Every Favorite-of-the-Year Honoree

Still a favorite. The characters are devilish and horrible and thorough all at once. Top tier beach read.

Just spectacular. Intricately planned, delicately spooled out, and kept me guessing until literally the final word. What a ride. Felt the closest to a modern Christie I've read in a while. I'm hungry for more.

A fun world to explore and engaging characters I liked how they grew over time and information about the world was spooled out.

Really picked up after the first one. Characters are still bad and the writing is still pretty dry, but this one leaned much more heavily into the speculative sci-fi aspect that was promised. Loved the time jumps too- great to see how everything played out over years and years. No clue where the third one will go, but I'll definitely be reading it (eventually).

I loved the framing of magic as a series of rules. Fun, heist-y read and a good setup for more to come.

Riveting time loop book about relationships, memories, and reality. Heartfelt, but intense. Great characters and really nails the hopelessness of a time loop. Real page turner.

Exciting spy thriller. Big focus on martial arts and maybe 3 too many similarly named characters, but it's a great mystery and a fun read overall.

Touching and funny, but informative and pleasant. Definitely an interesting read.

Great exploration of what supers would look like in the modern age, with the internet. Brutal and funny in all the right ways. Dialogue was great and most of the cast was distinct and stellar.

Great concept and frame. Enjoyed the arc of the novel and the characters. Good sciencec, good adventure, good Weir novel.

Wears its Firefly inspiration on its sleeve, but in a good way. Good characters and a decent world. I liked the story too. Good romp all around.

Great expansion on the first book. Good character work and plotting. Cool expanding of the world.

Great heist. Cool magic, if a little unexplained. Good characters, though their ages are real weird. Character motivations are good and the development feels natural. Pacing at the end felt a little odd, but it's a pair of books, so this is really only part 1.

I had sort of a love/hate thing going with Becky Chambers' debut novel. There was a bit of eye-rolling when it came to unnecessary romantic pairings - I didn't expect the romance in a book I assumed was about space politics. But, at its core, it does what sci-fi does best: it imagines a world reminiscent of, but distinct from, our own. A lot of time and effort is spent explaining each character's elaborate gender journey, which didn't feel relevant to the story. But it makes sense that other planets wouldn't have a gender setup like ours and learning to navigate that would be a very real need for an intergalactic society. Given that, it helps the reader re-examine how we interact in our own society. And dang it if that's not what sci-fi is all about.

Superb. Maybe a little too close to home with the pandemic, but a delight nonetheless. I liked the intricacy of it, how everything was related. Great description of a possible future and the crumbling of society. It was really beautiful, in its own way.

Great setup to more goodness. Superb worldbuilding and prose. Pretty good characters. Good sense of wonderment and discovery.

Great read! Breezes by and asks some really interesting questions. There's definitely a lot of tension and it's fun thinking about what makes us, us.

Neat framing. A really compelling sci-fi story wrapped in a love story I didn't care as much about. The language was pretty though and they did a nice job with the contrast between the characters.

Reads like a spy thriller, but it's all cited non-fiction. Really interesting look into how the USSR operated and person-focused tasks of the time. Characters were numerous and a little same-y, but the narrative was woven well.

Really great, intense book. Breakneck pace. Mix of Ender's Game and Game of Thrones. There were a lot of characters and it was a little hard to track at times, but that didn't really hold me back. Enjoyed the world and am very curious to see where the trilogy goes.

Really enjoyable read. Twists and turns and nothing is quite as it seems. Both spooky and a satisfying mystery. Some of the side characters are a little hard to track at points, but the book helps you along well enough. I liked how information trickled out throughout the narrative. Also it was paced really well. Most of all, it features one of my favorite story mechanics: time loops. Very well done.

Fast and well-written. Biggest complaint is the lack of arc for the characters. Doesn't seem like any of them learned anything. In any case, it was fun and great to have a perspective I'm mostly unfamiliar with.

Let me start by saying I absolutiely adored the frame of this story. Unabashedly. The biggest mark against it was that the prose is, at times, pretty dense. Not all of the stories are great, but some of them are. I liked the absurd bits. The conclusion was pretty good, but I'm not sure it really tied everything up. It's... definitely an interesting read. Not for everyone, but at least give it a bit of a shot.

Really fun read l the way through. Impressive blend of British history, slang, context, and of course, a heist. Every bit felt satisfying and it was a serious page turner.

Really great book. Good frame, superb worldbuilding, pretty good characters. The way magic was explained felt fairly satisfying. It sort of throws you into the deep end and everything makes more sense as you go. Doesn't stray from tradegy. Definitely a good start to a series and I'm excited to see what comes next.

Really amazing worldbuilding. Exciting story without a lot of filler. I liked the non-linear nature of the first part. Plenty of swashbuckling. Lacking interesting female characters, but overall a very fun read.

Weir definitely has a style; it's one I enjoy. The issues the characters face are explained succintly with scientific reasoning. The protagonist is quippy, realistic, and driven. Not terribly long, but a good read. --- I did a couple of chapters of this in audiobook form. The performance was great!

This book was a lot of fun. The first third or so was all character work that was setup, but once the story got rolling it was fun. Good job of describing life in mid century Spain, i'd imagine.

Pretty awesome read. Felt a lot like name of the wind, but with less flowery language. Not a bad rung, but a different style. Felt very direct. That was good though, seemed like lots of time for things to happen.

Enjoyable book! A mix of humor and memoir. The other thing I really liked about the audio book was that he had celebrity friends leave voicemails to introduce chapters, which was a nice touch. Also there were some audiobook specific jokes about not being able to see the pictures and stuff. There was a lot of bravado on top of the stories, but there was also a very genuine person under there somewhere. Enjoyable read!

A battle of sociopaths, great twists, believable characters. Loved it.

Clever spin on the alternate reality. Interesting characters, immersive environment