2020 SFFH works that we love

ULTRAGOTHA

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Here is a thread for works we loved that were published this year.

I had great fun with A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by our own T. Kingfisher. It was everything I love about her writing. Whimsical, practical, poignant. She also had some pointed things to say about society and Heroes. You will never look at gingerbread cookies the same.
 
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Stytch

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I'm enjoying Jenna Glass's "Women's War" series, so I was pretty excited to read the second installment, "Queen of the Unwanted" when it came out this year. The only other 2020 book I've read so far is "The Last Smile in Sunder City," by Luke Arnold. I bought it mostly for the cover blurb promising "The illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and Dashiell Hammet," which I'm happy to report was spot-on.
 

Brightdreamer

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N. K. Jemisin's The City We Became does brilliant things with its somewhat surreal topic: New York City comes "alive" through human avatars, and is immediately attacked by an extradimensional entity that has killed numerous other woken cities in the past.

Also, Seanan McGuire's Come Tumbling Down, part of her amazing Wayward Children series that turns portal fantasy tropes on their ear, was - as I've come to expect from McGuire in general and this series in particular - beautiful and dark and heartrending. (For those following the series, it returns to Jack and Jill and The Moors, the perpetually twilight land of mad scientists and roving monsters.)
 

waylander

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Shadow of a Dead God by Patrick Samphire does the "mage as noir detective" thing very well.
 

benbenberi

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I'm also reading Jemisin's The City We Became. Wow! I love it! I'm not sure how it reads to someone who's never been a New Yorker, but as someone who was born & raised & spent many formative years there I can tell you, she gets it and it's all there on the page. Plus an extradimensional menace, but that's almost beside the point. The city & all its complexity -- even my poor old insular neglected Staten Island! -- are the stars of the show.