Hello all, and welcome to my Science Fiction November monthly wrap-up. While not all of my reads are strictly within the science fiction genre, I would argue that a couple of them are genre-blending enough to qualify as fantasy scifi and scifi horror. I think the Book of the Month will come as a surprise… to absolutely no one.
NB. Books are rated within its genre. For avoidance of doubt, rereads are not considered for Book of the Month.
Click here if you want to see the list of all the books I’ve read so far this year: Petrik’s Year in Books (2020)
Between 1st January 2020 until 30th June 2020, I’ve read and reviewed 71 books (35.7k pages).
Please read this first. There will be three rules I set in this list in order for me to give appreciation to more authors rather than having only a few authors hoarding this list. These rules allow me to highlight more authors, and at the same time, I’ll also be able to include both new and older books (many of them still need attention) that I read within this year.
Do note that although there’s a rank to this list, I HIGHLY recommend every book/series listed below because I loved all of them immensely, and they received a rating of 4.5 or 5 out of 5 stars from me. Without further ado, here are the top 15 books I’ve read this year so far! (All full reviews of the books listed can be found on Novel Notions and my Goodreads page.) …
ARC provided by the publisher—Tor UK—in exchange for an honest review.
The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: Standalone
Genre: Sci-fi
Pages: 608 pages
Published: 4th August 2020 by Tor (UK) & Orbit (US)
Children of Time has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016, and Children of Ruin won the “best novel of the year” in The British Science Fiction Association Award a few days ago. Tchaikovsky’s newest work, The Doors of Eden, will definitely continue to win him more prestigious SFF awards in the future. …
ARC provided by the publisher—Pan Macmillan—in exchange for an honest review
Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Children of Ruin retained everything that’s great about the Children of Time by following its predecessor’s footstep really closely.
Although Children of Time worked absolutely well as a standalone, please do not read Children of Ruin without reading the previous book first because this isn’t a standalone sequel. Tchaikovsky builds upon the foundation and ending from Children of Time to expand the universe within this series further. I really don’t want to spoil anything from the series so I’ll refrain from talking about the main plot and I’ll try to keep this review as concise as possible. …