"The Sea Watch" by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Official Shadows of the Apt Website
Order "The Sea Watch" HERE or HERE (ebook)
Read FBC Review of "Empire in Black and Gold"
Read FBC Review of "Dragonfly Falling"
Read FBC Review of "Blood of the Mantis"
Read FBC Review of "Salute the Dark"
Read FBC Review of "The Scarab Path"
Read FBC Interview with Adrian Tchaikovsky

INTRODUCTION: There is no secret that in the past three years the Shadows of the Apt has become my favorite ongoing fantasy series for its combination of superb world building, great characters and extreme inventiveness. Salute the Dark ended quite emphatically the first part of the series dealing with the war between the Collegium and the Empire in Black and Gold, while The Scarab Path, a standalone withing the larger series context, has been my personal favorite to date and I rated it the best fantasy of 2010.

I strongly recommend to go and get those five books and read them before proceeding further here, though I will try to keep the spoilers to the minimum possible. Be warned that even the blurb of The Sea Watch consists of huge spoilers for the ending of the first part.

After reading The Scarab Path and the synopsis of The Sea Watch which had spoilers about the previous books, but little illumination about its content, I was quite intrigued to see where the author will take us next. And as the title hints The Sea Watch goes indeed to the sea, though in the authors' ingenious world building, a large part of it actually takes place in underwater landscapes and it reads like sense of wonder sf on say Mars of yore.

"A shadow is falling over Collegium. Despite the tenuous peace, Stenwold Maker knows that the Empire will return for his city. Even as he tries to prepare for the resurgence of the black and gold, a hidden threat is steadily working against his people. Ships that sail from Collegium's harbour are being attacked, sunk by pirates. Some just go missing ..."

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: After the superb The Scarab Path, Mr. Tchaikovsky switches characters, setting and gears in The Sea Watch. Starting essentially with the return of the Khanaphes mission and the election for the new speaker which Jordy Drillen, Stennwold ally is favored to win partly due to the success of that mission, partly due to Stenwold's backing, the novel switches soon into high gear when conspirators appear with unclear but ominous plans, while Stenwold finally is compelled to check allegations that someone is targeting Collegium's shipping which has expanded due to the war with the Empire and the corresponding reduction in the traditional land commerce.

The Sea Watch is all Stenwold and Teornis with supporting action from a lot of new characters, most notably fly-kinden Laszlo, a young factor from a pirate crew who wants to move legit and whose boss Tomasso agrees to help Stenwold find out who is attacking Collegium ships, while from the under-the-sea kinden, mercenary Wys and Paladrya whom we first see in the prologue set some years earlier are the most important, though we meet a large cast of unforgettable characters.

And of course the usual Collegium cast like Jordy Drillen, Arianna, the wasp ambassadors and their minions, Marius and Acius, the Vekken returned from Khanaphes and some of their Kes rivals, as well as a few other known characters which I do not want to spoil also appear, though Tynissa is still missing, Stenwold is fuming when he gets Che's letter and the news about her new companion, while Teornis returns to prominence as wheeler and dealer and favorite adoptive son of the Collegium...

The second important aspect of the Sea Watch is the large expansion of its universe. Among many goodies, I will mention: kinden bonding with and traveling in animals like sea-horses and huge jellyfish or riding octopuses and crabs; seagods, prophecies, dart-cavalry, but also Aptness, submersibles, engines in a no-fire world based on springs and siphons, accretion of materials and more; there are also mysterious kinden like the builders and the savage echinoi, while more familiar ones like the spider analogue, the krakind, and their servants/followers, and the huge crab-like warriors that grace the cover, the onychoi, and their followers, appear too.

The tone of the novel is back to the expansive non-stop action of the first four volumes, as opposed to the more intimate Scarab Path. While there are some superb personal scenes including a restatement of one of the best and most chilling moments in Salute the Dark, The Sea Watch is first and foremost action oriented, taking the reader on a page-turning ride to its superb finale...

The Sea Watch has a clear beginning and ending - ending that is another for the ages - though despite its completeness, I felt quite sad when it ended since I really wanted more; August and volume 7 "Heirs of the Blade" cannot come soon enough, though to be honest I have no real idea how the author's hint of another partial tie-up as in Salute the Dark will happen since for now I see no clear main direction away from the regular power play of the series universe - Collegium vs Wasps vs Spiders...

I had the highest expectations for The Sea Watch (A++) and it delivered everything I came to expect from the series and consolidating its front-runner status in my fantasy reading. To end this review here is one of the best lines of the book that makes one want Heirs of the Blade asap...

‘There will come a tomorrow, ...., when we shall speak again. Remember that."

"Home Fires" by Gene Wolfe (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)

Order "Home Fires" HERE
Gene Wolfe at Wikipedia
Read FBC Review of The Sorcerer's House

INTRODUCTION: After last year's super fun The Sorcerer's House, I was very excited about the announcement for Home Fires, though the blurb below made me a bit unsure if we will get an entertaining mind-bender like last year or a mess like An Evil Guest which I found unreadable.

"Gene Wolfe takes us to a future North America at once familiar and utterly strange. A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person—while Skip is in his forties and a wealthy businessman, but eager for her return. Still in love (somewhat to his surprise and delight), they go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage. Their vacation rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom. There is no writer in SF like Gene Wolfe and no SF novel like Home Fires."

For anyone interested in collecting books, UK boutique PS Publishing has come up with some awesome-looking editions of both The Sorcerer's House and Home Fires and I have to include their cover of Home Fires here since it is much more suggestive than the bland US cover released for the general market, while in the US, Subterranean is also selling the PS editions in limited quantities.


OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: "Home Fires" turned out to be a very entertaining mind-bender from Gene Wolfe that ultimately made full sense, though for a long while it kept me guessing while adding new twists every page.

The world building while scant in some ways, is sketched perfectly for the needs of the book since we get all the little details we need about this future Earth split into several not-so-friendly blocks - NAU, EU, Greater Eastasia, Third World - which faces a war in space with the mysterious Os over habitable planets with no real inkling about the technology involved. A familiar but also strange future in which the author drops his little bombshells - sometimes in a literal sense too - quite often.

The structure of the novel is also interesting - and not dissimilar with The Sorcerer's House except that here there is more conventional 3rd person action plus first person interludes rather than letters. The main storyline of the book is followed by interludes narrated - except once - by the main hero, Skip Grisom, a 49 year old managing partner of a succesful law firm who keeps telling us he wants only one thing - that his "contracta" - civil law wife - master-gunner Chelle Blue coming back a bit earlier from space due to injuries - earlier being relative as 20+ years have passed on Earth, while only several for her - stays with him, age difference and all.

So he has a plan to woo her including "resurrecting" her deceased mother Vanessa - whom actually Chelle has "divorced" before enlisting but to whom she turns when back on Earth as a familiar presence since after all Vanessa now still looks near the 40's she was when Chelle left Earth, while Skip at 49 is not instantly recognizable to his chagrin. The "wooing over" includes taking Chelle on a cruise, while dumping Susan, his secretary and longtime lover, in the process too, though of course things start going wrong soon, but Skip is nothing but inventive.

One of the narrative devices that confounded me in the beginning was that the introspective interludes in which we learn a lot about this future world and about Skip, are followed by forward jumps in the main action that pass over quite important happenings that are then mentioned. So, at least to start with, I was like: "Oh, this happened? When and how could I miss it?", only to realize that actually what we get now is everything we will know. So lots of space for misdirection, clues and disorientation, but done so well that the pages turn by themselves.

There is quite a lot of action with occasional unforgettable moments are just. The main draw of the novel is Skip Grissom who is one of the most compelling and unusual for the sff genre characterized by "young guns and old mentors" - sfnal characters in recent memory, with Vanessa also stealing the show in all her appearances. Chelle remains mostly an enigma though we get to see a little of her "true self" at some point.

Adding to the above we have a remarkable secondary cast, including the aforementioned Susan, the handless beggar Achille - a refugee from Sharia law EU with hands cut for stealing - who attaches himself to Skip, various other returning comrades of Chelle, cruise ship officers, hijackers, Skip's junior partner Mick and more...

Home Fires has also a great ending - which in many ways it was the only one reasonable to boot - and you want to parse it carefully when reading it the first time, followed by an immediate reread to see what you missed earlier. The title has also an interesting connotation, being explicitly linked to the situation of Skip (remained on Earth to "keep the home fires" going) and Chelle (went to fight in space to preserve humanity at great costs for her and her loved ones - and here there is this nice touch too, of the reversal of the usual sex roles), but also to the quite unsettled situation on Earth that is glimpsed in the action of the novel and the reminiscences of Skip.

All in all, Home Fires (A+/A++) is another winner for Gene Wolfe and mind-bending sf-without-gadgets/superscience at its best.

The 2010 Locus Recommended Reading List with Comments (by Liviu Suciu)

Locus has recently put out its annual Recommended Reading List and then followed with the Locus Awards online voting form. Since the magazine purports to represent the sff field, I always pay attention to its list and I vote in the poll.

I posted my full vote list for 2008 HERE and highlights from my vote list for 2009 HERE - I do not remember why I did not post my full list but it may be that I forgot to save it - and once I will vote in the near future, I will post again my full vote list; I urge every sff lover to take 15-20 minutes and vote HERE.

For now I want to discuss the 3 main categories: SF novel, Fantasy novel and Debut novel.

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Novels - Science Fiction

Yarn, Jon Armstrong (Night Shade Books) Surface Detail, Iain M. Banks (Orbit; Orbit UK) Directive 51, John Barnes (Ace) Chill, Elizabeth Bear (Ballantine Spectra) Hull Zero Three, Greg Bear (Orbit US) CryoBurn, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen) The Passage, Justin Cronin (Ballantine) Zendegi, Greg Egan (Night Shade Books; Gollancz) Zero History, William Gibson (Putnam; Viking UK) Feed, Mira Grant (Orbit) Starbound, Joe Haldeman (Ace) Sleepless, Charlie Huston (Ballantine) Brain Thief, Alexander Jablokov (Tor) The Dervish House, Ian McDonald (Pyr; Gollancz) Terminal World, Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz; Ace) Birdbrain, Johanna Sinisalo (Peter Owen) Blackout / All Clear, Connie Willis (Ballantine Spectra)

Comments: 17/18 novels with the Willis duo.

Opened 15 - have not heard of Birdbrain until now and I never touch a W. Gibson novel since I do not like his style.

Fully read 5 - Surface Detail (A++, #1 sff and all around 2010 novel of mine), Hull Zero Three (A+, recommended list), The Passage (A, very slow and boring middle third takes away from a better than expected novel), Terminal World (B/A-, disappointment list), The Dervish House (D, dismal)

More-or-less fast-read 2 - the ultra-forgettable Brain Thief and the "interesting premise but poor execution in which my suspension of disbelief got broken fast and I just could not take it seriously" Blackout; from the remaining books, the only one I am sure I will read at some point is Cryoburn, with Zendegi an outside shot if I am ever in the mood for it.

The one big surprise on the list is Directive 51 since I just cannot see how junk like that got included.

In general I found this list ok'ish, more core-sf'nal than I expected though still somewhat away from what is sf today and there is even a Baen book to my surprise, but I guess that Lois Bujold is too big a name to be ignored...

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Novels - Fantasy

The Golden Age, Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland (Dalkey Archive) The Bird of the River, Kage Baker (Tor) Zoo City, Lauren Beukes (Jacana South Africa; Angry Robot UK; Angry Robot US) The Desert Spear, Peter V. Brett (Ballantine Del Rey; HarperVoyager) Changeless, Gail Carriger (Orbit US) The Wolf Age, James Enge (Pyr) Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde (Viking; Hodder & Stoughton) The Jade Man's Skin, Daniel Fox (Del Rey) The Half-Made World, Felix Gilman (Tor) Horns, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz) Kings of the North, Cecelia Holland (Forge) Hespira, Matthew Hughes (Night Shade Books) Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Canada; Roc) The Bards of Bone Plain, Patricia A. McKillip (Ace) Kraken, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Ballantine Del Rey) The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell (Random House) Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (DAW) The Folding Knife, K. J. Parker (Orbit US; Orbit UK) A Matter of Blood, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz) The House of Discarded Dreams, Ekaterina Sedia (Prime Books) A Dark Matter, Peter Straub (Doubleday; Orion) The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK) The Habitation of the Blessed, Catherynne M. Valente (Night Shade Books) The Sorcerer's House, Gene Wolfe (Tor)

Comments: 24 novels

Opened 14 - 4 of the unopened ones are from series I do not follow since the first volume was not for me though I liked some of the respective authors' other offerings in two cases and I would be willing to try something closer to my taste in the other two (Changeless, Wolf Age, Jade Man's Skin, Hespira) 5 are from authors I do not touch since I do not like their style - Hill, Holland, McKillip, Straub, Stross, while the Pinborough novel seems far from my taste and being Gollancz, I would need to order it from the UK which I have no interest in doing; if it ever gets a US edition, I may take a look though.

Fully Read 6 - The Folding Knife (A++, top fantasy of mine in 2010), The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (A++, top 10 novel of 2010, though I do not really think it's fantasy, maybe sf if you want to make it sff), The Half -Made World (A++, top 25 novel and top 10 fantasy), The Sorcerer's House (A+, recommended list), The Desert Spear (A, more forgettable than I expected on first read), Under Heaven (A-, beautiful writing and world building but huge flaws and one of the worst main leads in recent novels, the "boy with the golden spoon")

Of the rest Kraken (still stuck around page 200) and Shades of Grey - this one I kind of fast read it, but when book 2 appears I may read it carefully too - are the ones most likely to be finished by me.

Here I cannot say I am surprised by any selection maybe except for Changeless, though Locus trying to at least pay lip service to the current trends by including standard UF is a good thing imho. The traditional fantasy is also better represented than I expected though the list is still far away from what core fantasy is today. Here Locus still needs a lot of catch-up to claim being representative.

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First Novels

• The Loving Dead, Amelia Beamer (Night Shade Books)
• Noise, Darin Bradley (Spectra)
• Clowns at Midnight, Terry Dowling (PS Publishing)
• A Book of Tongues, Gemma Files (ChiZine Publications)
• The Native Star, M. K. Hobson (Ballantine Spectra)
• Meeks, Julia Holmes (Small Beer Press)
• The Last Page, Anthony Huso (Tor)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)
• Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
• Redemption in Indigo, Karen Lord (Small Beer Press)
• The Dream of Perpetual Motion, Dexter Palmer (St. Martin's)
• The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi (Gollancz; Tor 2011)
• The Bookman, Lavie Tidhar (Angry Robot UK; Angry Robot US)
• The Replacement, Brenna Yovanoff (Razorbill)
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, Charles Yu (Pantheon)

Comments: 15 novels

Opened 14 - I do not remember having heard of Meeks until now

Fully Read 6 - The Last Page (A++, top 25 novel), The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (A+, recommended list), The Bookman (A+, recommended list), Shades of Milk and Honey (A-, liked the style but too little substance), The Quantum Thief (B, far away from the hype but a mostly entertaining middling sf closer to Scalzi/Sawyer than to Banks/Reynolds, disappointment though mostly due to hype), The Dream of Perpetual Motion (D, the one debut I really wanted to like and it just fell flat for me - Robert has reviewed it for FBC and he liked it more)

More-or-less-finished - Clowns at Midnight (pretty good and I want to give it a more careful read at some point), How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (dismal sf for grad-lits who have no clue about math, I recommend everyone to read this review of it since it says a lot of what I thought, though I would add a recommendation that the author tries to learn what a differential equation is before throwing the term around freely; at least Mr. Huso's holomorphs/holomorphy makes some sense in The Last Page's context and that is supposed to be fantasy not sf)

I am unlikely to read any of the remaining novels here. All in all, a decent list and considerably better than I expected.

2011z_SFF/Related

The Main List (120):

The Book of Transformations/Newton (A++, r, FBC)
The Hammer/Parker (A++, r, FBC)
In the Shadow of Swords/Gunn (D, r, Gr)
The Heroes/Abercrombie (A+/A++, r, FBC)
Hellhole/Anderson & Herbert (A, r, FBC)
In Fire Forged (HH Anthology 5)/Weber and others (A, m, Gr)

Sea of Ghosts/Campbell (B, r, FBC )
The Soul Mirror/Berg (A++, r, FBC)
The Fallen Blade/Grimwood (B, r, FBC)
The Midnight Palace/Zafon (A+, r, Gr)
The Shadow of the Sun/Friend Ish (C, r, Gr)
The Dragon's Path/Abraham (A++, r, FBC)

The Sentinel Mage/Gee (B, r, FBC)
The Enterprise of Death/Bullington (C, r, FBC)
Leviathan Wakes/Corey (A++, r, Gr, FBC Robert)
1636 The Saxon Uprising/Flint (A++, m, FBC)
Encrypted/Buroker (A+, m, FBC)
Equations of Life/Morden (A+, r, FBC)

Home Fires/Wolfe (A+/A++ , m/r, FBC)
The Sea Watch/Tchaikovsky (A++, m/r, FBC)
A Discovery of Witches/Harkness (D, m, Gr)
The Oracle of Stamboul/Lukas (A+, m, FBC)
The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man/Hodder (A+, r, FBC)
Madame Tussaud/Moran (A, m, Gr)

What Time Forgets/Redmond (A+, r, FBC)
King of the Bosporus/Cameron (A+, m, FBC)
Guardians of the Desert/Wisoker (A, r, FBC)
Napier's Bones/Murphy (A+, r,FBC)
Naamah's Blessing/Carey (A++, r, FBC)
The Falling Machine/Mayer (A+, r, FBC)

Embassytown/Mieville (A++, r, FBC)
The Wise Man's Fear/Rothfuss (B/A-, m, Gr, FBC Robert HERE)
City of Hope & Despair/Whates (A, r, FBC)
The Tiger's Wife/Obreht (B, m, FBC)The River of Shadows/Redick (A++, r, FBC)
Thera/Shalev (A++, m, FBC) *

The Last Brother/Appanah (A+, m, FBC)
Among Thieves/Hullick (D, r, Gr, FBC Robert HERE)
Up Against It/Locke (C, r, FBC)
Troika/Reynolds (novella, A, m, Gr)
Raven:Odin's Wolves/Kristian (A/A+, r, FBC)
Extremis/White & Gannon (D, m, Gr)

The Shadow at the Gate/Bunn (A+, r, FBC)
The Sword of Fire and Sea/Hoffman (A+, r, FBC)
The Immorality Engine/Mann (A+/A++, r, FBC)
The Philosopher's Kiss/Prange (B, m, Gr)
The Clockwork Rocket/Egan (A++, r, FBC)
The Last Four Things/Hoffman (A++, r, FBC)

The View from the Imperium/Nye (C, m, Gr)
Heart of Deception/Malcolm (B, m, Gr)
Camera Obscura/Tidhar (A+/A++, r, FBC)
The White Luck Warrior/Bakker (D, r, FBC)
The Winds of Khalakovo/Beaulieu (D,r, Gr, FBC Robert)
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresalti/Valentine (C, m, Gr)

Into the Hinterlands/Lambshead and Drake (A+, m, FBC)
The Big Switch/Turtledove (B, r, Gr)
Song of the Silk Road/Yip (C, m, Gr)
Steelhands/Jones & Bennett (A+, r, FBC)
Desert of Souls/Jones (C, r, Gr, FBC Robert)
Out of the Waters/Drake (B, m, Gr)

Order of the Scales/Deas (A+, m, Gr, FBC tbd)
Theories of Flight/Morden (B, r, Gr)
Degrees of Freedom/Morden (C, r, Gr)
The Departure/Asher (B, r, FBC)
The Map of Time/Palma (B, r, Gr, FBC Robert)
A Beautiful Friendship/Weber (A/A+, m, FBC)

Hannibal:Enemy of Rome/Kane (C, m, Gr)
Crown of the Conqueror/Thorpe (A+, r, FBC)
Ring of Fire III/Flint (ed) (C, m, Gr)
A Dance with Dragons/Martin (A++, m, FBC)
The Kings of Eternity/Brown (A+, m, FBC)
Low Town/Polansky (D, r, Gr, FBC Robert)

Vortex/Wilson (A++, m, Gr, FBC)
The Return of Captain John Emmett/Speller (A+, m, Gr)
How Firm a Foundation/Weber (A+, r, FBC)
Silent Land/Joyce (C, m/r, Gr)
Spinning/Baron (A, m, Gr)
A Place Called Armageddon/Humphreys (A++, m, FBC)

The Rift Walker/Griffith & Griffith (A++, r, FBC)
Anticopernicus/Roberts (A+, m, Gr, FBC)
Heart of Iron/Sedia (B, m, FBC)
A Soldier's Duty/Johnson (C, m, Gr)
Prince of Thorns/Lawrence (C, r, Gr, FBC Robert)
Roman Games/MacBain (C, m, Gr)

Whitefire Crossing/Schafer (B, r, Gr, FBC Robert)
The Night Circus/Morgenstern (A+, r, FBC)
The Key to Creation/Anderson (A, r, FBC)
Debris/Anderton (A+, r, FBC)
The Uncertain Places/Goldstein (B, m, Gr)
Final Days/Gibson (A+, m, FBC)

The Last Hundred Days/McGuiness (F, m, FBC)
Far to Go/Pick (A+, m, FBC)
The Sense of an Ending/Barnes (A++, m, FBC)
The Testament of Jessie Lamb/Rogers (A+/A++, m, FBC)
Der Sternwolker/Meyer (A+, r, FBC)
The Noise Revealed/Whates (C, m, FBC)

Marathon/Cameron (A/A+, m, Gr)
By Light Alone/Roberts (A++, m, FBC)
Scholar/Modesitt (A++, r, Gr, FBC, Nov)
The Days of the King/Florian (B, r, Gr)
The Bloody Meadow/Ryan (A, m, Gr)
The Recollection/Powell (C, m, Gr)

A Shore too Far/Manus-Pennings (A+, r, FBC)
Dancing with Eternity/Lowrie (A++, m, FBC)
Manhattan in Reverse/Hamilton (A, r, FBC)
Cold Fire/Elliott (A++, m/r, FBC)
Pattern Scars/Sweet (B, r, Gr, FBC tbd)
The Islanders/Priest (A+/A++, m, FBC)

The Lovers' Dictionary/Levithan (A+, m, Gr)
All Men of Genius/Rosen (A++, r, FBC)
Touch of Power/Snyder (A+, r, Gr, FBC Dec)
The Beginning of Infinity/Deutsch (non-fiction but very associational) (A++, m, Gr)
The Traitor's Daughter/Brandon (A+/A++, m, FBC
Heirs of the Blade/Tchaikovsky (A++, m/r, FBC)

The Time in Between/Duenas (A+, r, FBC)
The Cold Commands/Morgan (A++, m, FBC)
1Q84/Murakami (A++, m, FBC)
Warlock's Shadow/Deas (A+, m, FBC)
Solaris Rising/Whates (ed) (A, m, Gr, FBC soon)
Firebird/McDevitt (B,m, Gr)


Here I will keep a continually updated post with the 2011 releases I've read with rating (see below), link to Goodreads mini-review/first impressions, link to FBC review when available. For each book I will include in the brackets the way I obtained it - publisher/author review copy (r), or by myself (m). In a few cases I first got the book for myself on its release, only to later get a review copy, so I will mark those books as m/r.

I plan to include only sff/related books - related is a broad term for me and anything I find of interest and I would review here if time/energy would allow counts; in general this means that mainstream novels count while non-fiction mostly does not.

The other main exclusion is that only English language books will be included (I read Romanian, French, Italian, Spanish, the last two languages much slower though, so the book in cause better be an A++ potential one), though this one is rarely restrictive since for obvious reasons of availability, the non-English books I read tend to be older.

As for the controversial issue of ratings, I find them useful as a rough guide as long as they are consistent and meaningful, so I will give a short key for my system which is based on two criteria: book type and how much I enjoyed it.

Generally speaking an A rating means a book I enjoyed end to end regardless of its type. An A+ are the special A books that have an extra something *for me* so in an abstract objective way - whatever that means - they are the same as A books but they have this extra zing - many times first books in the series qualify for newness, while second books which may be better technically do not since they do not expand enough the universe of the series.
In a few occasions, I rate A+ books of A++ potential that fell a little short of "blow me away" though they were still excellent.

A++ depends strongly on type since much fewer books are eligible there - essentially the "heft" novels, epics, adventures that are part of big-picture series so in a way I consider them together with the books that came before or the few rare "truly blow me away" standalone non-epics like last year's Aurorarama or Room. Both the A+ and A++ ratings are very personal, while the A rating is more generic.

B's are books with A+ or higher potential that I mostly enjoyed and read end to end but with which I had significant issues.

C's are books with A potential that were so-so to meh, I generally fast-read them after a while to see what happens but without really caring and which I will avoid sequels to if any. In rare cases, C's can be A+/A++ level books that disappointed me a lot, but had enough to keep me in the series for one more book.

D's are books that I did not care for but I fast read just in case I find a "hook entry" which would get me involved. Sometimes they can be truly disappointing A+/A++ level books with nothing that I cared for in them.

F's are the few books I strongly disliked but I still fast-read them only for the "North Korean movies syndrome" - so bad to be amusing on occasion like the examples HERE.

"Not for me" are books that just did not click with me and I have no current plans for a later try; time and energy are limited while the quantity of available books is truly staggering...

Current Ranked List of A++ level -top - 2011 Releases (18)
Current Unranked List of More Highly Recommended 2011 Releases (32)

The A+/A++ ratings and the lists composition/ranks may change as time passes since there are books that impress me a lot on first read but drop fast from my memory, while others stay with me much longer than I expected. These two lists above are partly time-feedback, partly a short-cut... For many books below, the FBC review will come in due course closer to the publication date and the links will be updated then, so I marked such as Goodreads (Gr) for the current link and FBC to be posted (tbp) in the future.


* Thera is technically a 2010 novel, but being published late in the year and being so awesome, it's included here