This isn’t a first for me. I have fond memories of my dad reading The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story when I was a child, and it’s remarkable how much the book stuck with me over the years. Now I’m older and I have children of my own, it has given me a wonderful opportunity to read the book to them as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t own a copy of the book!

Here’s my totally irreverent, irrelevant, and worst ever annual “Books of the Year” list for 2023! This is a terrible list of books. I mean, most of them aren’t even books. Why did I make this? I could’ve been playing Final Fantasy XVI, or hanging up the laundry, or literally anything else. But instead I am pleased to present to you my totally irreverent, irrelevant, list of awards to mark the end of the grand old year of two-thousand-and-twenty-three. And of course, it’s in a top-ten format.

I’m pretty happy with the amount of books I managed to read and review this year! So many were indie books, too, which was my goal. All in all, I read and reviewed 25 books up to the time of writing this post. Whenever I review books, in addition to this blog, I usually post them to Goodreads and Amazon, as well as sharing the link to the review on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, and sometimes Instagram (if I remember).

An excellent eclectic short story collection from J. Dianne Dotson. After finishing the Questrison Saga, I knew I’d be forever picking up J. Dianne Dotson’s books, because they’re a great lot of fun. I think there’s only one more book out that’s under the J. Dianne Dotson pen name: The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, and from there on, her works will be published under the pseudonym Jendia Gammon.

I picked up Daros during one of the big indie sales and oh boy was it a fun read. It’s been difficult picking between all the different books I grabbed during that one sale, and I’ve only swamped my TBR even more since then! But this isn’t supposed to be about my ever-growing TBR, even though at my average reading speed, it’ll take me over 3 years to get through. This is about Daros by Dave Dobson.

A new book from Drew Wagar is always a cause for excitement. I cannot stress enough how good the Shadeward Saga is, and as you’ll have seen if you’ve been following these book reviews, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his other works, too. It feels like a long time since we first heard about Drew’s plans for the Hegira Saga, bringing more stories to the fantastic universe of Shadeward, and then it felt like the release date for this first novel, Contravention, came upon us so fast I hardly had time to think

Alan R. Paine has a particular style to his writing that is immediately apparent, but easy to underestimate. My first experience with his style of storytelling was his contributions in the fantastic sci-fi anthology, Nine Streams of Consciousness, and then later in his NaNoWriMo experiment Faraway Sky; Ocean Deep. His works all have a deeply anthropological feel to them—akin to Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing in many ways. There’s always deep explorations of aspects of humanity and the experience of life which are given so matter-of-factly that it can be a little uncomfortable at first.

Dust & Lightning is a futuristic standalone science fiction novella from Rebecca Crunden that also kind of blurs lines with the superhero genre, and it’s honestly a heck of a lot of fun and vibes. If you’re an indie writer and not already following Rebecca on the myriad socials, then you absolutely should.

Meghan Douglass’ short indie sci-fi horror that is dark, bleak, and utterly disturbing in all the right ways. Coming in at around the 50-page mark, I blasted through Humanity Lost really rather quickly. You might think that’s not enough time for a story to make your skin crawl, but, oh boy, this did exactly that.

Ringworld is one of those classic sci-fi books that curiously seems to fall into the same kind of subgenre as Arthur C Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama—that of people exploring an awe-inspiring alien megastructure no-one’s ever seen before. I enjoyed that book a lot, and so I knew I had to give Ringworld a go, especially having heard good things about Larry Niven’s work generally. So this was my first delve into his Known Space universe, but the experience left me torn.

Similarly to The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge is a videogame I have no personal experience with. At least with the first game, I’d played a little of the Android remake by Chris Wild. Not so with its sequel. Mike Singleton’s Doomdark’s Revenge was originally released the same year as its predecessor, again for the ZX Spectrum system, and significantly expanded the first game’s scope. There were now hundreds of characters, and a brand new realm to explore. The Icemark also had a much larger map than that of the land of Midnight in the previous game, and many more routes to success. Understandably, making such a novelisation sounds like a monumental challenge.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most successful and prolific fantasy authors of recent years. I’m sure we’re all astounded at the blistering pace he puts out these ungodly huge tomes. As such, I’ve been really curious to see what his writing is actually like, and why it’s been so well-received. Taking advice from various Booktubers and other commentators, I decided to start with his first Mistborn trilogy, which is said to be a good entry point to his work. And, you know what? I get it.

Oh my gosh, why did I put off reading this for so long? I’ve had Duckett & Dyer: Dicks for Hire sitting on the Kindle for ages, and I’d never gotten around to it until now. And it is hilarious. I haven’t read many comedies—only Hitchhiker’s Guide, some Discworld, and Terry Brooks’ Magic Kingdom For Sale. Sold! and that was quite a long time ago. So it was refreshing to read some more sci-fi comedy, and G.M. Nair’s novel was an absolute riot.

I know I’m always in for a good time when Drew Wagar releases a new book. The Elect Saga is an interesting series; not technically new, but newly released wide. Drew announced to us on his Discord that he was re-writing and re-editing the short fan-fiction series he’d written years ago for the Elite-inspired videogame, Oolite, removing any copyright offending content, and releasing it out into the wild for all to read.

We are now halfway through 2023, and The Oath & Blood Price: Part One is my fourteenth book review of the year, most of which have, like this one, been indie or self-published books. I said before that this year I wanted to focus more heavily on indie books and support the indie writing community, and I had a really great time with Peter Shaun-Tyrell’s debut fantasy novel. It’s on the shorter side, so I was able to read through it quite quickly, but I will definitely be picking up Part Two sometime in the near future. Let’s talk about Part One.

This book had been sitting on my shelf for well over a year by the time I picked it up to actually read. Such is the way of the eternal TBR. I’m glad I finally did, though. I really love the cover art for this book, and those of its sequels Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each one taken from a single painting by John Harris, split into triptych. And I have to admit, the cover is really what drew me to Ancillary Justice initially. Well, that, and an intense curiosity about such a highly-regarded space opera. So, let’s get into it.

Ever since university, I’ve kept in the back of my mind the idea of reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. Why university? Because one of my lecturers was a Barsoom super-fan. One time, I wrote an essay for his class which was about writing the preamble to a constitution for a new human settlement on Mars under John Carter. The trouble was, it needed to be 500 words. Most preambles to constitutions are 150 - 200 words long. So, using my imagination, I came up with an entire story to fill out the word-count of how these people escaped the tyranny of Earth and established a settlement on Mars.

Time for another non-fiction review! This time I’m taking a look at Why You Can’t Catch A Rocket To Mars by Professor Lyndon N. Smith. The book comprises a series of reflections from the author on the state of modern science research and society, attempting to find answers to the question of why the rate of scientific progress and technological innovation appears to have slowed in today’s world when compared to the giant leaps and grand promises of yesteryear.

I’ve been saving this one up for a while. I really enjoyed reading through the first three books of the Questrison Saga, Heliopause, Ephemeris, and Accretion. Their blend of space opera and fantasy with intense action was a lot of fun, and those first three are relatively short.

Another book I’ve read as part of Drew Wagar’s Monday night Twitch book club. Similarly to the situation with H.G. Wells, I’d never read any Jules Verne before, though I am familiar with a number of his more famous stories - particularly Around the World in 80 Days, From the Earth to the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And those are mainly via TV and movie adaptations