hello do u have any fantasy/scifi/dystopian books to recommend?? i love ur taste in books
UHHHH i’ve been reblogging posts about most of what i’m reading lately so none of this will probably come as a surprise, but off the top of my head......
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin made me cry and was easily the best book I’ve read so far this year. an ambassador from Earth (for some reason this is a cisgender guy) goes to planet full of genderless aliens to invite them to join a intergalactic league of worlds. there are politics, and of course some gender exploration (not perfect but still interesting), but mostly it’s an exploration of the human condition, like most of Grandma Ursula’s books. very good, also heartbreaking, with an enemies/rivals-to-lovers relationship in there, sort of. the first time I’ve liked an enemies/rivals-to-lovers anything tbh.
I just finished Graceling by Kristin Cashore and ngl it was dumb as shit at times but still kinda fun lol cause it had Prince Po who fulfills a lot of my favorite character tropes. it’s a YA fantasy/adventure/romance where people with heterochromia have “Graces” which are like superhuman abilities unique to the person. the main character has the grace of “killing” and for this reason has been used as a weapon all her life by her uncle the king. I’m reading the sequel right now which I think is a lot better so far and expands the world and character depth. there are a lot of POC, the protagonists are (mostly) WOC, and there’s some gender commentary about being a woman with power that isn’t really mind-blowing, tbh I found it kind of trite in the first book, but so far in the sequel I think it’s handled a bit more maturely. I hear the third book gets gud.
if you’re in an Avatar: The Last Airbender mood, I was surprised to enjoy The Rise of Kyoshi by FC Yee and I hear the sequel is as good or even better. it didn’t blow my mind—some things were predictable but others did surprise me at times. and I enjoy Kyoshi struggling her wants with her identity as an Avatar, a pursuer of justice, and also a killer.
the MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam) by Margaret Atwood is probably one of my favorite dystopian books, or “speculative fiction” as she calls it. it’s near-future world where most people either live in corporate compounds provided to them by the companies they work for, or in poverty in half-flooded cities. most of the world is in need of resources. the books follow two parallel stories, one of what happens after a worldwide extinction event wipes out humanity, and the second of how society gets to that point. predictably, it’s a dark and unpleasant read. despite my enjoying it, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this series, it’s super weird on race (like most Atwood things I’ve read) and I didn’t like the last book at all, but I thought the first two were pretty good and enjoyable in a sick way, if you think you can stomach a story of where we might be in 20-30 years wrt climate change, capitalism, genetic modification, and scientific freedom gone rogue. it’s definitely a hard series to read. I feel like I need to give a disclaimer for why I like this one so SLIGHT SPOILERS: personally, I think of Oryx and Crake as like a typical “male” narrative of the apocalypse, where a regular guy who was there to witness the events of the End of Times ends up alone at the end and trying to rough it out by foraging a ruined land for supplies and living day by day, and I think of The Year of the Flood as a more typically “female” perspective, where the apocalypse just sort of happens to a regular woman and her community. then she—eventually they—have to find ways to deal with it and come together to think of surviving the future, not just each day. it’s not to say that one way is better than the other, but I think both perspectives combined make for a fuller view and YOTF really had a sort of light at the end of the tunnel that I found myself hoping for after reading OAC. (meanwhile, the last book.... I ignore it.)
the Murderbot series by Martha Wells is a delight and really funny. in the far-future where humans are exploring the galaxy, a security robot develops feelings and takes on bodyguard and mercenary work as it discovers how to be a person. I’m still not done (and the series is ongoing) but this is a pretty sweet, lighthearted read of a scifi future in which corporations are still awful and technology is still misused, but not everything is terrible and friends can still be made and robots have feelings for their charges.
looking back it is embarrassing how few books by WOC I have read this year, I am trying to rectify that. but also I’m glad in a way that I’m reading at all because this is the first year in a long time i have actually, like, read stuff that isn’t fanfic or comics? and that is entirely because this year I am working in a job that isn’t working me to the bone and have time to read at the end of the day, unlike the previous 4 years, so this list is not as long as I’d like it to be, but so far, the sixteen books I’ve read this year are a lot better than the total of one book I read in 2019, which was a Deadpool novel, so.
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