The end of another year of reading manically

Having averaged a book a week during 2014, it's time for a few concluding thoughts. My favourite new books of this year, in no particular order, have been:

• Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie. Smaller scale than her first book, but every bit as good.
• Steles of Sky by Elizabeth Bear. A triumphant ending to a really first-class fantasy trilogy. I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to get my copy signed by Bear at Loncon — a definite highlight of my year!
• City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. An unsettling baroque fantasy that explores questions of colonialism and oppression
• The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher. A haunted house story pretending to be a space opera.
• The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley. An epic scale fantasy with parallel worlds at war with one another

I've also made some fantastic discoveries, including:

• Jasper Fforde; his novels are so exactly my thing, I can't quite understand why I hadn't read them already
• Emma Newman's Split World series; a really good urban fantasy series with a strong line in feminism and a superb lead character
• Tea and Jeopardy; Emma and Peter Newman's podcast which combines a great interview with enjoyable silliness. I like it so much I was reduced to fanboy incoherence when I met Peter at Bristolcon!
• Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce novels; R recommended these on the strength of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and I promptly woolfed down the whole series. Bradley does a wonderful job of writing his absurdly precocious narrator, adding just enough to make you wonder how reliable she actually is!
• Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series. Another series I've been meaning to read for a while and couldn't quite believe how good it was

Reading other peoples' best of 2014 lists, I've realised I've got one very serious omission: Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor. Given that Addison is a pen name for Sarah Monette, one of my favourite writers, I can't quite understand why I haven't got round to reading it. It's definitely a mistake I need to correct before the Hugo nominations close...