Tomio’s Top 100 of the Last Ten Years (81-90)

Continuing the list started here….

90. - Nekropolis by Maureen McHugh (2002)

McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang is one of the best Science Fiction offered us in the 90’s, and while Nekropolis isn’t quite its equal, this books casts a tangible funereal aura while still promoting a habitual desire to read.

89. - A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin (2000)

The gall of somebody putting an epic fantasy on the list! To be frank, anyone who tries to put such a list together that has particular attachment to SF or Fantasy and doesn’t include George R.R. Martin would be highly questionable. It’s arguable that Martin has been the most important author (regarding adult fantasy) in the genre over the last decade in terms of having a calculable impact on elevating reading expectations in fantasy; it’s not the only step on the staircase, but it is one that many actually took.

This book represents the pinnacle of epic fantasy in my mind; Martin is just showing off here, complete mastery of POV and perspective, and juggling them by the dozen, 98% of the authors who snicker at epic fantasy could not have pulled this off. The Red Wedding is one of the all time classic chapters in fantasy.

Queue The Rains of Castamere…

88. - The San Veneficio Canon by Michael Cisco (2005)

This collects Cisco’s Divinity Student and subsequent novella, The Golem. Cisco is the writer who illuminates by making the vivid obscure; this is a completely bizarre trip into the halls of language where there are no dividers between reality and the fantastic. The Golems is a chase for love in an underworld of Cisco’s devising. A 200+ page book that has as much to remember than most multi-sequence tomes

The world needs more books by Cisco.

87. - Alva and Irva: the Twins Who Saved a City by Edward Carey (2003)

This is not the only Carey entry on the list, but our opportunity to visit Carey’s Entralla in a book that the term world building takes on new and actual meaning. Churchill said, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Alva and Irva represent that to the fullest.

86. - The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (2002)

Auster is one of the few authors who have written mulit-book sequences that should be read by everyone (his New York Trilogy). Auster’s other books - while all worth reading - prove to be difficult to disassociate from that sequence as he tends to pull key elements from the series that take prominent roles in the books. This could possibly speak on how far reaching his trilogy is, but regardless it took me time to step away from that work and fully enjoy his subsequent work.

This is a book that replaces the tree nobody here’s falling with people nobody ever hear.

85. - Dark Property by Brian Evenson (2002)

Powerful writer whose doesn’t shy away from pissing people off, and while the latter is terrific, he is on this list for the former. Thematically extreme and almost impossible not to go through the book without adding some new words to your vocabulary. If an American would have wrote Ballard’s Crash it would have been Evenson.

84. - The Insult by Rupert Thomson (1997)

I feel the same about most of Thomson’s work (even when they are all widely different), one lately they have a tendency to lose their legs in some portion of the novel, but even with that in mind I never stop buying his books (haven’t read Divided Kingdom yet which I heard may be his best work - I think The Five Gates of Hell is his best that I have read).

Thomson’s story about a man turned blind regaining his vision threatens to give the term thriller some sense of respectability.

83. - The Nightmare Factory by Thomas Ligotti (1996)

Ligotti is the best horror writer currently living that I am aware of. That’s not to say there are other outstanding writers in the field but I associate his work with ideal horror, and this collection is not only among the best collections of horror in the last ten years it’s in my mind one of the dozen best ever. While his most recent effort, The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is an excellent introduction for the new reader (and has many of the stories), it is Nightmare Factory that will hold a spot in the Horror pantheon.

82. - Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart (2004)

Most people who have read Sean Stewart probably have read his Star Wars effort, Yoda - Dark Rendezvous, making Stewart one of the most talented authors to write in that setting. They do themselves a disservice by not reading his other books, like Galveston Mockingbird, and Perfect Circle - who can actually make Texas seem interesting with his blend of magic realism/ghost story.

81. - My Happy Life by Lydia Millet (2002)

A striking emotion-eliciting tale, as we are taken into the mind of a mentally troubled patient left behind when her asylum closes down.

It’s a mixture of melancholy and beauty, and I will be damned if one can be unmoved by the reading.

* Read 91-100 here.
* Read 71-80 here.
* Read 61-70 here.