List: awards:world-fantasy-award-nominees

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is most definitely a Neil Gaiman book. It's also like a Pratchett book - a bit less humor and a bit more beauty in its sentences.

American Gods

by Neil Gaiman · published 2001 · read 2012-02-01

American Gods is a polarising book, and I belong to the people enchanted by it. Gaiman does wonderfully dirty, touching things with language, and mythology, and just drew me in.

A Game of Thrones

by George R.R. Martin · published 1996 · read 2012-10-01

Nothing left to say, is there? I liked the change in perspective, and the world, and the writing, and that nobody was safe.

The Obelisk Gate

by N.K. Jemisin · published 2016 · read 2018-10-28

The Obelisk Gate is the second part of N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy, and it's brilliant. It continues the heavy character building we got in the first volume. Some characters grow, some change a lot, some change just in our ey

The Fifth Season

by N.K. Jemisin · published 2015 · read 2018-09-10

There was nothing about The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin that I didn't like. It's a bit short, but we have two more volumes to balance that.

My Real Children

by Jo Walton · published 2014 · last read 2023-04-05

This review is biased. Of course, all my reviews are biased, what else are they there for? But this one is more biased than most. My Real Children by Jo Walton came recommended by a friend who said “if you ever feel the need to bawl

The Lies of Locke Lamora

by Scott Lynch · published 2006 · read 2016-10-19

Gripping heist adventures in a unique and well-built world: Locke, Jean, Bug, the twins and Chains grew close to my heart really soon. There is a phase in the beginning where the book is going slowly and the characters don't mean anything

The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman · published 2008 · read 2015-04-15

I would have loved this book as a child, and I still love it as a grownup (Gaiman tends to write like that). It is paced well, written wonderfully and rings true (in a very similar way American Gods does, but a bit toned-down to the way chi

Odd and the Frost Giants

by Neil Gaiman · published 2008 · read 2016-06-11

It's a Gaiman fairytale, about a wonderful boy among the vikings and their gods, and that's all you need to know.

The Other Wind

by Ursula K. Le Guin · published 2001 · read 2018-04-29

A good end to the series. The different roles and characters were great, and the explanations of humans vs dragons explained previous plots.

Among Others

by Jo Walton · published 2011 · read 2020-05-10

Among Others worked super well for me, especially considering that there is little-to-no plot and the whole book is a well-dressed bibliography. But the protagonist's (diary author) voice is super strong and realistic, and … okay, let's be

Silver in the Wood

by Emily Tesh · published 2019 · read 2020-02-20

Good forest fairytale. Heavier on the "hurt" side of hurt/comfort that I initially thought. Good characters, good writing, and only a bit low on substance.

Iron Council

by China Miéville · published 2004 · read 2018-09-02

I think The Iron Council was weaker than The Scar (which is the previous volume in the Bas-Lag/New Crobuzon trilogy), but I enjoyed it nearly as much, because I'm a sucker for revolutions. Also, it's noticeable just how skil

The Scar

by China Miéville · published 2000 · read 2018-07-24

The Scar is the second volume of Chine Miéville's Bas-Lag series, and it's as impressive as the first one. Only very loosely connected, we now explore the wider Bas-Lag world instead of New Crobuzon. Again, China Miéville excells with

Perdido Street Station

by China Miéville · published 2000 · last read 2022-07-28

Wow, this book was … a lot to take in. I liked it very much. Getting thrown into an Ankh-Morporkesque city, discovering alien races, and characters, and social structures was awesome. I noted with thanks that there was very little of a conv

Every Heart a Doorway

by Seanan McGuire · published 2016 · read 2018-10-06

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire is a nice little fantasy tale of the place where children go after going through a Door to Another Place (Fairylands, for example), and then coming back. It's short, and sweet, and sad, and gruesome

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter

by Theodora Goss · published 2017 · read 2019-08-06

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss was an absolute delight. It takes place in Victorian London, and we see the daughters of Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde, Dr Moreau, and other classics of Victorian literature trying to unr

The Goblin Emperor

by Katherine Addison · published 2014 · read 2020-02-22

Fun, well-written Fantasy with very strong characters and great character development. Bit predictable, and a large cast, but still a good read – and that's saying something for a novel that may be Fantasy, but has not the least bit adventu

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

by Ken Liu · published 2016 · read 2018-03-16

A heart-breaking short story about belonging, and families, and a tiny bit of magic. But mostly heartbreak.

Uprooted

by Naomi Novik · published 2015 · read 2018-07-21

Uprooted by Naomi Novik was a perfect fantasy story/fairytale. It's got all the right parts (dark magic, regular magic, unimpressed heroine, ambivalent wizard, etc), but isn't terribly predictable, and forms real characters instead of sha

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

by Terry Pratchett · published 1990 · read 2015-04-01

Good Omens is the result of a blessed (but not ineffably blessed) collaboration. And it produced a similarly blessed mini-series! Nothing's not to like here. The only thing that always surprises me when re-reading it is how rooted it is

The Tea Master and the Detective

by Aliette de Bodard · published 2018 · read 2019-07-07

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard is a nie short scifi novella in a world where different sorts of teas can have a profound impact on how the human brain works, there is deep space that behaves entirely different from

Sailing to Sarantium

by Guy Gavriel Kay · published 1998 · read 2021-02-10

Sailing to Sarantium was my first Guy Gavriel Kay book, and it won't be my last. Not just that it didn't wrap up in one book (boo! … kidding), I also enjoyed the style a lot. Kay lets his story take place in Byzantium during Constantine's r

City of Stairs

by Robert Jackson Bennett · published 2014 · read 2020-05-08

Extremely strong, vivid story. I'm left with a lot of impressions – because the worldbuilding was good, because the characters were strong, because the story was better than decent. A couple of minor points like a predictable staple plot tw

The Emperor’s Soul

by Brandon Sanderson · published 2012 · read 2017-11-29

Wow. It's not only the soulstamp concept that drew me in, it's the mechanics of plausibly altering the past, and the basic assumption that everything has a soul, an understanding of self, and a dream. Love it. At the same time, it's very mu

11/22/63

by Stephen King · published 2011 · read 2018-10-09

I found 11/22/63 a good time travel story (Would you give five years of your life to stop the JFK assassination, given the chance?). Stephen King, as always, excells at the depiction of real, gritty human life with all its ups and dow

Harpist in the Wind

by Patricia A. McKillip · published 1979 · read 2021-04-23

Concluding this series, the established power couple tackles the remaining big riddles in the world, and finally figure out what's going on. Some parts of it were obvious, at least the direction – but the conclusion surprised me and was imp

Gideon the Ninth

by Tamsyn Muir · published 2019 · read 2020-02-15

Gideon the Ninth is popular, but didn't work for me – the first third (or so) felt very muddled and I was wondering why everybody seemed to love this book so much. It got better, but the world it played in never felt quite solid to me, and

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

by N.K. Jemisin · published 2010 · read 2019-11-15

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K.Jemisin is solid Fantasy, with cool mythology, a decent protagonist and good other characters, and absolutely nothing wrong with it – it just didn't really come to life for me. Huge bonus points for a

The City & the City

by China Miéville · published 2009 · read 2018-11-14

The City & the City is a very impressive scifi book, but while I can appreciate its coolness and weirdness, and I can't point to a single flaw, somehow the story didn't quite grip me, although the concept of the two cities was introduced be

Beneath the Sugar Sky

by Seanan McGuire · published 2018 · read 2019-05-10

While Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire was yet another pleasant entry in the Wayward Children series, it didn't grab me nearly as much as the previous novellas. I'm not into Candyland in the first place, or that of the troupe

The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford · published 1983 · read 2020-07-25

Sometimes I'm reading a book and won't be very into it – only to discover that it grows on me after I've finished reading it, like some wines only really develop in the aftertaste. Dune was one s

For He Can Creep

by Siobhan Carroll · published 2019 · read 2020-02-12

Cat-lovers, take note: This short story lovingly combines cat stereotypes, and then goes two steps further. Very enjoyable.

The Raven Tower

by Ann Leckie · published 2019 · read 2019-03-22

I'm not quite sure where I stand on The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. On the plus side: a fantasy story told from the perspective of a god (and with a fascinating definition of 'god', to boot), in a consistent voice (good thing I was use

The Innkeeper’s Song

by Peter S. Beagle · published 1993 · read 2021-06-14

Peter S. Beagle is always interesting and never quite conventional. This book starts out with the titular Innkeeper's Song, providing us with the entire plot condensed into a folk song, and then proceeds to elaborate in first-person chapter

Trail of Lightning

by Rebecca Roanhorse · published 2018 · read 2021-06-17

Urban fantasy needn't take place in a city, and this is a prime example: it may be a supernatural mystery story taking place in post-collapse North America on a reservation after the collapse of the USA, but it's still very much urban fanta

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

by Alix E. Harrow · published 2019 · read 2021-05-13

Coming-of-age stories are possibly just not for me anymore. The book-driven portal fantasy is nice enough, and the helping of "remember how bad turn-of-the-century racism is" is not bad if a bit forced, but … I just didn't care about the pr

The City of Brass

by S.A. Chakraborty · published 2017 · read 2021-09-04

Set in Napoleonic Egypt, this is the story of Djinn, Daeva and related beings. Didn't do much for me – the concept of a hidden city of supernatural beings with tons of infighting sounded intriguing, and the stagesetting very promising, but.

The Black Tides of Heaven

by J.Y. Yang · published 2017 · read 2021-06-10

Asian-inspired genderfun fantasy. Didn't compel me at all: the plot wasn't as focused as the short length warranted, and the characters didn't stand out to me at all. The plot was compressed and considering the high odds and tragedy, didn't

The Curse of Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold · published 2001 · read 2021-04-25