Dragon Ball: That Time I Got Reincarnated as YamchaEvery once in a while something magical happens. Sometimes we’re blessed with fanfiction that gets sanctioned by the series. Sometimes, we get manga like this. Dragon Ball: The Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha is by Dragongarow Lee, a fan artist who is well known in the community.
Jaco the Galactic PatrolmanMaybe it’s because I tend to lean towards long-running shonen series, but it isn’t very often I come across a standalone volume of manga. Jaco the Galactic Patrolman by Akira Toriyama is exactly that.
Standard Hollywood DepravityI can finally say I’ve finished the Ray Electromatic series. Standard Hollywood Depravity by Adam Christopher is a novella set between the first and second books in the series. It’s a short, fun mystery that can be easily read as a standalone story if you haven’t read the first novel in the series Made to Kill.
There have been a lot of fantastic books this year. Some of my favorites have already been outlined in my Top 2018 Books list. Everything I enjoyed couldn’t have possibly fit in one list, though. And some books I still want to talk about weren’t necessarily full 5 star reads. But they were good nonetheless with interesting plots and themes and characters I really cared about. I noticed something in common with some of these: they didn’t have a lot of reviews on Gooodreads.
Here it is, the long awaited Top Reads of 2018 list. I read a lot of books this year – 224 of them according to my Goodreads list. I’m not exactly stingy with 5 stars, either. If it’s a great book, then I’m going to give it a high rating. And I gave 4.5 to 5 star ratings on a whopping 50 books. I’ve managed to whittle that list down a bit since then and while still it might not be a short list, but it’s certainly more manageable than before! All of these books have been published in 2018 in the United States, though several were published prior in other countries.
Before She SleepsBefore She Sleeps by Binah Shah is a book is a dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic society where decreased fertility and disease have led to the human race declining, women being forced into marriages with multiple husbands. The story follows several women who resist this society and its rules. They do this in a very direct way – they are all part of an underground resistance – but also in their own smaller, personal ways. This is very much a story of autonomy and regaining autonomy.
Cutie Honey: The Classic CollectionI have long loved classic manga and anime. When a new edition of an older manga comes out you can bet that I am first in line for a copy. Obviously, I jumped on the chance to read Cutie Honey: The Classic Collection by Go Nagai. Cutie Honey is a lot of things. In one sense it’s a magical girl manga. In another it’s a sci-fi manga. It’s a mystery story. There’s violence, nudity, and sexual themes. And I loved every second of it.
The Arrival of MissivesAliya Whiteley’s The Arrival of Missives is a historical fantasy novella that is absolutely not to be missed. The prose has lyrical beauty that sweeps the reader along and weaves a truly unforgettable story.
It might not be apparent from the blog’s theme, but I’m actually a fan of non-fiction. However, science fiction or fantasy themed nonfiction isn’t always something that’s easy to find, and so not very many of these books make it onto this blog. So, in honor of Nonfiction November, here is a list of nonfiction books with science fiction and fantasy themes.
State TectonicsI have been reading Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle series since it’s debut in 2016. It is a series which proved oddly timely, speaking directly to events which, as of its writing, hadn’t yet come to pass – namely, the events surrounding the 2016 US presidential election. Now, the series has come to a close with the third book in the series, State Tectonics. Like the two before it, State Tectonics is an oddly timely, fascinating look at politics, democracy, and the availability and spread of data and other information. Set on a future earth with a world government and micro-democracies, this is a book that shouldn’t be missed.
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