Friday, August 25, 2006 | By: Patrick

Top 5 of 2006

Hi guys!

Feel free to disagree with me, but here are what I consider the best fantasy books of 2006 thus far. For my money, they're the best literary investments this year!:-)

1- (tie) R. Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought
2- (tie) Steven Erikson's The Bonehunters
3- (not far behind) Hal Duncan's Vellum
4- Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora
5- Naomi Novik's Temeraire/His Majesty's Dragon

To make this interesting, I invite you to leave a comment with your own top 5 of 2006. With Gaiman, Kay, Feist, and Pratchett all releasing new works, this list could change before the year is through. . . Still, it's been a good year so far!;-)

10 commentaires:

maschine said...

Hm...

1. The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson (without a doubt)
2. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (a real fun read - and that's the most important, isn't it?)
3. The Briar King/Charnel Prince by Greg Keyes (or do the novels have to be published this year?)
4. Night of Knives by I. C. Esslemont
5. The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker (somehow it always takes half a book until I'm in the story, but from that point on it's great)

Promising books that did not make it into the list are:
In the Eye of Heaven by David Keck and
The Sea Beggars by Paul Kearney

The rest were mostly comics, Pratchett re-reads, Asimov's Foundation, Thomas Covenant and a bit of this and a bit of that

But I guess it is still too early to give a final ranking, since I'm planning to read Abrahams's A Shadow in Summer, Wright's Last Guardian of Everness, Sanderson's Elantris, Gaiman's Anansi Boys and Gemmell's King Beyond the Gate - or at least some of them *g*

4:03 PM
Neth said...

I haven't read all that many that were officially released in 2006, but of what I have read I'd rank:

1. Thousandfold Thought - Bakker
2. The Bonehunters - Erikson
3. The Crooked Letter - Sean Williams (I'm currently only half way through, but so far I'd place it here, by the end it could pass BH)
4. His Majesty's Dragon - Novik

It might be argued that City of Saints and Madmen by VanderMeer would count, if so, it's the number 1 spot easily. I see Maschine counts Night of Knives (I read that one in 2005), but if it were on the list, it would be 4 or 5.

4:29 PM
werewolfv2 said...

City of Saints and Madmen was very good. The fact its been released for several years it seems, kinda screws up when to count it. :)

I'm not going to count it...though if I did it would easily be in the top 5.....Night of Knives would be a close call, it wasn't really that good of a book but...I really liked it! But I also read that back in 2005.


1: The Lies of Locke Lamora
2: The Bonehunters
3: Sebastian - Anne Bishop
4. His Majesty's Dragon


I think that's it for my 2006 list so far. Thousand Thought, Hal Duncan's Vellum, The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie and a few others are in my to be read pile still...oh yes, cant forget Jeff Vandermeers Shriek: an Afterword

4:48 PM
Alan said...

Hmm... Vellum was a mid-2005 releas over here, though I didn't read it until January; it would be top on my list for 2005.

Turns out I've only read three new releases this year:
1- The Thousandfold Thought, Bakker
2- Shriek: An Afterword, VanderMeer
3- The Bonehunters, Erikson

5:49 PM
Konrad Gaertner said...

1. Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters
2. Steven Brust, Dzur
3. Jonathan Stroud, Ptolemy's Gate
4. Patricia Briggs, Moon Called
5. Carrie Vaughn, Kitty Goes to Washington

Only five? Here's what didn't make the cut:

Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Scion
Charlaine Harris, Definitely Dead
Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora
Naomi Novik, His Majesty's Dragon

And then there's the ones I haven't read yet:

Tanya Huff, Smoke and Ashes
Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn
Charles Stross, The Clan Corporate
Liz Williams, The Demon and the City
Jo Walton, Farthing
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife

And the next two months will see the publication of 4 books on my "must buy" list:

Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
Lemony Snicket, The End
P.C. Hodgell, To Ride a Rathorn
Robin Hobb, Forest Mage

This has been a good year for me :)

4:08 PM
Danae said...

I cavill at the placing of the Novik. The second and third books are much better.

Otherwise, 'tis probably a good list. I've only read The Bonehunters and the Noviks - a fourth of the way through Vellum.

12:14 PM
RobB said...

I haven't read Erikson's Bonehunters and I'm in the middle of Lynch's book right now, which does deserve to be on the list. Bakker, too even though I read it last year.

Vellum was very good, but one book that will be on my top five (probably top three) is Sean Williams' The Crooked Letter.

8:07 PM
Freebird said...

You bastard! How didn't I see this before? Fine, fine, I'll give you a sneak peek at my favorites when I post mine at the end of the year. But since my reading has been mostly out of field or of books not published in 2006, I'll break these down into various categories:

Best Reads of 2006 Published in the US in 2006:

1. Hal Duncan, Vellum

2. R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought
(No others read that were published in 2006 in the US or the UK)

Best Reads (no re-reads) of 2006 Published in Prior Years:

1. Ben Okri, The Famished Road (1991) - There is a reason that this work of magic realism won the Booker Prize. It is a very powerful read. Up there with Vellum and a few non spec fic reads for Best Overall Read of 2006 right now.

2. José Saramago, Las intermitencias de la muerte (Nov. 2005, Spanish) [I have a suspicion that when this is published in English in 2007 or 2008, that there will be a lot of press about this one - very strong work.]

3. Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) - yeah, took me this long to read this tale, but still...wow. Very powerful, almost 50 years later.

4. Sarah Monette, Mélusine (2005) - I really need to pimp this one more, as I really, really enjoyed reading this back in March. When I have the time, I'll buy the second book, The Virtu, in the next couple of months, as it was just released in July.

5. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1980) - Quite possibly Rushdie's best work. Highly, highly recommend it.

And just for the hell of it...the most disappointing (not worst, as I'm currently reading CoT now and 'summarizing' it at wotmania ;)) read of all the books I've read in 2006 is Brandon Sanderson's Elantris. Suffer. :P

4:12 AM
Mervi said...

Hmmm...
So far, I've read just two books released 2006:

1, Steven Brust: Dzur
2, Dave Duncan: Children of Chaos

Out of the others:

1, J. Gregory Keyes: Newton's Cannon
2, Brust and Bull: Freedom&Necessity
3, Brust: Issola
4, Lois McMaster Bujold: Hallowed Hunt
5, J. Gregory Keyes: A calculus of angels

I've got both Vellum and City of Saints and Madmen sitting on the to-read-pile, so the list is likely to look very different in six months.

10:31 AM
Robert said...

These are probably my favorites of the year so far. First post by the way ;)

1. The Bonehunters - Steven Erikson (my current favorite series I'm reading)
2. Woken Furies - Richard K. Morgan (more SF than fantasy, but one hell of an entertaining read)
3. Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson (Very enjoyable book by an up-and-coming author)
4. Crown of Stars - Kate Elliott (Excellent conclusion to a very strong series)
5. The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch (Just finished this. Very promising debut)
6. The Blood Knight - Greg Keyes (Another solid entry in a solid series)
7. A Shadow In Summer - Daniel Abraham ( Also a strong debut. Made me look forward to reading the next entry 'Winter Cities')

I'm just starting 'Farthing' by Jo Walton and have waiting in the wings:

Armageddon’s Children - Terry Brooks
The Crooked Letter - Sean Williams
The Prince Of Nothing Trilogy - R. Scott Bakker
Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey
In The Eye of Heaven - David Keck
Vellum - Hal Duncan

and forthcoming:

Forest Mage - Robin Hobb
The Testament - Eric Van Lustbader
The Harsh Cry of the Heron - Lian Hearn

So, I should be busy for a while ;)

Also looking forward to new books this year by Douglas Clegg, Dean Koontz, Elizabeth Haydon, Kate Elliott, James Clemens, David Farland, etc...

7:10 PM

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