Merry Christmas Eve and what better to speculate about than some of the best fiction of the year! Of course we are talking about our top picks for speculative fiction. If you love futuristic or dystopian fiction, this is your category!
Top Pick: Upgrade by Blake Crouch
If you pick up a Blake Crouch book, you know that you are going to be in for a wild ride that will likely result in sleepless nights while reading the book and after reading the book because you keep thinking about it for months. Upgrade was no exception to his formula. However, he changed tactics a bit and strayed from his usual focus on quantum entanglement to human gene modification. He has also moved from being more current day to a time of a dystopian world after disasters.
Runner Up: Fairy Tale by Stephen King
This book is like a book within a book in certain ways. I read the first few hundred pages, which could have been a book on its own, and then the story took off in another direction that was creative and had a way of bringing fantasy into reality in way I haven’t read in a really long time. It has been an incredibly long time since I have read anything by Stephen King, and I had this one recommended to me by a friend. I’m glad he did because it was so different from anything I have read this year that it made it that much more enjoyable.
Honorable Mention: Clean Air by Sarah Blake
This has unexpectedly become one of my favorite books for the year. I’ve always enjoyed the dystopian genre, but it has become quite predictable over the years. I’m glad to see such a unique take with Clean Air. From the premise of the book to the characters, I loved it all. I was hooked from the beginning and just had to keep reading to find out what was going to happen.
Honorable Mention: 48 States by Evette Davis
Davis brings a fresh look with 48 States. Named so because two of the states are evacuated for energy production, this book dives into some of the darker areas of what could potentially happen to our country.
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