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Powell’s Essential List: 25 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the 21st Century (So Far)
(www.powells.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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As far as “best” go, I’m non plussed. Some of these I really liked, some… not so much.
Personal positive votes:
Perdido Street Station - absolutely loved it, great social commentary undertones while the story goes its own way in an incredibly vivid world
Fifth Season - great first book of a good series, good writing and good tension points
Saga - great art to match a great retelling of Romeo and Juliet in space, where all tropes are out the window
Personal “good but not great”: All Systems Red - fun light read, nothing more
Personal negative votes:
The Name of the Wind - it’s the archetypal fantasy story, with a lot of world building and little else, a Marie Sue as a main character and a love story with many many problems. I guess it’s there because it’s famous thus essential?
The Three Boby Problem - the writing is dry, the math is wrong, I can’t stand this book
American Goods - talking about dry writing style. And keeping the reader in the dark about completely arbitrary world rules. I did not enjoy it, often it feels Neil Gaiman writes to show you how much smarter he is than you. I will admit that Gaiman has been extremely influential, so I support it being on the list
Mistborn - page turner with little else to its name. The characters drop their life long ideals so easily to facilitate the plot, they are hardly believable
The other books in the list I haven’t read nor were on my reading list, most I hadn’t heard about before.
The only one of the ones you mentioned that I've read is American Gods, which I liked a lot, but I'm a different audience for that. I'm an atheist who is fascinated by religions, so I know a little about a lot of them, and I also don't mind slowly-paced books. There were lots of references to things that made me smile and kept me engaged.
Oh, I read All Systems Red as well, and liked it, but also agree with your observations: it's a fun, light read. Also worth noting that it's a novella, so there wasn't as much room to develop a lot of complexity as for a book twice its length.