My recent blog posts on speculative fiction series are hardly complete. So many books. . . so little time. I haven’t read a lot of books I should have read, or blogged about the ones I should have blogged about. But some I have left out on purpose.

WHAT I HAVE LEFT OUT AND WHY

YA series—The Hunger Games, Divergent, Twilight–I’m not going to talk about all those things. The first books in both The Hunger Games and Divergent series were lots of fun to read. After that, both series went downhill fast. And Twilight is the worst-written stuff I’ve ever read (and I did read several of them in order to understand my students’ and my own daughter’s compulsion to devour the things). The worst-written until Fifty Shades of Gray, I should say–a novel apparently inspired by Twilight. I did read Fifty Shades, too, because I was on a panel about the way it had changed publishing, and I wasn’t going to be that person who says, “Although I’ve never actually read the book, I think. . .” But ugh. It’s not even good BDSM. (Kushiel’s Dart, anyone? That first book is goofy BDSM fantasy fun, even though the rest of the series is by turns silly and drab–at least as far as I got, which was only maybe through the second in the series.)

Paranormal shifter stuff–I have read a few of these. And harem paranormal stuff. And reverse harem! And omegaverse. What is that. You see how out of touch I am? But I’m not going to talk about those, for the obvious reasons that I’ve never read one I like–because if it doesn’t have good writing, I’m out. . .but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any with good writing, only that I haven’t discovered any or looked very hard. Does that mean I’m just too straightlaced and narrow-minded? Not sure–I have indeed read some good BDSM novels, including that classic, The Story of O, and even sort of kind of tried to write one. I don’t have the credibility to do it, though. But anyhow, these paranormal and urban fantasy erotic subgenres have their dedicated fans, who need no opinions of mine.

Most romantasy. See my discussion of Sarah Maas in a preceding post. I have read some others–Rebecca Yarros, Leigh Bardugo. They’re okay, I guess. Believe me, I’m not sneering at this subgenre, or at romance. I’m a big Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood fan. I haven’t found any romantasy that really grabs me. Yet.

AND. . .the wizard in the room. . .Harry Potter. A lot has been written elsewhere about the Harry Potter books. If I could have been a little girl all over again when those books were being published, I am sure I would have been first in line at the bookstore at midnight, with my wand, in my pointy hat. As an adult reading them to children, I haven’t found them to be that wonderful. They seem kind of derivative to me. And then there’s all the controversy, which I don’t have the time or inclination to go into here. I do like all the different flavors of jellybeans. And the messenger owls. And that train going over the Glenfinnan Viaduct, which I have seen the original of in Scotland.

And thanks for the royalty-free image I used to create the graphic at the top of this post: Image by <a href=”https://pixabay.com/users/jazella-1930366/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3971796″>Jazella</a&gt; from <a href=”https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3971796″>Pixabay</a&gt;

Coming Soon

It’s almost speculative fiction award season! Last year I read all the short-listed novels for the Nebula, Hugo, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards, and as many of the ones short-listed for some of the main Locus Awards as I could manage. This year I plan to read all the short-listed novels for the Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, World Fantasy, and Hugo Awards. The Nebula short list has already been posted. I will start with those. SO. . .as I read read read, I will give the novels capsule reviews on this site. I hope you will join me, because I am planning to have a lot of fun reading these books. I am already chomping on the first.

Note: The Locus Awards have too many categories for me to do justice to. I mean, I’m a fast reader, but not that fast, and the Locus Awards include categories like horror that I just don’t cover.