The 2014 Hattie Awards!!! Or the Best Book of 2014 (That I've Read)

2014 was a busy year for me with lots of challenges at work and plenty of travel. Even though this blog was dormant nearly all of the year it was probably still one of my highest word count years when counting all of the reread posts done for Tor.com on The Way of Kings, a project I was proud to be part of and glad to have behind me. As many others out there know: Writing on a schedule is hard work, especially when you have other work to do.

I still managed to read quite a bit this year even though my overall numbers are still down. I miss reading 100+ books a year, but appreciate all the added time I spent with friends and family this year. Looking over my reading log I've read 81 stories though many this year are novellas and graphic novels. I've not counted most short stories unless I bought them for my Nook and there were only 2 or 3 like that, but the novella and novelette length really hit me hard this year with a dozen or so of those. There was just one anthology read being the all-star Dangerous Women. Here's how the numbers breakdown:

Graphic Novels: 12 (though I read many more and only list those I thought worth remembering)
Short Fiction (novellas, novelettes, short stories, etc.): 24ish (Not counting Dangerous Women)
Novels: 45

Now on to the Hattie Awards!

Best Fantasy

 Winner - City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Runner-up - Smiler's Fair by Rebecca Levine

Honorable Hat Tips -The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley, The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman, and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

Bennett's latest stole the show as far as I am concerned though Smiler's Fair took me by surprise. Sanderson's WoR was what I hope it would be, but only time will tell if it will all payoff. My money's on yes. The Mirror Empire leveled up Hurley's game though there was some shakiness in the first quarter. I think Hurley's best is still to come in this series since some beautiful ground work has be laid.

Best Science Fiction

Winner - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

Runner-up: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Translated by Ken Liu)

Honorable Hat Tips - Lock In by John Scalzi, Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi, and Red Rising by Pierce Brown, On A Red Station Drifting by Aliette de Bodard

Some will be surprised Andy Weir's The Martian isn't on this list somewhere. That's because I read it in 2013 with it winning in one category.  But North's story has stuck with me a long time and never wavered from being my favorite in this area though it is probably better labeled Science Fantasy it merits a top spot. The Three-Body Problem left me cold for the first half of the story to the point I almost put it down, but I'm glad I stuck with it as it is one of the most unique First Contact stories I've ever encountered. Lock-In is probably Scalzi's best novel since Android's Dream and I friggin loved AD. Koyanagi's Ascension hit me right in the Firefly spot while bringing a unique cast that I was just as quick to fall for. Red Rising is the real please-me-deal in the same way Ender's Game was only more brutal. de Bodard's novella lives up to the accolades to date and I look forward to delving into more into this universe.

Best Weird/Horror

Winner - The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey aka Mike Carey

Runner-up - Datura by Leena Krohn

Honorable Hat Tips - Truth and Fear by Peter Higgins, The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard

Datura is the stuff that eerie nightmares are made of. I know because it kept giving them to me. Truth and Fear feels very middle-bookish, but the writing has a stark beauty and strangeness that captivated me. I'm still trying to wrap my head about Murakami's odd little novella. The design by Chip Kidd was worth the price of admission all on it own. The End of the Sentence gave us a dark a slightly creepy American fairy tale well worth checking out.

Best Finish to a Series

Winner - The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman
Runner-up - Shadow Ops: Breach Zone by Myke Cole

Grossman left me amazed throughout his Magician's series and he was able to close it out quite poignantly. It will be a series well worth re-reading. Cole's finish to the first Shadow Ops arc executed all the goals I had for the series with big screen action on a small page.

Best Urban Fantasy

Winner -  California Bones by Greg van Eekhout

Runner-up - New Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko 

Honorable Hat Tips - Skin Game by Jim Butcher, and Falling Sky by Rajan Khanna

van Eekhout is back in UF after a 5 year absence with a new series that re-imagines California as if ruled by powerful magicians who eat other magicians. Not nearly as dark as it sounds since van Eekhout plays to the lighter side of things more times than not and plays up the thief angle quite well. Who knew Lukyanenko wasn't done with the Night Watch series? At first I thought this was going to stretch a series too fair as the fourth book really did close most threads off well, but the author managed to dig up a story that is as good as the rest.

Best Other

Winner - Tigerman by Nick Harkaway

I wasn't sure where to put Harkaway's latest, but I knew it needed to be mentioned. The story involves a a superhero of sorts, an island scheduled for demolition, and a bevy of most likely disreputable men. Though it meanders as Harkaway works tend to do that's the joy of the story. And that twist at the end! OMG, Harkaway is truly l33t.

Best Overall Book of the Year - You guys have got to read this!

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett

Considering Bennett nabbed this spot in 2012 for The Troupe this shouldn't come as too much of a shock. Now who do I have to talk to about the sequel City of Blades getting in my hands ASAP? Don't make me send Sigrud... The Girl With All the Gifts and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August have also stuck with me. These three books are also the ones I keep giving or recommending to friends depending on how their tastes bend.

Best Books Published before 2014 (That I read this year)

This year a third of the novels I read were not necessarily published this year. It is hard to rank them so here are a few of my favorites: Foundation by Isaac Asimov (re-read and deservedly in print for more than sixty years), American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett (Bennett has to be the love child of Bradbury. Has to be!), Late Eclipses by Seanan McGuire (Toby just stole my heart from Dresden), The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu (Action/Adventure with Aliens FTW), and The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig (Badass/drugs are bad/also blue apparently).

So what were some of your favorites this year?

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Best Books of 2009 (That I've read)

INTERVIEW | Myke Cole author of Fortress Frontier

Myke Cole is the author of the Military Fantasy series Shadow Ops, which started last year with Control Point followed by the just released Fortress Frontier. He’s done three tours in Iraq and was recalled to serve during the Deep­water Horizon oil spill. I finished Fortress Frontier right after this interview and found it to be an even better read the the first in the series. Each book has brought something new to the table while giving a good view of life in the military, granted military with magic, but that just amps it up even more.

MH: Shadow Ops: Control Point introduced us to a world where magic has come alive again and people with abilities are conscripted into the military. Control Point is through the eyes of military lifer Oscar Britton, but Fortress Frontier moves the POV to someone else. Why the change?

MYKE COLE:  All of my favorite fantasy writers, from Peter V. Brett to George R. R. Martin, deal with ensemble casts. I know plenty of writers have been incredibly successful following a single protagonist (Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Devon Monk, etc . . .), but that has never been the story arc that appeals most to me. It's the interplay between characters that we know really well that draws me in. I love the sense of in-depth world building that we get when an author fully fleshes out even the most ancillary characters. The serving boy has a story, so does the guy who pumps your gas. Steve Martin does an amazing job of this in his novella, Shopgirl. Joe Abercrombie is another writer who does this really well. The three books following his outstanding First Law trilogy are all in-depth examinations of 2nd string characters from First Law.

I have worked really hard to give the reader a very different experience with each Shadow Ops book. I understand that this risks those fans who like to follow a single protagonist, but it's just not how I write. I'm proud of the fact that Fortress Frontier and Control Point do very different things. You'll be following an entirely different protagonist for Breach Zone as well.

MH: One of the biggest confrontations Oscar faces in Control Point is revealing his powers to his parents. But one of this things that keeps coming back to mind is Oscar's dad goes through a portal where everyone supposedly dies, but we learn that is not necessarily true. So is there a chance his dad is not dead?

COLE: I'm not going to give spoilers. I will only repeat what you saw in the text: A gate opened, Stanley Britton went through. When the gate closed, he was still alive. Schroedinger's Cat, brother.

MH: Holding out on me, I see. This brings up an old discussion. I understand why authors don't like to give spoilers of their stories, but as a reader do you think there are such a thing as spoilers? This is something I go back and forth on a lot personally, while when I write my reviews I try not to include big reveals, but rarely would learning something "ruin" the story for me.

MYKE COLE: I'm with you. Learning what's going to happen in a story seldom cheapens the experience for me. That said, I recognize that there are people for whom so called "spoilers" really do ruin the experience. I always keep that in mind when talking about stories. It's like a wedding that way: you think it's about you, but it isn't.

MH: Your military experiences permeates Control Point. Did you always plan to go into the service? And were any of the characters based off officers you worked with?

MYKE COLE: If you'd come to me in college and told me I'd be a mercenary and eventually a uniformed officer, I would have laughed until milk came out of my nose. I was raised as a scrawny, nerdy aesthete, and only developed physically because working out was less shameful than sitting alone in the cafeteria during lunch. 9/11 spurred a reinvention for many Americans, myself among them. It created a perfect storm of opportunity: A passionate desire to DO SOMETHING, coupled by a glut of opportunities to do them. As the smoke from those planes cleared, the public was suddenly willing to let contractors do a lot of things they would never permit if they weren't frightened half to death. Once I was working for a private company in a war zone, I felt like my service was cheapened because it ultimately served a for-profit entity. That planted the seed that grew into my deciding to join up.

MH: I had a friend join up as well. I think that's something that ran though a lot of people's minds during that time.

You've an acknowledged Dungeons and Dragons player and last year helped DM and organize the Author D & D event at ConFusion. After watching that I couldn't help but wonder if you ever had a game going during your tours of Iraq.

MYKE COLE: I worked 18 hour days, 7 days a week, so that was definitely not happening for me. However, when I was at the US embassy, I did note with pride that there was an advertisement for a Warhammer 40K game right along side the yoga class flyer on the community bulletin board. Space Marines in Baghdad. Real life is *way* stranger than fiction.

MH: Grueling hours, man. But I'm glad gaming is still out there. Back to Fortress Frontier. What are the biggest differences between Oscar Britton and Alan Bookbinder? Both are military men, but one from the grunt side and the other bureaucratic.

MYKE COLE: Oscar Britton is a *lot* more conflicted than Alan Bookbinder. This is because Oscar never had a sense of being moored somewhere. He didn't get along with his family, never established a lasting romantic relationship, and . . . well, he's a black guy in rural Vermont. He always had a sense of being out-of-place. The army filled that role for him, it became the home he never felt he had. So, when he's suddenly faced with the choice between the army and his own identity, he is really, really, REALLY torn over it.

Alan is the opposite. His life was smooth sailing from jump. Stable, supportive childhood, wife and kids, great career. He is as grounded as they come.

And then there's one more critical factor: Oscar Britton is a Probe. Alan Bookbinder self reports and is embraced by the system. Bookbinder faces some hard choices, but they're not morally conflicted choices. His path is clear. It's just a matter of finding the will to get it done.

MH: Fortress Frontier is the second volume of Shadow Ops with Breach Zone being the third. How will that differ from the first two? 

MYKE COLE: I'm very proud of having made each of the SHADOW OPS books very different from each other. Each book does something totally different (which also plays into my decision to vary protagonists for each book).

BREACH ZONE does two things that the first two books don't do. It is a tragic love story and an in-depth look at a single battle (a la Joe Abercrombie's THE HEROES). It also shifts focus to the political landscape in America following the upheaval resulting from . . . certain actions by the protagonists in books I and II. It has been the most difficult of the 3 books for me to write, and that's likely because it's the most ambitious. Here's hoping I pulled it off.

MH: You've also mentioned that you're writing a media tie-in novella. Is there anything you can say about that publicly?

MYKE COLE: Only that it won't be media tie-in. I have worked very hard with a few companies to find ideas that work with their franchises, but unfortunately, my writing just doesn't seem to be wired to fit those molds. In the one case where we were able to agree on an idea, the contract specifications were, frankly, unacceptable. I am certainly open to media tie-in work, but I'm not going to write something my heart isn't in just to make money.

MH: What is one your favorite D & D character names you've created?

MYKE COLE: When Pete (Peter V. Brett) and I played D&D in college, he got the Complete Book of Humanoids (2nd ed) and I rolled up a Wemic fighter. I a lot of . . . leonine stuff, I guess. Kicking down doors, killing people without talking to them and generally mucking up the campaign. Pete shook things up by killing me, then binding my soul into a statue. The resultant character had 18 in every stat, but was completely immune to all magic, including positive spells. Made for a fascinating game.

Oh, wait. You wanted to know his name. I don't remember.

MH: Do you have any celebration rituals when a new book is out?

MYKE COLE: I grab my agent and we hit every bookstore in the area, signing as many copies as we can find. I also try to chat up all the booksellers, even buying them a copy if they're willing to give it a read. A lot of the people working in bookstores are serious genre fans, and getting them interested in your work (or thinking you're a nice guy) is a great way to accelerate a launch. Sadly, this ritual takes less time every year, as more and more bookstores are closing.

MH: What is the greatest advice you've even been given as a writer?

MYKE COLE: It's the same advice I've been given as a military officer, government drone and human being: quit your bitching and get to work.

MH: Now on to the important issues. What is your favorite hat?

MYKE COLE: Of course it's my Mich 2002 combat helmet. Here's a shot of me posing with it during my 2nd tour.

MH: Awesome. What books are you reading at the moment?

MYKE COLE: Joe Abercrombie's Red Country and 2 other books for prospective blurbs. This is probably the most frustrating thing about being a pro writer. You barely have time to read as it is, and when you do, you can't simply get lost in a book and enjoy it. You're either deconstructing the reading experience as you try to improve your own craft, or you're reading a manuscript that your publisher sent you and feeling like a jerk because you're either too busy to finish it by the blurb deadline or don't like it enough to attach your name to it (I only blurb books I *really* love. So far, that's been just two: Daniel Polansky's Tomorrow, The Killing and Wes Chu's Lives of Tao). Going pro really does suck a lot of the joy out of leisure reading, which is ironic, because that's what made you want to go pro in the first place.

MH: Is there anything you'd like to say to close us out?

MYKE COLE: My blog, FB and Twitter are great places to see what I'm up to. I'd also like to call on your readers to consider a commitment in the military reserve. Seems like the nation has been going through some tough times lately, and nothing has done more for my mental health than feeling like I was able to ante up and HELP. I've deployed for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Hurricane Irene and now Hurricane Sandy, and I sleep so much better at night knowing that I pitched in and did something. If you can, I think you should. Stand with me.

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REVIEW | Control Point by Myke Cole

Military Fantasy has been a staple of genre for decades. The Black Company, Malazan, Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt, and the Warhammer universe are some good examples, but none that I'm familiar with tackle the military in the present times. Contemporary Military Fantasy is something that we've clearly been lacking and Myke Cole's Control Point hopes to fill that void though it often has the feel of an Urban Fantasy even though much of the action takes place elsewhere. Given Cole's long military experience with 3 tours of Iraq he does have a unique experience to fuel the story.

Cole's series opener provides deep glimpses of some of the harsh realities and amazing highs capable in a military life even while mincing in some geek humor to take the edge off. Magic has seeped back into the normal world giving abilities to certain people. The world knows magic exists and all those capable of it in the United States are conscripted into the military except for a few people adept in the forbidden classes of magic. Those are silenced less they become the monsters humanity has always feared. The legal schools include the basic elements of those that can summon storms, move the earth, control fire, and command water at will. Illegal ones include those that can animate the dead and create portals to anywhere at will. This sets up a class system that is easy to hate and turns magic users into little more than drones. At least those that acquiesce to authority.

I ended up reading the first 2 chapters of Control Point 3 times before finally getting into the style as the first chapters can be difficult for those who abhor cold blooded killings of young people. That's exactly the choice that Oscar Britton faces in the opening pages. To do his job he must kill a teenager who has magic that she cannot be allowed to let loose. She's a Selfer who doesn't worry about the greater good. At least that is how the government characterizes Selfers.

After that mission Britton is faced with an even tougher choice. He manifests abilities in one of the prohibited schools of magic and things take a turn as he runs. The biggest weakness of the novel is Oscar. The world is very compelling, the politics, the magic, and the different views on the same issues (magic). But Oscar just goes too much back and forth over what he wants to do, what he feels his duty is, and what he believes in. He fights himself too much. He is a military man so why turn away from that when it is what he loves? At points he acts totally for himself and never really accepts that certain events were totally his fault. Granted he isn't put in a good place and left with many decisions so perhaps this fault is going too much into his head in the narrative. But when the chips are down Britton delivers.

Even with the weakness of Oscar I still ended up liking him. Control Point is at its best when the action happens, which is really quite often. Britton is flung from one life harrowing mission to another within pages. The magic is very impressive, especially when a skilled user is letting their full abilities loose. The sequencing of battles is particularly vivid. Picture those with the abilities from Avatar: The Last Airbender in modern combat situations from everything to a search a destroy mission in a sewer to an all-out battle on the field.

There are a lot of aspects I wish were explored more such as China being a country where magic users are free to live a semi normal life along with the magical plane that is only sparsely discussed. Also, I'd like to know a bit more about how the common people view those with latent abilities besides awe and fear.

Control Point is a solid, action packed debut with a few shaky parts that has a lot of appeal to it. By the end Cole more than found his footing and left me with high hopes for the continuation of the Shadow Ops series. I give Control Point 3.5 out of 5 Hats. The sequel Fortress Frontier should be out in February 2013, which I plan on checking out.

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