Reviewed by Robert Goodman.
2018 was another year of great books with some particularly good Australian debuts. Here are my top picks for the year. As in previous years the picks are broadly sorted by genre (but as always the genre tag is often completely arbitrary – there is plenty of crossover). Titles link to full reviews at Pile By the Bed.
Australian Crime
Some of the best Australian crime this year came from Australian debutants. Dervla McTiernan’s The Rúin, set om Ireland, delved into perennial issues of child abuse and police corruption. The Nowhere Child by Christian White starts with an irresistible hook of a missing child and builds from there. And in Greenlight by Benjamin Stevenson takes on our growing obsession with true crime tales. Meanwhile Jane Harper delivered her third and possibly best book yet in The Lost Man, Candice Fox continued to impress with her latest series in Redemption Point and Michael Robotham showed why he is still one of the best in the business in his latest Joe O’Loughlin thriller The Other Wife.
International Crime
From Korea, Un Su-Kim’s The Plotters, was a black but often literary descent into an alternative world of professional assassins. Thirteen, Steve Cavanagh’s fourth Eddie Flynn novel, once again propulsively combined courtroom drama with thriller elements. And Belinda Bauer’s Snap, long listed for the Booker Prize, is a crime thriller with heart and a conscience.
SciFi
Yoon Ha Lee finished his mindblowing Machineries of Empire series with Revenant Gun, a book in which he once again reinvented his main characters to great effect. Becky Chambers gave her unique take on generation ship tropes in Record of a Spaceborn Few. Tade Thompson’s debut Rosewater was the first volume of a slow alien invasion story set in Kenya. Meanwhile some reliable scifi stalwarts delivered. John Scalzi published both crime fiction in Head On and modern space opera in The Consuming Fire. And Alastair Reynolds returned to his Revelation Space universe after a ten year break with Elysium Fire.
Fantasy
The most original fantasy this year goes to Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad, a reimagining of the Frankenstein story set in the early days of the American invasion of Iraq. Paraic O’Donnell’s second book The House on Vesper Sands was an engaging Victorian romp with a dark heart. Fonda Lee mixed 1970s kung fu movies with urban fantasy in Jade City. And Angela Slatter rounded off her Australian crime/urban fantasy Verity Fassbinder trilogy with Restoration.
Young Adult (fantasy and scifi)
Obsidio, the final volume of Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae trilogy brings all of their characters together in a fast paced, graphically inspired scifi thriller. Australian debutant Sam Hawke started her Poison War series, introducing readers to two intrepid teens trying to save a city under siege in City of Lies. And Patrick Ness’s And the Ocean Was Our Sky reimagined Moby Dick from the whales’ point of view with a fantastical twist and atmospheric illustrations by Rovina Cai.
Historical
On the Australian front two exceptional historical novels explored fascinating aspects of our past. Preservation by Jock Serong was based on the true story of a group of men who walked from Mornington Peninsula to Sydney in the earliest days of the Colony. While Paul Howarth’s debut Only Killers and Thieves explored the violent relationship between landholders and the Aboriginal communities of the Queensland outback in the 1850s.
Two very different books looked at espionage during World War II and its longer term consequences. Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is an emotional tale of growing up during the War, told in his beguiling poetic style. While Kate Atkinson’s Transcription is a more consciously literary, wilder and more fun read, based loosely on a true story. Meanwhile, Pat Barker went back to the Trojan Wars in The Silence of the Girls, highlighting themes around the treatment of women that are still painfully relevant.
Literary Fiction
And finally, those books that could fit in many of the slots above but defy easy categorisation. Severance by Ling Ma is an apocalyptic zombie tale that is really about consumerism, millennials and the immigrant experience. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss is a coming of age story set amongst a group recreating the life of a British Iron Age settlement. Krissie Kneen’s Wintering is a gothic tale set in Southern Tasmania concerned with domestic violence, loneliness and grief. Michael Farris Smith tells the story of a washed up cage fighter in the American South trying to save himself with one last fight in The Fighter. And finally Hwang Sok-Yong delivers another powerful exploration of life in modern Korea and the price of success in At Dusk.
See you in 2019 for more great reading!
