The most recent book that I’ve liked is The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell, but it won’t be for everyone, since my work reads lightning-fast compared to The Wizard’s Butler. Another “cozy” book was Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop. Cozy or not, it left me with a good feeling.

For hard science fiction, I read two Alastair Reynolds books Terminal World and Inhibitor Phase. Both good, but I preferred Terminal World, possibly because I didn’t realize the meaning of the title until the next morning after I finished the book. I don’t usually do much space opera, but I did like Artifact Space by Miles Cameron. I can’t say I totally enjoyed Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh, but it definitely kept me turning the pages and raised some disturbing but worthwhile questions. I picked up a older book of Sheri Tepper — The Fresco — which had a mixture of the impossible and the far too true to life. The last book I’ll mention is A Play of Shadow — the second volume of Julie Czerneda’s Night’s Edge series. I seldom read more than one book in a series, but this one was worth it.

There were close to fifteen books I won’t mention, for various reasons, some of which were well-written technically, but either didn’t draw me in or were far too graphic in terms of sex and/or violence.