Reader Picks: Your favorite posts of 2017

The list of most-viewed items this year is interesting and a bit disappointing in that it's almost chronological for the first half of the year. Usually the entries are scattered, with a few things getting big bursts of interest. Of course, that result is pretty par for the course with the way this blog went this year -- a great deal of traffic early, tapering off late. That's most likely my fault, as work consumed me much of the second half of the year, and I did much less reading and writing than usual. When you go a month between posts, things tend to die.

Still, I'll keep with tradition in hopes that things pick up in the coming year and offer the most viewed posts of 2017.

10. "Son of the Black Sword," by Larry Correia. Published May 2. A bit of a departure from what I'm used to with Correia -- more serious with less humor -- but I enjoyed it quite a bit.

9. "The Death of Dulgath," by Michael J. Sullivan. Published April 11. I waited far too long to visit with my old friends Royce and Hadrian. Not the best of Sullivan's Ryria novels, but certainly not a disappointment.


8. Celebrating 20 years: The Top 10 posts and SPFBO thanks. Published April 5. I was riding high on good blog numbers when I wrote this -- the best in its long history. I had lots of plans to celebrate my 20 years of online presence, but none of those really happened beyond this one post. Still it's a good look at where this blog has been. I guess it's fitting that the celebration plan failed much like the blog. :)

7. "They Mostly Come Out at Night" by Benedict Patrick. Published March 15. Up until about the middle of this year, the Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off had a been a major boost for traffic to this site. It seemed every SPFBO book I reviewed brought a big bump. This is the first of a couple on this list.

6. "Miranda and Caliban" by Jacqueline Carey. Published February 16. Carey takes on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" and gives her readers a whole new view of a traditional villain.

5. "Stone Cold Bastards" by Jake Bible. Published February 28. This gargoyle adventure is the only book on this list to jump out of chronological order, and also one of two books I reviewed this year with the word "bastards" in the title. What are the chances?

4. "The Arm of the Sphinx" by Josiah Bancroft. Published February 1. Our journey of wonder and adventure continues in Bancroft's sequel to "Senlin Ascends." This series deserves all of the accolades its received.

3. "The Bone Witch" by Rin Chupeco. Published January 23. Though mostly setup for the story to come, this is an intriguing beginning.

2. Tell-Tale Thoughts: "Alone." Published January 19. My Poe series is far more infrequent than I planned a couple of years ago when I started it, but I still dust it off every now and then. I celebrated his birthday with a look at my favorite poem.

1. "Paternus" by Dyrk Ashton. Published January 9. No surprise to me that the top pick was an SPFBO book. Also the first review published this year.