I kicked off 2021 by finishing up Rebecca Roanhorse’s mind-blowing apocalyptic fantasy Black Sun, the best fantasy book I’ve read since reading Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy. Roanhorse’s quasi-Mesoamerican fantasy setting is refreshing not just as a change of scenery from the tried-and-often-tired European flavor of most mainstream fantasy; it is also refreshing in its normalization of queerness. Not every fantasy world has to carry with it the prejudices of the real world, and Roanhorse gives us a richly diverse society without making that the focus of the book, letting readers absorb the normalcy as part of the world in a reflection of the banal acceptance many of us wish to see in the real world.

By far the most thought-provoking read of the year was Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. This grotesque dystopian novel rewards readers who power through stomach-turning passages with an exploration of the silence we as people respond with in the face of every-day atrocities. Eleven months later, and I still regularly think about this book.

Rounding out my unintentional theme of apocalypse and plague, Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires was another highlight from the year. A fever dream odyssey across France during the height of the Black Death, the story presents plague-ridden Europe as a literal hell on Earth, a playground for devils and demons as God has his eye elsewhere. But despite the horrors, there is a thread of hope throughout.

Other highlights from the year included the rollicking magical realism of Raise a Holler, the pot-boiling noir of Blacktop Wasteland, the visceral gut punch of Between the World and Me, and a long-overdue revisit of one of my favorite books Ordinary People. The full list of the books I read this year is below. The coming year has a lot to live up to!

1. Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse
2. Tapping the Source - Kem Nunn
3. Raise a Holler - Jason Stuart
4. Ring Shout - P. Djeli Clark
5. Tender is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica
6. A Luminous Republic - Andres Barba
7. Saint X - Alexis Schaitkin
8. Blacktop Wasteland - S.A. Cosby
9. Followers - Megan ANgelo
10. Dragon Wing,
11. Elven Star,
12. Fire Sea - Margaret Weis/Tracy Hickman
13. Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
14. Let’s Get Back to the Party - Zak Salih
15. The Cold Cold Ground - Adrian McKinty
16. Below - Lee Gaiteri
17. The COmmitments - Roddy Doyle
18. Ordinary People - Judith Guest
19. Farm and Other F Words - Sarah K Mock
20. The Misenchanted Sword - Lawrence Watt-Evans
21. The Winter King - Bernard Cornwell
22. Disco’s Out…Murder’s In! - Heath Mattioli, David Spacone
23. Between Two Fires - Christopher Buehlman
24. Those WHo Hunt the Night - Barbara Hambly
25. Greenlights - Matthew McConaughey
26. The Whisper Man - Alex North
27. Blackwood - Michael Farris Smith
28. The Lord of the Rings (one volume edition) - JRR Tolkien
29. The Hell Bent Kid - Charles O Locke
30. The Winter of Frankie Machine - Don Winslow