2022 book 239

 Megan Whalen Turner's Return of the Thief

A very satisfying conclusion to this series, full of war and intrigue and betrayal and loyalty and love! It’s narrated by a very young attendant of the king, a boy born with a physical disability and raised mostly in isolation, and thrust into the king's court as part of a political game (he’s mentioned very briefly in the fifth book, which overlaps with the beginning of this one, and I was like ??? about it, since he’s from a family of political enemies, but of course it all makes sense). There are a few explicitly queer minor characters in this one, which is nice, but feels odd since there never were any in the earlier books. Like, thanks, I guess? Well, anyway, just a small quibble, I really liked this. A/A-.

2022 book 238

 Megan Whalen Turner's Thick as Thieves

I think this does work better read with the first four and not as a stand-alone, since the main POV character is a minor character from book two (the slave/secretary to the imperial ambassador) who's been stolen away by the main POV character from book three (the soldier). However, it is still a very slow read, as it’s just the two of them on the run for 90 percent of the book. I did enjoy their growing friendship, but books where it’s just people journeying around can be very tiresome. I do have hopes that the sixth book will be more action-packed (or at least have more political intrigue).

2022 book 237

 Megan Whalen Turner's A Conspiracy of Kings

It’s funny to me that when I read this twelve years ago, I complained about there being too much “boring political stuff” when now I’m like “yeah!! Intrigues!!” I do still think this is maybe the weakest of the first four, but still very entertaining, as the earnest young guy from book one gets kidnapped and has to foil plots against him and claim his throne. I enjoy that character a lot. 

2022 book 236

 Megan Whalen Turner's The King of Attolia

I think I liked this much more this time around than last time I read it—I am guessing I wasn’t super into court politics back then, but it’s exactly the sort of thing I enjoy these days. The main POV character here is a member of the Queen's Guard who ends up guarding the king and slowly coming to respect him. This is ALL court politics and I love it.

2022 book 235

 Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen of Attolia

It’s funny, I read this book over a decade ago, and if you asked me to describe it before this reread, I’d have just shrugged, but as soon as I was into it I remembered so many of the details (and reveals). (It was a little distracting waiting to see if I remembered correctly.) This second volume is a fair amount darker than the first one, but I enjoy all the war and diplomacy and court politics and gods of it all. I found it very satisfying. 

2022 book 234

 Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief

I didn’t actually dive right into another fantasy series after that last one, but both of the palate cleansers I tried—a contemporary literary fiction and a stand-alone fantasy—were SO BORING that my palate was ready for something fun. I have read the first five books in this series before, but a very long time ago, and meanwhile a sixth one came out, so here we go. This first one involves a young man who’s in prison for theft, at least until the local powerful mage guy frees him to help the mage steal something out of legends (this book has cool gods/world-building stuff going on). Very entertaining.

2022 book 233

 Tanith Lee's Wolf Wing

The final book in this series ended up being fairly tedious. I don’t care enough about it to try and think of anything else to say. B-.

2022 book 232

 Tanith Lee's Queen of the Wolves

This one also takes a while to actually get interesting (how many times is this protagonist going to get kidnapped and take forever to learn some crucial information????), but the second half has some awesome parts. This world is a weird mashup of fantasy and sci fi, I wonder how that will all be addresses in the final volume. B+.

2022 book 231

 Tanith Lee's Wolf Star

The second book in this series doesn’t actually get interesting till the second half—the book starts with the heroine being kidnapped and taken on a long journey and eventually imprisoned in a weird and isolated palace where the rooms move and the servants are the products of strange experimentations. I am curious about where her story goes next but this was kind of blah. B/B+.

2022 book 230

 Tanith Lee's Wolf Tower

I’ve been looking for more series to read that are told as diaries, and found this one, and I was into it! The narrator is a sixteen year old girl, a maid in a fantasy world, whose parents were exiled when she was just a baby. And then a traveler is captured, and a powerful old woman asks the maid to help him escape, and adventures ensue. But not the way I expected. I liked this very much and am immediately starting the second one. A-.

2022 book 229

 Stephanie Burgis' Scales and Sensibility 

This is a regency-era fantasy romance in a world that is pretty much historically accurate, except there are cute lil dragons that ALL the fashionable ladies wear as accessories. Our story starts with a young woman, a poor relation living with her spoiled cousin, who rescues her cousin's mistreated dragon and runs away! Some of the plot is really interesting and fun; I was less interested in the romance, but that’s mainly because our heroine falls in love with a dude she's known for literally a day. Lots of fun shenanigans here, though. This is the first of a series (the heroine has two younger sisters) and I look forward to the next. B+.

2022 book 228

 Kate Elliott's The Keeper's Six

Elliott is sometimes hit or miss for me, but this was really fun! I'm not going to try and explain the world here (it’s interesting though)—suffice it to say the protagonist, a sixty year old woman, has to get the band back together when her adult son is kidnapped by a dragon and she has to go on a mission to free him. The main character and her family are all really vivid; I did think the secondary characters could have used a bit more development (but it looks like there might be more in the series and room for that later). The protagonist also happens to be Jewish, which isn’t super relevant to the plot but is important to her character, so I was here for that. I hope there will be more books with her and her rabble-rousing, unionizing family. A-.

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

2022 book 227

 Rachel Neumeier’s Shines Now and Heretofore

Neumeier likes to do this thing where she will just write a book about a secondary character in her main series, which I think is delightful! Said character here is The Outlaw Leader With The Mysterious Past, and it’s great, lots of cameraderie and feelings etc. I wanted a little bit more of the ending but no major complaints. A-.

2022 book 226

 Rachel Neumeier’s As Shadow, A Light

An action-packed finale to the main trilogy in this series—wars, outlaws, prison breaks, etc. I do like the author's sense of humor. There is some business in this one where one of the main characters—the sassy twenty-two year old, who gets to use her martial arts skills quite a bit—dyes her fair skin and blonde hair to better blend in with the locals, and that gave me a little bit of pause. Is that blackface? Can you have blackface in a fantasy world where it has no social/cultural context? She is also threatened with rape a couple times, but see aforementioned martial arts skills. Her dad is also a POV character and undergoes what amounts to psychological torture, so this in general is a little darker than the first two. But balanced with moments of lightness. B+.

2022 book 225

 Rachel Neumeier’s Of Absence, Darkness

The second book in the Death's Lady series takes place sixteen years after the first, and finds the psychiatrist from the first book whisked away to the other world with his former patient, now friend, and his now-twenty-something daughter. This was kind of slow, like the first, but I enjoy court politics, and there’s a mystery element in trying to figure out who their enemy is. I mean I am not like OMG about these books, but they are an interesting diversion. A-/B+.

2022 book 224

 Rachel Neumeier’s The Year's Midnight

Starting another series by Neumeier; this one is intriguing because it’s set in our normal world (but it is a fantasy series!). The main character in the first half is a psychiatrist who’s moved and taken a new job in the wake of his wife's death, and one of his new patients claims to be from another world—except the reader knows from page one that she’s telling the truth. I’ll be honest that nothing much happens in this,but the characters were enough to keep me interested, and there are hints later volumes will be more action-packed. A-/B+.

2022 book 223

 C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner

I had tried to read this book once before, and bogged down in a chapter where space-traveling humans decided to settle a planet that already has an advanced civilization, and I was so annoyed at those COLONISTS and it went on FOREVER. But then I found out that’s not actually what the book is about—there are two sections at the beginning kind of explaining the history of the current conflict, and that’s one of them. So the main story is set a couple hundred years later and focuses on the sort-of-ambassador from the humans to the pre-existing people being a political pawn. But like he spends 90 percent of the book just being confused about everything, which is not really fun for a reader. There are some interesting moments and characters, and normally I am down for diplomacy in my books, but this guy was SUPER frustrating. I wanted to get into a big ol' series, but it seems like he’s the protagonist of the next few books and I just can’t do it. B.

2022 book 222

 Kate Saunders' The Mystery of the Sorrowful Maiden

Somehow I missed there was a new one in this series about a respectable Victorian widow who solves crimes (with a dry sense of humor). This mystery involves a scandalous group of actors, and at first it’s just financial stuff, but pretty soon a body is uncovered and there’s a murder to be solved. I will say some of the late reveals are pretty obvious, and I’m not sure how obvious some of them were supposed to be, but the mystery was solid and I did have my doubts about whether my guesses were correct. I want to give a content warning here but it’s kind of a spoiler?? B+.

2022 book 221

 Makoto Shinkai and Naruki Nagakawa's She and Her Cat (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

I was having one of those days where every book I started just felt MEH, so I grabbed this one, figuring cats always hit the spot—and it was so good I cried. Just a really nice book, a set of stories about people in the same neighborhood, narrated by them and by their cats. But just SO DELIGHTFUL. Apparently it’s based on some manga by Makoto Shinkai (the guy who made Your Name and other excellent movies), so if that’s your vibe,  e sure and check this out. Also check it out if your vibe is NICE PEOPLE AND CATS. A.

2022 book 220

 Elizabeth Moon's Victory Conditions 

Well, I didn’t really love this last volume of this series. There were plenty of enjoyable moments, but way too much time was spent on a shoehorned-in romance. Like literally I think there was one sentence in an earlier book suggesting the dude has feelings for the protagonist, and there was no buildup here, they are just in love and angsty about it (but in an annoying way). I will say I also found many of his sections really awkwardly written for some reason, and very repetitive. Even the was stuff was kind of boring! The big battle was not satisfying at all. There are also so many unresolved subplots! I still enjoy all the family relationships, but I don’t know if I’m going to bother with the sequel series. B.

2022 book 219

 Elizabeth Moon's Command Decision

I am still into this series! Lots of stuff happening in this one, as the evildoer conspiracy gets even more evil (a baby is killed, but off-page) and our protagonists try and assemble allies to fight the space pirates, including some dandified history buffs. I basically immediately forget all the action-y details as soon as they’re out of my eyeballs, but I enjoy them while they’re there! Looking forward to the final volume, I predict DRAMA. A-.

2022 book 218

 Elizabeth Moon’s Engaging the Enemy

The third Vatta's War book mainly focuses on the protagonist trying to get people to band together against the space pirates, who are stepping up their attacks. Meanwhile, her great-aunt is dealing with enemies back home (I was VERY pleased to see more of the great-aunt in this one) and cousin Stella is trying to figure out her role in the family business. A lot happens in this one, and some was tense and some was obvious and some was thrilling, and I’m looking forward to the fourth book. A-.

2022 book 217

 Elizabeth Moon's Marque and Reprisal

This picks up pretty much where the first one left off, only now the mysterious group destroying intergalactic communication devices comes for the protagonist’s entire family, leaving most of them dead in a series of attacks. So now it’s up to her, her famously flighty cousin, and her fruitcake-baking great aunt to figure out who’s after them and why (both the other women are extremely awesome, I hope we see more of the aunt in later volumes). The end chunk of this was kind of confusing and messy (literally in the latter case), lots of battling etc, but I’m intrigued about where things might go next. A-.

Favorite books of 2022!

Insert the usual line here about finally admitting I'm not going to get to the MANY books I meant to read this year, and so here are my favorites of the 2022 releases I did get to. Another weird year where I was into escapism and hope and HEART! Alphabetically by author: 

Olivia Atwater's Small Miracles

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

Jennifer Egan's The Candy House

Ruthanna Emrys' A Half-Built Garden

Linda Holmes' Flying Solo

Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country

Rebecca Podos' From Dust, A Flame

Emma Straub's This Time Tomorrow

T. Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone

Honorable mention to The Earthsea Cycle and the Annals of the Western Shore series by Ursula LeGuin, both of which I got to experience for the first time this year. Here's to 2023!

2022 book 216

 Elizabeth Moon's Trading in Danger

Back on my bullshit, reading sci-fi series I missed when they came out (plus I like Elizabeth Moon). This centers on a young woman who’s kicked out of her military academy for accidentally contributing to a scandal, and so her family, a powerful group of traders, sends her to captain a rickety old ship on a job and get out of the spotlight for a while. But soon enough she’s in a burgeoning war zone and things are getting dicier by the day. Great characters, action, humor, and some seriously tense and sad moments, very satisfying read. A/A-.

2022 book 215

 Meg Howrey's They’re Going to Love You

I LOVED all of Howrey's previous novels, but this one I kept picking up, reading the first paragraph, thinking “I’m not in the mood for this,” and reading something else instead. This time I finally plowed ahead but it did take me a bit to get into. It’s about a woman, a ballet dancer turned choreographer, whose parents were both dancers, but then her father fell in love with a man and her parents divorced, and her mother moved her to Ohio, and so trips to visit her father and his boyfriend in New York were rare and glamorous, but she and her father have been estranged for almost twenty years because of a Betrayal, but now his husband has called her because her father is dying and she has to return to New York to say goodbye. Parts of this worked really well for me—the childhood visits in the 80s during the AIDS crisis particularly—but I didn’t always enjoy the narrative voice and the betrayal doesn’t turn out to be very interesting. I did also enjoy the portrait of a woman creative in a male-dominated field, and her joy in her work. Beautiful ending, but not my favorite by this author. A-/B+.

2022 book 214

 Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House

So this is a super queer mystery set in 1950s San Francisco; the protagonist was a detective for the SFPD until he was caught in a police raid in a gay club. He’s actively contemplating suicide when a rich woman hires him to figure out who killed her wife (no, this is not set in a world where gay marriage was legal in the 1950s, but they were basically wives, ok), and invites him into her home full of secretly queer people. The mystery itself was so-so, but I really enjoyed the characters a lot, and the end seems like a setup for a series that I would definitely read. Warning for characters encountering a lot of homophobia, including homophobic violence. This is not a super dark mystery, but it’s not wholly cozy and fun either (though there are a lot of nice and funny moments). A-.

2022 book 213

 Andrea K. Host's And All the Stars

I decided a YA sci-fi stand-alone would be a good palate cleanser after being immersed in a series, and it served its purpose. Things start very abruptly just after an alien invasion of dust that kills lots of people, gives some superpowers, and turns others into basically slaves. Our protagonist is a teen girl, an artist, who ends up banding together with some other teens for survival…and eventually, they plan to fight back. Once things got going I was into it, very action packed if occasionally overly dramatic. I wasn’t super invested in the romance (the main characters are straight but a bunch of the secondary characters are queer). But great friendships here! I do think the “five years later” epilogue actually weakened things, or at least I didn’t find it particular necessary or interesting. B+.

2022 book 212

 Beth Brower’s The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol. 6

Well, now I’m all caught up on this series (though more seem to be forthcoming), and of course this one ends more dramatically than the previous five—a cliffhanger of sorts! How frustrating. I am also going to have a serious book hangover. I need to find more novels written as diaries, because this is the second series like that I’ve been really into lately (the other was YA science fiction, very different and yet much the same).

2022 book 211

 Beth Brower’s The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol. 5

I’m bummed that I only have one more volume before I’m all caught up with this series, because I’ve really been enjoying it. This one turned out to be seasonally appropriate, as it covers an eventful December and a pleasant Christmas. Just a lot of niceness and big ol' hearts.

2022 book 210

 Beth Brower’s The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol. 4

This volume goes a little deeper as Emma more directly deals with her grief (besides being an orphan, she lost her first love in one of England's imperialist wars) and cements her place in an interesting new circle of friends. I actually would be fine with her not marrying any of the dudes in these books, their friendships are much more interesting. A/A-.

2022 book 209

 Beth Brower’s The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol 3

I am really enjoying these, they’re pretty chill but there’s enough going on to keep things interesting—ie, tracking down clues to get tickets to a secret Shakespeare play, going to eventful dinner parties full of Reprobates, exchanging barbed comments with the local Duke, etc. I still wonder if the more fantastic elements will ramp up, but I’m enjoying things just fine without. A/A-.

2022 book 208

 Beth Brower's The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol. 2

Well, I can already tell I’m going to tear through this entire series, these books are very entertaining and also not very long. Further adventures in amusing British socializing and a bevy and potential future love interests (all dudes, alas, though it’s possible the protagonist's beloved cousin is queer, she is definitely uninterested in men). Very relaxing and funny. A/A-.