Best Books of 2022

This is the closest to a “Top Ten” list I’ve ever managed to get – and that only by being fairly ruthless about the whole thing. Even so, the best I can do is a “Baker’s Dozen” plus three honorable mentions.

Trends continue to trend. Most of the books on my list are fantasy and/or science fiction. The rest are mystery/thriller of various types and stripes, along with one horror because, well, T. Kingfisher.

About those three honorable mentions, Steel Fear should have been on last year’s list. I skimmed it then and didn’t get into it but this year I did and WOW! So I’m a bit late to the party but still just so good. And Remarkably Bright Creatures because it just goes so well with The Mountain in the Sea that I couldn’t resist including it. (Some of the folks in my reading group thought Mountain spoiled Bright Creatures but I thought they made each other better, and it’s my list. So there.) And last but not least, except in length, The Jade Setter of Janloon by Fonda Lee because I loved the world of the Green Bone Saga so damn hard and just can’t let it go.

Over all the books from this year, my favorite is still Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. It was just a lovely story, it cast all its stock fantasy players against type, it told a fun and entertaining story without violence but with lots of love. It was the warm, comforting hug of a book that this year simply cried out for. Not that The Circus Infinite wasn’t equally wonderful in its SFnal way. Not to mention all the others.

(I had a LOT of A+ reads this year. So many wonderful books!)

All the links for the titles listed are to my reviews, wherever they might be located. Take a look and see if any of them belong on your TBR pile for the coming year.

It’s fitting that on this last next-to-last day of the year to take a moment to take stock of the reading year now passing. On Monday, a look ahead at the books I’m most looking forward to in 2023.

Happy New Year!