The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021
From epic voyages to haunting folk tales, here are the highlights of an otherworldly year.
Credit... Neal Boenzi/The New York Times
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By Amal El-Mohtar
- Dec. 8, 2021
In the gray fog of an uncertain year, these books stand out in bright colors and floods of intense feeling. They’re organized only by the order in which I read them.
The Absolute Book
By Elizabeth Knox (Viking, 640 pp., $28)
There’s so much vast, sprawling, protean wonder between its covers that “The Absolute Book” could be a fantasy object in and of itself. What begins as domestic realism, exploring Taryn Cornick’s grief at the sudden, violent loss of her sister, spirals into thriller territory before tumbling into epic fantasy. Spanning the geographies of Canada, Britain and New Zealand and the cosmologies of fairies, demons and angels, the novel more than lives up to its name.
On Fragile Waves
By E. Lily Yu (Erewhon, 288 pp., $25.95)
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