2021 Fiction Reading Year in Review

Inspired by Graham Bradley's Year In Review, I have attempted to catalog all of the fiction which I have read to completion for the first time this year, not including kids books that I read to my children.

This is a very approximate list, and in no sort of chronological order, because a year ago is a long time, and I did not make notes of this stuff as I went... Where possible, I have included Amazon affiliate links for acquiring the books. Generally speaking, I have enjoyed everything I have read (I wouldn't have finished it otherwise!), so presence on this list can be interpreted as an endorsement and recommendation.

Since I've already mentioned Graham, here's what I read by him this year:

• Kill the Beast, a steampunk / gaslamp horror retelling of Beauty and the Beast, which I reviewed as one of the first entries in my series on secondary languages in fiction.
• Sleepless Hollow (also available as a free audiobook, narrated by the author), a contemporary sci-fi / supernatural sequel to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
• The Guild of Eldritch Adventurers (podcast serial only), a time-travelling homage to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen featuring characters from American literature.

And since I do ARC reading for Michaelbrent Collings, here are his new releases:

• Synchronicity, a contemporary sci-fi thriller.
• Malignant, a contemporary thriller based on the horrors of human trafficking & sex slavery.

Note that I also reviewed another Michaelbrent book for my secondary language series.

I made a decent dent in the H. P. Lovecraft bibliography:

• The Tomb
  
• The Festival
  
• The Call of Cthulhu
• The Whisperer in Darkness
  
• At the Mountains of Madness
  
• The Shadow over Innsmouth
  
• The Haunter of the Dark
  

And since I seem to be grouping things by author so far, let's just keep that up!

By Sue Burke, I read Semiosis (which I previously reviewed) and its sequel Interference, a sci-fi duology dealing with human contact with aliens who have radically different means of communication.

By Sheila Finch, I read Reading the Bones, a novel in the Guild of Xenolinguists universe which I also previously reviewed.

I made a pretty good dent in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series... which I may at some point have to do a short review of addressing the narrative usage of Dwarfish:

• Mort
  
• Sourcery
  
• Pyramids
• Guards! Guards!
• Eric
• Reaper Man
• Soul Music
• Feet of Clay
• The Truth
• Thief of Time

By P. M. Freestone, I read the Shadowscent duology, a low-magic secondary world fantasy about which I previously interviewed linguist & conlanger Lauren Gawne. This consists of:

• Shadowscent: The Darkest Bloom (which I may have read back in 2020? But I finished the duology this year, so I'm counting it)
• Shadowscent: Crown of Smoke

By Arkady Martine, I read the Hugo-winning A Memory Called Empire, which I also reviewed. Even without having read the sequel yet, I have many additional thoughts that did not make it into that review, but unfortunately Arkady Martine's publicist has not yet gotten back to me about doing an interview, so I've been holding off on publishing a sequel review.

In the course of a couple weeks, I knocked out the entire Hugo-and-Nebula-winning Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells:

• All Systems Red
• Artificial Condition
• Rogue Protocol
• Exit Strategy
• Network Effect
• Fugitive Telemetry

And finally, I read Rosemary Kirstein's 4-book-so-far Steerswoman series, an excellent entry in the surprisingly large genre of things that look like fantasy but actually turn out to be science fiction with female protagonists written by female authors starting the in the 70s or 80s!

• The Steerswoman (review)
• The Outskirter's Secret (review)
• The Lost Steersman (review)
• The Language of Power (review)

I acquired a good bit more than this, but my reading rate has not kept up with my acquisition rate....