Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016 - Amazon's View

It's that time of year when Amazon releases their list of The Best Books of the Year 2016. Among the top list was one Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel called The Wolf Road by Beth Lewis, which was nice to see.

 A dystopian adventure, of course, The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape—told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity. 

That story does look interesting, but what about the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016? True to form Amazon had list of the best of, for most genre so I headed over to see what was there and was surprised.  I only knew about 2 or 3 of the twenty books in the list.  I took a look through and saw four which interested me.    Ninefox Gambit (Machineries of Empire Book 1) by Yoon Ha Lee was on that list so I haven't listed it below. You can find an entire post dedicated to it here (Up And Coming Reads | NineFox Gambit) and it's also part of a YouTube compilation I created here Book Highlights 2.

Special mention goes to Company Town & All the Birds in the Sky.  If you want to see the entire list you can by clicking this link here: [link]

Without further ado, my Top Picks from Amazon's Best of Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016 list are:

The Invisible Library Book 1 by Genevieve Cogman Collecting books can be a dangerous prospect in this fun, time-traveling, fantasy adventure from a spectacular debut author. One thing any Librarian will tell you: the truth is much stranger than fiction... Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it's already been stolen. London's underground factions are prepared to fight to the death to find the tome before Irene and Kai do, a problem compounded by the fact that this world is chaos-infested—the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic to run rampant. To make matters worse, Kai is hiding something—secrets that could be just as volatile as the chaos-filled world itself. Now Irene is caught in a puzzling web of deadly danger, conflicting clues, and sinister secret societies. And failure is not an option—because it isn’t just Irene’s reputation at stake, it’s the nature of reality itself...

The Hike by Drew Magary From the author of The Postmortal, a fantasy saga unlike any you’ve read before, weaving elements of folk tales and video games into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects. On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions, Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the “Producer,” the creator of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free him from the path. At once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary’s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. In The Hike, Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival.

Age of Myth Book One of The Legends of the First Empire Kindle Edition by Michael J. Sullivan One of fantasy's finest next-generation storytellers continues to break new ground. Afull-bodied, spellbinding fantasy adventures whose imaginative scope and sympathetic characters won a devoted readership and comparisons to fantasy masters Brandon Sanderson, Scott Lynch, and Tolkien himself. Since time immemorial, humans have worshipped the gods they call Fhrey, truly a race apart: invincible in battle, masters of magic, and seemingly immortal. But when a god falls to a human blade, the balance of power between men and those they thought were gods changes forever. Now, only a few stand between humankind and annihilation: Raithe, reluctant to embrace his destiny as the God Killer. Suri, a young seer burdened by signs of impending doom. And Persephone, who must overcome personal tragedy to lead her people. The Age of Myth is over; the time of rebellion has begun.

The Dark Side  by Anthony O'Neill In this gripping sci-fi noir for fans of The Martian and Quentin Tarantino, when an anarchic android begins wreaking havoc on a moon-based penal colony and bodies start turning up, an exiled detective must decide who he can trust in a city of criminals. Never bang your head against a wall. Bang someone else’s. Purgatory is the lawless moon colony of eccentric billionaire, Fletcher Brass and mecca for war criminals, murderers, and curious tourists alike. You can’t find better drugs, cheaper plastic surgery, or a more ominous travel advisory anywhere in the universe. But trouble is brewing in Brass’s black-market heaven. When an exiled cop comes to enact law and order in this wild new frontier, he finds himself the lead investigator in a series of high-profile murders that puts him toe to toe with the city’s charismatic founder and his equally ambitious daughter. Meanwhile, 2000 km away a memory-wiped android, Leonardo Black rampages across the lunar surface. Programmed with only the notorious “Brass Code”—a compendium of corporate laws that would make Ayn Rand blush—he journeys across the dark side of the moon with only one goal in mind: find Purgatory and conquer it.

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