I've completed 23 books so far this year, with another 5 or 6 started and abandoned. These are the top 5 so far. At least a couple of these are destined to end up on my annual top 5 list. I have hundreds of other book reviews on this site.
The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings
Normally, you don't judge a book by its cover, but in this case, go ahead and do it. It's a stunning book cover and a perfect harbinger of what to expect in this book. If your reaction to the book cover is, “cool,” you can add this to your to-read list.
This is a stunning debut novel. It's fantasy, set in a post-Katrina New Orleans around 2015, IIRC. This New Orleans is soaked in magic, with a series of songs powering the magic and keeping everything in balance. Except that somebody is stealing the songs, throwing everything out of whack and opening a rift that allows spirits and humans to cross a usually forbidden passage between New Orleans and its mirror in the spirit world, Nola. Nola is a city of zombie cab drivers and a magical sky car system to get around. Our heroes are a trio of three young kids, aided by some magical artifacts obtained on a quest set up by Grandma. There is also a parallel story line involving a 20-something trans ex-pat who has returned to New Orleans. He ends up on his own magical quest to find his cousin, who is presumed dead in a magical accident, but no body has been found.
There are many players in this story, and keeping up with them as the POV shifts, and following where you are (New Orleans or Nola) can be a bit of a challenge at some points in the book. But stick with it. Ultimately, this is a love letter to New Orleans, both the place, the spirit, and the music.
Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario
The author won a Pulitzer for her newspaper reporting in The LA Times about Central American immigration to the US. Consider this book the extended version of that reporting. The journey is harrowing, with kids as young as 8 or 10 leaving Honduras headed North to the US, often in search of their mother's, who had gone North years earlier to earn enough money to support their kids from afar. The journey involves extended stretches riding on top of trains, with young kids dying or losing limbs from a fall just about every day. They also have to dodge gangs, corrupt police, the Mexican immigration police, and legit cops. Along they way they get help from churches and locals who sympathize with their plight. Even if they make it to the US and find their family, they live in fear of being deported daily. That fear is probably much more real these days versus when the book was written 20 years ago.
You'll learn a lot about immigration, and you'll also understand why Trump's send them all back strategy can not work. Enrique failed 8 or 9 times before finally making it into the US. Conditions are so bad in many places in Central America that the risk of death pales against the misery of staying home. Most of these folks are not criminals, they are refugees. And they should be treated as such.
Everything Burns by S.A. Cosby
This is Cosby's 5th book, I think. By now, you know what you are getting in a S.A. Cosby book. It'll be set somewhere east of Richmond, VA, within a few of hours drive of the city. There will be crime. It will be violent. People will die, and those deaths will be graphic. Almost all the main characters will be black, and the plot is usually driven by systemic racism in some way. This time the story revolves around a family that owns the local crematorium. A brother is on the wrong side of the local drug gang, and his successful, rich, older brother home from Atlanta has to fix things. In this case, fixing things involves financial fraud, crypto scams, execution style murders, and people burned alive in the crematorium. At the end of the book I wasn't sure if there were any good guys in this story.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
If the news reported, completely seriously, that the moon and all known moon rock samples instantaneously turned to cheese (or a cheese like organic matrix per the official NASA statement), how would you deal with it? How would the President deal with it? Your neighbors? Evangelical preachers? And then, what if the moon turning to cheese appeared to trigger a life ending event on earth?
Can an author really did into those meaty questions with this ridiculous premise? Scalzi can. Did I mention the cheese related puns? He bounces back and forth between chapters where he very seriously considers how an evangelical preachers would explain this to the flock, and then in another chapter we spend the day with a Hollywood producer sitting through pitch after pitch of bad cheese related TV and movie pitches. It's not a traditional follow two main characters through a story book. It's more like an anthology, which each chapter considering how one specific group or person is dealing. There is a light connection weaving through the story, but I'm not sure it was even necessary.
Somehow when you finish this book you'll find yourself thinking about the meaning of life and cheese puns at the same time.
The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown
An early leader for my book of the year. It's an inventive story involving books that bestow various powers on whoever has possession. The book of doors allows you to time and place travel simply by walking holding the book, thinking of where or where and when you want to go, and walking through any door.Our heroine Cassie comes into possession of the Book of Doors and upon realizing its power, finds herself pursued across time and space by dark forces that would possess the books for evil. So time travel set in the modern day world with good and evil, all very well executed.
