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by Henry Leon Lazarus

Every year I go through my reviews and pick out the books that stand out. For your information, these come from the February 98 through January 99 columns. There's no real order to them – they just sort of found themselves a place. I always get excited doing this. These are the books I would recommend to friends, and books I would eagerly reread. Get them away from me at your risk – I'll kill to keep them.

Congratulations to all the writers who managed to get books here. Keep up your standards and I hope others find your work as much fun as I did.

I'm going out on a limb and say that the best novel of this year (and of the last several) is John Varley's latest novel. Mr. Varley was the star of SF in the seventies with his short stories that took place in the eight worlds of the Solar System (mankind had been kicked off Earth). Until now, however, his novels were fun, but alas, ordinary. The Golden Globe (hard from Ace) captures the magic and is amazing to read. K. C. "Sparky" Valentine is an on-the-run actor playing the small towns of the outer cometary belt. When we meet him he is attempting, hilariously, to play Mercutio (Romeo's friend) and Juliet in an explicit version of Shakespear's famous play. I laughed out loud. The main plot has him returning to Luna, from where he ran seventy years before, to play Lear in a production directed by a famous director who is also an old friend. To get there, on no money and chased by an unstoppable assassin, will take all his wits, his incredible trunk, his fifty-year old hibernating dog, and his invisible friend Elwood P. Dowd (who looks like Jimmy Stewart).

Patricia Anthony has committed literature in Flanders (hard from Ace). A young Texan has to come to terms with his own life during war in the trenches in World War I. The Irish priest thinks that Travis has second sight, and he does dream of a cemetery where members of his company go after they die and before they move on. Powerful and moving, I'd put this book somewhere between The Red Badge of Courage and Catch 22.

James Michener would have done Antarctica (Hard from Bantam) as a historical, putting fake characters on Scott's and Admundsen's famous expeditions, Kim Stanley Robinson puts the tale of Earth's harshest continent in the near future when the treaties are running out. He has high tech tourists being guided over some of those routes, eco-terrorists, and even a Senator's aide investigating the continent. Mr. Robinson visited there a few years ago, and his love of this frigid place and the small community living there comes through. This is a book to lend to non-science fiction readers in the hope they will follow this to his award winning Mars series.

In her best novel yet, Sheri S. Tepper tells of a human settlement on a volcanic planet, a Questioner, a bionic construct with three brains who decides the fate of worlds, and a collection of very odd aliens. Ms. Tepper has a very odd voice that I have come to enjoy a lot. Her musings on the differences between the genders make sense and add to the enjoyment.

Then there's Matthew Woodring Stover's Caine. He was born into a caste-ridden version of our own with its business men, administrators, professionals, and workers locked into their own levels. Actors have chips in their brains that allow their movements, what they see, and even their subject thoughts to be broadcast and taped. They create characters for themselves on an alternate plane, Ankhana, and go and have adventures which are then packaged. Hari Michaelson is Caine, an unstoppable assassin. His producer as locked him into a contract to kill the unkillable god-emperor when he need to rescue his exwife. Hari knows that Heroes Die (trade from Del Rey) but he has no choice. This is unbelievable action and absolutely enthralling.

I also enjoyed the second quarter of Tad Williams's Otherland. River of Blue Fire (hard from DAW) takes the characters from our near future deeper into this virtual world from which they cannot escape (their bodies asleep in the real world). They are finding ways to control their environment as it comes closer to crashing and killing them with it. When finished, this promises to be a major work – but I wouldn't start it unless I was prepared to live the six years till the final volume appears.

Eric S Nylund has a tale of a future computer cryptologist. In the Signal to Noise (hard from Avon Eos) static of our near future, Jack Potter finds instantaneous communication with aliens in other star systems. Knowledge trading leads him from one disaster to another but he is always clawing his way up to a better future.

Maureen F. Mchugh's tale of a Mission Child (hard from Avon Eos) who has to set out on her own when outriders kill the adults and destroy her mission home, would make a dark, political movie with echoes of what is happening in Africa today. Taking place on a world that has fallen to barbarism and then been re-contacted by Earth – it somehow finds that place somewhere between primitive and the modern where real people live and allows the reader to connect. It will echo in my mind for a while.

The best Poul Anderson in a decade, Starfarers (hard from Tor), is about a trip to investigate a star traveling culture that takes two ship years each direction and a round trip in Earth time of 10,000 years. Mr. Anderson shows the changes time brings to Earth and humanity, and also has fun inventing the alien cultures the small crew meets. My only complaint is that I would have expected more scientific progress over the 10,000 year span.

Bruce Sterling looks only fifty years into the future in Distraction (hard from Bantam Spectra) and finds more biological change than Poul Anderson considered. Mr. Sterling takes us to a United States gone to economic hell, but with plenty of cheap food available; and a biological lab under siege from Governor Huey of Louisiana, who has already conquered an air force base in his own state, and who isn't averse to using illegal brain modifying technology to grab the lab too. Our heroes, a Nobel Prize winning biochemist and a political spin master from Massachusetts have to mix love and politics to save the lab, and in doing so, reform America. Fun and exciting, it's sure to be on award lists.

Consider Charles de Lint's Somewhere to be Flying (hard from Tor), a truly wonderful book that assumes that American Indian myth figures like the tale teller Jack Daw, the impetuous Crow Girls, and the evil Cuckoos have always walked among us. In modern, urban America trouble starts when Coyote tries to get Raven's pot (something like the holy grail) and leads some of the killer Cuckoos (mob killers) into the chase. Mr. De Lint makes the reader believe in this odd past and adds odd and interesting characters for solid interest.

In Ship of Magic (hard from Bantam Spectra) Robin Hobb begins a new series about the trader families and their "live ships" just down the coast from where her last Farseer series took place. These ships actually talk and have self control after three generations of a trading family die on their decks. This is a fun world filled with slavers and pirates and I look forward to the next. I especially liked the mad, beached, and blinded ship who murdered its crew.

Sharon Shinn returns to her settled world of bio-engineered angels in The Alleluia Files (trade from Ace), recordings that can prove their God is a starship overhead that were created by the characters from Jovah's Angel (paper) a century before. As usual, a solid love story makes for exciting reading. It is interesting to see how belief disappears as technology advances.

Avon Eos liked my comments on Jane Routley's Mage Heart (paper) that they quoted me in the sequel, Fire Angels (trade) which is just as much fun as the first. Her family that she has been separated from since four, brings her back to the her country where her powerful magic powers put her at the heart of the politics for a new king and the fight to destroy a necromatic priest. She's more mature now, but still lost in the foils of love and politics.

I've been recommending L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s series about Recluse for a long time. It's nice that they can be read in any order. The latest shows the magical training of a chaos mage in The White Order (hard from Tor) during the time of Fairhaven (regular readers will recognize this town). I suspect that we will have another volume about the life of Cerryl. I especially like how Mr. Modesitt shows how the chaos wizards are corrupted by their easy access to power.

I have been very impressed with Felicity Savage's Ever, the final book being A Trickster in the Ashes (trade from HarperPrism). Ms. Savage is telling the history of Europia, an imaginary subcontinent set in the Pacific. Now that the Demons have been released from their cages, stilling the engines they drove, and now that the Significant Empire has conquered Ferupe, Ms. Savage, taking a historical novel approach, rather than a fantasy one, has Crispin on the run from one side of the Empire through Ferupe, showing how the technology created for demons is converted to diesel engines and sold to America and Europe. Thus creating new opportunities and directions for growth. I was expecting more explanation of the demons and how they fit in with the world, but I remain impressed with the trilogy.

David Brin also takes a historical approach in telling how the dolphin-crewed starship, Streaker, finally makes its way home and why all the alien species have been chasing it all this time. Heaven's Reach (hard from Bantam Spectra) has the crew reacting to cataclysmic events, rather than creating them. This makes the ending of this long series less satisfying.

The most original fantasy I've come across in quite a while is The Rune Lords (hard from Tor). In David Farland's world, a man with the sight of three is caring for two blind men who have given him their sight through runes. The best scene is where two enhanced metabolic warriors fight, each moving twenty times faster than their environment.

Alice Borchardt takes a well drawn picture of Rome in 762 nearly conquered by the Lombards and just before Charlemagne will rescue it in his first campaign. Regeane is of moneyless aristocracy, but a distant relative and, because of that, is betrothed to a Lord who controls one of the passes that Charlemagne will want to use. Abused and feared by her uncles because she is a werewolf. Her alternate personality, The Silver Wolf (hard from Del Rey and which I had to get from the Library) is the only thing that can save Pope Hadrian, his mistress and their sons.

C. S. Friedman's This Alien Shore (hard from DAW) is a neat puzzle with two elements. Firstly a girl with multiple personalities (artificially induced) is on the run from an Earth separated from the star gates, and secondly within the gate areas where a single guild controls access, a computer virus has appeared that mimics life so well it mutates, making it very difficult to stop as it kills those who connect directly to it. The background is well developed and I expect that Ms. Friedman plans other interesting stories here.

Another good novel is Julie E. Czerneda's look at an odd shape-shifting family, Beholder's Eye (paper from DAW). There are only five of them, related to one who crossed between galaxies, and they devote themselves to remembering dying civilized beings. A wild version of themselves has followed their founder and wants to absorb them, killing others as it searches the galaxy. Esen and her human friend have to somehow find a way to defeat this thing as it kills one family member after another

L. E.Modesitt, Jr. has another tale of his alternate world where ghosts manifest when violent death occurs, making wars less common. In The Ghost of the Revelator (hard from Tor) the retired spy's Diva wife is asked to perform in the Mormon nation of Deseret as a pretext to get his ghost-making apparatus there. She is kidnaped and he is forced to work for rebels against the local government to get her back. This is light fun in a civilized, and slower environment than our own and I look forward to more.

Matthew Woodring Stover assumes all the Gods of Canaan are very real, two centuries before King David. Jericho Moon (trade from Roc) is a well researched and fun tale (the best kind) that is not for believers, because the villain is the God of the Old Testament. The axe wielding Dara and her two friends have to save Jerusalem from Joshua and the lightening bolts of God.

I really enjoyed the latest News from the Edge as Mark Sumner takes Savvy to Insanity, Illinois (paper from Ace), an island were the inhabitants seem to have all gone nuts. In spite of the mundane solution I read it in one day and look forward to the next.

Deborah Chester has the first of a nine volume series about a galactic empire with eight species, The Golden One (paper from Ace). She introduces us to a young Aaroun who will eventually throw down the evil ruling Viis, but begins life as a pet of their ruling heir. The whole series may be Lucasfilm's Alien Chronicles but I can only hope that Ms. Chester gets to write the whole series. The middle book, The Crimson Claw (paper from Ace), takes the golden Aaroun, Ampris from gladiator to freedom from ruling reptile, the Viis. It is just as much fun as the first.

Miles Vorkosigan falls in love in Komarr (hard from Baen), the latest in the series by Lois McMaster Bujold that will probably be nominated for a Hugo like the rest. Of course, the potential love is married to the murder victim and helps thwart the villains out to destroy Barrayar with the usual fun.

Laurell K. Hamilton return with another adventure (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer mixed with Friends) in which her boy friend, the master Vampire of the city has to deal with the world council of Vampires who have come to town in Burnt Offerings (paper from Ace). In Blue Moon (paper), she goes to a small town in Tennessee where Richard, her werewolf boyfriend, has been framed for rape. There she finds a rich developer corrupting the town in order to access to land where a federally protected species of Trolls live. In addition she has to intervene between the local vampires and the local werewolves.

Consider Delia Marshall Turner's Nameless Magery (paper from Del Rey) a sort of female fantasy Tom Jones. Lisane, on the run from the Enforcers whose starships destroy magic, and on a strange world, is put in to a magic academy filled with magicians whose first burst of power killed their parents (or even their whole village). This would be standard, even boring stuff, but Ms. Turner never takes a straight path to where she is going and Lisane is a wonderfully brash character who I hope to see more of.

I also like how Katya Reimann uses the very real, and amoral gods of her world to shape the characteristics of the societies that worship them. In the sequel to Wind from a Foreign Sky (paper) Gaultry is on a quest to the corrupt, poison loving, empire of Bissanty in A Tremor in the Bitter Earth (hard from Tor) Aided by a young assassin, originally sent to kill her, and a slave she rescues, she has to face an evil, mad sorcerer. Ms. Reimann makes all this very real, and peoples the empire with living characters who reflect their society.

I also had a lot of fun with Alan Dean Foster's Carnivores of Light and Darkness (hard from Aspect) about a humble African herdsman, a self professed non-magician, on a quest given to him by a dying man. On a odd world where size can change easily from region to region as well as other basic characteristics, Etjole somehow has a seemingly magical solution for every major problem he faces on his way. I had a broad grin as I read this one, and can't wait for the continuation

David Drake, in his best and most fun novel ever, With the Lightnings (hard from Baen) leaves a naval lieutenant and a librarian to fight their enemy's empire, when the baddies try to take over the capitol world of a neutral trading empire. I especially liked the pocket sized rail gun (remember the weapons from the movie Eraser). I'd love to see a sequel.

I also had a lot of fun with Peter Jurasik and William H. Keith's Diplomatic Act (hard from Baen). Mr. Jurasik (who played Londo Mollari on Babylon 5) knows the politics of television and Mr. Keith is very good at creating realistic aliens. So when the actor, Richard Faraday is abducted to intercede in a galactic war and a telepathic alien poses as him, everything is absolutely hilarious. It was especially fitting that the villains are the supermarket tabloid aliens. My side is still hurting from this.

Steven Brust's latest tale of Vlad Taltos, human assassin in a magical world, has Vlad serving in a Dragon (hard from Tor) clan army that is fighting over a stolen sword. In the usual fun excitement, Vlad manages to retrieve the sword and kill the other commander. This would be a prime candidate for the movies or television.

Mark Anthony's Beyond the Pale (trade from Bantam Spectra) takes two people from our world into a fantasy world. However, he makes it work by having the evil, practically unkillable men with iron hearts (literally) show up first in the emergency room where Grace is an intern. It also helps that most of the action takes place in a castle where the problem is locating more of these corrupted people. I like the way Grace and Tom adapt to the magic talents they have and at the same time take their time adapting to using them.

Kristen Britain tells of a young woman suspended from school and heading home on her own who tells a dying messenger, a Green Rider (Hard From DAW) that she'll carry his message to the king. It turns out to be a near impossible, and very exciting task. I liked the capriciousness of the magic in this mediaeval fantasy and the way Karigan grows to maturity because of the conflicts she faces.

Esme who was Once a Hero (paper from Baen) is back in Elizabeth Moon's Rules of Engagement (hard) a bit of light fun that has her friend captured by the enemy (who like the women naked and mute) and herself blamed. Of course senior aunts help sort out the mess.

Dean Koontz returns with another tale of a small town with an abandoned Army Fort filled with experiments gone wrong in Seize the Night (hard from Bantam). This time Chistopher Snow, the hero who because of his medical condition fears daylight, faces a time travel experiment gone badly awry. Mr. Koontz manages to use every time travel paradox I know of, without leaving the present, letting events proceed in his usual pulse-pounding manner.

I missed the hard cover of Lawrence Watt-Evan's tale of an appointed hero who would rather avoid notice, Touched by the Gods (paper from Tor). His empire is being attacked by a magician who can raise the dead and who is being backed by one of the Gods. I thought it would be long enough to get me through the two flights and layover, but I couldn't put it down and it just flowed. Oh well, I'm saving it for a reread.

I also enjoyed Joanne Bertin's romance and fantasy novel, The Last Dragon Lord (hard from Tor) in which a ship's captain from a large merchant trading family and the last were-dragon found in six hundred years (they stop aging after they turn for the first time), must work together to foil the evil plans of a magician who uses blood magic, and is trying to kill these near-immortal beings.