For me, best of 2023 was Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow. A retirement-age forensic accountant traveling around in an ex-rock star bus from Walmart parking lot to next gourmet dining location does a job for a billionaire and suddenly ends up in a surprising amount of hot water over it. Hijinks ensue.
Runner-up goes to Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman. This is some bleak, bleak humor. Instead of carbon credits, Beauman posits extinction credits. Got a big strip mining operation coming up that will kill off a couple species? Better buy some extinction credits to cover their death! (And remember, it takes more credits to cover for a dead intelligent species, so factor that in!) Next extinction candidate: the Venomous Lumpsucker, but don’t make it extinct until you’ve got all your paperwork done. Researcher and extinction credit manager for a mining company end up in a desperate chase around the planet trying to ascertain if the last of the Lumpsuckers are truly gone or not, and we go along for the ride.
Honestly, I didn’t read much in 2023. Malazan, but it isn’t new. I kept hoping I’d get book #9 of The Spiral Wars, but it’s still pending. Played (or replayed) a lot of sci fi video games, and played in a pen and paper D&D campaign for my fantasy fix.
Yeah, finding the new stuff by authors you like can be tricky sometimes. I basically use this list to help me track new releases. It’s doesn’t cover 100% of new releases but it does get quite a few. Plus, my library lets me request/place holds on books 2 months before they release so usually I can be one of the top 3 in line for pretty much anything new (although it can take them a couple weeks to a month to actually get the book).
