2022 book 59

 Molly Gloss' The Hearts of Horses

Getting around to trying more stuff by Molly Gloss, and this was interestingly a very different kind of story than Outside the Gates, in that it's not fantastic at all--it's set in Oregon in the early days of WWI, and features a young woman who makes a living working with horses. (I've never been a horse girl but I do enjoy fiction with horses.) But it is similar in that it is all about the connections between people and how to build/be part of a community. There is an adorably awkward romance to root for, and a whole cast of interesting characters with lives full of love and loss and horses. Very thoughtful sort of book and I was also super emotionally invested. I don’t know if I can get my book club to read another historical novel about farmers/ranchers, but I just might try. A.

2022 book 58

 Nicola Griffith's Spear

I’m not particularly interested in Arthurian lore (and yet I keep reading it because there is so much of it??), but I AM here for lesbians with swords, so hooray for this new novel by Griffith, which reimagines the knight Percival as a girl with mysterious parentage and even more mysterious abilities who knows she is fated to be one of Arthur's companions. So she dresses like a boy and goes off to meet her fate, dressed as a boy, keeping farmwives company along the way. Really solid story, doesn’t spend too much time going over well-trodden ground, and great characters in Peredur (Welsh for Percival, and don’t give me credit for knowing it was him, it was an author's note) and Nimue. My only complaint is that I did wish for more, this isn’t a long book, but I did really like how it wrapped up. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in April.

2022 book 57

 Liz Ziemska's Mandelbrot the Magnificent

Interesting novella based on the real life of the titular mathematician (who named fractals), centering on his teen years as a Jew in France during WWII. There is a little hint of the fantastic/magical realism/mysticism but this is mainly rooted in history….and a lot of math. I was definitely caught up in the story but it didn’t one hundred percent work for me. I think this is one of the novellas where I wanted just a little bit more, or maybe that it’s that I found it mildly unsettling? A-/B+.

2022 book 56

 Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road

Earlier tonight I was trying to read, but I was too sleepy to care about that book and wanted to read something familiar and satisfying. And as many times as I’ve read this book, and as sleepy as I was, I couldn’t put it down and read it all in one sitting! Totally heartbreaking book with a totally captivating narrative voice, telling the story of two generations of friendship and love and broken people trying to build and rebuild lives and families and homes. And somehow hopeful too? (I will note parts of this are unsettling and there are some uncool words thrown around by teen characters.) 

2022 book 55

 Emma Straub's This Time Tomorrow

It’s funny how much narrative voice matters. The last book I read, I was like, stop JABBERING and get this plot going! And for this one, I was immediately invested on page one and could have listened to the narrator talk about her life and her dying father and her friends and her teen years and her fortieth birthday and her slightly dead end job at a fancy school FOREVER before any time travel stuff happened. And I love time travel stuff! But anyway, time travel stuff does happen, as protagonist Alice falls asleep on her 40th birthday, only to wake up in her teen body on her sixteenth birthday—with her teen self's young and healthy father. I’m not gonna say any more about the plot than that, I’ll just say that her dad is the author of a famous sci fi book about time traveling brothers which became a long-running tv show, so there are lots of good pop culture references and nerd references, and the heart of this book is a father-daughter relationship, which is nice to see. And as always with Straub, it’s a satisfying story full of characters you love and want to be friends with. Hope and heartbreak, all together. A.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on May 17th.

2022 book 54

 Grace D. Li's Portrait of a Thief

I’m pretty much here for a novel about five Chinese-American students (well, four students and one student-aged Google employee) plotting a heist to steal back looted Chinese art. I did wish the writing was slightly subtler, though I of course enjoyed the several descriptions of Durham and its skies (two of the characters are Duke students and the author is an alum, something I correctly guessed after reading a rhapsodic description of the lights at Brightleaf). But there's just too much of that sort of description—it bogs the story down. Like, start HEISTING, already. Plus, we spend so much time (too much time) in the (melodramatic) interior lives of these characters, and yet I didn’t a hundred percent buy that any of them would be willing to commit a felony, no matter what money or morals were involved.  I will say that Netflix has already optioned this and it will make for a very fun miniseries, it has a very cinematic feel. I just wished it was tighter. B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on April 5th.

2022 book 53

 Alexandra Rowland’s Over all the Earth

This novella does feature a character from Rowland's earlier novels, but you don’t need to know (or remember) anything about him to get what’s going on here. It’s about a young man in a tiny village on a cliff who longs to see the wider world but is too scared of heights to cross the bridge across the ravine. But when a traveling storyteller comes to town, he starts to find the impetus to make a change. There is a really interesting god/spirit thing here, and my only complaint is that the story stops right when I wanted more. Hoping these characters will pop back up in other Rowland works. A-/B+.

2022 book 52

 Victoria Goddard’s Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander

Mentioning Victoria Goddard made me remember I had a new short story of hers to read, but to my delight it was a solid 100 pager! It’s the story of Kip's great-uncle and mentor, as he travels to see Kip towards the end of events in The Hands of the Emperor. I found this /much/ more satisfying than Petty Treasons, maybe because the story itself is mostly new (uncle befriends a little girl on the train etc!), or because seeing these particular events from a different POV is just as interesting/moving as the events themselves. (I also appreciated uncle's unabashed gayness.) A.

2022 book 51

 Alexandra Rowland's Some by Virtue Fall

I liked Rowland's first two novels pretty well, but I really got interested in their work after they wrote this amazing essay about Victoria Goddard. And I feel like they’re maybe taking a cue from Goddard, bc they’ve written two novellas set in their larger world (and have a full novel coming out later this year). In this first one, two theatre troupes (and their noble patrons) are bitter rivals, and our protagonists may come to ruin bc their new play was STOLEN by the other one! Is the cute actress from the other troupe a SPY? Everyone here is super queer and also a super dramatic theater kid and all the characters are delightful. I didn’t entirely buy that anyone would go as far as the rival troupe did, but I did like how it wrapped up. Very entertaining. A-.

2022 book 50

 Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

So this is being billed as a "sister novel" to Goon Squad, even though it has a lot of the same characters (and the new characters were all MENTIONED in Goon Squad, since most of them are the kids of all those main characters). The central throughline here is one of Sasha's college friends (the black guy who hid from his white girlfriend's parents) becoming a social media mogul, and inventing a way to upload and share your actual memories--and search other people's. But the heart of this is still the way people love their lives and the connections they have to one another. Parts of this made me cackle (the email chapter especially) and parts made me cry (for a variety of reasons) and I loved all of it. (I’ll note that one chapter is from the POV of an autistic person, and I have no idea how accurate or well-done it was.) Anyway, if you liked its predecessor, this one is a winner for sure. A.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on April 5th.

2022 book 49

 Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad

I hadn’t read this since it first came out, and all I remembered was that a) I loved it and b) one chapter is narrated by a young girl entirely in PowerPoint. And both those things are still true! I mean, dang if I didn’t just read this all in one sitting! Anyway, we decided to read this for book club this month, since a sequel/companion is coming out in April, and it was really nice to revisit. If you somehow haven’t read this book (it won the Pulitzer), it’s a novel told in stories about an interconnected group of people in New York, primarily people in the music/cultural scene, flashing back to the characters' misspent youths (the 70s punk scene! Seedy Italian hostels!) and flashing forward to the near future . . . but this book was written in 2010 so the near future was actually . . . last year . . . insert sweat drop grimace emoji here. I will say I am glad we as a society have not started using the abbreviated text-speak Egan predicted. But the PowerPoint chapter was still very effective. A.

2022 book 48

 Ciel Pierlot's Bluebird

So this is a sci fi book about a woman who has a very Sabine Wren backstory--she's super smart and was trained as a weapons inventor by one of the big galactic powers (there are three in this world), but after creating a weapon that could be used on her own (minority) people, she takes her plans and flees, eventually becoming a REBEL! Or, well, part of a group of thieves and smugglers who also rescue refugees. Along the way she also gets a librarian girlfriend, and in this universe librarians are important, so I'm here for it. But now the powerful people have tracked her down and they want her weapon plans, AND they're holding her sister hostage! Good thing she just befriended a mysterious assassin with plans of her own. I will say the plot kind of falters in the second half, there are some frustratingly stupid character moments, and though I loved the assassin's story, the rest wasn’t super satisfying. Cool worldbuilding though. B.

2022 book 47

 Emily St John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility

So I will start by saying that I did like this a lot, but all the pre-pub hype saying it was like magical and hopeful gave me certain expectations, and I really /needed/ something magical and hopeful to read, but it didn’t really sweep me up the way I wanted. It’s the story of a weird anomaly and the three people who encounter in across centuries (one is Vincent from Mandel's The Glass Hotel) and the odd man they all encounter, who turns out to be a time traveler from a far future lunar colony, investigating the weird anomaly! And the book is really about him! But like I just needed more to be really invested; this novel is pretty short and I think could have used a few more moments with the characters. I did enjoy the meta aspects—one of the characters is a novelist in the 2200s who writes a pandemic novel just before a pandemic and has to suffer through a lot of interviews about it. Lol, I see you, Emily St John Mandel. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on April 5th.

2022 book 46

 Sarah Lotz's The Impossible Us

I am often very lukewarm on contemporary romances, but this one had a hook I couldn’t resist—it’s about a (straight) couple who meets when he sends an email to the wrong address, but eventually they realize they are in ALTERNATE WORLDS!! I love alternate worlds! Unfortunately, I didn’t love this book. I almost gave up on it early on bc I found the dude very tiresome, but they hadn’t figured out the parallel universe thing yet and I wanted to see that play out. And I was interested enough to keep reading, as he gets involved with an alternate-world-group and has some personal growth, though his love interest gets way less likable as things play out. But the end was just a whole lot of dread for how it would wrap up, and I wasn’t into it AT ALL. It's kind of a messed up ending! It just left a really unpleasant taste in my mouth. B-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on March 22nd.

2022 book 45

 Anne Tyler's French Braid

This started off a little rocky for me, since the first character we meet is a twenty-something grad student in 2010 whose narrative voice I would charitably describe as old-fashioned, which was not the vibe in 2010 (as someone who was a grad student in the early to mid-2000s I feel qualified to speak to this). Luckily we then flash back to the late 1950s, to her mother's teen years, and Tyler hits her groove with the story of a complicated family and how they grew apart. Some of the characters worked better than others, and one in particular absolutely infuriated me (Desmond! You poor baby!). This wasn’t breaking new ground or anything, but it was interesting and enjoyable. B+.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on March 22nd.

2022 book 44

 Katharine Kerr’s The Silver Mage

Solid ending to this epic fantasy series. I might have wished for a little less of the everybody pairing up in a hetero relationship and having babies etc as a happy ending, but that is balanced out by main character ladies who don’t have babies I guess (this series features one gay kiss and one briefly mentioned possible lesbian relationship). I mean that is kind of a sidebar to everything else that happens in this book, ha! Lots of war and action and DRAGONS and an interesting focus on fatherhood and of course on correcting past mistakes. I really enjoyed being lost in this world for a little while. A-.

2022 book 43

 Katharine Kerr’s The Shadow Isle

I will hand it to this author that a throwaway scene from several books ago suddenly matters as we get some interesting new characters who are determined to find their dragon daddies (ok, that’s just one character, but I love her enough for more). A few plot points are resolved, and a lot more are thrown into the mix. I’m just super invested in all of it! Not sure how Kerr is going to wrap up five hundred years' worth of stuff in the next volume, but I have great faith that she will do so!

2021 book 42

 Katharine Kerr’s The Spirit Stone

Everything in this world is kind of becoming an enjoyable blur at this point (there is a whole flashback timeline section in this one, and damned if I can remember a single thing about it, even though I read it earlier today! There are just so many timelines now!), but I'm not saying that to complain. Rather, it’s complete escapism and I am going to be BEREFT when I am done (there are two more books left in the Deverry Cycle, and then it looks like the author published the start of a related series in 2020?).

2021 book 41

 Katharine Kerr’s The Gold Falcon

The fourth subseries in the larger Deverry Cycle starts off fifty years after the previous book, and of course some of our longer-lived characters are still going strong, while others have been reincarnated and are getting to know each other, are relearning their skills, etc (I was very invested in all of that, and in how their souls have actually learned from the past!). Of course now there's a weird cult infiltrating things, leading to yet more war, and there’s some dragon drama, so it’s not all scribing and romantic plotting. Looks like there’s gonna be a major and long war in the follow up books, but I remain much more interested in the sorcery half of swords-and-sorcery. A/A-.

2022 book 40

 Katharine Kerr’s The Fire Dragon

Well, this wraps up several storylines in a satisfying way and hints at some interesting ones coming up in the next series, but also does something toward the end that I did NOT see coming and I applaud Kerr and her ridiculous Evander wholeheartedly. Still really enjoy her characters (she has a fascinating array of women; I of course am partial to the one that keeps recurring who is interested in HISTORY and of course to all the ones learning magic) and I liked that the plots in this one centered more on politics than on sieges. A-.

2022 book 39

 Katharine Kerr’s The Black Raven

This little sub series is a trilogy instead of a set of four, so there are a lot of pieces in motion in this book, but I have faith Kerr will bring it all together in the third volume. Lots of magic and interpersonal problems, fewer battles and grisly action scenes, so I enjoyed this one a lot. We're now getting backstory on important pieces of jewelry and honestly, I’m here for it. A-.

2022 book 38

 Katharine Kerr’s The Red Wyvern

Back on my bullshit, reading old fantasy series instead of new library books. This is the start of another sub-series in the Deverry Cycle, and introduces some new characters (including, briefly, one who seems to be in our world, or at least a world with Christianity) before linking them up with some characters from the first series. It does fill in some holes in the flashback timeline and I liked those new characters a lot, but was glad we got to see more of the mysterious magical dwarf island as well. I’ll be honest that I have lost track of a lot of the details of who is reincarnated into who across the many, many timelines at this point, but I just sort of let it all wash over me and eventually it all makes sense. The villains here are all pretty two-dimensional (read: boring) but everyone else makes up for it. A-.