the day, because it was too scary to read at bedtime. (The nightmares, they were intense.) But it was so worth it. This is another book where the monsters are regular humans, and particularly institutionalized white supremacy.
And finally... if I hadn't been trying to avoid conflict of interest, I absolutely would have included The Mimicking of Known Successes by my friend Malka Older and The Terraformers by my partner Annalee Newitz among the year's best books. Two queer, thrilling books set on other planets.
The Mimicking of Known Successes is a lovely romance that reminded me of Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. It pairs well with The Deep Sky — another book where the murder mystery absolutely pays off and is beautifully thought out. They have similar concerns about space colonization, too.
And The Terraformers is just utterly delightful and playful, despite its upsetting visions of indentured servitude and creatures whose minds/voices have been artificially limited. I really wish I could visit the Tongue Forks and hang out with Whistle the flying moose!
So what were your favorite books of 2023?