SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Any recommendations for Slice of Life science fiction or fantasy? That stuff is like catnip for me in these stressful times. Light-ish on plot and conflict, heavy on characters and their day-to-day routines.

Sci-fi example: Becky Chambers' Wayfarer series

Fantasy example: The Goblin Emperor

Have you read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson? It’s a sort of family saga/historical fiction with a bit of a fantasy element. Our main character dies and gets reborn every multiple times. I found it deeply engrossing.

Dawn wrote: "Have you read Life After Life by Kate Atkinson? ..."

This sounds most promising. I've been hesitant to start that couple of times for the length of it. But a slice of life seems like a good encouragement!

I'd recommend His Majesty's Dragon. There's some conflict (it's the Napoleonic Wars + Dragons), but mostly it's about the strong bond between the dragon and his rider and doing what's right.

I might recommend most things by T Kingfisher, like The Raven and the Reindeer which are technically more fairytale retellings than slice of life, but I think fit a lot of the same "feel" as the two you've mentioned.

The Night Circus is another that might work.

Lud-in-the-Mist might work too, or Strange Practice or Witchmark?

Thank you all for the recs so far! I've not come across Life After Life yet but it looks really intriguing, along with The Raven and the Reindeer and Strange Practice. I loved Novik's Uprooted and Spinning Silver so I've had my eye on her previous works for a while but didn't realize they were slice of life-y--this should be a good push to get into them!

I really liked The Healers' Road (really, truly just slice-of-life fantasy, without much magic) and Failure to Communicate (sci-fi about interspecies negotiation). The Cybernetic Tea Shop or The Tea Master and the Detective might also work, both of which are about AIs and tea, in different ways (the first is a romance, the second is a Sherlock Holmes adaptation).

I've just read

which is very slice-of-life - it's an urban fantasy graphic novel about a werewolf and a witch defeating baddies and falling in love, but also a lot of family, friendships, first love, there's lots of cooking, baking, cleaning out cat toilets, baby-sitting, etc. It's very cozy and cute.

Oh, and Clean Sweep is a cozy scifi novel that feels like Urban Fantasy, but has science and other planets etc. under the hood. It's about the innkeeper of a galactic inn where visitors from all over the galaxy can stay when visiting earth. It is connected to other planets via portals. As the story starts, the inn (which seems to be an alien life form or AI) is still half dead and has only a single guest, and the innkeeper is very alone in the world since her parents disappeared / got kidnapped.

There's a lot of exciting action, but also lots of cozy inn stuff, preparing rooms, baking, coffee, dealing with the neighborhood werewolf, solving inter-galactic crimes, found family, hosting peace talks between two species that have been warring forever, etc.

During the pandemic situation, Ilona Andrews made an omnibus collection of the first three novels in this series available for only one dollar on Amazon (it will disappear when the crisis is over, so get it now if you're interested). If you like a cozy, melodious Southern accent, then also check out the audiobook version, which is excellent.

For close to reality SF, these two feel-good treasures come to mind: Matt Haig's The Humans and David Gerrold's The Martian Child: A Novel About a Single Father Adopting a Son.

Ahhhh, so many good-looking recs! I bought the Clean Sweep omnibus and The Healers' Road since those were incredible deals, and put a lot of the others on my wishlist. Thank you so much for your replies!

The closest thing I can think of that's not already been recommended is Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. Unfortunately it's like the 20th book in a 20-book series. The author tries to write all her books such that they can be read stand-alone, but there's a lot of worldbuilding already done in this universe.

On the subject of Vorkosigans, A Civil Campaign would be another that is pretty much slice-of-life - a romantic comedy of errors in a sci-fi setting. I read and enjoyed it despite knowing close to nothing about the universe.

A lot of Ursula Le Guin would probably qualify - Always Coming Home is more than 500 pages of ethnography, and it's easy enough to skip the more 'academic' sections if you want to focus on the stories.

Kari wrote: "Ahhhh, so many good-looking recs! I bought the Clean Sweep omnibus and The Healers' Road since those were incredible deals, and put a lot of the others on my wishlist. Thank you so much ..."

Ditto!

Spindle's End by Robin McKinley (a Sleeping Beauty retelling, but most of the book takes place prior to the big events) or Chocolat by Joanne Harris (for a more contemporary setting).