The Top 27 Books of 2016 .. The Early Version

2016 has been history for about ten minutes now. So, it's time for me to recall fondly the best books of the last 12 months ... as far as my enjoyment was concerned. I make NO allusions that these were the 27 best in terms of quality. But I enjoyed the heck out of them. And maybe you might too.

As usual, I wait until the end of the year and then do a search in my Calibre database for all the books that I scored 10 Kovids when rating them in Calibre. Kovid Goyal is the creative mind behind Calibre, the best eBook tracking system that there is. You can give Calibre a checkout by going to Features – calibre if you want. I guarantee that you will derive SOME benefit from the program if you read books via an eReader of whatever sort. And if you do, don't forget the DONATE button in the upper right. Otherwise, this program is free. So, spend to your consciousness's limit.

Now, this FIRST DRAFT of this past year's gems is going to be, by necessity, brief. Nature calls and the night is still young. To do work. Rumplestiltskin. But I did want to note the 10-Kovid books and I will comment on all but one of them later.

The list of books that rated my top score:

SPORTS

• Jonathan Abrams's Boys Among Men
• Ben Lindbergh's The Only Rule Is That It Has To Work
• Bob McKenzie's Hockey Confidential

SF

• Elizabeth Bonesteel's The Cold Between
• Lindsay Buroker's Star Nomad
• Tanya Huff's An Ancient Peace 
• Marko Kloos's Terms of Enlistment & Lines of Departure & Chains of Command
• B. V. Larson's Dreadnought & Rebel Fleet
• Ken Lizzi's Under Strange Suns
• Arlene F. Marks's The Genius Asylum
• John J. Nance's Orbit
• Mike Resnick's The Prison in Antares
• John Sandford and Ctein's Saturn Run

Fantasy

• Jack Campbell's The Assassins of Altis & The Pirates of Pacta Servanda
• Tanya Huff's Third Time Lucky and Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World 
• Kristen Painter's Miss Frost Solves A Cold Case
• Jody Wallace's The Whole Truth

Mystery

• Jeffery Deaver's Where the Evidence Lies
• Gina Lamanna's Sprinkled

Thriller

• Bruce Desilva's A Scourge of Vipers
• Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg's The Pursuit
• Paul Levine's Bum Rap

Young Adult

• Zac Harrison's Crash Landing

I wasn't sure there was a standout winner even two weeks deep into Decemeber. I loved the laugh-out-loud humour of Huff's collection of short fantasy stories that date back decades, featuring the lazy and lusty wizard Magdelene. I think the book is every bit the equal of Henry Kuttner's Robots Have No Tails. And I spent an AWFUL lot of the year reading the works of both Buroker and Kloos, with both authors getting me to read more than a THOUSAND pages of their series this year. I admit, I came THISclose to repeating last year's conceit of handing Buroker the title for getting me to eagerly devour nine books in the Fallen Empire series. On the other hand, I gave three of the five books in Kloos's Frontlines series a full 10 Kovids. Does nine good to great books outweight five decent to great books? I don't have an answer either. So, no repeat of the series as best book concept I trotted out last year when K. K. Rusch won for the Anniversary Day Saga sub-series.

I was charmed by Painter and I thought Wallace had a brilliant take on super powers for the comic book-inclined among us. The sports books were strong this year and I enjoyed the antics of Lindbergh, the depth of investigation by Abrams and the look behind the scenes McKenzie enjoyed with a handful of hockey subjects. One of which was the dreaded David Frost blight on society, of which I was a small participant of. But McKenzie's look at it from the Sheldon Keefe angle was informative, honest and it might be the only positive to ever emerge from the darkness Frost brought onto the hockey scene over the last three decades.

But in the end, it was a book after my own heart. The fourth tome in the Liam Mulligan series of thrillers by New England mystery writer Bruce Desilva. I only was tipped to Desilva by an email from Lee Goldberg and many thanks go to him for that. Mulligan is, or was, a writer for a fictional Providence newspaper, hanging onto relevance by the width of a newspaper broadsheet. Enjoyed the first book in the series and then less of the second and the third was at best mediocre. Honestly, I wasn't sure WHY I picked up the fourth, A Scourge of Vipers. It's the completist in me, I guess. I had only four books in the series (a fifth has now been obtained) and I didn't want to leave one unread. As an ex-newspaperman who gets together with a couple of other old fuddie-duddies from back in those days about three, four times a year, there remains a certain romance in my memory for the good ol' days when newspapers were relevant. I loved the biz and was sorry I left it when I did, especially for radio and then a PR position. But with the unions moving into small weeklies at the time, I wouldn't have kept enjoying working at the paper I was at for much longer anyways.

Desilva's book is the most rivetting, gut-renching depiction of a smart-ass reporter with scruples finding a way to both save the day, end up fired and better off and find true love, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. I wanted to BE Liam Mulligan by the time all was said and done.

More about the book and all the rest in the next blog. When will that be? Wish I knew. Check back frequently if you care. No promises as to when.

My Top TWO FORGOTTEN books of 2015

Well, isn't THAT embarrassing!?!

We all know I can't count to 25 from reading the end of year Top 25 Books and the mid-year Top 25 TV programs. But now, it seems, I can't read the screen and see that I needed to write about 37 books in the massive review blog posting a fortnight ago.

Left off two Mysteries/Thrillers, both series books. John Grisham's The Fugitive and Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich's The Job. Erk and gadzooks! Grisham is on the short list of my Mom's favourite authors while I'm old pals with Goldberg and a member of the Evanovich fan club.

I have edited the Top 25 list to include the two books, update my counting (again) and promise to be more careful next New Year's Eve.

My Top 25 (or so) Books of 2015

First, let me start by pointing out NOT to bother counting how many books are in my Top 25. I MIGHT have enjoyed MORE books than that number to the fullest extent of the Kovid scale and I think trying to hit 25 right on the nose. And of course, my favourite book of the year turns out to be eight books in all. I admit to my mathematical failings completely.

What is The Kovid Scale. It's a one-to-ten scale named after the originator of the Calibre eBook Database program. It is quite possibly the most important piece of software on my computer. Helped a little in the early days getting it going. That makes me feel good. But I haven't had an idea worth fixing or implementing in years at this point. Kovid Goyal has assembled a dedicated team of programmers to update the program on a virtual WEEKLY basis. I think there were 46 updates in 2015. But I might have mentioned previously that, of late, math is not my strong suit. But regardless of whether I'm off by an update or three, the shear doggedness of Kovid et al in making a FREE program WORTH PAYING MONEY for, is worth a donation here via button in the upper right hand corner. Get it if you do ANY eBook collecting, whether through Amazon or not. It's simply an amazing piece of software.

All of the books I write about (except in a couple of comparisons) I rated as 10 Kovids out of a possible score of ten. That's NOT to say that each book is perfect or even great literature. The Kovid scale is based purely on my enjoyment of the process of reading the book, whether I devoted time to reading it rather than watching TV, eating, sleeping or (sorry about this Boss) doing money-making work.

Take for example, Aliette de Bodard's multi-award nominated SF book, On a Red Station, Drifting. It's easy to see why that three-part novella had chins wagging and typists typing. It's flowery with outstanding imagery and solid extrapolation of a future Vietnamese-based society. But for me, getting through all of that mannered description was TOO MUCH HARD WORK. So, I abandoned the book two-thirds of the way through it. The book (yes, I'm calling a novella a book, as I do three short stories on this list) is not in my Top 25. Reading for me, is either work-related or fun. I want a page turner that brings a smile to my face every now and then. Don't much like horror in any form nor incessant crude language. I want to escape my current existence and be somewhere else for a few hours.

Or a lot of hours in the case of the eight books in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Anniversary Day Saga, which takes place in her Retrieval Artist universe set a hundred years from tomorrow. The Moon is colonized and humanity has found a working relationship with various alien species by adopting one set of over-riding laws: The Law of the Land (Society or Planet) prevails. So Humans have to behave as per the local customs when they step outside the confines of our solar system. Which, being human, they frequently don't. This leads to the creation of Retrieval Artists, detectives of a sort who search for people who have abandoned their life because of a ruling that they have contravened the laws somewhere else. Often draconian laws that go beyond death sentences to having their children taken away. Rusch does an immensely good job of constructing believable aliens that really aren't just humans with funny nose appliances. In particular, the Peyti. There's a bit of a Jewish allegory here, but it's in the background rather than being heavy-handed.

The prior books in the main series present a truly unique detective noire approach to a possible future, that has been detailed in seven books I've enjoyed immensely over the years. What takes this year's effort by Rusch to another level is that she churned out the last six books of the series so that her publisher, WMG, could release them one a month for the first half of the year. In October, I sat down and read the complete set of books in a fortnight. And these weren't novellas, not at all, on average being 350-page books, thank her very much! But she constructed this decades-long battle by subversives to break the federation of planets and their Law of the Land, terrorizing the Moon multiple times over. It's a mystery and a conspiracy thriller all wrapped up in one (or rather eight) books. It's a wonderful accomplishment by a writer who also publishes a short story EVERY Monday and blogs incessantly about the business of being a writer. How she does it, I am completely baffled. I hear she doesn't sleep. And unlike writing factories like Clive Cussler and James Patterson, she does ALL the writing in these books. Did I mention she also writes romance and mysteries TOO?!?!

Now, I'd start by reading the first seven books in the Retrieval Artist series (there's a couple of short stories involved too). But if you don't want to spend three months in one place in space, I think you could probably just dive in with Anniversary Day. Blowback and A Murder of Clones also came out in hardcover before this year. But I read eBooks and paperbacks, so as far as I'm concerned, A Murder of Clones got January off to a good start. After that, Search & Recovery, The Peyti Crisis, Vigilantes, Starbase Human and then the finale, Masterminds, completes the intra-series.

I DID have quibbles. Masterminds STILL leaves a few threads unravelled, in particular a murder by some cops. Miles Flint comes across as slightly too rigid to be believable where it comes to his daughter Talia, a clone of his actual real daughter, dead since the first book in the whole series. He tries to give Talia everything, other than honest support as she goes through HER troubles assimilating losing her mother and discovering her father is far from dead, as her mother had told her. I honestly assume I would break every single self-rule I ever imposed, if given a second chance like he gets. On the other hand, Talia spends so much time in panic mode that I find THAT a tad unbelievable. Although, I admit, I've never been a teenage girl and never lost-- and found-- a parent. Still, the uber-smart and talented Talia is played for more of a victim than a heroine to save the day. I wanted to scream at the both of them. "TALK TO EACH OTHER!!!" So, I guess, that says it all about these books. I was invested.

KK Rusch's Anniversary Day saga is the most enjoyable book of the year. All 2000+ pages of it. George R. R. Martin, eat your heart out!!

What WOULD have been the book of the year had I not spent October mooning over Rusch's writing? Honestly, it would have been a baseball fantasy by Bill Branger called The New York "Yanquis" or a short story about feudal Japan, with fantasy underpinnings, called Only A Shadow by Steve Bein. Bein's first book in the Fated Blades series won the top spot two years ago, and you will find the series capper a little bit further down. But I can't believe how delightful a little slice of life in Bein's series was. And we are certainly in a new world, where a writer like Bein, can find himself with a little story that can't fit into his novels but that he can release as a short story electronically that took less than an hour to read. I'm hoping we do hear from Tada in the future.

Branger's book was a tour-de-farce, postulating a time that has now come and gone, where a bombastic owner of the New York Yankees could get so disgusted with his team of over-paid, under-performing superstars and decides to replace the lot with Cubans. Embargoed Cubans. How that is done and what happens next, had me laughing throughout. It's a delight little book, told from the viewpoint of a tired old pitcher on his last leg with an uncertain future in automotive sales before becoming the guy to wrangle all of these young and naive baseball wunderkinds from Fidel Castro era Cuba.

So, we're up to ten recommended books at this point. Now's the time to put them out there in no particular order. I'll do it by niche. If you aren't into SF or computers or whatever, you can skip those parts. I promise you that there are super-entertaining reads scatted throughout these sections. Pick and choose according to your preferences.

Science Fiction

This is the domain of Jack Campbell and Mike Shepherd. And sure enough, both writers are here. Shepherd for just the second book in the Vicky Peterwald series, Survivor, because I didn't get the annual Kris Longknife book until this past week. So, just the single Shepherd entry. Peterwald and Longknife share the same crazy SF universe. Both are princesses, Longknife using her position to make life better for humanity. Peterwald's the spoiled opposite who has seen the error of her ways and is trying to make up for lost time. Shepherd is innovative alien-wise and seems to have an interesting insight into the Machiavellian intrigues of courts, good or bad. And let's face it, I LOVE anything Shepherd writes.

Or that Campbell writes. Which explains ...

Campbell hits the list FIVE times altogether. Campbell's original Lost Fleet series has now spun off to produce top-notch fourth and fifth books in the Beyond the Frontier intra-series follow-up called Steadfast and Leviathan respectively while the OTHER off-shoot of Lost Fleet, The Lost Stars series #3, Imperfect Sword, that follows one of the losing group in the original series to interesting places. It's becoming more and more apparent that trust is building between President Gwen Iceni and General Artur Drakon in Imperfect Sword. That trust now seems built on actual action, rather than being forced upon them by circumstances, which is good for the newly independent Midway star system. The budding democracy there is entertaining, as was Steadfast and Leviathan, where Black Jack Geary performs his strategic masterpieces to battle a new enemy from an old foe. The AI (artificial intelligence) warships have been created to battle Geary's space Navy with Geary's own history of tactics forming the AI's strategies. What's worse, Geary's battle to the death is against an armada created by a splinter group of his own commanding officers, led by an admiral with a grudge and no clue what evil he has unleashed.

A three-story collection of Novella's called Swords and Saddles adds to the Campbell claim to fame. Three very strong stories, including what might be called the fourth story in the Paul Sinclair (think JAG in space) series. But the true gem is the first story, The Rift that tells the story of valiant marines not only surviving against intractable odds, but actually winning a battle that seems impossible, but logical in its conclusion.

That leaves me with one further Campbell book, but that is in the Fantasy section.

And what would a SF section be without a NINTH book from Rusch, this one a novella in the Diving Universe series of books and shorter stories. The Application of Hope provides readers with greater depth of understanding of the distance-hopping foldspace technology that fuels the series with stories from all over the universe. It's a tale of hope sustained, realized and ultimately doomed. Heart wrenching. 

Continuing on with SF, we have The Martian by Andy Weir, Murder in Orbit by Bruce Coville, Andromeda's War by William C. Dietz, Lock In by John Scalzi, Cutting Edge by Kendrick E. Knight, Red Tide by Larry Niven and Battle Cruiser by B.V. Larson. That's a pretty good list of constant favourites (Dietz, Scalzi and Niven) with four newcomers to my recommended author's list.

Dietz' book is the concluding book in the Prequel trilogy to the Legion of the Damned series of books. Whew! It features the heroics of one-time Royal, Andromeda McKee, now a leading presence in Dietz' imagined continuation of the French Foreign Legion in space. My next door neighbour would hate this book on principle alone, but Andromeda makes for a fierce warrior who finds ways out of pickles and into the halo of victory.

Contrasting that military SF are a couple of impact technologies books. Niven's book is an expansion of his short story Flash Crowd. It's actually Niven writing with Brad Torgerson and Matthew Harrington, rather than going it alone. So the writing isn't completely smoothed out. But this examination of what personal teleportation could mean in a future Los Angeles. Makes you think. A lot. Niven, with or without co-writers, is always worth reading. Scalzi has continued his clever extrapolation ways as he combines the effects of a global pandemic that creates bed-ridden sufferers unable to move a muscle, along with the ability of some people, especially the locked in ones, to temporarily take over the bodies of other people. It leads to a most unusual society and a difficult one for newly minted FBI agent Chris Shane, who needs to solve a diabolical murder. On his first day on the job. Scalzi's long hot streak continues.

The newcomers did it different ways. 'It' being making this list. Weir's book is very much better than the big summer movie. More details, more sense of impending futility to our wayward Martian's survival. Worth the time to read ... even if you saw the movie. Coville's book is a young adult novel that features Rusty McPhee, a child in a man's environment--a space station. McPhee finds a (presumed dead) body while working in the waste disposal unit. He tries to report that, but the necessarily super-efficient waste processing destroys the evidence. And that's not the only murder. So how does this 'Boy Who Called Murder' go about nabbing the bad guy before the bad guy bags him? Good stuff. Larson's book is, what else, another Military SF book, a start to a new series, and a book that can compete in the Jack Campbell stratosphere. Larson's accomplished in the niche and this book left me looking for more. Recommended goes without saying. The Kendrick book also kicks off a series. It's wildly imaginative, laugh out loud funny and lots of fun to read. The follow-up didn't quite match the mania of the original, so I'm only awarding Cutting Edge a perfect ten. But the second Nick Blade book is fun too and I'm looking forward to Knight continuing the series.

Fantasy

In the Dark Ages, information was hoarded like it was gold. Unfortunately, hoarding information became endemic and remains to this day. Jack Campbell has taken that idea and run with it in creating the Pillars of Reality series. Mari is a Mechanic, a guild member that has not only been taught the art of making machines work, but is even a sort of computer expert. Think "Steam Punk" computers, Mari being a master already with legendary prowess before being out of her teens. Campbell realises you basically have to have magic in a fantasy and he sets up Alain of the Mage's Guild to be the yin to Mari's yang. Alain operates under the belief that the world is nothing but an illusion, to change as he desires, leaving him with all of the social skills of a juvenile rhinoceros. The two have a meet cute that's supposed to end with them both being dead. Instead the two of them spend all of The Dragons of Dorcastle finding a way to truly communicate, despite their upbringings. I really enjoyed this departure from space opera that Campbell (actually John Hemry) has mastered. The second book was like the second Knight book. Good, just not perfect. And I now have the third volume, ready to include it in NEXT year's Top 25.

Putting Steve Bein's Disciple of the Wind here is a requirement due to the magical elements emanating from the Inazuma Blades down through the years in Japan. Present day Tokyo cop Mariko Oshiro has her hands full with the crazed antics of The Wind leader, Joko Daishi. Daishi's a nutcase with access to a magic sword AND a demon mask that lets him create a showdown with Oshiro despite being shot point blank by one of his followers and generally getting beat up whenever he and Oshiro go head to head. Tokyo is terrorized in ways ISIS could never imagine. Well, that is until the finale. Oshiro's world crumbles a lot in this book, what with her going rogue and being off the force for most of it. The present day stuff is balanced against the late 16th century tale of Daigoro, the Bear Cub, recovering HIS Inazuma Blade, his name and his lands. That's really the stuff I was most interested in, because the Joko Daishi stuff was a bit beyond the pale of belief. But it's all good Japanese stuff and a treat to read and be informed.

Sports

A novel and a bio. The novel is Mike Lupica's Fantasy League. The bio? Keith Glass' Taking Shots.

While Fantasy League wasn't the only YA I read that mined the same territory (kid trying to make it as a football player in the local youth league, while having an in with the owner of the local NFL outfit), it merited mention here instead of Tim Green's effort because of heart and likability. Charlie 'The Brain' Gaines has a girl for a best friend and that girl is the grand-daughter of the pro team owner. He's a wiz with tactics, not so much with his body. He, Anna and Grandpa Joe make for a quirky, if uber likable lot. The ending is pure schmaltz. Just what I wanted.

Keith Glass is a sports agent with a conscience. A rarity. He's also a man who has spanned College, NBA and Minor League basketball in a way that I found fascinating and informative. He played and coached in high school and college. And he's represented all-pros and never-were NBA pros. He's the Jewish agent who represented Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (formerly Chris Jackson), the Muslim who wouldn't stand for the American anthem. His clients included players who were colossal failures and some who were colossal over-achievers. He even makes sense out of family friend Larry Brown.

YA

Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a master of YA fantasy but takes a shot at teenagers and back room deals in The Fixer. It's a determined move into the Ally Carter oeuvre and it's really a good read. The anger that exists with sixteen year old Tess Kendrick as she's forced to move cross-country and into the home of her older sister Ivy is a bit of a reach. But if you buy the "you abandoned me" rationale for the tension, then the rest of this book will be easy. There's a lot more to the book than sisterly disaffection. Both sisters are 'fixers,' experts at getting through problems for other people. It's an ability with power inherent. And naturally, the needs of both fixers come into conflict. Just how do they fix their relationship AND handle a crisis in the country that includes death in the White House? Looking very much forward to the sequel in mid-year.

Computers

Joel Spolsky's Smart and Gets Things Done is a book from the early Aughts. A lot of the book is outdated in terms of names. But the concept of creating an IT department or a pool of programmers with ideas is timeless. I'm still a one-man programming shop, but I feel like I'd be a bit better prepared if I was to suddenly win the lottery and start up a team to do the coding while I just Architect the software. And really, if you were wondering why I'd keep working after winning the lotto, don't be. I really enjoy the creative process. Would not want to quit, no way, no how.

I struggled with whether to put the Linus Torvalds' biography, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, in the Computer section or into Non-Fiction. But it ended up here because some of the geek-speak in the book would be a turn off with all the technological details. It's a fascinating book about a fascinating man, even if he calls journalists (I'm a past member) 'scum.' The sections written by co-author Dan Diamond read like magazine interviews with lots of tech data and 'what we were doing during the interview' distractions. But Linus on Linus is pretty raw and I find that I like Linus a whole lot. Still don't use his O/S, but I respect him immensely after reading how the solitary by nature Finn took on Microsoft and Apple to more than hold his own in the world of operating systems today.

Non-Fiction

Porter Erisman was the lone Westerner in on the beginning of Jack Ma's uber-UBER-successful Alibaba, the Chinese answer to Google, eBay and Amazon. It's bigger than all three now. But it wasn't a mere dozen years ago after Ma, an English Teacher in a far-off part of China who overcame failing his college entrance exams TWICE, started the journey to global domination by starting the little Internet company he called Alibaba. The journey from a hole in the wall office to where they are now makes for interesting reading by Erisman, who completely puts aside his ego in telling the story of the company in Alibaba's World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business. Really informative.

Mysteries and Thrillers

If you skipped the Fantasy section, go back for Steve Bein's book. Just think of the 'fantastical' elements as hallucinations and misperceptions. If you have ANY interest in modern day or feudal day Japan, the book qualifies here too.

A handful of series continuations (I live for series), with two of them extensions of cancelled TV shows. Greg Cox brings back the Leverage gang for The Bestseller Job. If you liked Leverage and who DOESN'T LOVE caper shows?, then the extra hook here is the ability to imagine writing a best-selling book overnight. I miss the show, but not as much now.

And Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham are continuing the Veronica Mars universe with the second book as the follow up to the TV show. Mr. Kiss and Tell has Veronica making the move back to detective from New York lawyer, much to her father's continued consternation. The whole gang's back (even Logan) for yet another sheriff election in Neptune. Full of witty repartee and unwitting danger. More of the same, but with a more adult edge then we are used to. Wish Thomas could find time for another movie.

And of course, what would any Top 25 list be, if John Sandford wasn't on it. Not a great year for Lucas Davenport, but he's at least present and partially accounted for as a supporting rol in the latest Virgil Flowers book, Storm Front. Take the most laid-back of all laid-back detectives in the employ of the Minnesota BCA and match him with a Mossad agent with an agenda. Did I mention how sexy the female agent is? How distracted Flowers almost becomes? Of course, having the Middle East and all of its troubles come to Minnesota does have some dangerous implications. At the end, Flowers finds the stone at the heart of all of this and a few more places to toss out his fishing line. That IS why they call him That F'in' Flowers, isn't it?

Now, going 180 degrees away from discussing epithets starring Virgil Flowers, let me praise the fifth Theodore Boone book by John Grisham, called The Fugitive. Well, maybe not 180 degrees, unless you focus in on Theo Boone being a kid lawyer in the making. Not like youngish adult, no like YA. This outing sees Theo off to Washington for some school trip learnin' only to see the Pet Lawyer and son of lawyers, young Boone turn into sleuth Theo Boone. There's a bad guy from an earlier book in the series that needs nabbing. Will Theo re-direct his future ambition to becoming an FBI agent? Well, been there, done that rules that out, I think. DO NOT let the YA label put you off. Pay more attention to the Grisham name on the cover.

I've exchanged words with Lee Goldberg over my (slight) disappointment in his O'Hare and Fox (or is it Fox and O'Hare?) books. Liked the debut novella and the first two books in the series. Decent enough reads. But with Goldberg teaming up with chicklit superstar Janet Evanovich, who I also adore for here Stephanie Plum series, I expected rapid-fire 10 Kovid recommendations for the next few years. Goldberg, the man behind MOST of the Mr. Monk novels and several loved standalones, and I verbally sparred over my not being over the moon. I said I anticipated better, he said look at the sales stats. Could hundreds of thousands of readers be wrong? I let the matter drop. Mostly because I KNEW 2015 had started off with the third book in the series, The Job, earning 10 Kovids. I've described this series as a modern-day Nick and Nora Charles. I'll stick with that. It's the best parts of two REALLY GREAT writer's, adding RomCom sensibilities to Goldberg's tension-filled writing about exotic locales. It's almost the perfect caper book in a series about capers. Now, I hope Lee won't notice that the fourth book, The Scam, missed the list (Hate cliff-hangers when I was going to read the next book ANYWAY)

Lastly, a standalone short story by Andy McDermott, doing some sideline work while away from the Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase books. Murder on the Orient Excess is a superb locked room (on an airplane) murder mystery starring infuriating know-it-all Leviticus Gold. He's sort of the opposite of Sherlock Holmes, while sharing the eagle eye for detail. I really hope the story turns into an ongoing series. So should you.

ADDING IT ALL UP

So, how many books did this whole list eventually come to. If you got thirty-seven, then I think I agree with you. That's 37 out of the approximately 105 books, novellas and short stories I got through this year. Pretty good average. Most are gimmes coming from existing series that I have enjoyed a lot. Still, it makes it obvious why I so enjoy reading.

Hope you have as good a year and an even better 2016!

[EDIT] For reasons best left blamed on health, old age and a rush to get the job done this year, the list originally failed to include John Grisham's The Fugitive and Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich's The Job, both properly now placed in the Mysteries/Thrillers section. Jan 13/2015

BOOKS: Getting Closer to the Top 25 Books of 2014

There was a day and time when culling my yearly reading list to JUST 25 books that earned top marks would have been easy. I read mostly authors I had read before (yes, I know that comes close to being an infinity loop of logic) and I read A LOT. But life intrudes and my reading totals have taken a tumble these last few years. Decades really.

So, this year, the Top 25 list will be 21 books long. A good--maybe great--21. But this is my blog and MY Top 25 List and I reserve the right to do as I please. Full steam ahead.

As in the past, my rating scale is in Kovids, named after the programmer of Calibre, Kovid Goyal. Now, if you read eBooks rather than dead tree books, and have not heard of Calibre, hare thee off to Calibre's home page and grab this indispensable bit of software to manage your eBooks. And if you need to ask questions, MobileRead's forum devoted to Calibre will do all of that and then some. And when you are finished don't forget to tinkle the tip jar. You'll want to, just to let you know in advance.

 Unfortunately, the one wee problem with Calibre is that the rating star system is capped at five. But with a little finagling, you can create your own star system. My STARZ system is a better ranking system, topping out at 10 Kovids. This helps me with the problem of the five-star system having no way to handle AVERAGE, which we all know would be 2.5 stars or 5 Kovids. But Calibre doesn't permit a half-star. My Starz range from ten (the list of which is contained here), down to scores like 8 (recommended to readers interested in the genre) to 5 or 6 (books that are average or just a titch better than average), to 3 (tripe, usually from writers who should do better) to 1 (couldn't finish the book) and all the way to 0 (an affront to all of mankind usually involving the unholy trinity of ideologies, Conservatism, Unchecked Capitalism or just plain old Crap repackaged).

By the way, all of the links I'm listing here are to author pages to be found at Fantastic Fiction. Not strictly a site for the imaginative, FF is the place I go to find out all the series information. It includes lists of what's coming out and roughly when. And it has links to the local Amazon from wherever you call a home base. Because so many of the books listed below are series entries, having one place to go to see what else is available and in what order they should be read, makes FF indispensable.

A good to great book vs a REALLY great book is the difference between getting a nine and being in that paragraph at the end that lists authors who put out good efforts this year and 10 Kovid writers who get a whole paragraph (or more) here on this most valued list. This year, I found THREE 10-Kovid efforts written by Mike Shepherd (AKA Mike Moscoe) and eighteen others that are worthy of (windy) comment. Surprisingly, despite having the largest plurality, Shepherd did not cart off the top prize.

For the second time in three years, the best book I read in the past year was authored by Keigo Higashino. Malice continues Higashino's uncanny ability to run a Columbo plot past the reader and engross the reader despite knowing whodunnit almost from the start. The trick this time out is that the book's villain is not only jailed quite early in the book, he also makes a full written confession!! And with many page clicks to go, I wondered if this was the first story in a short story collection. After all, rule number one is always to stop working once the customer says yes. Or something like that. As it turns out, the book becomes a whydunnit and solving THAT particular exercise is a wonderful delight.

I read a SF short story many, many years ago that has stuck with me throughout the decades although I couldn't tell you the author's name or the title of the story to save my soul. Alien invasion starts. The aliens have the ability to completely mimic us from head to toe and have been studying humans for years and years. They are completely and utterly ruthless and the invasion starts with one last scouting sortie to begin the assault. But the aliens-masquerading-as-humans are caught almost immediately and the high mucky-mucks of the alien fleet abandon their assault plans based on this seemingly impossible defence capability by the humans. The last sentence of the story reveals the twist. The aliens, dressed as they had observed humans dressed, were arrested immediately after leaving their camouflaged landing site, taking on human form and then arriving in a nearby small town. The aliens had landed in a nudist colony.

To read Higashino is to know that there's a literary nudist somewhere in the reveal. It's been that way through every book I've ever read that he's penned (two Professor Jupiter books published thus far on this side of the Pacific and this one in the Kyoichiro Kaga series). And yet I was completely compelled to get to that last sentence, page click by page click. It also helps that the killer and the victim are both writers, which appeals to me on several levels. Who among us have not contemplated the perfect crime? Writers take that one step further. Having writers play hero and villain in this book moves it another step beyond.

This is a delightful book. Do yourself a favour and delve into the Higashino library. It will be worth it. I guarantee it!!

The OTHER 18 books on this list can be broken down into Science Fiction, Fantasy, Sports, Mysteries/Thrillers, Humour and ... well, I'll get to THAT book down at the end of this post. You'll see why.

SCIENCE FICTION

The afore-mentioned Shepherd has been awesomely entertaining. He sticks with military space opera and does it exceedingly well. The whole library pivots around his Kris Longknife, one of THOSE damned Longknifes. She's a tactical genius and the daughter of the Prime Minister back home and the grand-daughter of The Emperor and mostly responsible for the protection of humanity from a scourge that is becoming ever-more frightful every book that Princess Kris stars in ... which is now up to 12 with this year's Tenacious. By the way, there are assorted short stories and novellas that actually drive the total of Longknife books closer to 20 in all. Tenacious is a tad on the pessimistic side, with a lot of grim "Never again!" utterances. Ones that seems pretty legitimate. Shepherd has his cast of Longknife playmates intact, except for frenemy Vicky Peterwald. The book is more exploration than fight-filled which is entertaining in and of itself. But the stage for a video-gamer's dream has been set with Tenacious.

Vicky is off to a good start with her own series in Vicky Peterwald: Target. (And yes, there IS a preceding novella that was one of the better efforts left off of last year's list). Vicky is the Kris-equivalent from the totalitarian regime that had made her and Kris natural and enthusiastic enemies before the threats to humanity's survival showed up and made the frenemies more friends than enemies. I've lost count how often Vicky's life has been saved by Kris. But that's what best bud's are for. In Target, Vicky finds herself all alone, or almost all alone, back in the not so gentle embrace of the people who have tried to have her and her dad, the Wardhaven Emperor, knocked off--frequently. She gets bucked down to ensign and finds out her 'new' extended family comes replete with frenemies and actual support when the action requires it. It smells a bit of 'Kris Longknife: The Early Years.' But it's fun to start from the prospective of a spoiled brat, rather than the preternaturally brilliant Kris. Quite an enjoyable 'first' book.

Lastly, Shepherd has been writing Longknife prequel books about the Jump Universe/Society of Humanity under his own name. To Do or Die is the fourth book in that series, first as being by Shepherd, and it finally puts the two Kris Longknife grand-dads in the making, Future Emperor Ray the First and Trouble Tordon in the same place at the same time. Rita (who's back as a supporting character in the current Kris adventures) Longknife isn't around in this one, but Ray, Trouble and his missus, Ruth, are all that stands between the planet Savannah and a rigged election that will make official what's been going on for ages. The rule by thugs. The problem for the bad guys is that when you put Longknifes, Tordons and lots and LOTS of military hardware all in the same place at the same time, the bad guys don't fare well at all. By the end of the book, you'll be getting your hurrahs straight from the huzzahs and having a good time.

The rest of the Science Fiction faves run the gamut of Steven Gould's Exo to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Skirmishes and then back to outright military space opera again with Jody Lynn Nye's The View from the Imperium and Jean Johnson's Hellfire. Each is a series book and each is stronger than other entries from each series I read this past year. Do they stand up by themselves? I'd say yes to Exo and to The View from the Imperium, but no to the entries by Rusch and by Johnson. But you might disagree.

Gould's Exo is possibly the best Jumper book since the first entry, Jumper. A year ago, I though the series was done. Not because of the damage done by the foray into a parallel dimension where a book that was a novelization of the movie had to be written. But because the natural progression that started with Davy, then his future wife Millie and then daughter 'cent (short for Millicent) seemed to have run it's course. it was interesting in each case to see the jumping capability become part of each of their lives. What would YOU do if you could literally jump to anyplace in the world in the blink of an eye? After about the third answer, ennui SHOULD have set in. But Gould takes 'cent off into a new direction with a true hard science SF story that took my breath away. I was sure that this book was going to be the top place finisher this year until Higashino arrived to snatch top spot late in the year. 'cent takes "I spy with my little eye ..." and let's a telescope take the limits of her imagination and smash it to little pieces. All the while doing battle with Big Gov and small minds. Old enemies show up and Davy shows he still has the mettle to protect his loved ones. This is a really great book. And I can't see ANOTHER book in the series happening ... but I've said THAT before and see how happy I was that I was wrong?

Rusch's Skirmishes is another Diving Universe book. It's probably fourth in the series, but if you count all the short stories Rusch has written in the Diving Universe, then there's at least two, maybe three more books worth of pages in the lot. But officially, this is DU #4. This is another hard SF book and we see so little of that these days, what with military space opera almost completely taking over from what little fantasy leaves in the SF/Fantasy publishing niche. Don't get me wrong. I like Military Space Opera, as this list shows. But good HARD SF, where the scientific extrapolation is top-notch is like little treasures when you find them. Thankfully, Rusch is incredibly prolific and dependable. We get more Ivoire back story here with Coop Cooper finding more answers and many, many more mysteries in the Sargasso of outer space called The Boneyard. Boss, who's attraction to Coop grows by the story, let alone by the book, has her own problems as Rusch continues to run the two story-lines almost separately. Boss and her team of divers into the confluence of dimensions that is old tech, is one of SF's most intriguing bunch of characters. You can't jump into this book without reading the others. i just wish i could give you the reading list and how to get hold of them. Raiding Amazon for the first three books and however many shorter works in the series is just a start. But a start you'll enjoy. I should also point out that the prolific Rusch is setting aside the Diving Universe in 2015 to concentrate on more stories from the Retrieval Artist series of SF Mysteries. IF she comes back with three entries on next year's Top 25, I might be the least surprised person in the world. I am REALLY looking forward to what's headed for my bookpile this year!

I've enjoyed Nye's work over the years. She has a sly sense of humour with an ability to flaunt authority. The good news is that The View From the Imperium is a wonderful start to a series that one-time writing partner Robert Asprin would be proud of. His Phule's Company books are clearly inspiration for this book that is described as "P.G. Wodehouse meets Space Opera." And for once, the billing lives up to the performance. Ensign Thomas Innes Loche Kinago turns out to be an able commander despite being the spoiled brat hanger-on of the true-born nobility that rules space eons from now.  He's almost a royal, but carries himself off as a dandy of sorts. But a dandy who understands leadership. And the rag-tag group he eventually calls his command come to adore him, despite the issue of him being almost a royal and all. It's great fun and I pounced on the second book in the series Fortunes of the Imperium as soon as I finished The View. Alas, Nye followed up on another of her habits I've become accustomed to: the inability to maintain the momentum of a brilliant first book. See the Taylor's Ark series for example. The second book is not a bad read, it's just not a 10-Kovid follow-up. You've been warned.

Jean Johnson turns the Nye reading experience on top of it's head. Hellfire is the third book in the "Theirs Not to Reason Why" series. Don't get me wrong, i had enjoyed the first two books in the series, but had no reason to expect that Hellfire would be a big step up. All the way to the 10-Kovid level. Another Military Space Opera that steps away from her fantasy background, the Johnson series suffered from a major flaw. It's the 'Superman Conundrum.' Johnson's star of the books is Ia, who does Superman one better by being able to see the future. Otherwise, she's every bit the SuperWoman that Superman is in the comics. The powers are slightly different, but you can't tug on Superman's cape and that's basically true of what little Ia might be wearing at any given time, too. But somehow, Johnson gets around the conundrum in this third book and really brings all of 'the woman with the plan' into a mini-denouement. As it turns out, the trilogy is only the start. Two more entries in the series were published last year and I was expecting a sixth. But unlike Ia, my future forecasting seems a little off and I'll be reading Hardship and Damnation early in the new year. Don't expect a neat conclusion to every storyline in Hellfire. And obviously, no reading this book without reading the earlier tomes in the series. I wouldn't wait for my New Year's Day report next year, I'd pick up anything Johnson's written in this series.

FANTASY

Back at the start of the year, I thought I was headed for a monster year, reading-wise. I had just discovered Jean Johnson and there were books by old pros like Lawrence Block and Jeffery Deaver on the top of the pile. But I was MOST interested in getting to He Drank, And Saw the Spider by Alex Bledsoe. The fifth Eddie LaCrosse Mystery was maybe the best book in the series since the first one. And despite being a Mystery, the book is most definitely a fantasy. Eddie is the pre-eminent sword jockey of his time. A P.I. with a strong sword arm and a stronger sense of ethics. But a history where that wasn't always so. So, Eddie revisits the past to set things right by Isadora, a young baby he left with shepherds sixteen years ago. He failed the man who tried to protect Isadora from a mauling bear, but goaded by gal pal Liz, Eddie decides to revisit the scene of the tragedy. In doing so, a couple of kingdoms, a town of ... let's call them eccentrics, and Isadora herself all become embroiled in his attempt to, if not rewrite history, at least update it. There are sorcerers and all kinds of things to go bump in the night (and I'm not JUST talking about inebriated townspeople). It's all a fun frolic, if a bit deadly to some of the players. Highly, highly recommended.

MYSTERIES/THRILLERS

Deaver and Block were followed later in the year by works from long-term favourites Barry Eisler, Brett Battles, Spencer Quinn, Clive Cussler and the omni-bus effort called FaceOff that featured pairings of famous characters by the likes of Lee Child,  Michael Connelly,  Lisa Gardner,  Steve Berry,  John Sandford,  Jeffery Deaver,  Lincoln Child,  Dennis Lehane,  Joseph Finder,  Douglas Preston,  Heather Graham,  James Rollins,  Linda Fairstein,  Steve Martini,  Linwood Barclay,  Ian Rankin,  Raymond Khoury,  M. J. Rose,  John Lescroart,  R. L. Stine,  Peter James,  T. Jefferson Parker and  F. Paul Wilson. You might notice that Deaver is in there too, giving him, in effect, two books to place second to Shepherd for the year. I'm leaving the link hunting for FaceOff at Fantastic Fiction to you.

Deaver's separate entry in the list this year is a novella-collection called Triple Threat. Both series character entries in Triple Threat work exceedingly well. There's a Kathryn Dance short called Fast and a John Pellam 'Stranger New in Town' type mystery called Paradice that both sing and zing. Fast has to adhere to the total pace as Dance races against a clock to deny a terrorist the chance to enter heaven with a death toll to pay the gate tax. It's a Mission Impossible task for the modern age. And neat. Pellam's story makes me wistful for more Pellam stories. His arrival in town when a crime and a killing or two are in the process makes for entertaining fodder. Points for having an interesting sheriff rather than a witless dope that merely serves as a witness. As for the third of the trio of tales? Game was the least of the efforts, but serviceable. Which was all the was required to keep this book at the 10-Kovids rating. Short stories have been something I've come back to of late. And I'm very, very glad that I did with this single-author anthology.

Now, as for the full-on FaceOff anthology, the conceit had each of the brace of authors taking their characters into a shared setting and letting loose with the consequences. Not every story in the book entertained me. But what worked, really, REALLY worked. And in doing so, I've added a couple of writers to my pre-approved set of authors. Given my long-time love for Deaver's Lincoln Rhymes and John Sandford's Lucas Davenport, it won't be shocking to commend that entry here. (Aside: Both characters have been played by black actors in movies ... despite neither character being black in the books). Deaver and Sandford weren't editor David Baldacci's only successful pairings. Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly had a great start-off mixup of Patrick Kenzie and Harry Bosch. That was followed by the equally solid pairing of Ian Rankin's John Rebus and Peter James' Roy Grace. I wasn't overly fond of the R.L. Stine/Preston and Child pairing, but found myself surprisingly entertained by M.J. Rose's Malachai Samuels meeting up with Lisa Gardner's D. D. Warren. Then an uptick yet again as Steve Martini's Paul Madriani had to tangle with Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper in a tale about courtroom justice. Of the rest of the stories, all decent, the one other effort that made me start looking for backlists, was John Lescroart's Wyatt Hunt teaming up with T. Jefferson Parker's Joe Trona, a pair of characters who I'd only heard of before, but have never read about in the past. That has already changed. I heartily recommend FaceOff, not because it's perfect, but because of it being a Yelp for mystery fiction.

Block's book store owner slash cat burglar, Bernie Rhodenbarr, had special significance to me this year. I had inundated a sick friend with books and tv shows aplenty in what was the last few months of his life. His favourite? The Rhodenbarr books. As it turns out, in giving him the books, I discovered I had overlooked The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. What a delight!! Bernie's best friend, lesbian Carolyn, goes from after-the-fact complicit to criminal acts to being part of a burglary team. Maybe as a result, Bernie's plans don't work out quite the way they are supposed to. Until the end. By caper's end, Carolyn decides being only a little bit law non-abiding is better than being a burglar and leaves that to Bernie, once again. What I got out of the book was a remembrance at just how much fun Block had writing these books and how much enjoyment it and the other books in the series gave my dying friend. It is, and WAS, a rare, rare gift.

Both Eisler and Battles are frequent contributors to my best books lists. Eisler's John Rain and Battles' Jonathan Quinn both looked to the past for their eighth entries in their respective series's. The Rain book, Graveyard of Memories, serves almost as the secret origin of the man who would become the infamous assassin. Rain's fresh off the killing fields of Southeast Asia, working as a bagman for the CIA and battling with the Yakuza to start this book. He plays the role of a pawn in a game by higher ups, all the while acquiring the skills that would polish the one-time sniper into the feared, rightfully so, John Rain.  While the Battles book, The Discarded, starts in the past, it most definitely finishes in the here and now. Quinn's beloved, Orlando, gets brought into the past by her mentor, Abraham. The mission he didn't see through to the finish line plagues him on the doorstep of his final resting. In need of the peace of knowing he did more right than wrong, Abraham begs, pleads and bullies his way into one last job. Orlando realizes what's going on, but the Quinn extended family of cleaners needs to do this for her honour and for the respect they all have for Abraham.

Spencer Quinn, aka Peter Abrahams, continued to charm me with the latest Chet and Bernie mystery, Paw and Order. I love Chet's dopey dog viewpoint because hard-of-remembering Chet is all hero. As is his human partner, Bernie. In Washington DC to visit Bernie's girlfriend Suzie Sanchez, the detective duo end up entangled with everything that makes DC stop ticking, including the requisite international conspiracy (what's a visit to America's capital if NOT to encounter an international conspiracy). This eighth outing (seems like a lucky number in 2014), goes along as it should. Chet sniffs out a mystery, and remembers enough in time to make Bernie a hero, in between dreams of food and nightmares involving a hamster. Or is Barnum a guinea pig? Say, what's the difference between a hamster and a guinea pig? What's for supper? Why isn't everybody reading Chet's adventures? And so it goes.

I miss Veronica Mars, erstwhile high school student by day, detective by night. Or in a skipped lunch period. (I've forgotten that third season in college, where all the fun of being in Neptune California was forgotten.) But 2014 we saw a new Veronica Mars movie released that resolved a few of the threads left over from the now forgotten TV show. And, a release of a Veronica Mars novel did not go un-noticed by me. The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by series creator Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham was quintessential Veronica Mars. Brash and clever, touching in the way Veronica steps in for her dad, and interesting. Take March Break, add in miscreants, missing YA's, Mexican cartel royalty and mistakes aplenty by the law-makers and law-keepers of Neptune and add in Veronica's ability to take the shine off all of them and you get a page turner that would have been a dandy two or three episodes of the old series. I really miss Veronica Mars. When is the next book coming out?

Cussler didn't have a great year this year. He has so many series going with so many authors that, the whole seems lesser than the individual parts. It's obvious that the research for one series is being rehashed almost immediately in one the other series. In fact, at least two books this year from the Cussler production assembly line, featured Cuba prominently. Which isn't especially bad, when you also mix in Vikings, Baffin Island, Quetzalcoatl and archeoterrorists in Mexico, as Cussler and Russell Blake did in The Eye of Heaven, a Fargo's Adventure. I like the Fargo's, the 'Nick and Nora' of Cussler's stable of marine-interested characters. It's all lovey-dovey and hair-raising thrills as Cussler ties in the Vikings of yore, with the Toltecs, also of yore, with Caribbean sphere locales to come up with a page turner with all of the Cussler expertise. Entertaining DESPITE my usual plea for the factory to STOP putting Cussler in his books as a character. It's off-putting, juvenile and distracting to the goal of writing thrillers that aren't resolved by a mysterious man of a certain age and a certain ability to provide help from out of nowhere. Lazy writing. But the rest of the book is worth 10 Kovids.

SPORTS

As much as I miss Veronica Mars, I miss the Montreal Expos more. And the World Hockey Association. Two enterprises that needed documenting. And to a certain extent, Jonah Keri and Howard Baldwin have done exactly that. (You'll have to excuse the direct Amazon links, what with these books not fitting into the FICTION part of Fantastic Fiction).

Keri was an Expo fan who was there when Coco Laboy made the nascent Expos the story of Canada's baseball team. I'm from Toronto and cheered on the Expos in their opening-day win over the New York Mets waaaaaaay back last century. Keri details the rise and subsequent painful fall of Les Expos from the pained point of view of a Montreal fan, even after the team had fallen to second in the heart's of Canada. Keri's who's now one of the leading baseball scribes in the business, makes no bones about what Up, Up and Away is: A love poem to the team that was Canada's team before they became the Washington Nationals and left a whole country to cheer for MY home town Toronto Blue Jays. Up, Up and Away is a chronicling, year by year, of the Expos as they became the model modern day major league baseball franchise, culminating in being the best team in the game ... in the year they canceled the World Series. The year Bud Selig and the burghers of baseball stopped a third straight Canadian World Series triumph, following up on the two-time world champion Blue Jays. while that decision broke the spirit here in Toronto too, it proved fatal for the shoestring-budgeted Expos. There's so much heart in this book that Keri brings a rival's team's fate near and dear to my heart too. It's not a fresh release, but I read it in 2014 and I'm glad that I did.

Howard Baldwin's Slim and None isn't exclusively WHA, but it's got more details from one of the wildest and wackiest sports enterprises that ever existed. The rise of Baldwin, a ticket salesman for the Philadelphia Flyers, into the ownership of the New England/Hartford Whalers and later multiple NHL teams and even later into becoming an Oscar-winning Hollywood producer, is wacky all by itself. But the WHA parts is what makes this book a great read. As we now face a time when Gordie Howe might not be with us much longer, it's an interesting read as to how the 'Howe Family to the WHA' storyline developed and the behind the scenes maneuvering that brought the whole thing to fruition. It's timely, which is unfortunate. And it's a good read, which is just the opposite.

HUMOUR

Leonard Wibberley broke big in the 50's with The Mouse That Roared, the story of The Grand Duchy of Fenwick going to war with the United States and defeating America with a handful of bowmen and a string of fortune that beggars incredulity. And thus was born the Grand Fenwick series. In each book, Wibberley would find a way for his perpetually stuck-in-the-past little Duchy to have sweetness and honesty (well, almost complete honesty) and memories of better days gone by succeed when intent and greed work against it. And somehow the Duchy always seems to be pulling the world's bacon out of the fire while doing it. Last year, I re-read The Mouse on Wall Street one evening when looking for something light and frothy and fun and a quick read. Check, check, check and CHECK!! It's difficult to find anything to complain about the book or ANY of the books in the series. Unless you're a too big for your britches Wall Street financier. Then, you might be shown for the type A person you are. The rest of us? We will all just enjoy the read.

CHICKLIT

And now we come to the conclusion of this year's list. Honestly, this really isn't the ChickLit section. More properly, this section should be ... gasp! The ROMANCE section!!!!

it was the first week of January and I was enjoying that time early in the year when the glow of Christmas is still all about and nobody's mind is back to work yet. And there I was reading one of the newfangled Marvel Comics prose novels. It was Marta Acosta's The She-Hulk Diaries. Now in my defence, I've been a long-time fan of Hulkie's lawyer cousin Jen, who Stan Lee turned into a distaff Hulk to protect Marvel's trademark, copyright and any other creative rights he could wrap up by making a She-Hulk before his Distinguished Competition could do the same thing. In name only, of course. She Hulk has been through a lot over the years, including five, if memory serves correct, solo series starring the jade-hued giantess. She-Hulk has been treated seriously and seriously made fun of. She's been part of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and other teams I'm having trouble remembering right now. She's been drawn by the likes of John Byrne and artists who shouldn't be mentioned in the same sentence as John Byrne. But her adventures have been entertaining more often than not.

Still, it was with little expectation that I picked up Acosta's book. And what I got was a healthy does of Sex in the City wrapped up in a black and green wrapper straight from the funny books. It was a romance of unrequited love and still filled with, you know, strong woman stuff. Like throwing trains around strong woman stuff. Not strong willed. Far from it. Turns out Jen's a bit of a wreck. And forlorn. Which can be a dangerous combination. Albeit, a hilarious combination.

I've  tried writing/explaining/excusing about why and how it came to be that I read a Romance book. And I liked it. That IS how the refrain goes, doesn't it? There, I've said it. It bears never repeating again. But I read a Romance book in 2014, gave it 10 Kovids and plan to never do it again. Promise. Really, I promise. Probably.

2014's done and gone. I hope to do better in 2015.

BOOKS: My Favourite Books from 2013

[Do NOT click on ANY LINK found in the comment section of this blog. No matter how innocuous the link MIGHT appear to be, it is MOST LIKELY SPAM or a link to MALWARE. I am disheartened by the need to do this, which accounts for the sparsity of posts this year.]

In my Calibre system, the default rating system is the classic 5-Star system. I've always been troubled by that. A 3-Star book is above average and a 2-Star book is below it. But some books are just plain average. Which will it be? And there was a raft of low scores I wanted. 0-Stars and even 1-Star represent drek, pure drivel (think anything Ann Coulter writes). But there had to be a rating that was for books I couldn't finish, but that had redeeming qualities. Or just plain bad books, less than average. Thus was born the 10-Kovids Scale.

The Kovids Scale is named after the programmer who gave the world Calibre. It is my favourite piece of software and gets better every week. Incrementally of late, since most of the heavy lifting of this eBook database/conversion/editing program had been done in the months leading up to 2013. Still, there has been lots added in just the past year and there's promise of more to come. IF you have eBooks, you have to have Calibre. It's not an option, it is an imperative.

Alright, I am going to end the suspense early and just declare the best book I read last year was a late November release, The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly. It's the fifth book in the Mickey Haller series. And the third one to get the list-qualifying 10-Kovids ranking. Is it better than #1 The Lincoln Lawyer and/or #4 The Fifth Witness? It's been hard enough to striate the Kovids Scale, so I can't really say. It's the most self-aware, repeatedly referring to the EFFECTS of The Lincoln Lawyer movie (although I can't remember if THAT is the title of the fictional equivalent). I still think the original is best because this book has some jarring jumps in time when turning the page. But it's less a punch to the gut that The Fifth Witness was, so I place it a hair ahead of it and a hair behind The Lincoln Lawyer. Happy? It's not quite perfect, but it was the few hours with the Kindle that I enjoyed most this year.

What follows is a sort of shambling grouping of the other 10-Kovids books. No ranking, just a promise of a good read. The rules are simple. If I read it in 2013, it qualifies. If I didn't, it's not on this list. Does not matter a whit when it was published. After all, aren't these lists just link bait for most readers?

Mysteries and Thrillers

In a lot of ways, Brett Battles and Barry Eisler farm the same rich soil that is Anti-Hero protagonists.

Battles has the little team called Jonathan Quinn and friends. Can't just call it the Jonathan Quinn series anymore. Quinn's protege has even taken to BEING Quinn on occasions, all to keep the group family business together. What business? The Quinns et al are Cleaners, the folks who follow murderers and assassins around and clean up the killing field(s) so tidily, even the CSI guys and gals can't determine a crime has been committed. Or when. I really enjoyed the seventh volume in the series, The Enraged, which picks up immediately in the aftermath of the violent and shocking sixth book, The Collected. And BOTH make the list this year as 10-Kovids titles. The Collected takes place in a Caribbean prison, long abandoned. And The Enraged deals in revenge. Battles has fleshed out (the original) Jonathan Quinn extremely well over the years, using the novella format to perfection. At last count, I had seven novels, three novellas and one short story to tell us a lot about Quinn. But not enough. I somehow missed out on another short story, The Assignment. But that one, centred around lady love Orlondo, must await NEXT Year's List.

Eisler moves the Anti-Hero just a BIT further to the bad side with his series about assassin John Rain. A somewhat reluctant assassin these days, but a killer nonetheless. And oddly enough, Rain isn't the star in EITHER entry on this year's list to take the coveted 10-Kovids rating. Early in the year, I quite enjoyed a short story starring Delilah, the ranking Rain paramour and every bit as deadly, called London Twist. Late in the year, a short story about Dox, Rain's best pal and sniper extraordinaire, called The Khmer Kill. Both stories require extensive back-reading in the Rain series. Both were short, but memorable reads.

Greg Rucka has always been a favourite of mine for his Atticus Kodiak books and the slightly lesser Tara Chace books. But, unfortunately, he's spent a LOT of his time writing comic books (and I'm a comic book reader and fan) and stayed out of the long-form novel world. He was back in 2013 with the first of what I hope will be a long-running series about ex-Black Ops good guy Jad Bell. Alpha has Bell becoming the new security head of a Disney-esque theme party with a sudden problem. His daughter is visiting (he's divorced) on a day when terrorists take over the park. There MIGHT be a little too much Die Hard in it, but any story that takes advantage of the ability of the deaf to (more than) overcome their handicap is alright with me. THIS book is why I want Rucka out of the comics biz and back doing what he does so very, very well.

The last book in this group is one that was published almost two years ago. I'm a little slow on the uptake these days. John McEvoy's Blind Switch, a pure mystery, has an awful lot going for it. Series star Jack Doyle is an advertising executive who's never been particularly successful, whether it be in boxing, at work or at home. A couple of ex-wives attest to that. What he is, when not underwater in a bottle of booze, is resourceful and a pretty decent guy ... with friends in low places, which happens to be Chicago, a character itself. Naturally, Doyle's smarts surface at the oddest of times. Doyle rebounds from a race-fixing brouhaha to go to Kentucky and play a pivotal role in outfoxing the REAL bad guys, intent on killing horses as part of an insurance scam. Good start to a series and a good introduction to a new writer (to me).

Fantasy

With Harry Potter receding further and further in the rear-view mirror, I have to admit to a somewhat declining interest in Fantasy (no jokes about my personal life, please). That said, I FINALLY broke down and bought Goblin Tales after I couldn't con anybody into buying it for me. Filling in the edges of the Jig the Goblin series proved to be a very enjoyable couple of hours. Jim C. Hines has proven time and time again that he's the go-to guy for turning schlubs not too unlike me into heroes. Not that I'm blue or carry around a kitchen knife. Short, near-sighted (although recently reconfigured) and reluctant to stick my neck out? Yep. I THINK you could read this book without reading the original Jig the Goblin trilogy. But why would you derive yourself of that pleasure?

Steve Bein writes police procedurals that enjoy a tight continuity with ancient feudal Japan. The fantasy element in Year of the Demon is a mask, and to a lesser degree, a sword, that hold an almost mystical grasp on characters from various points in Japanese history and the bad guys in modern day Tokyo. The same group that occupies the thoughts and deeds of  Detective Mariko Oshiro. Bluntly, the non-ending of some of the historical stories is the only reason this book isn't on the top of the heap. It reads like what it is, the middle book of a trilogy started in 2012 with Daughter of the Sword. Oshiro's Inazuma Blade goes missing in the midst of a cult initiative that bears unfortunate similarities to the Aum Shinrikyo characters who gassed the Tokyo subway with sarin. The wackos seem driven by having the sword and an ancient demon mask forged centuries before. While huge chunks of the book take place in the current Heisei era and in the Azuchi-Momoyama period at the end of the 16th century, the real meat of the book comes in the Muromachi era, about a century before Daigoro's travails in the 1500's. Kaida is a crippled young girl who is her village's best ama, an underwater diver. She's there for the forging of the mask in question and comes of age because of it. Her story never finishes. Curses. I await the third book. But that flaw aside, great book.

Young Adult

So, sue me. I like Ally Carter's writing. While her Gallagher Girls series concluded in 2012, she kept The Heist Society series going strong. A delightful short novella (not really short enough to be a SHORT story) called Double Crossed led later in the year to Perfect Scoundrels. The former was actually a cross-over into the Gallagher Girls universe and featured the two series leads sizing each other up and finding the competition invigorating. The latter book worked by delving much more heavily into the backstory of Kat Bishop's sort of significant other, WW Hale V. It's a delightful romp through the occasionally gothic history of a dynastically rich family. Better to be the daughter of a thief than the son of wealth. At least so this story proves. No question Kats turning SOSO into XOXO. And I'm going to enjoy that read when it happens officially.

At least one blogger touts Robin Benway as the new Ally Carter. Certainly, Maggie Silver in Also Known As bears incredible similarities to Kat Bishop, right down to having a family with certain ... let's call them extraordinary skills in the high worth acquisitions field. The Silvers are spies. Spies with an interesting set of guidelines for their daughter. One of which is to go to ground while allowing Maggie to spend a year in school in New York. And naturally, Maggie finds high school to be every bit the dangerous cesspool that acquiring super-secret secrets is. There's a boy. There's always a boy. And a distressing number of them are called Jesse, like in this book. But there's also a best friend, Roux. And Roux is, while not totally unique, just damaged enough to be a best friend rather than a rival. If Carter can keep churning out Heist Society material 24/7 there might not be room for a rival. But since she can't, I'm quite looking forward to the next Maggie and Roux story, due out this year.

Science Fiction

At last, a good year for Science Fiction and John Scalzi almost handled that by himself with his Old Man's War-set short story The B-Team followed up later by his serially-published novel called The Human Division, from the same universe. I was late to the Old Man's War series, not getting to it until last year. Read the whole original quartet in nothing flat once I got started. While the third and fourth books of the series (and short stories aplenty) waned to 6-Kovid ratings, Scalzi was back on his game for the latest additions. The B-Team was laugh out loud funny from start to finish and reminded me that others read Keith Laumer's Retief and enjoyed those books immensely. The B-Team invoked the best of Retief, and that is very good indeed. Meanwhile, The Human Division incorporated The B-Team completely and then re-vitalized the whole Old Man's War with a return to Earth. A return with an explosive ending. Which is a new beginning, I am sure. Just hope Scalzi doesn't do the serial next time. I couldn't wait and read through the book in fractured moments between other books. In retrospect, i would have preferred waiting for the whole book. Next time I will. And so should you. Read it, I mean. NOTE: Just to be clear, The B-Team is the FIRST part of The Human Division and thus, is included in the full book.

A 10-Kovids rating is a tough peak to climb to. Regular top-ranked author Mike Shepherd (aka Mike Moscoe) just missed with a novella and a short story in the Kris Longknife universe. Other perpetual enjoyment machine Jack Campbell didn't miss with his latest Black Jack Geary book, Guardian. It's the tenth straight Lost Fleet universe book to go perfect, although this year's second entry in the sub series, The Lost Stars, broke it with an 8-Kovids outing. Guardian is more political science than outright military SF this time out. Sure, there are Syndicate Worlds and the Enigmas and the Kicks (described as an psycho paranoid combination of Teddy Bears and Cows) to worry  about, despite the help from the Dancers. The issues this time are with humans. Partially in the Syndicate Worlds, but more along the home front. Campbell weaves the story competently enough so that I don't mind the reduction in space battle scenes. Which Campbell does as well as anybody. If you like the niche genre, then nobody fills it better than Campbell. At least Black Jack's story stays perfectly perfect.

Some old friends returned in a big way in 2013 with 10-Kovids outings by Eric Brown in Helix Wars, Allen Steele in Apollo's Outcasts, Robert J. Sawyer in Red Planet Blues, Steven Gould in Impulse and finally, the biggest surprise, a three-decade old book called Tambu from the late Robert Lynn Asprin.

Brown's Helix Wars is a sequel to Helix, set a couple of centuries later. Like in Larry Niven's Ringworld, the giant artificial construct/world called Helix is a major star in the book. And it works exceedingly well. There's a personal story involving the engaging pilot Jeff Ellis and the healer Calla. Jeff is stuck in married--but cuckolded--hell, Calla is on the final journey of her brief, but productive life. They get wrapped up in an invasion of Calla's lands by the Nazi-like Sporelli. And that's the major difference between this book and its predecessor. There's no religious background to all of this, despite the SF trappings on a story told many, many years ago in Lord of the Rings. The 'world' hopping between New Earth, Sporelli and Phandra takes many, many paths until the reader comes to a greater understanding of Helix and even the founders of New Earth. Years in the making, but worth the wait.

You can extrapolate two things: There will be a lunar colony, although probably not in my lifetime. And the omnipresent right wing kooks in the US will be an ever-present threat to stage a coup (unless all intelligence flees the good people of America, the right wing is done as anything more than a regional pain in the butt), As a result, I have no quarrel with the backstory to Steele's Apollo's Outcasts, a stand-alone novel featuring Jamey Barlowe. Barlowe's led a tough life on good ol' Terra Firma because he was born on the Moon and the greater gravity on the ground is life-altering. But the events of a coup puts Jamey back on the Moon and in the embrace of the residents of Apollo. Naturally, the kooks want him back for political reasons in a showdown that doesn't exclude the military option. But having home field advantage makes the Apollo folk tough to beat down. Good for them.

I've had a declining appreciation for Sawyer, coloured partially by the impressions of the man I've gleaned through personal appearances, web-sites and media broadcasts. Some of my favourite books are signed first editions that sit proudly on the shelves in my living room. The Quintaglio books and the Neanderthal Parallax books were 'idea' books that made you think. Even his standalones always had the 'one big idea' to fuel long hours of reading. But lately? The big ideas have been pretty low-brow, if high concept. Red Planet Blues is not a return to form. It's a SWITCH in form, a marriage of Sam Spade and Mars Expedition advocate Robert Zubrin. A mystery wrapped up in the enigma that is the Red Planet. It's actual several mysteries as the book has more than once case for PI Alex Lomax to solve. It's a neat execution of what Isaac Asimov once called the most difficult task in writing, the science fiction mystery. Extremely well done.

Gould shares some of the same history with Sawyer. Two very good books followed by a botched third book done for the less than good graces of the movie industry. I like the Jumper movie better than most, but HATE the book the sprang from it, the 4-Kovids rated Griffin's Story. Gould repaired some of the damage with an interesting short story side-trip with Shade a few years back. But he came completely back into my good graces with Impulse. Not surprisingly, the feature player in this book is the off-spring of original jumpers Davy and Millie. Young 'cent has all the fun of discovering jumping, given the head jump of her knowing her dad and mom can already do that. Of course, Millicent's acquisition of her jumping abilities and the other talents that manifest themselves does not go smoothly. Discovering new skills and vulnerabilities is what drives the Jumper series. There's a sheer joy that permeates this entry in the series, even when danger looms. There is one problem with the series. Short of having a baby come out of the womb jumping, I'm not sure there's another idea worth a full book out there. But I wouldn't mind a short story of two about Cent as she matures further.

Lastly, I come to Tambu, published in 1979. It was just sitting around, gathering dust. It looked like a prototypical Ace SF book of the era. "The True Story of an Interstellar Genghis Khan" proclaimed the garish cover, one that combined space ships and butterfly wings. How good could it be? Well, it had a good pedigree. While not a fan of his fantasy, I'd loved the Phule's Company pastiches of Hogan's Heroes/Sgt. Bilko. And I remain regretful there'll never be another Time Scout book. So, some spare time during a baseball rain delay became all the time needed to start and finish Tambu. What can I say? Tambu is as billed. He's clever and media-savvy. He's a winner who has become trapped on the pinnacle without becoming a whiner. Given an "Interview with a Vampire" setting, Tambu exposits a future time when 'an Interstellar Genghis Khan" might be needed. And does a great job of doing so. Highly recommended.

Summary

So, my Top 25 for 2013 only had 19, maybe 20 books in it. That's the price for enforcing high standards. Mike Shepherd, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Clive Cussler, Michael Lewis, Spencer Quinn, Brittney Dussault, Steve Simmons, Waverly Curtis, Jeffery Deaver, Janet Evanovich and Andy Stark almost made the list. So, more books for you to do your own searches at Amazon for. That's it for me until next year (assuming the drugs keep me alive until then).