I READ BOOKS THIS YEAR.

This is harder than you think. Some of them had no pictures.

Loved:

The Green Mile by Stephen King: Oh my fat tears. They still stain the Bellingham Library's copy. King inserted an archetypal tale--the centurion at Jesus' crucifixion--into a place unique in history. The whole novel seems palpable with death, the guards on the Mile brushing up against it every day. It makes John Coffey's ability to call the dead back all the more stunning, and his death sentence more heartbreaking.

The Age of Unreason series by Greg Keyes: Ben Franklin is an alchemist. The King of France seeks to bring Halley's Comet down on London. FUN rich historical fantasy, with swordfights, gunfights, air and sea battles and a few steamy scenes. Plus, this is one of the few fantasy series where magic feels magical. So often magic is a set of weapons with rules and trained operators.

Only complaint: Keyes doesn't address the whole picture--when the world turns post-apocalyptic, he talks very little about crop shortage. The characters' rations are never affected. Ah well. Still a load of fun.

The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik: I love historical novels. I love fantasy. I LOOOOVE the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. Novik gets even more historical detail into this series, made all the more believable because she captures the mindset of the time. The debates over dragon's rights made the later books more interesting than the first.

Only complaint: She really skips the sex. As in, "And now, dear reader, we will draw a curtain..." I know she'll keep more of an audience that way, but it feels like a cheat. I don't want porny George R.R. Martin scenes--but I don't want to feel like I skipped a chapter, either.

Mehhed:

The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone by Greg Keyes: Rich detailed medieval fantasy, again with magical magic. The closest thing to George R.R. Martin you can get. But the last book got a little too carried away into Keyes' increasingly complex magic system, and the climax didn't have the power of Age of Unreason's poetic unmaking.

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville: Reading this book is like listening to the ten-minute drum solo on a Led Zeppelin record. You know it's supposed to be awesome. So why do you want to fast-forward? Miéville writes a thoroughly detailed and incredibly imaginative city as the main character, with the people in the city as incidental passengers. And he describes. Boy does he describe. The description is the star of this book. I missed the characters.

Tigerheart by Peter David: This book was so beautifully written that I couldn't understand why I kept putting it down. David has an idiosyncratic voice and a quirky sense of humor. I finally decided that he was too much in love with his own voice. If he had cut down the asides and in-jokes, he would have moved the plot along faster.

HateHateHate:

The Dark Tower series by Stephen King: The first two books were rambling drug trips, but that's not why I hated it. In the third book, Roland of Gilead, the archetypal Gunslinger, tells his fellow Tower-seeker Susannah to let a demon rape her for the sake of their mission. And she does. Because "sex can be a weapon."

Rape is rape, not a WEAPON.