Monday, October 03, 2016

Books Read: September 2016

Now that another month has come and gone (and we're halfway through yet another), let's take a look at the books I read last month.

1. Everything's Eventual, by Stephen King
2. The Best Team Money Can Buy, by Molly Knight
3. The Lost Child of Lychford, by Paul Cornell
4. Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, by Seanan McGuire
5. Tripwire, by Lee Child
6. Behind the Throne, by K.B. Wagers
7. The Girls, by Emma Cline
8. Poisoned Blade, by Kate Elliott
9. Sweetbitter, by Stephanie Danler
10. The Obelisk Gate, by N.K. Jemisin
11. War Porn, by Roy Scranton
12. Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff
13. Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch
14. Pieces of Hate, by Tim Lebbon
15. The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy

Best Book of the Month: The review is pending, but The Obelisk Gate is the best book I've read so far this year, let alone this month.

Disappointment of the Month: Depends how you want to look at this. As a whole, I've thoroughly enjoyed the Tor.com Novella line, so finding even one that doesn't quite hit is a disappointment (most recently Pieces of Hate), but I think the real disappointment has to be Roy Scranton's War Porn - a novel which was very well received on publication and I found it too disjointed to actually tell a coherent story. As three discrete novellas, I think I would have appreciated the novel far more. Perhaps the overlap of the stories was meant to be more to show the shape of the war and how people back home / soldiers / Iraqis interacted and dealt with the war, but Scranton's novel never quite came together for me.

Discovery of the Month: I expect to read much more from K.B. Wagers. I didn't review Behind the Throne because one of our other Nerds of a Feather reviewers already took the novel on. I found that I would have given the same exact score (7/10), but the review would have read much more positively. I thought Behind the Throne was delightful and fast paced and an overall kick ass novel. Loved the setting, loved the voice, loved Hail as a lead character and a source of introduction to that world - I want to see more. Good thing, there's going to be at least one more book.

Worth Noting: It won't be published until January, but keep an eye out for Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day from Seanan McGuire. It's really friggin good.

Gender Breakdown: 9 of the 15 books I read in August were written by women, which brings my total to 64 out of 123. The percentage continues to climb back to 52.03% through nine months.



Previous Reads
January
February 
March
April  
May 
June 
July
August