The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2023
by Cheryl Morgan
Some of my favorite writers have had new novels out this year, and top of the list has to be Menewood by Nicola Griffith. If you are a fan of Hild then you will love this book. I need say no more.
A close second, mainly because I was a sensitivity reader for the book so am a bit biased, is Hopeland by Ian McDonald. I really don’t know how to describe it, save that it is climate fiction and is adamant that there is still some good left in the world.
Mike Carey has returned to science fiction with Infinity Gate, the first book in a two-part series about a war for the multiverse. One of the major characters is a teenage girl from a species that has evolved from rabbits. I’ve seen kangaroos in action close up. I know what a human-sized rabbit could do with those feet, and Mike does too.
Samit Basu is in fine form with The Jinn-Bot of Shantipoor, a science fiction novel that is based on but by no means shackled too, Aladdin. As usual with Basu, it marries serious thinking about society, great action, and wry humor.
I’ve been following Tim Powers’ career for decades now. I don’t always love his books, but My Brother’s Keeper shows him on top form. His portrayal of Emily Brontë as a brave and determined young woman trying to save her family from a werewolf curse is a joy to behold.
On to some younger writers now, and Valerie Valdes is fast becoming a favorite. I often see her work described as “cozy”, but while you are generally guaranteed a happy ending, Where Peace is Lost deals with some pretty weighty topics.
The book that should have won all the awards this year is The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez. Thankfully the British Fantasy Awards got it right, but the book’s absence from Hugo and World Fantasy shortlists is a mystery to me.
Emily Tesh has graduated from novellas to novels. Some Desperate Glory does a fabulous job of shaking out tired space opera tropes and giving them new life.
I’m always pleased to see books from small presses do well. Sadly, Unsing Stories has since closed, but in The Coral Bones they produced a fine piece of feminist climate fiction that caught the notice of several UK awards.
Still with planetary science, but on a much longer timescale, is The Terraformers by Analee Newitz. This sort of very long view of social development used to be a staple of early 20th- century SF, and it is good to see it brought up to date.
Hopefully I have enthused about Stark Holborn before, but if not her science fiction Westerns are well worth a look. Hel’s Eight is the sequel to Ten Low and is every bit as good.
Finally in the newer writers, L R Lam has been getting steadily better throughout their career and DragonFall is an imaginative new take on dragon lore that is worth checking out.
When I took on Juliet E McKenna’s backlist more than 10 years ago it was with the hope that continued exposure would eventually lead to her getting a mainstream contract again. This year it finally happened with The Cleaving, a very feminist re-telling of the Arthurian story. Juliet is still doing new books for Wizard’s Tower, and the latest, The Green Man’s Quarry, sold over 1000 copies in its first week, which is very good for a small press.
A project I set myself this year was to finally read Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence. I was too old for it when it first came out. I can see why it is so popular with younger readers, but the lack of agency of the characters nagged at me.
Continuing series that I’m fond of had new books this year. That included Furious Heaven from Kate Elliott, System Collapse for Martha Wells, Translation State from Ann Leckie, Beyond the Reach of Earth by Ken MacLeod, and A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard.
Several great series also reached their end. We had Salt on the Midnight Fire from Liz Williams, Promises Stronger Than Darkness from Charlie Jane Anders, and Blue Beautiful World from Karen Lord. I want to make particular mention of the Rhapsody of Blood series by Roz Kaveney which finished with a fifth volume, Revelations, this year, but is really one giant secret history novel spanning the whole of human history.
The flood of amazing novellas seems to be slowing down a little, perhaps because readers are reacting to the very high prices being asked for them. This year’s favorites for me were Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo and Even Though I Knew the End by C L Polk.
In nonfiction we saw the release of Space Crone, a collection of wonderfully pointed pieces by Ursula K Le Guin. I was also very impressed by Jack Dann’s The Fiction Writers Guide to Alternate History. The round table he ran with various practitioners of the art is a wonderful demonstration of the absence of rules for writing because every writer is different.
One of the oldest stories in human history is the Epic of Gilgamesh. If you really want to understand that book, I recommend the new translation by Danish scholar, Sophus Helle. Sophus is an Assyriologist with an excellent understanding of literature. He not only provides a fresh and very readable translation, but also a comprehensive explanation of the social and historical background to the creation and development of the Epic.
Talking of mythology, Ronald Hutton is always excellent for debunking of modern nonsense about pagan survivalism. However, there do seem to be some traditions that have survived. In Queens of the Wild Hutton takes a look at some of them. Excellent scholarship as usual.
Talking of scholarship, I was amazed by Begin Transmission. Tilly Bridges appears to have worked her way slowly through the four Matrix films, and the animated series, frame by frame, noting things of interest. The result is something only a person with that level of dedication, and a thorough grounding the film-making theory, could have produced. I’m not sure that I buy all of the allegorical elements that Bridges claims to have found, but the evidence seems very compelling and the Wachowski’s are absolutely smart enough to have done everything she describes.
I read a lot of history books these days. Most of them are quite academic, but one that stands out for readability and fascinating subject matter is On Savage Shores by Caroline Dodds Pennock. It tells the stories of indigenous people from the Americas who, back in the 16th and 17th centuries, took the long and hazardous journey from their homes to Europe, a land full of savage and uncivilized people.
A more recent history best seller is Normal Women by Philippa Gregory. It is a wonderfully feminist attempt at restoring women to British history over a span of 900 years. Much of it is fascinating, and heartwarmingly inclusive. However, the one element of the book that I am an expert on – trans history – is full of errors, which makes me worry about the accuracy of the rest of the book.
I’ve had essays included in two academic works this year. I make no claims for greatness myself, but my fellow contributors have done fine work. Thus I warmly recommend Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Alastair Sims, and Follow Me: Religion in Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Francesa Barbini. I’m especially grateful to Dimitra and Alastair for letting me write about Patricia Kennealy-Morrison’s delightfully bonkers Celtic space opera, The Keltiad.
On now to film and TV. Haters of superhero stories have been gleefully predicting the death of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for some time now. However, The Marvels was the most delightful film I have seen in a long time, while Across the SpiderVerse is a work of genius. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is much better than most reviews suggest, and Loki Season #2 took a very interesting turn. Having said that, the Nick Fury TV series, Secret Invasion, was terrible, leading me to suspect that it wasn’t only the title sequences that were entirely software-generated.
The Barbie movie did a lot of things very right. Margot Robbie and Kate McKinnon were brilliant as usual, and the feminist rant delivered by Gloria (America Ferrera) was very much on point. I can understand that some women are against anything promoting the ridiculous Barbie body image, but the film is opposed to it too. Also the film left the anti-trans bridge furious, which must speak well of its feminist credentials.
Good Omens Season #2 was short, weird, and utterly heartbreaking at the end. I can’t wait for season #3.
Star Trek continues to be interesting. While Picard Season #3 was primarily fan service, Strange New Worlds is reliably wonderful. Lower Decks is still managing to take the piss out of Trek while still loving the franchise. Sadly I’m feeling pretty meh about the final season of Discovery.
I have mostly given up on Star Wars, but I was pleasantly surprised by Ahsoka. I loved how it unashamedly bought in to the fantasy aspect of the franchise, and how that irritated a lot of dudebro fanboys.
I thought that Amazon’s adaption of William Gibson’s The Peripheral was superb, and I’m very sad that we won’t be getting a second season.
And then there is Doctor Who. With Russell T Davies back at the helm the series is once again ridiculously silly, delightfully heartwarming, and occasionally edge-of-the-seat scary. This is the third series I’ve mentioned that has David Tennant in it, which probably says something about me. Ncuti Gatwa’s initial appearance was very promising.
Now that I’m resident in Wales I’m trying to listen to more musicians who perform in Welsh. I mentioned Gwenno last year. Her latest album, Tesor, has most of the songs in Cornish, which is very similar to Welsh. The music is fabulous, if electronica is your thing.
If you prefer something more traditionally Welsh, I warmly recommend the harp music of Cerys Hafana. And if Indie rock is your thing, a band called Mellt (Welsh for Lightning) is worth checking out.
I’m writing this only a few days before the Winter Solstice. That’s traditionally a time for hauling out albums by the likes of Clannad and Enya, but this year I will be playing Heilung. They describe themselves as an experimental folk band, but there is something very metal about their attitude. With members from Denmark, Norway and Germany, they specialise in recreating the sounds of Iron Age Northern Europe, complete with lyrics drawn from runic inscriptions.
Neatly segueing on from that, the games company, Modiphius, has successfully Kickstarted a new tabletop RPG called Cohors Cthulhu. This is basically Call of Cthulhu in the Roman Empire, which is so much my jam that I might have to dust off my game-mastering skills.
The Podcasts I listen to these days are mostly history-themed. My current favorite is Gone Mediaeval from the History Hit stable. Co-host Matt Lewis is a staunch Richardian, which is how he got the scoop on Philippa Langley’s amazing discoveries about the Princes in the Tower. I’m very much looking forward to reading Langley’s book on her research.
In terms of travel, I was delighted to get to the Eurocon in Uppsala in Sweden. It is a beautiful city, and the old Viking settlement with its huge royal burial mounds is well worth a visit.
Finally I warmly recommend the Fantasy exhibition at the British Library. The associated events are great too. Many of them are available online, and you can find several of the past ones available via the Living Knowledge Network.
Cheryl Morgan blogs, reviews and podcasts regularly at Cheryl’s Mewsings and Salon Futura. She is the owner of Wizard’s Tower Press. She also lectures regularly on topics of SF&F literature, and on queer history.
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