Best of 2015

These are my fantasy picks of 2015, and they come straight out of what I’ve written up on the blog so far, with the scores I gave at the time. I don’t claim it’s a complete picture of the genre. It’s the books I’ve actually read and had opinions about, so you’ll see a lot of Sanderson, a fair bit of Wheel of Time and a couple of classics I’ve reread more times than I can count. If you want to see how I handle the SciFi side, I did a similar list for my military SciFi favorites a little while back, and I’m still waiting for the Wheel of Time to hit screens while the Shannara Chronicles trailer keeps me going as a placeholder.

One thing about me and fantasy series: I’ve been burnt by Robert Jordan’s death during the writing of the Wheel of Time, and ever since I’m frightened to start a new series without knowing it will actually finish. It also means I tend to binge, so when I say I finished a series in two weeks, I mean it. I also rate on feel as much as on craft, so a book I couldn’t put down will beat a technically better one that I had to push through, and the scores below come with that bias built in. What I look for is a character I can care about and a magic system that follows rules, and when a book has both I’ll forgive nearly anything else.

The two I’d give a 9

Furies of Calderon is the first book in the Codex Alera, and I gave it 9 out of 10. Citizens of an ancient Roman legion were transplanted to a new land, so you get Roman names for just about everything, along with natural elemental spirits called furies that nearly everyone can bend. The hero, Tavi, is an anomaly because he has no connection to any furies at all, and he’s forced to live without a power everyone else takes for granted. Fidelias is a traitor you can actually admire as a true patriot. It’s a definite page turner, and I finished the whole series in a two week stretch and plan to go back to it. The magic is well thought out and consistent, and while the way the powers are used reminded me a little of Mistborn, that never bothered me. I gave the characters 5 out of 5 and the story 4 out of 5, because they’re likable heroes and villains that aren’t over the top in any way.

The Dragonbone Chair also got a 9 out of 10, and it’s a book that I didn’t appreciate when I was young. I was bored at the beginning the first time and really struggled with the early chapters, but I was hooked as time went on, and on the reread I knew what awaited me and powered through. There’s nothing earth-shattering and new in it, since you still have the kitchen boy Simon, the old magician and a pair of quarreling princes, but it’s excellent and it’s well thought out. It has epic battles and enough death and destruction to make even George R.R. Martin happy, and I can see why it influenced Game of Thrones. Be warned that I couldn’t pronounce half the names, and it’s not a beach holiday book. Simon’s mooncalf behavior took me a while to appreciate, but once I thought about it, that’s pretty normal for a clueless, inquisitive fourteen-year-old. It has all the staples of a young adult novel, like innocent teenage romance and a boy hunting for a mystical item, and it’s cliched perhaps, but well met with betrayal and war.

Sanderson, and why I can’t stop

I’m a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson, and I’m always in awe of how many different and well defined magic systems he comes up with. Warbreaker is a standalone, with the land split in two by an old war and a people who worship the dead who return to life, and I gave it 4.5 out of 5. The only thing I could fault was that I don’t get to read more about my favorite characters. The Rithmatist is the lighter one, a young adult story where the magic has proper rules and guidelines, and I finished it in two quick sittings. Joel desperately wants to be a Rithmatist, one of the chosen who can bring chalk drawings to life, and I’d happily point a Harry Potter fan toward it. If they ever make a movie, I’d be there in the theater.

The Mistborn books are where I started to understand why he got picked to finish the Wheel of Time. I took The Hero of Ages on a long road trip expecting it to last half the drive, and I couldn’t put it down. Then The Way of Kings gave me what I was looking for after Jordan’s series wound down, a new epic to fall in love with, and I read most of it in a couple of late night marathon sessions. Roshar is a savage world of awesome tempests, and a prologue thousands of years back shows the Heralds abandoning humanity. The second Stormlight book, Words of Radiance, gets a 4 out of 5 from me, and the only reason it isn’t a 5 is one character, because Kaladin’s weaknesses start to show. The rest of it I enjoyed, including Jasnah escaping into Shadesmar to meet Hoid and Taravangian pulling the strings with his swings between genius and something much weaker.

Old friends I keep rereading

The Chronicles of Amber is one of those series that survives the test of time, and I’ve reread it several times, finding something new to enjoy each time. It’s had an impact on a lot of other fantasy, and you see the correlations once you know to look for them. A Wizard of Earthsea is a different kind of old friend, since I first read it in my early teens and it had a profound impact on me. It started a bit slowly this time, but it’s a good book I’d definitely recommend, and it won’t have the angst of Martin or the impact of Jordan or Sanderson. For a quick and easy read though, it’s well worth picking up. Amber has Corwin, who wakes up with no memory and has to work out which of his many brothers and sisters to trust, and the Pattern that gives the books their magic shows up again in the Wheel of Time, which is one of the correlations I mean. I think that’s why they sit so well side by side on my shelf.

Then there’s the Wheel of Time, which I’ve covered book by book. I’d send a newcomer to The Eye of the World first, and I’ll be honest that it’s a bit too similar to Lord of the Rings, but then so is everything in the genre. The handover to a new writer worked for me in The Gathering Storm, which is a genuinely great contribution with a real spark and fire, and I’d say it works for anyone who hasn’t gotten completely jaded by the series. Jordan’s writing style isn’t the best, and he’s long winded and tends to retell the story from another character’s view without advancing it, but his imagination and ability to conceive a whole world with its own language, peoples and cultures is something I can only admire. After that, Towers of Midnight felt like something was missing, though Matt finally taking responsibility for his power is a highlight.

Good, with a catch

Dies the Fire is a really good book, and the catch is the author’s constant harping on how the Wiccan way of life would survive in a changed world, which gets annoying fast. When it gets to plain old survival though, the story is really well done, even if there’s too much detail and the book ends up longer than it needs to be. I’d still tell you to read it and expect to enjoy the series once you get into it. It’s the sort of series where the early books are the hook, and the pay off for sticking with it is the survival story that follows once everyone stops arguing about the beliefs.

The same goes for New Spring, the Wheel of Time prequel. It’s good and interesting, but I’m not sure I’d have read the rest of the series if it had been the first book out. Introducing Lan and Moiraine there takes some of the shine off the characters we meet later, and the long run of side characters in the later books does nothing to advance the story. I’d read it second, not first. It’s a fine companion to the main story, and I’m glad Jordan released it when he did, because it let us see where Lan and Moiraine started before we spent time with the rest of the cast. The later volumes have the same habit of adding side characters whose deaths don’t really move us.

Which fantasy series from 2015 would you have put at the top of this list? Tell me in the comments.