Locus Ballot 2023: Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels and More

Time to pick from the long list of nominees for the Locus ballot 2023, covering work published in 2022. It’s a big list, since it represents the consensus judgment of a large group of reviewers at Locus magazine, and I can’t pretend to have read it all. I think part of the purpose of such a large set of titles, especially in shorter fiction categories, is to suggest work that will hopefully be more widely read. In this post, I’ll stick with the categories I know best: Science Fiction Novels, Fantasy Novels, First Novels, Collections, Anthologies and Novellas.

I’m not into top five rankings, especially since my choices this year are all so good, but the ballot forces me to put them in order. So here they are in the order I ranked them, though for me, most of them tie for best of the year. In some cases, I put fewer than five since I only want to pick titles I’m closely familiar with. I’ve linked to the titles that I’ve reviewed, and if you’re interested in more novels that I loved in 2022, you can check out my longer lists favorite science fiction and fantasy novels as well.

Science Fiction Novels

• Neom by Lavie Tidhar
• Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus
• Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
• Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Needle by Linda Nagata

Fantasy Novels

• Spear by Nicola Griffith
• When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
• Babel by R.F. Kuang
• The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
• The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri

First Novels

• The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings
• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor
• How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
• The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

Collections

• Bliss Montage by Ling Ma
• Liberation Day by George Saunders

Anthologies

• Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, edited by Sheree Renee Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki & Zelda Knight
• The Future is Female! Volume Two: The 1970s, edited by Lisa Yaszek
• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 6, edited by Neil Clarke

Novellas

• Servant Mage by Kate Elliott
• Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse