2022 book 78

 Tanya Huff's Fifth Quarter

The second book in this series focuses on a new cast of characters somewhere entirely different, which was a problem because I found both of the protagonists here to be very unpleasant to read about. One is a young assassin woman who would be great if she didn’t want to bang her brother, the other is a guy who keeps body swapping with people to extend his life, and has stolen her brother's body (she ends up sharing her body with her brother till they can steal it back). And then it becomes clear there's going to be a romance between these two characters, which I was doubly not into (I also didn’t think the writing on that was great). A bard and a prince do eventually come into the mix, as does a senile and terrifying necromancer, but I should not be rooting for most of the main characters to die in a book like this. The plot is also really slow, as everyone is just traveling around after each other for the entire book, boring and exhausting. If you’re wondering why I forced myself to finish, it’s because I want to read the next two books. Though the next one also focuses on these characters and I don’t know if I can do another book with them. C.