Top 10 Reads of 2013

2013 has been a fantastic year for our reading lists (or a horrible one, if you consider how much larger our to-read piles have grown). We've read a lot of brilliant books, but we've managed to narrow our list of favorites down to the top ten books that truly resonated with us this year.

Love Minus Eighty by Will McIntosh

MOGSY SAYS: I read more than 200 novels this year. 200. Asking me to pick just a handful of my favorites is a nigh impossible task, because I read so many amazing books in 2013. I could easily fill this list myself with 10, 25, or even 50 of my greatest reads this year, but alas I cannot, or my co-bloggers will surely beat me into coma with their heaviest of epic fantasy tomes (they already let me choose four instead of their three).

But Wendy has helped me narrow things down, with the description she wrote for the post above. The keyword is "resonate". And I suppose few other books have resonated with me this year as strongly as Will McIntosh's Love Minus Eighty. In a future full of advanced technology, people still strive for that timeless, formless, unshakeable connection to another soul known as love. It is what makes us human.

Provocative. Thoughtful. Beautiful. Passionate. This book is all that and more, and definitely deserves more attention. Way more. (Read more in my review)

The Boys by Garth Ennis

TIARA SAYS: This year has been all about the comics/manga for me, so while I've read some really great novels, I wanted to do something a little different and highlight some of the great comics I've read this year starting with The Boys. Now, I haven't actually put up a review of this series yet, but I've been working on one that may find its way to my personal blog because it's a long, introspective thing that keeps growing. The Boys is bloody disgusting. Within these pages, you will find an overabundance of disgusting human behavior. There is an excess of gross conduct and no one is truly beyond it.  It's offensive, hard to swallow, and out of control. It is also BRILLIANT.

Depending on your view of things, you may either feel that Ennis pointed out some very disturbing trends in comics, especially as they start to explore darker concepts with the audience shift, or you may feel that he missed the mark on some issues which has started some interesting debates. Personal interpretation is everything with this series. I've seen interpretations of the same events in to the book differ wildly, but prove to be valid ways of looking at things. Either way, this series is one of those stories that's hard to shelve. You want to look away, but it's such a veritable, horrific mess that you just can't stop reading it.

The Cloud Roads  by Martha Wells

WENDY SAYS: A sure sign that a book has really impressed me is when (A) I "just one more chapter" it to completion and (B) buy all of the author's other books the moment I'm done.

Wells really impressed me with her world building, especially when it comes to the various people of her world. Too often genre fiction authors create "alien" species, only to have them simply be humans with make up. Wells' creatures are each unique in form and culture and she takes a studious amount of time to bring that all to life. I have the utmost praise for the way she makes her main characters move, never forgetting that they are, most often, winged creatures, which means they will function in very different ways from us. I loved the way her characters moved and responded to each other. Every aspect of their world is so very different from ours, but so very endearing.  (Read more in my review)

The Thousand Names by Django Wexler

MOGSY SAYS: Like Wendy, one way to know that a book has impressed me is when I go on the hunt to track down all of the author's other works as soon as I'm finished reading. This is exactly what happened when I finished The Thousand Names.

This book was so difficult to put down; I devoured all 500+ pages in days. I couldn't even make myself slow down to savor it because it was just that absorbing. I've always had a soft spot for flintlock fantasy, Wexler gave me everything I wanted with his epic fantasy featuring magic, revolution, blood and gunpowder.

Military fantasy fans as well as wargamers rejoice, this book will put you right where the action is, with rich world-building as well as memorable and fully-realized characters to boot. (Read more in my review)

Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama

TIARA SAYS:  Before I started reading this (and watching the anime), if someone had asked me what my favorite manga of all time was, I would've said, "Simple. Tite Kubo's Bleach." If you were to ask me now, I'd probably do some fidgeting and get annoyed because I think this series has claimed the number one spot in my heart, and I feel like I'm cheating on my first love (Bleach) that I've been with for years. I still love you, Bleach. Don't leave!

I've gotten into quite a few new mangas this year, but none have fascinated me quite like this one. What I love about this series and what always stays on my mind is how human these characters are, how vulnerable they are both physically and metaphysically, and how these characters, the situation they're in, captures so much of the human need to fight and survive--even when it looks hopeless. It's a story about the courage in the face of fear. It presses upon the reader that, in order to survive, humans have to depend on each other and bring their individual strengths to the table to win this fight. It captures the indomitable spirit of humans without compromising other emotions such as fear, trust, and uncertainty. The fact that all this captured with few words and visuals. Amazing! (Read more in my reviews)

The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

WENDY SAYS: This is a sneaky little book. It's actually a romance that cleverly disguises itself as science fiction. While you're blissfully enjoying the displaced Sadiri people's hunt for suitable mates to help replenish their society after the heinous destruction of their planet, you slowly come to realize that you've fallen in love with Delarua and Dllenahkh, who slowly come to realize that they've fallen in love with each other.

Part way through this book, Tiara asked how I was enjoying it and I gave her a gushing response about how it felt like sitting comfortably on a couch, hanging out with good friends - who happen to like science fiction.

This book was so subtle and unassuming, which made it easily able to get right under my skin. (Read more in my review)

Miserere: An Autumn Tale by Teresa Frohock

MOGSY SAYS: This was a book I read in early spring, so sadly I was unable to feature it in my "Best of Summer" list. That's why I'm so glad to have the opportunity to talk about it now in our year end Top Reads post. 

Simply put, this book is gorgeous. The writing, the depth of the characters and the strength of their emotions made me want to hurl myself to my knees and thank the book gods that we have writers like Teresa Frohock and novels like Miserere. It is an intensely alluring book, taking its time to reveal its true nature, doling out details about its world in a trickle as you read. Needless to say, patience will be rewarded -- in spades. The author's talent is on full display, giving us the most brutal and disconcerting elements of horror, but as well showing how the most powerful of loves can endure and offer redemption. And Teresa Frohock does it all oh so beautifully. (Read more in my review)

Batgirl by Gail Simone

TIARA SAYS: I've read many amazing comics this year, and I could gush on and on about books like Saga, East of West, and Locke and Key just to name a few. However, I wanted to highlight Gail Simone's Batgirl for a few reasons. One being that it's been a long time since I really appreciated the story in mainstream comic. This book joins books such as Kingdom Come and Old Man Logan as a book that rises above the usual wash, rinse, repeat in mainstream comics, and it's not even an AU (alternate universe) like those two--unless you just don't acknowledge the DCnU, which is totally legit in my opinion. 

Now, admittedly, I think Gail's writing can be a little corny (and I still think Barbara is more formidable as Oracle), but I have been enjoying Batgirl. First, I think Gail has done a wonderful job of showing Barbara as a survivor, a survivor who both rejoices in and questions her miracle, a survivor who has triggers that she's still trying to overcome, a survivor who questions the validity and intent of Gotham heroes, even herself. Of the books I've read, Barbara's stories have highlighted many of these issues, showing the upside and the downside. I think Gail does a wonderful job tackling some harder issues. Barbara's return has been plagued with issues and doubts she's dealing with, and I appreciate Gail doing that rather than trying to make Barbara's return to the mantle all rainbows and good times. (Read more of my reviews)

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

WENDY SAYS: All of my subsequent YA reads have to stand up to this book in terms of characterization. I love the way Stiefvater writes young adults. They are not the obnoxious, completely self-absorbed creatures that I don't enjoy reading. That is, sure they are a bit self-absorbed, but they aren't written in such a way that their teenage flaws become grating. Yet they aren't written as adults in teen bodies. Stiefvater handles them respectfully in a way that both teens and adults can appreciate.

The other thing that I adore about Stiefvater's writing is the way she foregoes allusions when painting her world. Instead, she uses actions and absence to describe a scene, and most importantly, to make her characters very, very real. Her descriptions are absolutely delicious.  (Read more in my review)

Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan

MOGSY SAYS: It's a great time to be a speculative fiction reader right now, with so many great and original ideas having found their way to being published in recent years. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter have their place too, because if it weren't for them I wouldn't have had the pleasure of reading this incredible book in 2013.

What struck me about Hollow World isn't so much the story, but the main character's personal journey -- the things he learns about himself and the questions he asks about life and love. I didn't expect such heavy subject matters when I first picked this one up, but it was a welcome surprise. The book took my emotions on a roller coaster ride -- I felt ecstatic, shocked, angry, sad, annoyed, disturbed, deeply touched, so moved that I was almost in tears...all that and more just from reading the story, and any book that can give me the kind of feels that Hollow World did certainly qualifies as having resonated with me. (Review coming in Spring 2014 closer to release)

Comic Review: Batgirl: Knightfall Descends by Gail Simone

Batgirl, Vol. 2: Knightfall Descends by Gail Simone

Just dial F for Feelings on this one.

My second journey into a Gail Simone book, and let me just say, that I really enjoyed this book. Gail seems to have found her footing in this book and with the character. Much of the campiness that slightly turned me off was toned way down in this book. There was still some campiness there, but not to the same degree as the previous volume. This book follows Barbara on a series of encounters ranging from a run-in with the Court of Owls to the emergence of vigilante named Knightfall who may have been an innocent girl turned into a crazed “hero” intent on saving Gotham by purging it of its evil.

The thing I’m finding very interesting in these books is the storytelling format. So far, the volumes have been made up of various mini-stories rather than having one specific arc focus. I think the reason this works so well with Barbara’s story is because we watch as she adapts to these different situations while coping with the various thoughts and feelings she's harboring.

Continuing with the theme from volume one, Barbara still stands on shaky ground. She continues to be a dichotomy. She’s still trying to come to terms with her capabilities as a hero, and she’s beginning to question “the system.” She questions if they’re contributing to the problem by protecting the “haves” and their investments from the “have-nots” rather than addressing the problem of poverty and the disproportionate gap between the two groups. She asks is she truly a hero in this respect?

She also comes face to face with very important parts of her past in the form of her mother, which started in the last volume, and one of the thugs who witnessed her crippling at the hands of Joker (an encounter that turned out differently than I expected). There’s also the issue of Barbara’s brother, James. She’s unaware that something is bubbling that will probably blow up on her soon. Throw in the fact that she’s still dealing with her survivor’s guilt and trauma, which tends to make her react in very emotional ways in some situations because she’s triggered.

A character that I’m rapidly becoming to enjoy is Melody McKenna, an investigator for GCPD whose story we learned more of in this volume. Barbara keeps insisting that Melody McKenna hates her. That is so not true, and it’s so obvious that it’s not. McKenna is upset with Barbara because of what happened with her partner after Barbara’s return. That’s obvious as well. However, while McKenna has an invested interest in Batgirl, she’s allowed Barbara on numerous occasions to do her thing. In this volume, McKenna seems to show that she fully grasps what happened with her partner is not Batgirl’s fault because she relates a situation where she acted in a similar fashion as Barbara with the same outcome.

I could chalk this up to Barbara’s current conflicting feelings, though, how she seems to take everything so personally and feel it so deeply. She feels every loss. She sees the situation with McKenna’s partner as something she should’ve handled better, so maybe this insistence that McKenna hates her is just a  transference of her own harsh views of herself onto a tangible person/object.

My only complaint with this was In the Line of Fire, which is issue #9 and part of the crossover with the Court of Owls. This pissed me off so bad, but not because it was badly written. Truthfully, it was very good, and it was shaping up to be my favorite part of the book (now my favorite part is the Batwoman/McKenna/Batgirl team-up near the end), but it just ends without you really knowing what happens. I don’t think it really think this should’ve been included since it heavily depends on you reading issues from other books to get the full scope of what’s going on.

The other stories have an “ending,” except this one, and then the next story goes immediately into this Knightfall storyline, which will be resolved in the next volume. You’re left wondering what happened, if you haven’t read it, because it was obvious a big deal. However, it does say that you need to go to Batman #9, but still, I had to track down this Owls business to read soon. Remember, I said I wasn’t really trying to get into all this DCnU stuff, but DC is making me.

I think this is shaping up into a fine book. I like the sort of darker approach to her return. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Barbara has issues that have plagued her return and will presumably continue to plague her for a while. Watching her triumphs and failures, her insecurities, her growing confidence, makes her feel like a very believable character.

Final Verdict:

4 of 5 stars

Comic Review: Batgirl: The Darkest Reflection by Gail Simone

Batgirl: The Darkest Reflection by Gail Simone

Full disclosure. I stopped reading the New 52 after four comics. I read Mister Terrific #1, Justice League #1, Detective Comics #1, and Swamp Thing #1. Out of those four comics, I was only impressed with Detective Comics and Swamp Thing. Justice League was only “meh” and didn’t feel like it was worth the trouble of continuing at that point, and Mister Terrific was terrible when it had so much potential to be great. Even though I did enjoy Detective Comics and Swamp Thing, I still put them on the back burner in favor of other comics that I wanted to catch up on. Admittedly, I was one of those people who wasn’t that excited to see Barbara assume the Batgirl mantle again. I love Barbara. I really do, but I always felt that she was a more formidable hero as Oracle than as Batgirl. That’s neither here nor there now, and there’s no point in rehashing old thoughts. Moving on...

I decided to try Batgirl for two reasons. I wanted to try another comic from the New 52 to see how I would enjoy it, and I wanted to read more Gail Simone after sort of shying away from her writing because of a volume of The Atom I read that made me want to run away screaming. Friends and fans of Gail assured me that I would enjoy either Birds of Prey or Batgirl much more than I enjoyed The Atom. After some resistance, I finally decided it was time to close my eyes and step off this cliff again.

The Darkest Reflection follows Barbara Gordon who has made her return as Batgirl after an experimental—or at least it sounded experimental—medical procedure returns her ability to use her legs. For those of you not quite familiar with what happened or only have a vague idea of what happened to her, refer to The Killing Joke pre-DCnU. After some downtime rehabbing while living in her father’s home, Barbara decides that it’s time to spread her wings, move out of her father’s house, and take up the mantle of the bat again. What Barbara didn’t count on was her survivor’s guilt and PTSD (which is triggered when she’s faced with guns) making her return to crime fighting more difficult than she’d expected.

I enjoyed this much, much, much more than I did The Atom. At first, I was a little afraid that I might have to put this book down because it started a bit campier that I like. Actually, no, I should explain that better. I love when writers use campy writing to their advantage, but sometimes, I feel like writer’s try too hard with it. In turn, that turns me off because it comes off feeling so artificial and forced and makes it hard for me to enjoy the story.  This was one of the main problems that I had with The Atom. There were points in the beginning of this story where I worried I might be traveling down that road again, but after a while, the story found its footing and turned into an enjoyable read.

Barbara is a survivor struggling with the thought of having her legs back. She struggles with conflicting feelings that make her feel blessed for this miracle, but questions why did she, out of all the people in the in the world, deserve such a miracle. After thwarting a murder attempt on a family, Barbara’s next foe challenges her miracle as well and brings out deeper psychological fears.  

I really enjoyed the portrayal of Barbara’s struggle. She’s of two minds for most of this comic. She’s a superwoman and a frail all in the same breath. One minute she’s praising herself for her strength and smarts, and the next minute, she doubts herself and if she’s even doing the right thing. She wonders if she’s squandering her miracle by pushing herself too hard, but then she feels that this miracle wasn’t given to her for her to sit by idly. A brief confrontation with Nightwing shows the feelings she stills hold for him while punctuating that she doesn’t want the others to believe that she’s not capable--to the point that she lashes out at him in order to show that she isn’t helpless. She doesn’t want their help. She wants to prove herself, her strength and ability to overcome, to the bat family. 

Let me talk briefly about the ending of this comic. No real spoilers, but just some thoughts. When I realized that Barbara’s threat was eliminated in the fourth issues but there were still two issues left in this arc, I was thinking, “Okay?” It ended perfectly, and I was thinking that things were about to get odd since what could you possibly accomplish in two more issues? I was pleasantly surprised. You can say the next two issues in the arc were a mini-story, but still tied into the “reflection” theme showing Barbara what she could’ve been if she hadn’t had family and support.

The first part dealt with accepting that miracles happened to people whether they deserved them or not and that there’s no one who can decide that someone is undeserving of such a miracle, even if it’s a personal miracle. The second part dealt more personally with the idea that not everyone may see his or her miracle as a miracle. It showed how fragile the line between miracle and damnation is in some people’s mind, and it showed a thing about compassion and understanding, as well.

Overall, this was entertaining. There were some hiccups for me, and I’m back to questioning why it’s so easy for some people to find out who the bat family is over other more intelligent criminals. That's a general annoyance of mine with Batman and the bat family, not something that's limited to Gail herself. However, I still enjoyed the story and appreciated it for showing Barbara’s return as a struggle that she’s working to overcome for physical and psychological reasons. I’ll definitely read more of the Batgirl books. 

Final Verdict: 

3 of 5 stars