2011 Top Speculative Fiction

With 2011 about halfway over, what works of speculative fiction have really stood out so far this year? This is the question Booklist attempts to answer in this article from the May 15th issue. Here is a selection of the titles named; all are available right here at your Community Library.

All the Lives He Led by Frederick Pohl.
It’s 2079 and Pompeii has become a theme park. Pohl is a master of everything that goes into a cracking good novel, and for this one, he has clearly boned up on vulcanology to boot.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.
Diana Bishop is the last of the Bishops, a powerful family of witches, but she has refused her magic ever since her parents died. Essential reading across literary mystery and epic and fantastic romance genres.

Hellhole by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
This is a militaristic sf story of galactic proportions that also offers characters easy for the reader to believe in.

Pale Demon by Kim Harrison.
The ninth Rachel Morgan novel finds our tough and feisty witch on a mission to get her shunning rescinded; this is an excellent series entry that is guaranteed to satisfy the author’s following.

What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz.
This novel is deliberate, highly supernatural, somber throughout, and motivated by religious dread—one of Koontz’s weightiest performances.