Great Year for My Reading Habit

Twen­ty Four­teen is shap­ing up to be a ter­rif­ic year for my favorite authors and book series. Here are some of the books I can’t wait to read (in order of release date):

• 2/20: Influx by Daniel Suarez – I’ve not read the most recent books by Suarez, but I loved the Dae­mon series and plan to read these Gib­son-esque near-future novels.
• 3/3: Words of Radi­ance by Bran­don Sander­son – I just fin­ished the first Storm­light Archive nov­el (and it’s mas­sive) and it is already one of my favorite fan­ta­sy series, with a very unique world and ter­rif­ic characters.
• 3/11: Men­tats of Dune by Bri­an Her­bert & Kevin J. Ander­son – Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that the sequels/prequals/expanded uni­verse nov­els haven’t been as good as the Frank Her­bert nov­els. To be fair, not all of the Frank Her­bert nov­els were on the same lev­el, either. How­ev­er, I’m such a Dune junkie, I eat these up with glee.
• 6/17: Cibo­la Burn by James S.A. Corey – A new Expanse book is also get­ting to be near­ly an annu­al event, thank­ful­ly (of course, with two authors under one pen name, one would expect some turn around!). I start­ed the series last year right on time for the third book, and I’ve been wait­ing for the fourth ever since about a day afterwards.
• 7/15: Half a King by Joe Aber­crom­bie – Okay, I’ve got a few books to read in this fan­ta­sy series to catch up to this one, but I real­ly liked Aber­crom­bie’s first books.
• 8/5: The Magi­cian’s Land by Lev Gross­man – The Magi­cian’s series has been one of the most refresh­ing things in all of fan­ta­sy in a very long time. I’ve eager­ly await­ing the final(?) book in the series to see what end­ing befalls Quentin and crew.
• 8/12: The Fool’s Assas­sin by Robin Hobb – Anoth­er series I’ve got to play catch-up on, but I real­ly liked the first two nov­el of Fitz and the Fool.
• 8/26: Lock In by John Scalzi – It’s a new sto­ry­line (and pos­si­bly a series; at least there’s a novel­la to pre­cede it), but Scalz­i’s wit is always wel­come in sci­ence fic­tion. He’s already released a novel­la in the same world as this novel.
• 10/7: Ancil­lary Sword by Ann Leck­ie – Ancil­lary Jus­tice was one of my favorite books of last year and I’m very hap­py that Leck­ie had the sec­ond nov­el in the series in the cham­ber (or she is an incred­i­bly fast writer, which is rare but would be wel­come). Her first book was nom­i­nat­ed for almost every award imag­in­able and I sin­cere­ly hope she wins them all!
• 10/7: Arma­da by Ernest Cline – I loved Cline’s first nov­el and can’t wait to see what he’s got next. Update: Well it was bound to hap­pen for at least one book on this list. This title has been pushed back until July 2015.
• 10/21: The Abyss Beyond Dreams: Chron­i­cle of the Fall­ers by Peter F. Hamil­ton – A new Com­mon­wealth uni­verse book!
• 10/28: The Periph­er­al by William Gib­son – He’s back into the dystopi­an, dis­tant future. Not that I haven’t enjoyed the future-of-10-min­utes-from-now nov­els, either.
• 11/18: Clakkers by Ian Tregel­lis – A new series start­ing in Tregel­lis’ cold­est war universe.
• 11ish? The Thorn of Ember­lain by Scott Lynch – A new Gen­tle­man Bas­tards book is get­ting to be like clock­work from Lynch. So far, he’s kept the char­ac­ters rich and slow­ly pulling the cur­tain back on a much larg­er fan­ta­sy world. This one does­n’t yet have a firm release date, but I’m hold­ing out hope.

Of course, it’s high­ly pos­si­ble (actu­al­ly, almost cer­tain) I’ll not get all of these books read by the end of 2014, but I wel­come the chal­lenge gladly!

It’s tough to pick just one that I’m most anx­ious about, but it would prob­a­bly have to be Ancil­lary Sword.

I was going to end this post with a pithy remark how if only Patrick Roth­fuss and GRRM would release some new nov­els this year, it would be com­plete. Well, no new nov­els, but Roth­fuss is releas­ing a novel­la in the Kingkiller Chron­i­cles in Octo­ber and GRRM is also con­tribut­ing a Game of Thrones (actu­al­ly, Song of Fire & Ice) short sto­ry to a fan­ta­sy col­lec­tion (Rogues) out next month he is co-edit­ing (which also con­tains oth­er sto­ries from many of these authors along with oth­ers I enjoy reading).

So, yeah, 2014 is pret­ty much shap­ing up to be a near per­fect year for genre fiction!

That being said, Patrick Roth­fuss and GRRM hav­ing until about mid­night, Decem­ber 31st, 2015 to get out The Doors of Stone and The Winds of Win­ter until I start pes­ter­ing them.