Five Favorites- Speculative Fiction
Yes, here I am posting about speculative fiction, a gathering of genres I am not shy about admitting I stay away from, if you can't tell by my general lack of enthusiasm about it. I mean, the whole reason why I grouped them all together under the label of speculative fiction is because I didn't have enough material to draw it out and have a science fiction, a fantasy, a paranormal, a dystopian, and a horror list. I admit though, even with my drawing it out I am a bit embarrassed to say I had a hard time reaching five, since really only three were definites. But I need more time with my historical fiction and thriller lists, and fall is literally the only time I voluntarily bother with speculative fiction so I thought it would be nice to talk about it.
So, without further ado, here are my top five speculative fiction novels! In no particular order, of course.
1. The Unwind Dystology
Originally, this list had a lot of nostalgic favorites such as The Girl Who Could Fly and the Percy Jackson series, but I haven't revisited those in a long time and while they both had a big impact on my life, I don't feel the need to go back to them like I did to the Unwind series. This is one of my favorite series of all time. Don't be put off by the dystopian genre classification. In fact, the first book came out three years before The Hunger Games swept onto the scene. So, what is this book about? Basically, it's set some undetermined time in the future after the Second Civil War, which was fought over abortion and resolved by the Unwind Accord, a law passed saying that 13-18 (later 17) year olds could be "unwound", retroactively aborted with all their parts used for transplants, which was a scientific discovery by then. We follow three teens, the typical YA trio of two-guys-and-a-girl, Lev Calder (he goes through like a million last name changes over the course of the series) who is a tithe which means he is going to be unwound willingly at the age of thirteen, Risa Ward, a state ward unwound because of budget cuts, and Connor Lassiter, a troubled teen whose parents unwound him as a last resort and also my biggest fictional crush. Him and Risa are also my number one OTP. There's also a lot more going on and that's just the first book. One interesting thing about the series is that the first book, Unwind, can be read as sort of a standalone, and then the other three books- UnWholly, UnSouled, and UnDivided are kind of like the actual series. It's a really great, really fucked up, and really underrated series, and has been reigning as one of my favorite books ever ever since I first read it back in middle school. It's basically my Harry Potter.
Are you sick of hearing about this book yet? Well, you're probably going to hear about this book a lot more in the upcoming months. Because Marina is the current holder of my favorite book of the year, ever since reading it all the way back in March, and almost instantly became one of my favorite books of all time. This is a Spanish YA horror novel with heavy Gothic influences. It's about a boy, Oscar, who goes to this boarding school in Barcelona. As he wanders around the old part of town, he meets a man named German Blau and his daughter Marina who he becomes close to. From there, they find themselves getting involved in the dark and twisted world of Mijail Kolvenik, an inventor in postwar Barcelona. It's a very complex, complicated plot to describe, so normally I just tell people that it's basically a mix of Phantom of the Opera, Bioshock, Frankenstein, Edgar Allen Poe, and the science fiction-y parts of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue. It's just really damn good.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a post apocalyptic nightmare of a book that hits you hard in the feelings. The prose is a thing of beige beauty, simplistic with almost every sentence perfectly formed. It's bleak and depressing and even horrific, but it has an almost hopeful undertone about finding something from nothing. I could tell you that this book is about a man and his son trying to not just survive but retain their humanity in a ruined world, but that's almost too simple a summary. Reading this book is an experience, one best gone through without any prior expectations. It was my favorite book of last year and has become one of my favorite books ever.
You can tell how much I read speculative fiction because every book on this list except one I read either last year or this year. The answer for that is simple, until last year I read almost all contemporary, historical fiction, and thrillers, as well as a lot of nonfiction. I didn't start develing into fantasy until I started getting into Booktube and that made me want to try really hard to read fantasy but alas, I couldn't do it. That being said, Six of Crows was a really great discovery, one that even I was able to really get into. Mostly because I loved the Amsterdam inspired setting and the interesting blend of 16th-17th century Netherlands with late 19th-early 20th technology and clothing all in one fantasy world. This book captured me with its atmosphere and cast of characters, a group that reminded me so much of the Unwind crew. This is one of the biggest fantasy duologies out there, so I won't waste your time talking about the plot. My favorite characters were Jesper, Kaz, and Inez, I hated both Nina and Matthias, and I felt very little towards Wylan except in relation to Jesper, in which case I was all over him. I was less invested in the second book, which disappointed me in a lot of ways, but it is still a really great book duology, even for someone not into fantasy at all.
So, we had a horror novel, 2 dystopians, and a fantasy. What about science-fiction? And well paranormal, but most people including me have kind of stopped taking those books seriously since the rise and fall of the paranormal empire. So science fiction. More specifically, space science fiction. I mentally refer to it as hi-sci-fi because I like the way that sounds. I reach for those books even less than I do fantasy because I can't stand space and have little patience for endless musings on the universe. With the exception of The End from The Tsar of Love and Techno because that last story is beautiful and you know it. But yeah, the Illuminae Files. Also known as, why the hell did I like this book. It's just a ton of fun to read, that's why. It's no great literature or anything, it's just a quick, funny, and violent read, with a great first novel, a less great but still strong second book, and hopefully a third book that will round out the series nicely, even though the second book did not feel like a middle novel at all. This is another book that I think is fairly hyped up, so I also won't bore you with plot. My favorite characters are Ella, Kady, Grant, and the AI. This book was just fun escapism, and really, what else do you need from science fiction?
What are some of your favorite speculative fiction books? Have you read any of these books? What do you think about them? Leave your thoughts below!
No comments:
Post a Comment