Some of these books have not strictly been released in 2010 (read: were definitely not released in 2010 – Fantasy Book News, I’m looking at you with Brian Sanderson’s 2005 Elantris on the list), but I don’t make the rules so these are – loosely – what a (random) selection of SFF sites and bloggers have listed as their top five books of 2010 (regardless of whether they have actually been released in 2010). Following in the spirit of things (i.e. disregarding the publication date entirely), I have added my own ‘best science fiction and fantasy books of 2010 (not necessarily released in 2010)’ to the list. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the data to fit nicely into a chart (preferably pie), but here it is in startling boring tabular form. I’ve highlighted recurring books in the same colour, although none occur in the same position in more than one list, so as an experiment this probably failed. So here’s what we learn from an exercise that took a startling long time to carry out: favourite books are relative, Tor dominate USA-side, Orbit and Gollancz are pretty much equal (in a small selection of unrelated best-of lists, one of which I realised after is purely a nominee list but I decided to keep it in anyway for data analysis/padding), I’d like to read Stephen Donaldson’s Against All Things Ending by Gollancz as it looks fabulous and if you are going to colour code a table in order to highlight recurring themes it’s probably best not to do this in a table that already has colours in it. Enjoy!
Websites used: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Fantasy Book Critic, Publishers’ Weekly, Good Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Fantasy Book News, SFGate, Fantasy Faction and me.
Websites used: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Fantasy Book Critic, Publishers’ Weekly, Good Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Fantasy Book News, SFGate, Fantasy Faction and me.
| Website | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Amazon.co.uk | Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan (Orbit) | Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks (Orbit) | Against All Things Ending by Stephen Donaldson (Gollancz) | The Ambassador's Mission by Trudi Canavan (Orbit) | The Evolutionary Void by Peter F. Hamilton (MacMillan) |
| Amazon.com | Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (Ace Books) | Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan (Tor) | Changes by Jim Butcher (Roc) | Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs (Ace) | Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton (Berkley) |
| Fantasy Book Critic | Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks (Orbit) | The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer (Viking) | The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor) | The Folding Knife by K. J. Parker (Orbit) | Aurorarama Jean-Christophe Valtat (Melville House Publishing) |
| Publishers' Weekly | The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum (Orbit) | Feed by Mira Grant (Orbit) | The Hundred-Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit) | Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor (Daw) | A Special Place: The Heart of a Dark Matter by Peter Straub (Pegasus Books) |
| Good Reads (Nominees - winners announced soon) | The Way of Kings by Brian Sanderson (Gollancz) | Kraken by China Miéville (Pan) | The Black Prism by Brent Weeks (Orbit) | The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman | The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett (Harper Voyager) |
| Kirkus Reviews | The Bird of the River by Kage Baker (Tor) | Bearers of the Black Staff by Terry Brooks (Orbit) | Side Jobs by Jim Butcher (Orbit) | The Palace of Impossible Dreams by Jennifer Fallon (Tor) | Shadows in the Cave by Caleb Fox (Tor) |
| Fantasy Book News | Lamentation by Ken Scholes (Tor) | The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz/ Orbit USA) | Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor) | Daemon by Daniel Suarez (Quercus) | Elantris by Brian Sanderson (Tor) |
| SFGate.com | Not Less Than Gods by Kage Baker (Tor) | The Passage by Justin Cronin (Orion UK) | Planetary: Spacetime Archaeology by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday (DC Comics) | Horns by Joe Hill (Gollancz) | Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor) |
| Fantasyfaction.com | The Desert Spear by Peter V. Brett (Harper Voyager) | The Way of Kings by Brian Sanderson (Gollancz) | Spellwright by Blake Charlton (HarperVoyager) | The Black Prism by Brent Weeks (Orbit) | Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz/ Orbit USA) |
| Me | Changes by Jim Butcher (Orbit) | Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot Books) | Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett (Corgi) | The Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobbs (HarperVoyager) | The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Orbit) |
More than anything else, I would like to congratulate you on the construction of the above chart. I think you should sell it to Mr Wikipedia.
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