Mogsy: Best of 2016 and the Year in Review
It’s once again that time of the year where I look back at the last twelve months and round up my favorite reads! As always, my methods are going to be rather haphazard, but as you know I read a TON of books and having to narrow it down to just “Top 10” or even “Top 20” is a difficult (if not impossible) task. That’s why I’ve opted not to do a traditional list, and instead I’m going to be breaking this post down into different genres/categories to highlight all the books that 1) were my favorites of the year, 2) I thought were most memorable, or 3) I think should be getting more love and attention. The one thing they have in common is that I loved them all.
You can see my reviews and more information about the books by clicking on the images and following the links.
Fantasy
Starting off with Fantasy, the biggest category, this is mostly a year of epic sequels and conclusions. Incredible trilogies like Jeff Salyards’ Bloodsounder’s Arc, Mark Lawrence’s The Red Queen’s War, Erin Lindsey’s Bloodbound, and Juliet Marillier’s Blackthron & Grim all ended with a bang. The Mirror’s Truth, Saint’s Blood, In the Labyrinth of Drakes, and City of Blades were also impressive continuations of their respective series. Edit: And of course Wall of Storms, which I first missed putting up…an oversight for sure!
I also discovered new favorites by authors I’ve read before, like Sam Sykes with his surprisingly funny, highly entertaining new novel in the Pathfinder Tales sequence. Anthologies aren’t usually my bag but I also really enjoyed Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere Collection. Finally I discovered a favorite new-to-me author in Jennifer Fallon with The Lyre Thief, an awesome opener to a new series.
Science Fiction
2016 was an excellent year for Science Fiction as well. Some highlights include more great titles in the new Star Wars canon (Bloodline and Dark Disciple, which I finally got to read this year), and another new-to-me author who is now among my favorites, Blake Crouch. Allen Steele also impressed me with his new book Arkwright but Emma Newman probably deserves the big prize for blowing me away with After Atlas. I’ve read a lot of books by her, but this was the best.
By the way, this year The BiblioSanctum also participated again in the month-long Sci-Fi November event, so if you’re interested in seeing a more detailed list of all my favorite sci-fi reads this year, be sure to check out the Top Ten post I put together for the wrap up!
Horror
2016 was also a huge year for me when it comes to the Horror genre, both for new books and with exploring the backlist. It was tough choosing my favorites, but I knew without a doubt that The Last Days of Jack Sparks was going to be among them, and The Family Plot and Hex were also clear standouts. I was also glad that I got to go back and read A Head Full of Ghosts and The Damned. Finally, The City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong is technically more of a Mystery/Thriller, but I decided to include it in this category anyway because arguably it does contain some elements of psychological horror, not to mention it was just plain awesome.
Urban Fantasy/Paranormal
Urban Fantasy and Paranormal – an assorted genre for sure, and so it’s no surprise that my favorites are also varied. The Valducan horror UF series gets its most amazing sequel yet in Ibenus, while No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished is another self-published winner by Rachel Aaron, and the long-awaited Stiletto finally came out and delighted fans of The Checquy Files. One of my favorite authors Kristi Charish also kicked off a new series with the fantastic Voodoo Killings and The Immortals by debut author Jordanna Max Brodsky was absolutely stunning.
Children’s and Young Adult
I didn’t read as many Young Adult books this year, so the ones that stood out were truly memorable. There were the excellent debuts: The Star-Touched Queen, Iron Cast, and The Reader. Gemina was a highly anticipated sequel which I enjoyed even more than the first book. After many years, I also finally got to read the Alcatraz series by Brandon Sanderson – and I loved it.
Overview: Books Read in 2016
Goodreads Ratings:
On My Shelves…
By a Male Author: 51.9%
By a Female Author: 46.8%
Unknown/Male & Female Co-Authored: 1.3%
Audiobooks: 25.8%
For Review: 88.0%
Genres (some crossover):
Fantasy: 47.6%
Science Fiction: 27.3%
Horror: 16.0%
Urban Fantasy and Paranormal: 16.0%
Children’s and Young Adult: 18.2%
More on The BiblioSanctum:
Mogsy: Best of 2014 and The Year in Review
Mogsy: Best of 2015 and The Year in Review
The BiblioSanctum 
Honestly, I have had a crappy year according to GR. My average rating was 2.9! What? I try not to finish 2s, I must have finished so many
But you had a great list
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LOL, mine was like 3.7. But GR doesn’t do half stars though, and I do on my blog (which are my “real” ratings) so the average might have been inflated a bit.
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Great year you had! Glad you were able to read up to 200 books for this year! I wish I could read that much in one year!
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Thanks! Thank goodness for audiobooks, or I couldn’t have done it 🙂
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Yeah, audiobooks is awesome to listen to!
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That’s a phenomenal number of books in a year 👍 and you covered a broad range of authors too. Best wishes for 2017 😀
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Thank you, you too! And I’m definitely skewed heavily towards fantasy, so I’m going to try and boost the other genres next year. Also I basically read any book that interests me without thinking too hard about it, so it was interesting to see that my ratio of male/female authors still came to about 50/50.
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Impressive. And to have over 20 5Stars, man, I am jealous. That is almost 2 a month!
On the other side, I noticed you had no 1stars. How did you avoid that? With so many books under your belt, it seems like you’d have hit at least 1 1star just out of pure statistics.
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I think my number of “real” 5 stars is actually lower than 20, silly Goodreads really needs to do half-stars because I’m sure there were quite a few 4.5s that I rounded up 🙂
And I was also surprised I didn’t dish out any 1 stars this year! Typically I end the year with at least 1-3. In general I think I do a good job avoiding books I know I won’t like though, and 1 star means I REALLY disliked something so it would have to be REALLY baaaad, ha!
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Ooh I hadn’t heard of the Seth Skorkowsky series but I REALLY like the sound of it! Adding that to wishlist now! The Immortals was already on my list. Need to hunt these down!
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Skorkowsky’s series is amazing, I hope you get the chance to check it out! And yes to The Immortals, which was excellent – I can’t wait for the sequel. 🙂
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Great list, Mogsy! I’ve been working on my year-end list, too (will come out the first week of January) – and we have three picks in common! The Reader, The Star-Touched Queen, and The Immortals. And I know your reviews of those books influenced me to buy / read them, so thank you very much for those recommendations. 🙂
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That’s so great to hear! And yeah I didn’t get to read as much YA this year, but so much of it was awesome, especially the debuts 🙂
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Heh. I was always a jerk and rounded down for some reason. Before I dropped half stars completely. Strangely enough I only read 55 books yet a good portion of your best of fantasy list. So I apparently picked right.
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Haha! 🙂 I round up or down depending on the book, I guess, though I’m pretty sure I’ve rounded down for 4.5s more than I’ve rounded up.
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I’m always in awe of how many books you manage to read in a year! Many of these will be on my (adult) list next week, and many are books I hope to get to at some point. It’s always so hard narrowing things down, so I really like your approach, no set number. My top ten list is probably going to end up being a top twenty list this year!
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I’ve always thought that sticking to a top ten or any set number is just too cruel, how could I choose!? 🙂
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I’ve added a ton of these to my GR TBR list! After Atlas was one of my favorites of the year too.
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AA was definitely a standout. I still reel thinking back to how good the story was.
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I’m so glad to see Marie Brennan on here. I bought that entire series in hardback off Book Outlet a month or so ago for less that $20.00 for all 4 out so far. I feel in love with her after reading a recent Tor.com novella. Also, a reading group I’m in on Goodreads is reading Dark Matter in January so I’ll finally be motivated to give it a go. I’m so glad I upped my horror reading this year, I never knew how much I missed it. The Family Plot was great and solidified Cherie Priest as one of my favorite authors. She has a cute dog to boot she is always featuring on her blog and twitter. Great list and I bet it was hard to narrow down!
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Wow! That is such a good deal for the Marie Brennan books – especially considering how gorgeous the hardbacks are with the artwork and everything. And I hope you and your reading group will enjoy Dark Matter!
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I’m glad you had such a good reading year! No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished and Iron Cast were both fantastic reads. I can’t wait to read more from both authors. And I need to start Marillier’s series that you mentioned as soon as I finish with Sevenwaters.
Here’s to a great 2017!
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Agreed, and thanks for putting Iron Cast on my radar! I wouldn’t have read it without your amazing review 🙂
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WOW! 233 is more than impressive, it’s *staggering*!
But who’s counting when one is having fun? 🙂
And I like the idea of the statistics by genre, it makes me curious to see what mine are, even with the puny number of books under my belt… 😀
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It’s fun! I love keeping reading statistics, so I make sure to maintain a bunch of tags on goodreads to make tallying up at the end of the year easier 🙂
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Great books! Some were also among my favourites this year and I recognise a lot of books that are high on my wish list.
I’m a bit sad I didn’t get to read much this year, 233 books is amazing! Hopefully 2017 will be better for me, also for the blog!
Happy holidays!
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Thanks, and here’s to 2017! May it be filled with great reads 🙂
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Wow. You read a lot of books this year! Den of Wolves and The Wheel of Osheim are on my to be read list. I’m glad to see you enjoyed them.
Cheers to a fantastic 2017 reading year!
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Thanks! And I hope you’ll enjoy Den of Wolves and Wheel of Osheim when you read it 🙂
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You’ve had a great year and there are some lovely books on here. We really have had a year of top reads and I love looking at these end of year lists.
I think what’s really impressive is not that you’ve read all those books – although that is no small accomplishment – but that you’ve reviewed them too (because, let’s face it, it is time consuming and takes time away from the reading).
Well done 😀
Lynn
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Haha, well, I *try* to review everything but there may be…quite a few I didn’t, lol. Because you’re right, writing reviews does take time, time which I could be using to read even more 😉
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Crazy reading numbers this year!!! Good job!
I’m actually reading one of the Pathfinder Tale’s novels right now: Hellknight by Liane Merciel
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That was a good one, though Shy Knives was perhaps the best PT book I’ve read so far!
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Looks like you had a really great reading year! I love how you listed your top books in each genre.
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Happy reading in the new year! 🙂
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Either I’ve read these, or I should get round to it… *keeps a note*
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Awesome!
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I’m reading the The Star-Touched Queen now, and it’s…interesting. Thanks for sharing your list with us!
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You’re welcome, and I hope you’re enjoying The Star-Touched Queen!
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So many books! Well done on having an almost equal split between male and female authors – I suspect my list won’t be so close percentage-wise.
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I would have liked mine to be even more even, but I was really surprised how close it was! And I wasn’t really aiming for 50/50 consciously.
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I am surprised The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu wasn’t on your list !
I don’t know how you managed to read so much but well done, it must require a lot of organization! I really need to give some of these titles a try, hopefully I’ll manage to squeeze some of them in 2017 (After Atlas, The Lyre Thief, The Last Days of Jack Sparks, Bloodline and Dark Disciple for example) ^^
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OMG! I can’t believe I missed putting Wall of Storms on there, must rectify! Thanks for pointing it out, I’m editing the post right away 🙂
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Haha your welcome! 😉
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THAT is a really good reading year! A nice top tier of 5 star, then a whole piled of 4 stars. How would you compare the overall quality of books in this year’s reading vs. previous years?
The biggest surprise for me on here is how little I know about the fantasy titles you list! Out of all the genre/sub-genres, it’s my favorite but I’ve obviously not been paying attention? Or something! Anyway, I’ve saved the whole post for future poring over and TBRing.
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I seriously NEED to get my hands on Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere Collection because I die a little every time I see it knowing I don’t own it LOL! I also must crack open my copy of GEMINA and find a copy of The Immortals because I’ve heard great things about that one from you and a fair few of other trusted blogger friends!
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