My Top 5 Reads of 2022
My Top 5 Reads Of 2022
Introduction
2022 has been a crazy year, but it’s also been full of some incredible books, which I’m so grateful for! I hope 2023 will bring just as many amazing stories into my life, but first, let’s look back at the last 12 months and which literary gems made my top 5!
5) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital in 1987. Sadie is visiting her sister, Sam is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there, but playing together brings joy, escape, fierce competition -- and a special friendship. Then all too soon that time is over, and they must return to their normal lives.
When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - creating virtual worlds to delight, challenge and immerse, finding an intimacy in the digital realm that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.
This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest, examining identity, creativity and our need to connect.
4) Cloud Cuckoo Land
Cloud Cuckoo Land By Anthony Doerr
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of recent times, Cloud Cuckoo Land is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.
In the 15th century, an orphan named Anna lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople. She learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds what might be the last copy of a centuries-old book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the army that will lay siege to the city. His path and Anna’s will cross.
In the present day, in a library in Idaho, octogenarian Zeno rehearses children in a play adaptation of Aethon’s story, preserved against all odds through centuries. Tucked among the library shelves is a bomb, planted by a troubled, idealistic teenager, Seymour. This is another siege.
And in a not-so-distant future, on the interstellar ship Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault, copying on scraps of sacking the story of Aethon, told to her by her father.
Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders whose lives are gloriously intertwined. Doerr’s dazzling imagination transports us to worlds so dramatic and immersive that we forget, for a time, our own.
3) Where Shadows Lie
Where Shadows Lie By Allegra Pescatore
THE CHOSEN ONE IS DEAD
Speak the truth.That is what Elenor has been taught to value above all else, but when her brother dies, leaving her next in line for the Throne of Lirin, truth becomes a matter of opinion.
Stand for what is right.Gabriel thought his years of fighting against oppression were over when he agreed to assassinate the royal family. He never expected to end up helping one of them.
As the carefully woven webs of deception surrounding Elenor and Gabriel begin to unravel, Princess and Rebel must set aside their differences and work together for the sake of the Kingdom they both love.
Meanwhile, from the rainy streets of Lirin to the scorching dunes of the Mondaer Desert, the ripples of their actions have inadvertently broken a chain of events five centuries in the making. Ancient forces move in the shadows, calling in debts and striking deals. A monster with a thousand faces fingers his knife, ready to kill, and a pair of fugitives run for their lives.
With magic itself misbehaving and old alliances crumbling to dust, it is up to an unlikely group of friends and enemies to pick up the pieces the chosen one left behind.
2) A Cinder of Roses and Steel
A Cinder Of Roses And Steel By Ginevra Mancinelli
The second installment of the new epic fantasy series A Hallow of Talons and Tears. A perfect read for fans of Game of Thrones and Brandon Sanderson.
Escape the prison of ashes.
The Rosencircle has plotted for centuries, waiting for the moment the Silver Kingdom would prove to fail. But there is more at stake now that the powerful stones that once belonged to them are in the wrong hands. Tasked to find them as well as protect the secrecy of the society she belongs to, Rosewillow stumbles on a path that will lead her to a greater purpose and to a man she should only kill—Officer Opherus Goldsnout.
Sand and Smoke.
Tecla Lionhelm will reclaim her lost title and home but, as the Regency collapses and the Sand Towers lay waste to the lands separating her new residence from the South, she quickly plans a bigger war. Between settling in Sóley Rochelac's Noirmont and learning more about the magical powers she can now wield through the Quiet Tear and the Darling Mind, Tecla's fate and life are in danger.
The key to restoring the kingdom.
Unsure whether Sóley Rochelac will return, Count Alane engages in a mission to retrieve the remaining Lady of Noirmont, but Rohais Rochelac lives with Elva Lionhelm and the mysterious Silver Prince. Preoccupied with politics, Alane and Rohais might miss the truth, and it lies within the stone the prince possesses; the last of the Gifted Crosses of the Rosencircle.
1) The Poppy War
The Poppy War By R.F. Kuang
A brilliantly imaginative talent makes her exciting debut with this epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic, in the tradition of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.
But surprises aren’t always good.
Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.
For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .
Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.
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