An excellent list of favorites, Jarrod! I already had The Spear Cuts Through Water on my 2025 TBR, but your praise for it has me even more excited for it. Best wishes for many fantastic reads in 2025!
I’m happy to see both Flowers for Algernon AND The Spear Cuts Through Water made your top books of the year! Nicola Griffith’s Spear is truly a poetic experience: so I’m looking forward to reading more of her works. Whenever you read The Vanished Birds, let me know. I’d love to re-read it with you!
I have unfortunately not read any of your Top 10 («Shame, (bell), Shame on me!» 😅), but you have cemented and pushed up «Flower for Algernon» & «Spear through Water» on my TBR, also «Earth Abides» sound really cool! Can highly recommend «Hild» by Nicola Griffin (where she made some rather qualified guesses on the rather unsong youth of a future Anglo-Saxon Saint), will definitely be reading the sequel «Menewood» in 2025! As I have still a couple of books left on my dock (Currently reading «City of Thieves» by David Benioff (Historical Fiction set during the WW2 Seige of Leningrad (Modern Day St. Petersburg) and have a New Year MBR in «The Wall» (City of Victory Trilogy #3) by Adrian Goldsworthy (Historical Military Fiction set during the building of Hadrian’s Wall)), a temporary leaderboard would be: 1)Split: «Imperium» by Robert Harris (Historical Fiction, book #1 in Cicero Trilogy about the Eponymous Roman Statesman: Harris is such an amazingly witty and knowledgeable Historical Fiction Writer, his Cicero from the eponymous Trilogy is easily my Favorite Character of 2024!) & «A Brightness Long Ago» by Guy Gavriel Kay (Fantasy inspired by the Mercenary Wars of Renaissance Italy: What can I say that is not already said about GGK, the Prose, the Characters, the Interactions, the Descriptions, all top notch!) 2)«Når landet mørknar» (Approximately «When The Land Darkens») by Tore Kvæven (Historical Fiction set during the 13th Century end of the Norse Settlement of Greenland, think of it as a Norse John Steinbeck novel, winner of the Brage Prize for Best Norwegian Novel in 2018: With endearing doomed characters and an ecological interplay between nature and man worthy of a Fantasy World Build, I think it is a shame that there most likely would be difficult to translate the understated nuances of his laconic style from Nynorsk to English!) 3)Split: «To Green Angel Tower» (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #3) by Tad Williams (Epic Fantasy: What an amazing width, going from the cozy to the horrific, the mundane to the epic, that is simply astonishing and deserves to be more celebrated! ) & «The Warrior Prophet» (The Prince of Nothing #2) by R. Scott Bakker (Grimdark/Dark Epic Fantasy inspired by the Crusades, Silmarillion & Dune: A genuinely challenging author in his themes & descriptions and an intricate world-builder, who puts his characters literally through Hell and back!) 4)«Howling Dark» (Sun Eater #2) by Christopher Ruocchio (Space opera: I love how effortlessly he weaves in both Genre & Classic Literature and Art into a natural world building and is not afraid to go weird, philosophical and esoteric! ) 5) Split: «Sword in the Storm» & «Midnight Falcon» (Rigante #1 & #2) by David Gemmell (Heroic Fantasy/S&S inspired by Celtic Britain and the Roman Invasions of Julius Ceasar, can be read a two part novel or stand-alones: Easily the best character ensemble writer of this year, you get humbled by the empathy Gemmell gave to even his minor characters or antagonists, with incredible emotional callbacks!) Cheers and Happy New Year, Jerod!
Harari's Nexus is my next read. Looking forward to it! Thanks.
An excellent list of favorites, Jarrod! I already had The Spear Cuts Through Water on my 2025 TBR, but your praise for it has me even more excited for it. Best wishes for many fantastic reads in 2025!
Thank you Philip! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Happy New Year!
I’m happy to see both Flowers for Algernon AND The Spear Cuts Through Water made your top books of the year! Nicola Griffith’s Spear is truly a poetic experience: so I’m looking forward to reading more of her works.
Whenever you read The Vanished Birds, let me know. I’d love to re-read it with you!
@@SheWasOnlyEvie thanks! Will do!
These are some pretty spectacular books. Lots of favorites on here, and as I read more Wars of Light and Shadow I expect that to increase. Great list!
Thank you friend! I've no doubt that Wars of LIght and Shadow will make this list again next year.
Super list! The Spear Cuts Through Water is one of the best books I’ve read this year as well
So good! I was surprised at how much it stuck with me.
I have unfortunately not read any of your Top 10 («Shame, (bell), Shame on me!» 😅), but you have cemented and pushed up «Flower for Algernon» & «Spear through Water» on my TBR, also «Earth Abides» sound really cool! Can highly recommend «Hild» by Nicola Griffin (where she made some rather qualified guesses on the rather unsong youth of a future Anglo-Saxon Saint), will definitely be reading the sequel «Menewood» in 2025!
As I have still a couple of books left on my dock (Currently reading «City of Thieves» by David Benioff (Historical Fiction set during the WW2 Seige of Leningrad (Modern Day St. Petersburg) and have a New Year MBR in «The Wall» (City of Victory Trilogy #3) by Adrian Goldsworthy (Historical Military Fiction set during the building of Hadrian’s Wall)), a temporary leaderboard would be:
1)Split: «Imperium» by Robert Harris (Historical Fiction, book #1 in Cicero Trilogy about the Eponymous Roman Statesman: Harris is such an amazingly witty and knowledgeable Historical Fiction Writer, his Cicero from the eponymous Trilogy is easily my Favorite Character of 2024!) & «A Brightness Long Ago» by Guy Gavriel Kay (Fantasy inspired by the Mercenary Wars of Renaissance Italy: What can I say that is not already said about GGK, the Prose, the Characters, the Interactions, the Descriptions, all top notch!)
2)«Når landet mørknar» (Approximately «When The Land Darkens») by Tore Kvæven (Historical Fiction set during the 13th Century end of the Norse Settlement of Greenland, think of it as a Norse John Steinbeck novel, winner of the Brage Prize for Best Norwegian Novel in 2018: With endearing doomed characters and an ecological interplay between nature and man worthy of a Fantasy World Build, I think it is a shame that there most likely would be difficult to translate the understated nuances of his laconic style from Nynorsk to English!)
3)Split: «To Green Angel Tower» (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, #3) by Tad Williams (Epic Fantasy: What an amazing width, going from the cozy to the horrific, the mundane to the epic, that is simply astonishing and deserves to be more celebrated! ) & «The Warrior Prophet» (The Prince of Nothing #2) by R. Scott Bakker (Grimdark/Dark Epic Fantasy inspired by the Crusades, Silmarillion & Dune: A genuinely challenging author in his themes & descriptions and an intricate world-builder, who puts his characters literally through Hell and back!)
4)«Howling Dark» (Sun Eater #2) by Christopher Ruocchio (Space opera: I love how effortlessly he weaves in both Genre & Classic Literature and Art into a natural world building and is not afraid to go weird, philosophical and esoteric! )
5) Split: «Sword in the Storm» & «Midnight Falcon» (Rigante #1 & #2) by David Gemmell (Heroic Fantasy/S&S inspired by Celtic Britain and the Roman Invasions of Julius Ceasar, can be read a two part novel or stand-alones: Easily the best character ensemble writer of this year, you get humbled by the empathy Gemmell gave to even his minor characters or antagonists, with incredible emotional callbacks!)
Cheers and Happy New Year, Jerod!
Cheers and Happy New Year as well! I do hope to get to Tad Williams and Suneater soon! Thank you for your well thought out commentary as usual.
Looks like you had a great year. Evie would be very happy.
Yes, that is so true!