Another year gone, another year of reading, watching, and playing to reflect on. Last year, I focused my end-of-year round-up purely on my reading, as that is obviously the original focus of this blog. A year later, I now know I’d equally like to give credence to video games and television shows as well for their significant influence on my storytelling and worldbuilding interests. 

As always, I find it impossible to properly list my favorites in a definitive ranking, so I’ve simply presented my five favorites in each medium in no particular order. Below that, I have also included a series of honorable mentions, works of fiction that came close to the best-of list but didn’t quite make it for one reason or another. Also, while many of these works came out in 2023, that wasn’t a precondition – this is merely a list of things that I first encountered this year. 

Let’s begin!

Books

Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)- Jay Kristoff/Amy Kaufman

To kick off this list, I’m beginning the only way I know how; namely, Jay Kristoff’s typical brand of writing a magical female lead fated to destroy a fascistic order. Kristoff does this in every one of his series’ and yet I love it. Aurora Burning is an adventurous and futuristic romp through a space-faring setting that lands somewhere between science fiction and science fantasy. While I enjoyed the first book, its sequel felt substantially more developed by comparison. Both books move at a breakneck speed, so the additional time provided in this sequel lets the characters actually breathe and stretch enough for the reader to get the measure of them. Like any good middle part of a trilogy, Aurora Burning ends with the characters in dire straits, granting them ample time to butt heads as their dramatically conflicting motivations and goals properly come into play. A solid recommendation for any fans of young-adult-style ensemble cast stories with more narrative oomph than your regular fare.

The Shadow of the Gods (The Bloodsworn Saga #1) – John Gwynne

John Gwynne’s writing has a magic that drips from the pages. He is a master of the historical high fantasy genre (I’m coining that term if it doesn’t already exist), already cutting his teeth in “The Faithful and The Fallen” and “Of Blood and Bone” with his fantastical take on ancient cultures of the British Isles. In this series debut, he utilizes old Scandinavian culture and mythology and applies it to a fantasy world pockmarked by warfare and struggle. As with any Gwynne novel, expect to find a vast array of main characters whose narratives sit far removed from each other before ultimately crashing together in unique and interesting ways. If nothing else, take the time to revel in the pure fun that is viking raiders clashing with monstrous beings straight out of legend.

Stormblood (The Common #1) – Jeremy Szal

My next favorite sci-fi read of the year treads the water between cyberpunk and space opera. Stormblood follows a war veteran suffering with the damage placed upon his body in his time as a special forces combatant. He’s one of the lucky few of his past compatriots, as many of them have started dying under suspicious circumstances. Adopting no shortage of noir staples, this novel features a criminal conspiracy criss-crossing a city-sized space station with no shortage of flashy firefights and the technobabble that old hats of the genre come to expect. 

The Night Circus (Standalone) – Erin Morgenstern

This book is an oddity to me. It’s very slice of life-heavy, with little in the way of actual plot to drive the pages. I realized about halfway through that nothing really was going to happen in the story beyond what we’ve already been presented with. And yet, it remains one of the most engrossing reads I’ve yet encountered. I think this is really due to what’s perhaps the strongest conceptual setting you can imagine. Set before and during the turn of the 20th century, The Night Circus chronicles the decades-long competition between two stage magicians whose magic is very real. Over the course of their scheming, the circus transforms into impossible arrangements, the various performers forced to reckon with the unnatural effects the magic is having upon them. The circus becomes the setting for the magicians’ game, with the cost of losing their conflict unfolding before their eyes. The Night Circus is slow, broody, and dreamlike. It is nothing short of enthralling.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk and Robot #1) – Becky Chambers

As soon as a bookseller introduced this book to me by describing it as the journey of a tea-making monk upon their bike-powered camper/food truck with their innocent robot friend, I was sold. If that description sparks your interest, please go pick this up. It’s sub-200 pages and you can easily chew through it in a couple of reading sessions. Even if science fiction isn’t your normal fare, this is a special one and I will happily recommend it to anyone I meet. The focus of this novel boils down to a philosophical conflict between the monk and robot with one increasingly frustrated by burn-out and the other harboring no shortage of fascination with even the most mundane of occurrences. It’s the perfect balm for a tired soul. 

Honorable Mentions

Murtagh – Christopher Paolini
Last Night at the Telegraph Club – Malinda Lo
Prose Edda – attr. Snorri Sturluson
They Met in a Tavern – Elijah Menchaca

TV Series

Fleabag – Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Prime Video

This show is a must, must, MUST watch. This British dramedy is darkly comedic and absurd, and as vulgar as it is ultimately heartwarming. The titular main character is deeply flawed – selfish, neglectful, and addicted to her vices. Her almost painful pattern of behavior is necessary to witness in order to see where she takes herself by the end of this short series. Fleabag is about how each of us find our ways to navigate grief and a warning to not push it away too long. Again: give this a shot. I still go back and rewatch the “it’ll pass” scene occasionally, only to have my heart torn out one more time for Fleabag.

His Dark Materials – Jack Thorne, Max

I’m not the only one who was living in dire straits after the dual tragedies that were the Eragon and The Golden Compass movies that were released in quick succession in 2006 and 2007. Finally, Compass has returned to high-budget adaptation twelve years later with His Dark Materials. A proper serial adaptation of all three books, it’s as faithful to the source material as any fan would hope. Dafne Keen shines as Lyra Silvertongue Belacqua, though Ruth Wilson steals every scene she is in. Wilson is an absolutely terrifying Mrs. Coulter and precisely what I had envisaged a decade-and-a-half ago. This adaptation doesn’t shy away from tackling some of the books’ more convoluted and difficult topics, all handled with the proper gravitas that is due to the legendary trilogy.

Ragnarok – Adam Price, Netflix

Continuing with the Norse mythology phase I had this year is Netflix’s Ragnarok. Conceptually, this show is a take on Ibsen’s stage play Enemy of the People, but it replaces all the characters with figures out of norse mythology. Our main character, Magne, is himself a modern incarnation of the god Thor, destined to clash with the Jötunns who effectively rule his small town through their heavily polluting industrial complex. A lot of this series is the classic superhero bildungsroman, with the hero fighting with his call to action due to his admittedly strong moral code. It’s just a classic good story and perhaps the truest take on Norse mythology we’ve gotten in mainstream western media.

The Owl House – Dana Terrace, Disney/Disney+

This show, in many ways, feels like a spiritual successor to the classic Gravity Falls. It is on its surface a kids fantasy cartoon, with approachable adventure-of-the-week plots for audiences to follow. The main character Luz’s finding of a home in a world of witchcraft is a perfect allegory for any kid that feels out of place with their peers. Eda the Owl Lady is the perfect witchy aunt and her titular home becomes the perfect basecamp for all sorts of wild adventures. As the story reaches its climax, it satisfyingly builds upon all its disparate narratives, providing a high-stakes endgame very much in line with what audiences loved about Gravity Falls. 

Let’s not forget, Terrace got Disney to air not one, not two, but three top-tier animated queer relationships in this show. Kudos.

I, Claudius – Jack Pulman, BBC/PBS Masterpiece Theatre

This is the kind of show they very much do not make anymore. BBC somehow managed to get perhaps the greatest lineup of British actors in history together to put on a Shakespearian-level drama of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. We’ve got Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart, John Hurt, Derek Jacobi, Siân Phillips, and George Baker, all busy plotting, backstabbing, and poisoning each other. Megalomania is on full display, with John Hurt in particular making me think he is actually insane, not just playing good old Caligula. This epoch is one of tragedy and is told through the voice of Derek Jacobi’s Emperor Claudius, providing just the right amount of regret over his inaction in stopping the corruption of his forebears.

Honorable Mentions

The Mandalorian, Season 3
Ahsoka*
The Rings of Power
The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die
The Last of Us
Wednesday
The Fall of the House of Usher

*Ahsoka is easily the best Star Wars we received this year, but it still exists in the shadow of last year’s Andor. I feel like the five TV shows I identified as the best of the year would be misserved if I replaced one with Ahsoka, even though Star Wars is famously my favorite franchise. However, if we’re judging by individual episodes… Ahsoka Episode 5 “Shadow Warrior” is the greatest cinematic Star Wars project ever, bar none. It is pure, perfect Star Wars.

Video Games

Tunic – TUNIC Team, Multiplatform

Let me begin by stressing that this is one of those games that is best engaged with knowing as little about it ahead of time as possible. At its core, Tunic is an isometric action-adventure that has you controlling a fox wielding a sword and shield as he fights monsters, solves puzzles, and explores a vast and strange world. The similarities to classic The Legend of Zelda titles certainly does not stop there, but these discoveries are best left to your own playthrough. If you were lucky enough to have access to an NES and the classic 1986 The Legend of Zelda – and its vitally important instruction booklet – this little game is going to feel like going back in time. For myself, who has never played the original Zelda, I felt like Tunic gave me a modern window to actually understand what made the groundbreaking game so special to so many people.

Alan Wake 2 – Remedy Entertainment, Multiplatform

Alan Wake 2 is hard to categorize. It’s a third-person psychological horror with some combat, immediately reminiscent of the old Silent Hill games. I could go into the minute-to-minute gameplay and story beats, which all have their own merits, but I think what makes this game special is purely its atmosphere. There’s a moment in the plot where I realized that nothing going on is really as it seems and everything experienced by the characters is subjective. Once you grasp this you can just sit back and enjoy the ride. This game is built on dream logic. You’ll go down a flight of stairs from street level yet suddenly find yourself standing in the rain on a rooftop a block away. Your surroundings can shift in unsettling ways as the plot’s in-universe writer, Alan Wake, can literally change the story as progress. The tensest moments have you wandering through a looping series of hallways, taking clear inspiration from the legendary PT, eyes scouring the walls for any baddies ready to jump out at you from the shadows. The tension ratchets up with each loop you take, observing the small and large ways the path has changed. The best part of the game is easily the 15 minute rock opera you take part in that outlines the entirety of Alan’s life to that point. Remedy Entertainment has something fascinating building up in their nascent connected universe of games and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Pikmin 4 – Nintendo EPD, Nintendo Switch

If you’ve ever watched a colony of ants going about its business – collecting food or materials, fighting off larger insects, and carrying things back to the colony – you understand the core concept of this game. In this series, you play as a miniature astronaut stranded on a planet that looks strangely like our own and work together with the local fauna, the Pikmin, to repair your starship, just as they rely on you to coordinate their efforts. Pikmin 4 is the first entry in the series I’ve actually ever put serious time into. I think that 10-year-old me tried out the first one at one point, but once I lost my little army of technicolor Pikmin to a single enemy I immediately shut it off and tried to forget about the tiny lives I’d led to an early demise. Fast forward to now and after trying it again I can easily say this is an endlessly fun and satisfying little adventure. The scenery is beautiful as you, an inch-tall character, travel through the vast jungles of grass and the mountainous furniture of a titanic back yard.

Also, this game has Oatchi. Nothing more really needs to be said.

God of War Ragnarök – Santa Monica Studio, Playstation 5

For nearly 20 years God of War has been notorious for being a gratuitously violent series, fronted by the single-mindedly vengeful Spartan Kratos. However in 2018, Santa Monica Studio pulled a 180 and decided to make the narrative front and center, presenting a thoughtful examination of godhood. Kratos, in self-imposed exile in Midgard after his destruction of the Greek pantheon, was rebuilt in the 2018 soft-reboot of the series, God of War. He was shown to be a remorseful man doing his best to protect his son from the curse of godhood that he is afraid he has passed down to him. While God of War’s thesis proclaims that anyone can overcome the demons of their past. Ragnarök, meanwhile, insists on rebuilding the legacy of the old gods, showing Kratos that it is possible to not only be a better man but also a better god. His foil in the story, Thor, is shown to be a vicious and vice-addicted person tormented by his emotionally absent father, just as Kratos once was by Zeus. Kratos’ insistence to Thor in the final act that “we must be better,” for the sake of their children is a legendary moment for this masterpiece. 

Baldur’s Gate III – Larian Studios, Multiplatform

Yeah, of course this one is here. I mean, I’m still kind of blown away that this game exists. Operating off of a slightly modified version of Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition, Baldur’s Gate III is the ultimate virtual approximation of what it feels like to play a game of D&D. Even if that’s all it was, this would still be making it onto best-of lists for 2023. However, they managed to implement the most important part of any D&D game: the party of characters traveling and fighting together. With every companion character fully voice-acted and equipped with their own story arcs and goals in mind, the illusion is built that you’re just one of seven players sitting at a D&D table. 

This game spent three years in Early Access, letting players enjoy a limited, and admittedly buggy, early buil of the game. It was good for whetting the fanbase’s appetite for what was to come, but it also helped to establish a rapport between players and developers as the fans became testers for all sorts of features and in return got a series of updates with news, changes, and additions. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Baldur’s Gate III is that this rapport has continued post-launch. In a gaming atmosphere where developers ship out buggy, half-complete messes and expect to nickel-and-dime their players for every little addition, Larian is overperforming. They remain constantly in touch with the player base, filling them in on expected releases and events. In many ways, Larian is the Dungeon Master for this game of D&D and, just like any good DM, they look forward to our feedback on what we together want this game to be.

Honorable Mentions

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom*
Signalis
Planet of Lana
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Star Wars Empire at War: Awakening of the Rebellion**
Cocoon

*I know, it surprises me too that Tears of the Kingdom is only an honorable mention. And while my previous blog post about my experience with it remains true, now that I’ve finished it I feel like it severely under-delivered. Much as I love the version of Hyrule created in Breath of the Wild, I feel like Nintendo’s lack of emphasis on traditional narrative is beginning to grate on me. Nintendo needs to find a way to balance their open-world formula with the strong linear storytelling the series is known for.

**The modding community is 100% responsible for keeping EAW alive nearly 20 years after its release. AOTR is my favorite of the bunch, providing a fleshed out sandbox in the theater of the Galactic Civil War.