2022 book 76

 A.G. Slatter's All the Murmuring Bones

I recently figured out that A.G. Slatter is Angela Slatter, whose work I like a lot, so hooray for new-to-me books by an author I like! Anyway, this is the story of a young woman who's the last in the direct line of a family that made a deal with the merfolk for prosperity and safety and whatnot, but they haven’t kept up their end of the bargain and their fortunes are in decline. So her grandmother is going to marry her off to a wealthy but awful cousin to try and restore things. I will say this story went to a lot of places I didn’t expect, and it’s always nice (or at least interesting) to be surprised. Parts of this are pretty dark/grim but the protagonist and her voice kept me engaged (I really enjoyed her) and I liked how it wrapped up a lot. A-.

2022 book 75

 Megan O'Keefe's Velocity Weapon

I feel like I’ve been reading this book for like a whole week, it’s very long and there is so much going on. So it's a pretty classic sci fi sort of story, one POV character is a military woman who has been rescued by an enemy ship after a devastating battle—and when I say rescued by a ship, I mean the ship, because it's an AI! I looooove a spaceship with feelings! And the other main POV character is her younger brother, a rising political star dealing with space politics, which I also enjoy. But then there is sporadically a third POV character, a thief on a job gone very wrong, as well as occasional interludes from a journalist (fine, I liked her) and the woman on earth in the past who spearheaded their space shortcuts. Clearly a lot of that is going to come into play in later books, but between all that and a romance and the various timelines it is kind of too much. And this ends in a cliffhanger that actually makes me not super interested in reading the later books. I really liked the siblings and their stories and wish this book was just those sections, it would have been a lot tighter. B+.

2022 book 74

 Anna Carey's This is Not the Jess Show

This is a YA novel novel about a teen girl growing up in the 90s, except actually she’s one of the main characters on what is basically the Truman Show, except nostalgia themed. I liked the characters and plot here a lot, a fun read for sure, but I could have done without the cliched teen romance. Like if you are literally on the run, maybe don’t stop to make out. That is my YA pet peeve! There’s a sequel due out in May which I may read depending on how central the romance is (I’m more interested in seeing a teen girl take down a corrupt media empire, personally). B+.

2022 book 73

 Molly Gloss' Wild Life

Sooooo this novel is about a woman living in the Pacific Northwest in 1905, a mother of five rowdy boys, who supports her family by writing adventure novels and stories, and when a little girl goes missing, she joins the hunt, only to get lost in the woods…and get adopted by a pack of sasquatches. Just getting that out there. I really liked this; it’s constructed as a diary with little excerpts of stories and newspaper articles and the like, as discovered years later by a granddaughter, who isn’t sure if it’s real or if it’s an abandoned novel. And I loved the first half, the struggle to balance writing and motherhood. It slows down a little once her wilderness exploits come into play, but it’s still very interesting, and I liked how things wrapped up (or at least thought they were fitting). A-. 

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Trigger warning for mention of rape and some unwanted groping.

2022 book 72

 Patricia McKillip’s The Bards of Bone Plain

Hmm, another interesting one from McKillip, but not one of my favorites. It’s about a cast of characters around a bard school, primarily one disaffected youth looking for a research paper topic, interspersed with the story of a famous bard from history/poetry. The modern storyline was more interesting to me, and I feel like some of those characters (mainly the women, especially a talented bard and a princess/archaeologist) and a late stage romance got short shrift because of the alternating timelines. I did like the bits about doing research and the eventual identity reveals, but I’m not sure the end totally made sense. B+.

2022 book 71

 Louise Erdrich's The Sentence

Rereading this bc I’m making my book club discuss it this month (I am the benevolent dictator of our book club). I will say I enjoyed rereading this maybe even more than initially reading it, because you can see the pieces come together (and because you’re mentally prepared to read a book that gets into Covid and the George Floyd protests in the back half). This novel is the story of Tookie, an amazing narrator and protagonist who gets out of prison and gets a job at a bookstore (the bookstore the author owns in real life). Which is being haunted by their most annoying customer. So it’s a great love letter to books and bookstores, while also talking about love and family (all kinds of families) and the experiences of Indigenous people and the connections we have to one another. This was one of my favorite books of last year and I loved it just as much this time. I just hope my book club agrees!

2022 book 70

 John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society

I’ve actually never read anything by Scalzi before, but I had this checked out of the library when a friend at Seder happened to be raving about it, so I figured I might as well! Anyway, it is a fun and mostly diverting novel (I did bodily cringe at the occasional mentions of Covid and the Tr*mp Administration) about a guy who gets a mysterious job at a place that turns out to be in a parallel earth full of kaijus, with scientists studying them and so on. Parts of this are pretty predictable, but it’s all entertaining and action packed and I did actually laugh out loud a few times. I think the world could have been fleshed out a little more (presumably more than like ten people work there) but no major complaints. A-/B+.

2022 book 69

 C.S.E. Cooney's Saint Death's Daughter

I really liked Cooney's Desdemona and the Deep, so when I saw she had a new novel out, I immediately bought it. And it was SO GOOD?? It’s about a girl who’s a necromancer, from a powerful family of necromancers and assassins, but she’s literally allergic to violence! And when her parents die and it turns out they were deeply in debt, she and her terrifying (not in a fun way) older sister have to figure out a way to keep things together. But really this is about found family, politics, magic, love, trust, and adorable undead dogs. Lots of action, lots of great characters and great relationships, lots of surprises along the way. I really, really enjoyed this, and Cooney might now be an insta-buy author for me. A.

2022 book 68

 Isaac Fellman's Dead Collections

All right, I read the trans vampire archivist book! (And he even turned out to be Jewish, so extra relevant to my interests.) Anyway, yes, this novel is about a trans dude who is also a vampire (vampirism being a cure for tetanus in this story), who’s working as an archivist, processing the collection of a lesbian sci-fi tv show writer, and falling in love with her wife. I liked both characters and liked them together, but was more interested in the archival work stuff (and how the vampirism comes into play there). I also liked all the sections told in emails/texts/Facebook posts. Interesting and a little bit weird! A-/B+.

2022 book 67

 Patricia McKillip's Song for the Basilisk

Man, another winner from McKillip. This one is full of magic, music, and politics, and I love all three. And even while all the pieces were coming together, I still wasn’t sure how it would end. Really fun variety of POV characters too, and I liked all their different relationships. It’s rare for an author to write such beautiful and interesting and satisfying stories, each one surprising in its own way. A.

2022 book 66

 Katherine Locke's This Rebel Heart

So this is the story of a Jewish girl in Hungary in 1956, on the eve of the revolution. But it’s not a straightforward historical novel—there’s a fair amount of magical realism going on, like Budapest being literally leached of colors, the river being magical, and an angel of death that happens to be hanging around (making out with local youths) (like 75 percent of the dudes in this book are bi). I think this book does a lot of things well—excellent on the Jewish stuff and Holocaust survivor narratives, dealing with the sins committed by your fathers, cool friendships and newspaper shenanigans, etc. But like my issue is that I /knew/ how this revolution went, so the back half of the book is slow and also suffused with dread, which isn’t super fun to read (I wasn’t that invested in the characters and their makeouts, but maybe it needed more of that?). I did appreciate the golem talk, though. And the girl power. The ending just didn’t totally land for me. As a side note, there is an informative author's note at the end that does /mention/ the current issues with anti-semitism in Hungary, but I really think that needed to be hammered home more since it is such a big part of the story itself. Like, that problem was not cured. B+.

2022 book 65

 Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons

Barnhill's first adult book is, I think, also the best thing I’ve read by her. It’s set in the 1950s and 60s, primarily focusing on a little girl growing up in a world constrained by the patriarchy—and in a world where thousands of women have transformed into dragons (pleased to report this does explicitly include trans women). Her story (and her family's) is interspersed with the dragon-related writings of a scientist, fighting anti-dragon sentiment. I really liked this. Just really compelling characters (including a bad-ass old lady librarian), great/interesting sister relationships, lots of lesbians, and I loved how it all wrapped up.   Just gave me a really warm feeling inside (not a dragon pun). A.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on May 3rd.

2022 book 64

 Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes

The internet has been buzzing about this book, and since I love a cozy fantasy, I figured I’d check it out. And it lives up to the hype! It’s a very cute story about a lady orc who retires from battling to open up a coffee shop (in a city that has never heard of coffee). There are still some tensions—she doesn’t want to pay protection money to the local crime boss, and also someone wants to steal her good luck magical stone—but this is mainly just a nice story about nice people making friends and enjoying baked goods. With a tiny bit of romance. More like this, please. A/A-.

2022 book 63

 Molly Gloss' Falling from Horses

 I was a good quarter of the way into this before I realized it’s a sequel to The Hearts of Horses, in that the protagonist here is the son of the protagonist in that one. Anyway, the story starts with a nineteen year old boy on his way to Hollywood in 1938, where he wants to be a stunt rider in cowboy movies. Along the way he befriends a young woman who wants to be a screenwriter. I liked the narrative voice here a lot; he’s telling the story as a much older man, looking back on his year in Hollywood, and flashing back to his childhood and to a family tragedy. I did kind of want a little bit more from the friendship, or from his older years in general, but I liked seeing the bits and pieces of it that we did get. Note that movies in the 1930s did not care about animal safety and there are some grim scenes with horses (and riders). A/A-.

2022 book 62

 Claribel Ortega's Witchlings

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted it to be the new Harry Potter, with a non-gross author. But this needed an editor with a harder hand. It’s about a little witch girl about to be sorted into her coven, but it turns out she’s a Spare, a coven-less witch treated as a second class citizen (this society makes zero sense), and she and her fellow Spares have to complete an impossible task to keep their magic or else they’ll be turned into toads. But like, nothing in this story is SUBTLE. All the plot beats are obvious, the villains are all mustache-twirling bad guys, even the friends we made along the way feels rote. There are some cool moments and characters (I was partial to the librarian and the super strong baby) but so much of this was just formulaic. Plus the word “smirk” is used about 87 times. :( I just don’t think middle grade books need so much hand-holding. B.

2022 book 61

 Adrienne Celt's End of the World House

This book was very INTERESTING but I didn’t LOVE it. It’s set in the near future (I guess?) where the world is ravaged by storms and floods and bombings, but things have calmed down enough for our two best friend characters to take a trip to Paris, where they’re invited to visit the Louvre on a day when it’s closed. Except then they get stuck in a time loop and things really go off the rails. This official description says this is “ a thought-provoking comedic novel about two young women trying to save their friendship as the world collapses around them” and that’s the novel I wanted to read, but it ends up not really being about their friendship, or at least I had mixed feelings on how it’s all resolved. I did think the main character on her journey was compelling, but the end stressed me out a little. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on April 19th.

2022 book 60

 Patricia McKillip's Od Magic

McKillip is sometimes hit or miss for me, but this one was a major hit. Some things here I love: magic schools, politics, plants, mysteries, cute older couples, secret women's magic, a little bit of romance, optimism and love. Things start off when a young man gifted with powerful magic, who lives in an isolated village chilling with plants, is recruited by a mysterious woman to be the new gardener at her magic school. And that sets all sorts of stuff into motion. And if you think you’ve maybe guessed the plot from that little description, let me assure you that that guy isn’t the main character and the protagonists (a burned out magic teacher, a princess, and a magician's daughter) are even more interesting. I really liked this, just wished there was a little bit more to the ending. A/A-.