TOP TEN TUESDAY #3

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish with the aim of sharing Top Ten lists of our favorites – mostly book related.

This week’s topic is: Top Ten Books I’m Looking Forward To For The First Half Of 2017

If reading is a pleasure and a joy, anticipating the arrival of books we set our sights on is just as fun, especially if they are new installments in our favorite series or stand-alone volumes from authors we particularly enjoy.  So here are some of the titles I can’t wait to add to my reading queue:

1) John Scalzi: The Collapsing Empire

It’s no mystery that John Scalzi is one of my favorite authors, and he’s the kind of writer whose books I buy sight unseen, knowing with absolute certainty that I will have a great time reading any kind of story he writes.  This new novel will be set in a different universe from the one of Scalzi’s greatly acclaimed Old Man’s War series and deals with the discovery of the Flow, a sort of extra-dimensional field that allows faster-than-light travel and the creation of a vast network of colony worlds. Then something threatens the stability of the Flow, and the communications between human outposts…  Intriguing, isn’t it?

2) Ian McDonald: Luna, Wolf Moon

Last year, the first volume in this series, Luna: New Moon, was the best book I read, no question about it.  This story of the colonization of our satellite and of the powerful families that ruled its economy was both fascinating and compelling, but it ended with a massive cliffhanger. Now this amazing saga is returning with the second book, and I’m beyond anxious to know what happened to the survivors of the bloody upheaval that closed the first chapter of the story, and to see if they will exact their vengeance, and how.  I you still have not read this magnificent story, I urge you to try it, it will be more than worth your time.

3) Bradley Beaulieu: With Blood upon the Sand

Another great discovery from last year, a fantasy novel rich in imagination and peopled with great characters, Twelve Kings in Sharakhai was both a revelation and an amazing beginning to a compelling saga. The main character Çeda started the first leg of her journey of vengeance in book 1 and now that she’s finally inside the enemy camp the true adventure will be about to begin.  I can hardly wait to go back to this well-crafted, vibrant world steeped in mystery, intrigue and peculiar magic, rich with fascinating characters and dreadful creatures.

4) Scott Lynch: The Thorn of Emberlain

The Gentlemen Bastards are back! This new chapter of the adventures of Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen promises to be a good one: in the course of the last book, The Republic of Thieves, there were some revelations about Locke’s past that will, with all probability, bear some weight on the story’s course, and I can’t forget the last chapter of that book and the dreadful menace that is approaching. To further escalate tension, there seems to be a war brewing on the horizon and it still remains to be seen how that will impact on the… activities of the two friends and comrades.  No matter what’s going to happen, it will be an engrossing read, as always…

5) Seanan McGuire: The Brightest Fell

Again, an author and a series that need no introduction: for this 11th installment in the successful October Daye series there are no hints about story development yet, but to me it hardly matters, since I’ve been a staunch Toby fan for a long time now. You keep rolling them out, Ms. McGuire, and I will keep reading them – and so will the ever-growing number of enthusiasts that have discovered one of the best UF series of the moment.

6) Seanan McGuire: Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Same author, different series: the first book in the Wayward Children saga, Every Heart a Doorway marked the beginning of a new narrative track for this extremely prolific writer. The wayward children are those who found special doorways that took them into strange, fantastic and more often than not scary worlds that nonetheless attracted them more than the one – the ‘real’ world – they lived in. And if by choice or accident they managed to stumble back home, they now feel out of place, and long to go back and recapture the magic.  Poignant and deep, and quite thought-provoking.

7) Sean Danker: Free Space

Admiral was a total surprise, both because it turned out to be much different than its beginning led to me expect, and because I’m more than curious to know more about the mysterious character that was at the center of the story. In this new installment he’s kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip in the far-from-stable political landscape where the Evagardian Empire holds sway… but only up to a certain point, it would seem.

8) M.R. Carey: The Boy on the Bridge

There is not much information about this book, apart from the fact that it’s a sort of prequel to the highly successful The Girl with All the Gifts, a poignant post-apocalyptic story that was able to take a well-used trope and turn it into a wonderful, meaningful story.  To say I’m curious would be the understatement of the year!

9) James S.A. Corey: Persepolis Rising

No information about this one either, but it’s more than enough to know that it will be the 7th book in the acclaimed The Expanse space-opera series, the same that was so very successfully translated on the small screen by the SyFy Channel, in a very welcome return to a SF production of quality and depth.  The sixth book, Babylon’s Ashes just came out, and the fact that I’m already keeping this one in my sights says a great dal about my appreciation of this story…

10) GRR Martin: The Winds of Winter

And a list about much-expected books would not be complete without the mention of the next installment of the most famous fantasy saga of our days: there is no clear indication about the possibility of reading the much-longed-for next book from A Song of Ice and Fire in 2017, but since hope springs eternal I’m adding it at the end of my list as a form of propitiatory ritual. Please, Mr. Martin, pretty please….