The Best Books I Read in 2023 (Second Half)

First, an update. I began this site to post my short stories, and maybe the occasional blog. I was editing my first novel and wanted to write new material as I was doing it, while also improving my craft, so set myself the challenge of writing a new short story every month, which I would then post online for accountability. And I did that for the entire rest of the year. I didn’t post one at the beginning of this month, arguing to myself that I had a lot going on in December and the novel I’m working on should surely be my first priority. I also didn’t really post one back in November. That has made me realise that, while I’m writing draft one of a new novel, my interest in and the time I can invest into the short stories has decreased dramatically. So, I’m going to stop regularly writing and posting them.

I’ll probably get back to it when the first draft is finished and I want something new to write while editing, but that isn’t likely to be until March or April (despite a wildly optimistic younger me, a whole couple months ago, thinking it would be done by February — I really hadn’t taken the holidays into consideration). In the meantime, I think I’ll try to do more blogposts to keep this site at least somewhat active. Also, this post is quite delayed, given it’s now the middle of January, but hey, I really didn’t have time for anything but the novel over the holiday period. So, without further ado.

Following up from the post I made six months ago, or there abouts, these are my rambling thoughts on all my favourite novels that I read since then. ‘Favourite novel’ is here defined by the scientific system of ‘books what I gave 5 stars to on Goodreads’. You’ll notice a fair few of the same names because, well, they’re good writers. So, without further ado, the five novels that were close enough to perfect as to make no difference:

Babel (R. F. Kuang)

We’re starting with a spicy one but it’s not my fault — this just happens to be the first one chronologically. I loved this book, as did most critics, but it seems to have become controversial amongst readers, at least on Reddit. Honestly, it seems like certain corners of the internet have started to turn on Kuang’s work generally and I’m not entirely sure why. (Sure, Poppy War wasn’t my favourite trilogy but it was decent and then this novel absolutely blew me away). With this novel specifically, it seems the main charge it that it’s too preachy which I fully disagree with, but we’ll get to that.

So, Babel follows a boy from China (I read it back in July so I’m a little hazy on the details but I think it was Hong Kong, or that he was born in Beijing but moved to Hong Kong) who, after his family all die, is adopted by an English academic. He is ‘raised’ by the man, who turns out to be his father, and sent to study at Oxford, at the faculty specialising in magic. The book is set in Britain during the early Industrial Revolution, mostly in the 1830s if I remember correctly, and in an alternative version of Earth in which, you know, magic exists.

Specifically, the magic in this world is based on language. You write two words in different languages with an etymological link and, based on how their meanings interact, it creates an effect. It only works, however, if written on silver (again, if I remember correctly). In this world, this magic is the source of Britain’s industrial strength and cause of its imperialism, as it seeks to gather the world’s silver and utilise hitherto un-utilised (by Britain) languages.

I love this magic system. First, just in itself, it’s the perfect blending of hard and soft magic, at least for me. Enough rules that something isn’t going to completely blindside you with enough unexplored potential to allow for it to still feel magical. It’s magic that can be satisfyingly used to solve a puzzle without feeling like game mechanics.

Second, I love how it relates to the world and themes. The need for silver explicitly comments on the British trade deficit with China that motivated it’s policies towards the Qing Empire during this period. Basically, Britain was importing a lot from China but not selling much to it, leading to a huge trade imbalance and therefore lots of silver going into China to pay for all that (something something modern American politics something). The awful ‘solution’ decided upon was to export opium, derived from poppies grown in northern India, which, due to its addictive nature, would create a demand for itself and rebalance the trade deficit. This of course was not appreciated in China, with banned the import of opium and seized shipments of it from British merchants. Britain used that as the excuse it needed to launch a war against China, the First Opium War, and forcibly open up the Chinese market. In real life, this is all explainable through economic motivations but in the novel Britain wants a positive trade balance specifically because an influx of silver is how it keeps its magic going. Wonderful stuff.

And then there’s the linguistic aspect. Essays could be written on that; on the metaphor the novel creates for the shallow exploitation of colonised cultures. The need to find and utilise ‘new’ languages as the ‘old’ ones get used up, take that thing that is most essential to culture, but strip it of all context to use it purely as a resource for the furtherance of the imperialism that subjugated that culture and language in the first place. The very fact that Britain’s sense of superiority and globally preeminent place comes from using that which is decidedly not British — the languages of other peoples. I really can’t go into too much detail because I just wouldn’t be able to stop writing. Again, it’s just so good.

The novel itself is about this kid exploring the world of academia and magic he finds himself in (a richly realised world that I cannot praise enough), discovering the oppression and exploitation it’s all based on, and deciding to fight against it despite it being the thing he loves most in the world. Most of the criticism of it’s ‘preachiness’ is focused on how much the novel lambasts imperialism. People either argue that it goes too far in its condemnation (I disagree) or that it’s pointless because we all know imperialism was/is bad (whoever says this has clearly never been to the UK). I think that criticism fundamentally misses the point. The novel is thematically about the question of reform vs revolution and the level that academia is implicated in the actions of the states it is based in despite often presenting itself as neutral. Both those lines of query are very interesting to me (the second one especially given I studied international relations, where academia and policy are porous at best). It also has a lot to say about the odd situation of being from a marginalised group but given all possible privileges, so long as you stay in line and ignore the awfulness of the world around you and specifically that directed against the group you come from. So yeah, it takes ‘imperialism bad’ as a given (‘cos it is) and uses that as a springboard to look at more interesting questions and ideas.

I won’t say much more on the themes and worldbuilding, though those were the stand-out, most interesting elements. I will just mention that I had some concerns about an American writing in Britain but they were mostly alleviated. I just have a reflective concern whenever I see that (which is a major reason why I haven’t read V. E. Schwarb’s fantasy series set in an alternative London) but Kuang brought three things to the table that mostly overcame that. First, she was writing from the perspective of a partial outsider to the culture, something she was able to write really well (largely, I’m sure, drawing on personal experience), which meant the culture didn’t have to be fully explored as it was actively hostile to the character. Second, she has actually lived in the UK and studied at Oxford, giving her insights on the UK broadly and Oxford specifically that another American writer wouldn’t have. Third, research: she clearly did a lot of it and I cannot praise it enough. There were still a few elements that, as a Brit with an interest in the period, stood out to me as wrong, but it was minimal.

I have less to say on the character and plot. I liked Robin — he’s a man after my own heart — and most of the other characters too. The plot was decent and ran through at what was, for me, enough of a clip to keep in engaging. The only time it stretched believability is when they let English girl (I forget the name) leave their super-secret clubhouse even though it was clear she was having doubts. Obviously she was going to go to the police. I get her friends being blind to it (somewhat — though they were already suspicious of her) but what about the older kids? Does it show their naivety and how out of their depth they are? Yeah, I guess, but it went way to far for me.

I really liked the siege sequence at the end, as I always enjoy a siege and especially a street battle. I will say, though, that the Luddites coming down to fight with them was the one time I felt smacked over the head by the themes. Hey guys, academics and the working-class can have solidarity! I know you, middle-class academic, might have a class prejudice against them, but actually they’re really nice and will fight your battles! I don’t know, that just felt too theme-first for me and a little tacked on.

But yeah, amazing book overall and the first basically perfect book I read in the second half of the year.

Kindred (Octavia E. Butler)

There is nothing I could say about this book that hasn’t already been said in a thousand essays. It was very, very good.

This was my first Butler and I did initially find her style so sparse as it be almost off putting — and I’m a guy who likes Orwell and Hemingway. Once I was used to it, I saw the beauty in it the same as I do in those other more sparse writers. It still wouldn’t be my preference, but nor was it a point against the novel.

Like with Babel, I read the novel quite a while ago and I’m struggling to remember names and details. What I can say is that the world was very well realised — both Butler’s ‘modern day’ and her Antebellum South — and I remember being struck by how logical and straight forward the characters were, which was a breath of fresh air. No idiot plotting here: the characters quickly realised what was going on and instantly tried to start gaming it (eg having her carry a bag of things she might need on her at all times as they don’t know when she’ll be snatched away).

I truly can’t say any more as trying to come up with anything novel to say about this, well, novel would be impossible. It was amazing and, if you haven’t, you should read it. That’s all.

Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)

My return to Kay, after reading A Song for Arbonne earlier in the year. This was a very good epic fantasy novel. One of the best I’ve read. Like I think I said last time, Kay sits in this transitional period in fantasy from the classic to the modern and takes the best of both. Very much like a classic fantasy, it has mysterious almost omnipotent wizards and is very theme-forward, but it combines that with a more modern approach to character that some of the classics lack.

It’s a pretty classic setup. Rightful heir to the throne must take back the kingdom from the evil sorcerer who has taken it over. But Tigana is so much more than that. Kay loves basing his settings very closely on a historical place and period and has them inform his plots too, so what we get here is just as inspired by the Italian Wars, in which France and Spain fought over Italy during the Renaissance, as by Lord of the Rings. The focus on the political and the humanisation of our primary antagonist were other elements that struck me as breaking with traditional sword-and-sorcery.

The world in Tigana felt more overtly magical than that in A Song for Arbonne, which makes sense as multiple characters were literal wizards, but for all that it didn’t feel any less grounded. In fact, it’s amazing how down to earth Kay made this world given it’s subject matter, and I think a lot of that was the historical inspiration and the focus on the individual cultures that make up the Palm.

Plot and characterisation are quite led by theme at times, in a way that felt very classic. For example, everyone breaking down crying when they first heard the word ‘Tigana’ and immediately pledging their life to its liberation didn’t necessarily feel earnt by their characterisation but instead followed the themes. That’s fairly indictive of the classic genre and especially of heroic fantasy, where characters were much more liable to change dramatically in in ways that were more thematically justified than justified through their established character, especially as they answer the call of destiny and take on the mantel of heroism (I recently read ‘Legend’ by David Gemmell, which also gave me that feeling). In this case, our primary POV character (though by no means our protagonist) is a womanising, carousing, musician who doesn’t seem to care for much at all in life, until he discovers his stolen Tiganan heritage and instantly makes freeing it his only object. Yet, it works, especially if as a reader you’re kind enough to understand what the author is trying to do and how, yes it’s different from the modern genre, but not necessarily worse.

The most interesting character by a country mile was, of course, Dianora. A woman who left home with a single goal: kill the sorcerer who destroyed her family, homeland, and culture. Her story is told out of order, as we get her backstory only later on, so excuse me if I think about it a little more chronologically. First, to see her culture dismantled in front of her eyes, her family broken up, her brother wasting away until he makes the decision to leave first. The incestuous relationship that develops between her and her brother before that is perhaps the most shocking and uncomfortable part of the novel, as well as the most tragic. They know what they’re doing is wrong, are disgusted by themselves, but have no other pleasure in their lives so retreat into each other until they recognise that they cannot any longer. Indeed, the novel as a whole asks a lot about pleasure while living with trauma, in a traumatised culture in ways that I frankly can’t get into as I’m trying to keep my wordcount down.

So, she sets off with her plan. She finds the evil sorcerer king. She aims to assassinate him and free her country. But then she falls in love. She realises that he’s not evil in the classic understanding. He’s human. He was angry over his son’s death and took revenge, but revenge is an understandable emotion. A human one. A passionate one. And, if Brandin is anything, he is passionate. Indeed, as we learn more about him, we realise that he is almost pitiful, having given up everything — his crown, his wife, his country — to enact his awful revenge. So, not quite the evil sorcerer king Dianora thought he was. Her torturous emotions: her love for the man she most hates, are way and above the most interesting part of the novel from the character perspective (at least for me), and her final decision was suitably tragic.

I’m really pleased that Kay was able to blow me away again and he’s already catapulted into the ranks of my favourite authors. I am looking forward to getting into the rest of his bibliography with gusto.

Fool’s Errand (Robin Hobb)

Oh it’s good to be back. Speaking of favourite authors: Robin Hobb everybody. This book felt very much like a homecoming, in a way that I don’t think would work if you haven’t read the rest of the Realm of the Elderlings books leading up to it. If you have done that, as you should, then you are with Fitz for three books until he ‘retires’, then go over to a very different story, and now come back to a very different Fitz a decade after we left him. You will feel, as I did, that Fitz has already suffered enough and should be allowed to retire in peace. Indeed, the entire first section of the novel (a not insignificant part of its page count) is a continual rejection of the call to adventure in a way that feels almost like Hobb herself toying with whether she can really pull Fitz back into the pain that always comes when he gets involved in the Six Duchies’ affairs.

That first section was slow and largely uneventful but, when you have as much baggage with Fitz as you should do (as a reader of the Farseer Trilogy), it hits so incredibly hard. You see his sad but ultimately peaceful life and recognise the cost to him that will have to be borne if he goes back into protagonist mode.

Once the story begins, it seems oddly low stakes. The prince (Fitz’s biological son, but don’t tell anyone) is missing, which is obviously a big deal, but the actual scale of the story seems quite contained. The entire novel after Fitz finally agrees to help takes place over maybe a couple weeks and all within about a day’s ride from Buckkeep as he tracks down and fetches Prince Dutiful. That’s a far cry from how we ended things with Fitz — going on a grand quest to the other side of the Mountain Kingdom to awake stone dragons to fight an existential threat to the kingdom — and how we left things with the Bingtown Traders — an averted international war and saving of dragons as a species. Yet, it felt right for this return, just as the long introduction did. Ultimately, we don’t need to go far from home to give Fitz a terrible time and, at the end of the day, what are the Fitz books for if not giving him a terrible time?

I love Fitz. I often disagree with him but I always understand him. So I was shouting the entire novel (once he found the prince) ‘Tell him who you are!!!’ — not the father bit, but the cousin and bastard of the Farseer line bit. Frankly, I assumed Prince Dutiful would guess — how many other people with both the Wit and Skill could possibly exist? I mean, I know everyone thinks Fitz is dead, but that happened before Dutiful was born, surely he’s heard the stories about it (surely Kettricken mentioned him at some point) and what other explanation could there be? But anyway, I disagree with him but I do kinda see why he didn’t say anything. He’s a man who more than anything doesn’t want to be dragged back into his old life, nor does he want to give Dutiful false hope. Still, it’ll definitely all come out at some point and I look forward to it.

Nighteyes. Oh Nighteyes. Obviously Hobb was setting up his death. But in the first novel of a new trilogy? I thought she was setting up for it to happen at the end of the series. Now? I was heartbroken and really wonder if Fitz will get a fourth wit beast for the rest of the series. After all, this is only book four of nine following Fitz, so surely he’ll keep using the wit in the later ones? In my wildest dreams, he eventually wit bonds with a dragon. In the meantime, I imagine we have a lot more grief to get through.

The last character I need to talk about is, of course, the Fool/Amber. Is there an accepted way for fans to discuss this character? Like name and pronouns and what have you? I suppose I’ll call him the Fool in Fitz books and I’ll call her Amber in Traders books. So, the Fool. Love isn’t a strong enough word. I could watch that pair doing anything and it would be compelling, with that deep friendship and undercurrent of longing. So, Fool loves Fitz, right? Definitely, right? I remember first realising that during the final book of the first trilogy, but it seemed to be reinforced here (and at the end of Liveship Traders). It creates this inherent tension in their relationship that Fitz seems entirely unaware of, as they have this incredibly close friendship, but with this fundamental thing between them, this unrequited love that makes the relationship oh so bittersweet for the Fool. And look: I’ve been the straight guy in that friendship — it’s a relationship I know well. Will it cool into friendship and nothing more on the Fool’s side, simmer undiscussed, or lead to some crisis point and admittance of the Fool’s true feelings? Only time will tell.

I am so happy to be back in the Six Duchies. As always with Hobb’s writing, it’s the characters and interpersonal dynamics that keep me invested and so I am so interested to see where they all go. Fitz and the Fool, obviously, as I’ve already said, but also how Fitz’s relationship will change with characters we already know (Kettricken, Chade) and how Fitz as adoptive and awkward father figure to Dutiful will shake out. And Hobb appears to be setting up that the primary conflict of the series will relate very directly to antagonism towards the Wit, which only increases the opportunities to pull Fitz in every direction. Oh I am so sorry for what she’s going to do to you, my dear boy, but I am so looking forward to reading about it.

Emma (Jane Austen)

Technically, I finished this one in January. But you waited long enough for this post and I felt that four was too few novels to discuss. So, we get our third returning author. Comparing Emma to Pride and Prejudice, I don’t think it was as good a romance, but I do think it was a better novel.

Indeed, Emma hardly reads like a romance at all to me. All the characters are paired off by the end (the novel ends with no fewer than three marriages) but they really weren’t its focus. The focus was on Emma as a character — making this novel much more of a character study than the previous Austen I read — and on the village as a whole — making it, conversely, much less focused on a single family than Pride and Prejudice — but not per se Emma’s love life. In fact, Emma was pretty solid on never getting married until changing her mind right at the end and, at least for me, her happily ever after felt almost tacked on at the end. She briefly considers being in love with Mr Frank Churchill but gets over that pretty soon, and doesn’t even do that with Mr Elton. If there’s a focus on love and romance, it’s on Harriet Smith’s happily ever after, not Emma’s.

Before reading the novel, I watched the recent film with my girlfriend. I think the film actually had a stronger romance, in part because the age gap between Emma and her eventual husband Mr Knightley was far less noticeable. In fact, looking up the characters who played them, I was shocked to discover that the age gap is almost right: a full 13 years between their actors. Johnny Flynn does look quite young for his age — frankly I would have put his age about a decade younger than what it is — and I think that allowed the film to still technically keep the rather large age gap (about 15 years in the book) without it being noticeable. Without wanting to go into ‘age gap discourse’, the book was very clear on the fact that Emma is 21 and Knightley is a man in his mid-to-late 30s who has seen her raised from a baby. He says at one point that she was the first woman in his esteem from the age of 14, and that he has been in love with her since she was, well I forget the exact age he mentions but I think it was about 16.

Maybe it’s my Gen-Z coming through (yes my dear reader, I am in fact elder gen-z. Don’t tell anyone) but that did strike me as a bit, to use our parlance, sus. I don’t have a problem with two consenting adults getting down and dirty, to be clear. It’s just the idea of such an older man having been in love with her while she was so insanely young in comparison — when she was a literal child — that slightly brings up my breakfast. If they had just met, I would have no problem with it. It’s specifically the fact that he watched her grow up from such a young age that makes me a little off put.

So, even knowing that that was the happily ever after being led up to, I wasn’t particularly on board with it and focused much more on other parts of the novel. But even putting aside my feelings, the novel itself didn’t give much indication of a future marriage between them until pretty late. The ball was surely the first real hint, which actually happens quite late in the novel, and then nothing more until very close to the end. So it’s not just me — the novel itself seems far more interested in other elements of itself. Specifically, in Emma as a character and how she has to learn to be a better person to those around her. Kinder with her acquaintances, less pushy with her friends, and generally less self-centred.

I’ve said before, I’m a setting reader before all else. Plot, character, theme, all are secondary to setting. It helps that she was writing contemporary fiction in her own time, but no-one puts me in that world of the Regency gentry like Austen does. Because they were written as contemporary, there is no attempt at ‘worldbuilding’ like a historical fiction or fantasy writer would: as a modern reader, you’re just thrown in. I love that, even as it’s something that obviously was not intentional on Austen’s part. And the setting itself — what more can I say than it is one of my favourite historical periods. I’m a filthy modernist whose real interest in history begins in the 18th century, 17th at a push, and the early-19th is my true love. So put me in that world and I’m happy, no matter the context.

Another thing I should mention loving about this book is how much is hidden from the reader as they initially read through. Largely this is due to the character herself, as Emma is frequently far less observant than she imagines ourselves. So, we are left to piece together things like Elton falling for her, Knightley being in love with her, and the whole relationship between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax, as Emma isn’t going to. Having watched the film, I was already spoiled on these elements, but I’ve never been one to care for spoilers. In fact, I kinda like them, as then I can read a novel actively looking for all the foreshadowing. It feels less like experiencing the book as merely a reader and more like reading it as a fellow writer, tipping my hat to all the clever use of craft I can see on display, hidden just off stage.

Anyway, it’s a very good book. A great one to just exist in for a while, experiencing the lives of these people who are both so alien and so relatable. And hence, Emma rounds off my perfect books for 2023.

Will I continue this series of blog posts into 2024? We’ll see. I don’t want to just keep talking about the same writers again and again, so I may switch to only making posts about books by new authors that I loved, and perhaps writing and releasing them just after reading the book, rather than waiting potentially many months until I have forgotten large chunks of it. But that’s all in the misty future so, to mix some metaphors, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Until next time.