Hi, Mith. The Night Country is a well-written, though dark and even somewhat oppressive ghost story. As I recall, it was also dedicated to Ray Bradbury, yet another work gaining some inspiration from Something Wicked This Way Comes. All that appealed to me going in, what kept me reading was O'Nan's ability to humanize the ghosts, make their motives understandable, and to make the spiraling action unnerving without losing sight of its inherent sadness. Among books I've read published during the oughts, it's one of my favorites, though I might not put it in the top five of all I read during the oughts. Honestly, if I could convincingly justify William Gay's Twilight as fantasy, I might replace the O'Nan with it. (Of course, it only now occurs to me that I could justify it's inclusion on the basis of horror rather than fantasy, so ... hmmmm ....) Randy M.
My favorite speculative fiction books of the decade My Top 5 Speculative Fiction books are 5)Anathem by Neal Stephenson 4)Spin by Robert Charles Wilson 3)Perdido Street Station by China Mieville 2)The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss 1)Pandora's Star & Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton Honorable mentions The Void Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, The Scar by China Mieville and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
I agree with you about Patrick Rothfuss but I simply can NOT get through a Michael Chabon novel! I tried with Adventures of Kavalier and Clay AND Yiddish Policemen's Union and threw them away in the first chapter. Do they get better??
Well, I feel fairly warm towards Olympos. It threw away the integrity of the plot and concept, but if nothing else it was a great page turner that I enjoyed right up until I realised that this was the ending. Anyway, I read them with such a gap in between it's not hard to keep them in separate compartments in my mind.
The Price of Spring & An Autumn War - Daniel Abraham Storm of Swords - GRRM Wizardknight - Gene Wolfe The Darkness That Comes Before - R.Scott Bakker
I am a purist in this regard - since new century started in 2001, first decade of it ends in 2010. Therefore novels published in 2000 are twentieth century books and don't belong in this list. Nevertheless for the purpose of this thread I am willing to present a temporary list of best SpecFic books 1. Anathem - Stephenson 2. Prince of Nothing - Bakker 3. Blindsight - Watts 4. The Scar - Mieville 5. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Clarke Prince of Nothing is technically a trilogy, but I think it is better to regard this kind of series as single novels for the purpose of such rankings. Honorable mentions are The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe and Golden Age trilogy by John C. Wright. If 2000 year books counted A Storm of Swords would be first (even if it is only a single volume of a series. I may be a purist, but it doesn't mean I am not allowed to be inconsistent when it suits me )
