Mackenzie’s Auto-Buy Authors!
Recently I featured Nicole’s post about her auto-buy authors in this blogger appreciation post. After reading her post, I felt inspired to write my own! But also Nicole convinced me to do it hahahah. I think you all will be able to guess a few of the authors on my list. As Nicole said in her post, auto-buy for me doesn’t necessarily mean I will purchase all of their books, since that’s dependent on my personal finances. However I will always read any book from these authors!! And If I have the money, then I’ll buy their books.
I’m also going to list a handful of authors that I think could become auto-buy authors, but at this point I’ve only read one of their books. So they’re on my “potential” list! I’ll definitely be picking up their future books since I loved the one of theirs I read so much.
My Favorites!
My absolute ride-or-dies:
These two authors come as NO SURPRISE to anyone. Yes, I’m talking about Tamora Pierce and Seanan McGuire.
Tamora Pierce is the author that completely shaped my childhood. And obviously because of that, she shaped what my reading tastes are now. Her books showed me all kinds of strong female characters, and how “strong” can mean many different things. I have multiple editions of all of her books, and I will be reading her books until I die. I also regularly reread her books. If you remember, I talked about I’ll be rereading all her Tortall books in my 23′ and Me post! Obviously no author is perfect, and I recognize a lot of problematic elements in her work (especially the older novels). But I still love her, and her more recent novels improve and fix some of those problematic things!
About 3.5 years ago I wrote a blog post about how much I love Seanan McGuire. Since then, I’ve only fallen more in love with her and her books. Her October Daye series remains one of my top favorite series of all time, and her Wayward Children series is definitely up there too. For my birthday a few weeks ago I got the first 4 books of the Incryptid series, and I’m so frikkin excited to start them. I still have a lot of her backlist to get to, mostly her sci-fi/horror books under her Mira Grant pseudonym. She writes so so much, so I have a lot to look forward to in the future!
Love these people too!!
These next four authors are definitely my beloveds, but the previous two are just. Top tier for me.
So to start off, we have Garth Nix. He is pretty much the only cishet white male author that I love with all my heart. Sabriel is the book that kickstarted my love of necromancers. At this point in my life I’m not sure if I’ve reread Tamora Pierce’s books more, or Sabriel. I just love it with all of my heart. The rest of the Old Kingdom series is excellent, and I honestly love all of his other books! The Keys to the Kingdom series is super underrated, as well as the Seventh Tower series.
And next up we have one of my faaaavorite sc-fi authors, Alex White! My favorite books of theirs are the books of the Salvagers trilogy, which starts with A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. My review of the first book is here. It’s a sci-fi trilogy that has magic and found family and treasure hunting and SPACE GAYS!!! Alex has also written some novels in the Star Trek and Alien universes, which I haven’t read yet but am looking forward to. Their books are so fun and full of heart, and I want everyone to read them!
Well, I did say that Garth Nix kickstarted my love of necromancers, so here we are with the result of that love. My modern favorite, Tamsyn Muir and the Locked Tomb series. This series blows my frikkin mind. The intricacies!! The plot threads! The mystery!! I can’t, it’s so incredible. I cannot wait to see what happens with the conclusion of the series. Honestly I could reread these books a thousand times and still find new things in them.
I must now honor the queen of beautiful prose, Nghi Vo. Her writing is seriously so beautiful and touching. The pictured series of novellas (the Singing Hills Cycle) is all about storytelling and stories within stories and folktales and love and loss and so much more!! I love each novella so so much. I have a few of them reviewed on the blog which you can find here. Luckily for me, I still have a few of Nghi Vo’s novels left to read!
Potential Auto-Buy Authors!
First up: Ryka Aoki! She is the author of Light From Uncommon Stars, which I apparently have not reviewed here on the blog?? I’ve definitely talked about it a LOT on my Bookstagram though. And I was even on a podcast about it!! If you want, you can listen to that here. There are slight spoilers in that episode, if you want to listen before reading the book let me know and I’ll tell you when the bigger spoilers are! But anyway, this is SUCH a wonderful book. It’s a great mix of sci-fi and fantasy, and it’s SO QUEER. Definitely looking forward to reading more from her.
Next we have Tracy Deonn, who wrote the STUNNING young adult fantasy Legendborn. Legendborn is her debut novel, and like. WHAT!! It’s so good!! It’s an Arthurian legend retelling centering a Black teen girl. Bree is a badass and just all around great character. I wrote a full review of it here which you can read if you want! The sequel, Bloodmarked, is out but I haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet. I’m soooo excited to!
This next author is a beloved of my friends: Intisar Khanani. I read her debut novel Thorn, which is a retelling of The Goose Girl. It was really well done! And I actually just got the next two books set in the same world (The Theft of Sunlight and A Darkness at the Door). My friends said that these two are even better!!
And last but not least, Xiran Jay Zhao, the author of Iron Widow. I have a review of that up on the blog, which you can find here. It’s an incredible YA sci-fi book inspired by China’s only female emperor. It has polyamorous rep!! And giant mechas!! And it’s just sooooo good. Zhao has a middle grade book out which I need to read. And I’m very eagerly awaiting Heavenly Tyrant, the sequel to Iron Widow!
We both definitely share Seanan McGuire as an auto buy author!! I love her books 😭
Seanan mcguire is also one for me! Along with Robin Hobb and Margaret Atwood!
Garth Nix is definitely an auto read author for me now. I loved the two Booksellers books and I have Abhorsen to read at the moment. The Alex White books sound brilliant so I’ve added A Big Ship to my TBR.
Ahhhh I am SO GLAD you wrote this post!!!! It was so fun to see who was on your list! (Tamora Pierce was also so foundational for me. Alanna: The First Adventure will always hold the most special place in my entire heart.) Thank you for sharing your thoughts, this was so lovely to read!!
Of course I knew who your top two would be. 😉 I also guessed Garth Nix might feature (I still have not read anything by him, but when I do, I will certainly come to you, haha). I’m also really curious about Nghi Vo’s writing! And oooh, you’ve not read InCryptid – curious to see what you make of the books. I’d like to try them at some point too (audio would be my preferred mode if the narrator(s) are good, I think).
As for me… Well, Hobbviously you know who’s my top pick. But I think another I’ll have to say now is Jacqueline Carey makes grabby hands at Cassiel’s Servant. And of course Ilona Andrews!! 😀
Okay I did predict Seanan McGuire making the list lol! And I can’t wait for Heavenly Tyrant! I was so surprised to learn about Tamora Pierce in a book club with my friends a couple years ago, everyone in the club had read her books in childhood, I have no idea how I managed to totally miss their existence
I’m a bit shocked at myself right now because normally, when I come across posts like these, I’ve at least read a few of the authors – but here I am shaking my head because I’ve ONLY read Legendborn/Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn and have never entered the worlds the other authors have created. Okay, you’ve just convinced me that I have several new authors to check out!!