Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse -- a voyage permitted only to those who've always believed there's another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night.

To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They've each lost something important -- a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life -- and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.

Palimpsest (2009)
2010 HUGO AWARD NOMINEE
Bantam trade paperback
367 pages
my rating : 6/10

Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson

In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the 60 stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City.

In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation's spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.

Then, out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax -- Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is...troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce.

Treachery and intrigue dog Julian's footsteps. Hair's-breadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian's soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob.

....As told by Julian's best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks -- and answers -- the age-old question: "Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?"

Julian Comstock (2009)
2010 HUGO AWARD NOMINEE
Tor hardcover
416 pages
my rating : 6/10

WWW: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer

Caitlin Decter is young, pretty, feisty, a genius at math -- and blind. Still, she can surf the net with the best of them, following its complex paths clearly in her mind.

When a Japanese researcher develops a new signal-processing implant that might give her sight, she jumps at the chance, flying to Tokyo for the operation.

But Caitlin's brain long ago co-opted her primary visual cortex to help her navigate online. Once the implant is activated, instead of seeing reality, the landscape of the World Wide Web explodes into her consciousness, spreading out all around her in a riot of colors and shapes. While exploring this amazing realm, she discovers something -- some other --lurking in the background. And it's getting smarter...

WWW : Wake (2009)
2010 HUGO AWARD NOMINEE
Ace hardcover
368 pages
cover photos by Steven Biver, John Lund
my rating : 6.5/10

The City & The City by China Miéville

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Besźel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Besźel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Besźel's equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman's secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Besźel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

The City & The City (2009)
2010 HUGO AWARD WINNER
Del Rey hardcover
312 pages
cover art by FWIS
my rating : 8.5/10

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, crèche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?...

The Windup Girl (2009)
2009 NEBULA AWARD WINNER
2010 HUGO AWARD WINNER
Night Shade books hardcover
359 pages
cover art by Raphael Lacoste
my rating : 8.5/10

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

Elantris was beautiful, once. It was called the city of the gods: a place of power, radiance, and magic. Visitors say that the very stones glowed with an inner light, and that the city contained wondrous arcane marvels. At night Elantris shone like a great silvery fire, visible even from a great distance.

Yet, as magnificent as Elantris had been, its inhabitants had been more so. Their hair a brilliant white, their skin an almost metallic silver, the Elantrians seemed to shine like the city itself. Legend claimed that they were immortal, or at least nearly so. Their bodies healed quickly, and they were blessed with great strength, insight, and speed. They could perform magics with a bare wave of the hand; men visited Elantris from all across Opelon to receive Elantrian healings, food, or wisdom. They were divinities.

And anyone could become one.

The Shaod, it was called. The Transformation. It struck randomly -- usually at night, during the mysterious hours when life slowed to rest. The Shaod could take beggar, craftsman, nobleman, or warrior. When it came, the fortunate person's life ended and began anew; he would discard his old, mundane existence and move to Elantris. Elantris, where he could live in bliss, rule in wisdom, and be worshipped for eternity.

Eternity ended ten years ago.

Elantris (2005)
Tor fantasy hardcover
496 pages
cover art by Stephan Martiniere
my rating : 7/10

A Scattering of Jades by Alexander C. Irvine

The great fire of 1835 has burned most of New York City's wooden downtown. Like many people, Archie Prescott thinks he has lost everything. His home is a smoldering ruin, his dead wife's body at his feet. And next to her is a child's corpse he assumes was his daughter. It seems like the end of everything.

But it is only the beginning.

Goaded into action by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, Archie runs afoul of one of P.T. Barnum's former sideshow workers, Riley Steen. With the help of an ancient book translated by Aaron Burr, Steen has resurrected a chacmool. This ageless Mesoamerican avatar plans to use the blood of Archie's still-living daughter to bring about the end of humanity.

Meanwhile, Steven Bishop guides tourists through the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Steven, a slave, wants nothing more than a world where the color of his skin doesn't deny his humanity. His fateful first meeting with the chacmool leads him to believe that the promise it offers may bring him to such a world.

In the midst of ancient magic and murderous conspiracies, Archie finds himself with the power to save the world or drown it in sacrificial blood...but first he has to stop mourning his daughter and undertake a grim cross-country journey to save her.

A Scattering of Jades (2002)
Tor paperback
406 pages
cover art by John Jude Palencar
my rating : 8/10

Expiration Date by Tim Powers

Young Koot Parganas is growing up in Los Angeles in the 1990s, but his parents won't let him do anything normal. His weirdo parents venerate the spirits of the dead Mahatmas. At the age of eleven, Koot has disobeyed his parents, broken into a plaster bust of Dante, stolen the small glass vial concealed inside it, and set in motion events that will change his own life, and everyone else's.

For trapped in the vial was the preserved ghost of Thomas Alva Edison, and there is no telling what power the possession of that ghost could confer. The exposure of Edison's ghost lights up a beacon for those who can see such things.

Koot is pursued through the dark underside of the city, aided by allies as strange as his enemies: a bum and his dog; a man concealed by the ghostly mask of Houdini; a psychiatrist-sorceress; and a former television child-star who has been dead for several years, but who is not yet ready to leave his body or abandon his revenge on the woman who murdered his godfather.

Expiration Date (1995 UK, 1996 USA)
Tor hardback
381 pages
cover art by Michael Koelsch
my rating : 8/10

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

After the first exquisite songs were interpreted by radio telescope, U.N. diplomats debated long and hard whether and why human resources should be expended in an attempt to reach the world that would become known as Rakhat. In the Rome offices of the Society of Jesus, the questions were not whether or why but how soon the mission could be attempted and whom to send.

The Jesuit scientists went to Rakhat to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God's other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went for the greater glory of God.

They meant no harm.

It is the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a twenty-first-century scientific mission to a newly discovered extraterrestrial culture. Sandoz and his companions are prepared to endure isolation, hardship and death, but nothing can prepare them for the civilization they encounter, or for the tragic misunderstanding that brings the mission to a catastrophic end.

The Sparrow (1996)
Villard hardcover
cover art by Giotto di Bondone (14th century)
405 pages
my rating : 9/10

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

One Boy...One Dragon...A world of adventure.

When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon soon realizes he has stumbled upon a legacy nearly as old as the Empire itself.

Overnight his simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. With only an ancient sword and the advice of an old storyteller for guidance, Eragon and the fledgling dragon must navigate the dangerous terrain and dark enemies of an Empire ruled by a king whose evil knows no bounds.

Can Eragon take up the mantle of the legendary Dragon Riders? The fate of the Empire may rest in his hands....

Eragon (2002)
Knopf hardcover
cover art by John Jude Palencar
497 pages
my rating : 7/10

Kiln People by David Brin

In a perilous future, disposable duplicate bodies fulfill every citizen's legal and illicit whim. Life as a 24-hour "ditto" is cheap, as Albert Morris knows. A brash investigator with a knack for trouble, he's sent plenty of clay duplicates into deadly peril, them "inloaded" memories from copies that were shot, crushed, drowned...all part of a day's work.

But when Morris tackles a ring of crooks making bootleg copies of a famous actress, he trips into a secret so explosive it incites open warfare on the streets of Dittotown.


Kiln People (2002)
Tor paperback
cover art by Jim Burns
567 pages
my rating : 8/10

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Werewolves can be dangerous if you get in their way, but they'll leave you alone if you are careful. They are very good at hiding their natures from the human population, but I'm not human. I know them when I meet them, and they know me, too.

Mercy Thompson's sexy next-door neighbor is a werewolf.

She's tinkering with a VW bus at her mechanic shop that happens to belong to a vampire.

But then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself...and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to get her into a whole lot of trouble.

Moon Called (2006)
Book one in the Mercy Thompson series
Ace paperback
cover art by Daniel Dos Santos
288 pages
my rating : 7/10

Matter by Iain M. Banks

In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight and a search for the one -- maybe two -- people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.

But the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilizations throughout the greater galaxy.

Concealing her new identity -- and her particular set of abilities -- might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.

Matter (2008)
A Culture Novel
Orbit USA hardcover
cover art by Debra Lill
593 pages
my rating : 7.5/10

To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

The time is The Beginning. The place is Heaven. The story is the Revolt of the Angels -- a war of magic, corruption and intrigue that could destroy the fragile fabric of the universe, plunge it back into chaos, from which all thing come.

To Reign in Hell (1984)
Ace fantasy paperback
cover art by Steve Hickman
268 pages
my rating : 6/10

Gridlinked by Neal Asher

Gridlinked is a fast-paced science fiction adventure mixed with a dash of cyberpunk and a splash of espionage. Earth Central Security agent Ian Cormac is a legend, a protector of the Polity, hundreds of worlds connected together by instantaneous transport via "runcibles." Unfortunately, he's burnt out, "gridlinked" to the net so long his humanity has nearly drained away.

Now he must go cold turkey as he's sent to investigate a thirty-megaton runcible disaster on the planet Samarkand. With the runcible out, Cormac must get there by ship to investigate the disaster. But he has incurred the wrath of psychopath Arian Pelter, who trails him across the galaxy with the decidedly homicidal android Mr. Crane at his side.

And deep beneath Samarkand's surface are mysteries better buried.

It's not only humans who know the meaning of hate.

Gridlinked (2001)
Tor trade paperback
423 pages
my rating : 8/10

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

In 1878, two young magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation. They continually vie to outwit and expose each other.

This rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers -- with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception the magician's craft can command -- the highest misdirection and darkest science.

Blood will be spilled, but even this will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.

The Prestige (1995)
World Fantasy Award Winner
Tor trade paperback
cover engraving by Giovanni Battista Bracceli
360 pages
my rating : 9/10

Zodiac by Neal Stephenson

Two centuries after the Boston Tea Party, harbor dumping is still a favorite local sport, only this time time it's major corporations piping toxic wastes into the water. Environmentalist and professional pain in the ass Sangamon Taylor is Boston's modern-day Paul Revere, spreading the word from a 40-horsepower Zodiac raft. Embarrassing powerful corporations in highly telegenic ways is the perfect method of making enemies, and Taylor has a collection that would do any rabble-rouser proud.

After his latest exploit, he's wanted by the FBI, possibly the Mafia, and definitely by a group of Satanist angel-dust heads who think he's looking for a PCP factory, not PCB contamination. Pretty soon dodging bullets is the least of Taylor's problems---because somewhere out there are an unhinged genetic engineer and a lab-concocted bacterium that could destroy all ocean life...and that's just for appetizers.

Zodiac; the eco-thriller (1988)
Bantam Spectra Books
cover art by Bruce Jensen
308 pages
my rating : 8/10

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer

All those who ever lived on Earth have found themselves resurrected -- healthy, young, and naked as newborns -- on the grassy banks of a mighty river, in a world unknown. Miraculously provided with food, but with no clues to the meaning of their strange new afterlife, billions of people from every period of Earth's history -- and prehistory -- must start again.

Sir Richard Francis Burton would be the first to glimpse the incredible way-station, a link between worlds. This forbidden sight would spur the renowned nineteenth century explorer to uncover the truth. Along with a remarkable group of compatriots, including Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the Victorian girl who was the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), an English-speaking Neanderthal, a WWII Holocaust survivor, and a wise extraterrestrial, Burton sets sail on the magnificent river. His mission: to confront humankind's mysterious benefactors, and learn the true purpose -- innocent or evil -- of the Riverworld...

To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)
Book One of the Riverworld Series
Ballantine Books
cover art by John Stevens
216 pages
my rating : 8/10

Boneshaker by Cheri Priest

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska’s ice. Thus was Dr. Blue’s Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue’s widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

Boneshaker (2009)
Tor books trade paperback
cover art by Jon Foster
416 pages
my rating : 8/10

A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton

My name is Meredith Gentry, but of course it's not my real name. I dare not even whisper my true name after dark for fear that one hushed word will travel over the night winds to the soft ear of my aunt, the Queen of the Air and Darkness. She wants me dead. I don't even know why.

I fled the high court of Faerie three years ago, and have been hiding ever since. I ran as far as the land would take me, stopped only by the shore of the Pacific Ocean and the fact that if I'd used my passport the Bureau of Human and Fey Affairs would have been notified, and they would have told my relatives. And my relatives would have killed me. As Merry Gentry, I am a private investigator for the Grey Detective Agency: Supernatural Problems, Magical Solutions. My magical skills, which are scorned at the courts of Faerie, are valued in the human world. Even by human standards, my magic isn't flashy. Fine by me: Flashy attracts too much attention, and I can't afford that. Sightings of the Princess Meredith are now more popular than Elvis sightings.

Rumor has it that I'm dead. Not quite. I am Princess Meredith NicEssus, and if you read that name after dark, you will call down a knock upon your door from a hand that can kill you with a touch. I have been so careful, but not careful enough. The shadows have found me, and they are going to take me back home, one way or another.

The running is over. The fighting has just begun...

A Kiss of Shadows (2000)
Meredith (Merry) Gentry book 1
Ballantine Books hardcover
435 pages
my rating : 5/10

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just when it was on the verge of discovering space flight. For the human colonists now settling the Amarantin homeworld, what caused the species' destruction is of little more than academic interest. Even after colonists discover an almost perfect preserved city on the planet, only the archaeological community seems interested. But one scientist, Dan Sylveste, is convinced that solving the Amarantin riddle is vital to the survival of humanity.

Desperate to get at the truth -- but with few resources -- Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. Walking weapons, the ship's cyborg crew could easily become a very real danger to Sylveste's life - but they could also be his only hope to find the answer he so zealously seeks.

As Sylveste closes in on the secret, he learns that one of the cyborgs was sent to kill him. Because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason - and if that reason is uncovered, the universe - and reality itself - could be irrevocably altered.

Revelation Space (2000)
Ace books hardcover
cover art by Chris Moore
476 pages
my rating : 8/10

Sword-Dancer by Jennifer Roberson

Southron Blade Skill, Northern Sword Magic....

He was Tiger, born of the desert winds, raised as a slave and winning his freedom by weaving a special kind of magic with a warrior's skill. Now he was an almost legendary sword-dancer, ready to take on any challenge --- if the price was right...or the woman pretty enough.

She was Del, born of ice and storm, trained by the greatest of Northern sword masters. Now, her ritual training completed, and steeped in the special magic of her own runesword, she had come South in search of the young brother stolen five years before.

But even Del could not master all the dangers of the deadly Punja alone. And meeting Del, Tiger could not turn back from the most intriguing challenge he'd ever faced --- the challenge of a magical, mysterious sword-dancer of the North....

Sword-Dancer (1986)
Book one of the Sword series
DAW paperback
cover art by Kathy Wyatt
286 pages
my rating: 8/10