I read more books in 2019 than I have in any single year of my adult life. By quite a lot. In fact, it probably rivaled the number of books I read between leaving college and the end of 2018. I read enough that I could make make top 5 lists of series, novels, and shorter fiction I read in 2019.
Most of what I read this year is fantasy, but I did also read some science fiction and other forms of speculative fiction. Specifically, I read much of Brandon Sanderson’s work this year, so you will see him pop up a few times in these lists.
Here are my top 5 series I read in 2019:
Series
To qualify for this list, a series had to be intended as a series, have at least two books out in said series, I have to have read all books currently released in the series, and I have to have completed or caught up with the series in 2019.
5. Skyward series, by Brandon Sanderson
Skyward is a YA science fiction series by Brandon Sanderson, and is the only YA to make any of these lists. It follows Spensa, a girl on the planet Detritus who wants nothing more than to become a fighter pilot so she can help protect her home from the aliens that regularly attack it… and to clear her family name.
Skyward and Starsight are the first two books in this series, out of four planned. Skyward is a fast-paced novel, full of action, humor, and suspense. Starsight takes lots of things that were hinted at in Skyward and cracks them open wide.
If you are looking for a fun soft sci-fi novel that is on the lighter side, I definitely recommend this series.
3. The Lightbringer series, by Brent Weeks
The Lightbringer is a secondary world fantasy series. While it doesn’t really do much that is innovative for the genre, it uses the standard elements and tone of the genre quite well: it has an interesting magic system based on light and color, it has dynamic and flawed characters, it layers multiple conflicts on top of one another, forcing characters to make hard choices.
All of that being said, the piece of this story that I found the most interesting was the end. I won’t get into spoilers, but Brent Weeks raises some interesting questions about philosophy and theology throughout the series, and the way he handled those questions at the end fascinated me.
If someone came up to me said, “I’ve read all of the novels in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere, and I want to read more secondary world high magic fantasy with a similar tone to that,” I would direct them to this series.
4. The Gentleman Bastard series, by Scott Lynch
Gentleman Bastard is also secondary world fantasy, but it is very much not a typical one. First of all, it is low magic; only a few characters can actually practice magic, and they aren’t the main characters. Second, the protagonists are thieves and con artists who we love anyway due to their charisma and the fact that their moral compass seems slightly less messed up than most of the other characters we meet.
Tonally, it sits somewhere close to a good heist movie.
I recommend this series for anyone who loves secondary world fantasy, but wants to read some that takes the genre in new directions.
2. Red Rising trilogy, by Pierce Brown
Okay, so I cheated a little with this one. The first three books in this series form a trilogy, and now, the author is writing a sequel trilogy. I am a book behind being all the way caught up on the series as a whole, so I will only include the first trilogy in this ranking.
Red Rising is a soft sci-fi dystopian series that hits a lot tropes I am fond of: outmatched rebels rise up to overthrow an evil empire, explorations of the value of security versus the value of freedom, protagonists infiltrating enemy ranks, only to find that the enemy is human, too, etc. But what makes it land so high on this list for me is the voice. Pierce Brown does an excellent job of making Darrow’s emotions come through in the way he writes the prose.
If you decide to read this series, know I found the first book to be the low point in the first trilogy, though I did enjoy the first book very much.
1. Lady Astronaut series, by Mary Robinette Kowal
Lady Astronaut is an alternate history series in which a giant meteor falls into the Chesapeake Bay, destroying Washington, DC, and kicking off runaway climate change. This reframes the space race as a race to extablish humanity on other worlds before our own becomes uninhabitable, rather than a just a race between the US and the Soviets.
If you have read my Uninhabitable series, you know that the idea of humanity trying to cope with runaway climate change interests me. But it is the handling of the intersections of privilege and discrimination that really drew me into these books.
These books are fantastic, and I would recommend them to just about anyone. I gave half a dozen copies of The Calculating Stars to friends as gifts this year, because I loved them so much.
Book 3 is slated for a 2020 release, and Book 4 for a 2022 release. There are also quite a few short stories that are set in the Lady Astronaut universe, but I haven’t read them yet. I plan to do that during 2020.
What was your favorite series that you read in 2019? Let me know in the comments down below!
And be sure to watch for my other two top 5 lists coming soon: novels, and shorter fiction (novellas and short stories).
