Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite 2016 Releases

I looked at this meme, hosted by the Broke and the Bookish, and thought, I haven't read many new releases this year! And then I looked at my list of reads and discovered I read more new books than I thought.

My favorite new releases so far:


I enjoy the Foreigner series by C. J. Cherryh, (though I'm not thrilled with the covers) and I particularly liked this one because I've been waiting a long time for the shoe that drops towards the end of this book. Some people have been disappointed in Visitor because there isn't as much action as there is in many of the novels, but I enjoyed getting to know the kyo in Visitor, and getting better acquainted with the tensions between humans - ship personnel, station/rescued personnel, & Mospherians - in Tracker, also released this year. I like character development, and if the writing is good and the characters are interesting, a book doesn't have to have an action-packed plot to keep my interest.


Speaking of  books with more character than plot, this was one that grew on me. The Life of Elves by Muriel Barberry was a slow build, and I particularly enjoyed the French characters and descriptions of the village. This was one I had to read a bit at a time, and I didn't care so much about the characters in the Italian city. I haven't read The Elegance of the Hedgehog, so I don't know how it compares.



The fourth and final book of the Raven Boys cycle, The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater, was very good. I loved the characters in these books - Blue, Adam, Gansey, Noah. The plot was a bit thin by this time, but Stiefvater writes complex, believable characters.

Others I've read:

• Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (science fiction)
• Tracker by C. J. Cherryh (science fiction)
• Every heart a doorway, by Seanan McGuire (fantasy)
• Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip (fantasy)
• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (science fiction)
• Early Warning by Jane Smiley (historical fiction)

And what's on my horizon?

Homegoing by  Yaa Gyasi (historical fiction, out this month)

Underground Railroad by Colin Whitehead (alternate history, due September 2016)

Among Others

Finished Among Others this weekend, and loved it. Not sure why it took me so long to get to this. I think I had some fear that it would be "book dropping" and no plot, or would be "just" another coming of age story. But I am happy to say that I fell into this one with a sense of wonder, and that wonder was still intact at the end of the book.

It is a love letter to science fiction and fantasy for us book nuts, and I'm not sure the book dropping furthers the plot, and it is a coming of age story. But in my opinion the writing is better than average.

Curiousity about  what happened to Morganna kept teasing me further in, and I liked the understated use of magic, which can be read as real or something Morwena creates. Finally, she sticks the ending - both resolving the relationship between Morganna and Morwena, and allowing Morwena to stand up to her mother.