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-.

2022 book 207

 Beth Brower's The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, vol. 1

Yes yes, I have a ton of 2022 books on my kindle I keep meaning to read, and there’s only a month left in the year, but I wasn’t in the mood for any of those and the narrative voice here gripped me right away! I was under the impression this was a historical fantasy series, and while there are a few hints of the unusual, this is a fairly non-magical Regency-era diary of a young woman trying to claim her inheritance—and deal with various relatives and the upcoming Season. But like I said, I was very into the writing style here and will be immediately starting volume 2. A/A-.

2022 book 206

 Laurie Colwin's A Big Storm Knocked It Over

I was talking earlier today about how I easily have fifty books on my kindle waiting to be read, so I thought I’d make an effort to read one (I bought this book in 2019, haha). I didn’t like this quite as much as the previous book I’d read by Colwin, but it was a pleasant read and I liked the narrative voice a lot. The protagonist is a thirty-something newlywed, adjusting to married life and contemplating a pregnancy, all while dealing with difficult colleagues at a publishing company. (There are some absolutely hilarious moments in her workplace, and some really sweet moments in her home life.) I will say that this was written in the 90s, so I was very shocked to see straight up racist slurs being casually thrown around, so be warned about THAT. B+.

2022 book 205

 Sharon Shinn's The Shuddering City

Shinn's latest is an stand-alone featuring an array of narrators—a former priest, who left the city ten years ago and is now returning; a young woman warrior who needs a job and suddenly has a child in her care; another young woman who may or may not have someone trying to kill her; and a guard whose charge is a woman on house arrest for mysterious reasons, famous for seducing her guards to help her escape. These stories come together in a really interesting way, though some of the reveals were way grimmer than I expected! Still, it’s Shinn, so I had faith things would work out in a satisfying manner. I always love her little details; here, everyone has bracelets that indicate their gender identity/sexual orientation, as well as other bracelets for family members, and everyone is forever lifting up sleeves to be like “here’s my deal” which I liked. A/A-.

2022 book 204

 T. Kingfisher’s Illuminations

Normally a new T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon book makes my DAY, but this one took me a really long time to get into. It’s about a girl from a family of magical painters (I loved this concept), lots of great eccentric relatives, who finds a mysterious box in the basement and accidentally frees a monster. But then a lot of the story is “I can’t tell my family for Reasons” when there actually aren’t any reasons, which is very frustrating. I will say things do pick up eventually and I loved the last, like, third, but I did almost give up on this and I can’t say that’s ever happened to me with this author before. B. 

2022 book 203

 Victoria Goddard’s At the Feet of the Sun

So this is the much-anticipated sequel to a book I am into (and which a corner of the internet is feral for), and it’s over 1300 pages long, and SO MUCH happens, and I haven’t decided how I feel about all of it yet. Things start where one might expect, but soon Kip is having some mystical adventures of his own! I definitely liked how things ended up playing out, and I am very eager to see what happens next. Lots of very funny moments too. I guess A/A-?

2022 book 202

 Victoria Goddard’s The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul

The book ends in such a way that it feels like being wrapped in a warm hug, and that is a feeling we need in spades these days, I think. I love this particular Goddard book for a) middle-aged adventurers b) giggling friendships (especially between women, when most of her books have featured men) and c) the general sense of humor. Perhaps too much meditation on scenery, but I enjoy that sort of thing. 

2022 book 201

 Victoria Goddard’s The Return of Fitzroy Angursell

Rereading more Goddard books in preparation for a new one coming next week! In this one, which follows the events of The Hands of the Emperor, infamous poet Fitzroy Angursell sets off on a quest, begins to reunite with some old friends, and learns the importance of a good pair of socks. This one always takes me a couple of chapters to get into, because the narrative voice can be (purposely) overwrought, but once the plot gets going there’s a lot of wry humor and nice feelings and friendship to carry me through.

2022 book 200

 Victoria Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor

I didn’t intentionally reread one of my favorite books as my 200th read of the year, but the timing worked out nicely since the long-awaited sequel is out next week! It’s interesting to see which parts you notice more/resonate with when you’re rereading a book, especially one where as much stuff happens as this one! If you’ve never read it (or read any of my previous lil reviews), it’s the story of the secretary/head of the government for the Emperor, a man who is also a living god, and how he slowly changes the world for the better. It’s also the story of a bunch of middle aged men dealing with their repressed feelings and becoming FRIENDS. So many delightful and bittersweet and funny and triumphant moments. I am so excited to get to see what happens next (to Kip, as of course there are two other books that follow this but aren’t direct sequels).

2022 book 199

 Rachel Neumeier’s The Sphere of the Winds

So I wasn’t as into this one. It just didn’t grab me at all, and I put it down a few times before deciding I might as well see what happened. By the back half I was more into it, there was some interesting political maneuvering. I can’t figure out why it left me a little cold. Too much plot, not enough emotion? The girl tending toward sulkiness? I dunno. B.

2022 book 198

 Rachel Neumeier’s The Floating Islands

This was an enjoyable YA fantasy about a boy whose family (and city) is killed when a volcano erupts, and so he goes to the far-off islands where his mother is from to find her family, and becomes determined to becomes one of their magic-aided fliers. Meanwhile, his (girl) cousin likes to dress up as a boy to attend educational lectures. Soon both are caught up in magic and threats of war. I did like this a lot, I just wished the emotions went a little bit deeper? But I just discovered there’s a sequel and I’m excited to see what adventures they get up to next! A-.

2022 book 197

 Rainbow Rowell's Scattered Showers

So I rarely read collections of short stories unless they’re kind of telling a larger story, bc either a) I get annoyed and want to read a whole novel about the characters, or b) start to find them kind of same-y after a while. And I wish the story order was different here, bc there are SEVERAL in a row about angsty teens getting together with a romantic partner, and it was very same-y at a certain point (I did like the one about the 90s-era college student and the dude who keeps making her mix cds, very relatable lol). And of course some of these stories I had read before. Luckily the last few were newish, revisiting some of my favorite Rowell characters (Beth and Jennifer texting! Simon and Baz at Christmas! And I don’t even LIKE Christmas), and then one involving fictional characters incubating in their author’s mind. Fun stuff. I will say I did the special preorder to get the Simon and Baz AU zine solely because I thought I’d get to see Simon's mom doting on him (the title is “My Rosebud Boy” which is what she called him) but she is actually dead in that story too. Very cute AU but like GIVE ME LUCY DOTING! Anyway, it ended on a high note but took me a couple days to get through the first half. B+?

2022 book 196

 Rainbow Rowell's Any Way the Wind Blows

I DO love spending time with these characters! There are sort of three separate storylines split among five main POVs (and a few others pop up too): Simon and Baz dealing with their relationship, talking about feelings, and investigating a man claiming to be the true Chosen One; Penelope and Shepherd dealing with his curse; and Agatha trying to find her place in the world and dealing with a cranky vet and some goats. Lol. I really loved just being in this world with these characters, but the way the storylines all come together is really nice (and, finally, justice for Lucy).

2022 book 195

 Rainbow Rowell's Wayward Son

It’s a lot easier to enjoy all the lil mages' misadventures in middle America when you know there’s a third volume coming to resolve everything. :) So many good character moments in this one (particularly Agatha toward the end) as they deal with trauma, depression, and vampires. The depiction of tech bros remains prescient. Solid middle chapter that improves on rereading.

2022 book 194

 Rainbow Rowell's Carry On

I’m rereading this series bc Rowell has a book of short stories out this week, and there's a) a new Simon Snow story, and b) a ZINE that seems to be an AU about Simon and his mom??? (Which is extra hilariously meta considering Simon started as a fictional character in a book that another fictional character was writing fanfic about, and then Rowell herself decided to write about about the characters from the book-within-a-book.) I am personally very excited about that bc I think I’ve written “Justice for Lucy” every time I’ve blogged about this book (uh, sorry, spoiler for a book from 2015 there). (Lucy's story breaks my heart EVERY TIME and in fact I am eager to get through the second book so I can reread the third, where there finally is a little bit of justice for Lucy.)

2022 book 193

 Randee Dawn's Tune In Tomorrow: the Curious, Calamitous, Cockamamie Story of Starr Weatherby and the Greatest Mythic Reality Show Ever

This book has a GREAT premise—a struggling actress gets a job on a fake reality tv show run by fairies—but I just wasn’t super into it. There were some fun subplots—I was into the brownie employees staging a strike—but too much of the story was sunk into various unsatisfying romances and one-note villains. I don’t even have anything else to say about it. It was fine. B.

2022 book 192

 Kristin Cashore's Seasparrow

Well, I really enjoyed this, even it was a hard read at times. It focuses on Bitterblue's younger half-sister/spy, who like many from their kingdom is still processing/dealing with/healing from major trauma. There is also a very harrowing journey that covers a lot of the book. But I loved her narrative voice, I love a sad girl who deal with her sadness by being cranky and bitchy, haha. There are also several adorable psychic foxes (but warning that there is some sadness with the foxes too). My only real complaint is that eventually the reader sees exactly where everything is going, and it just takes a little too long to get there. Still, a satisfying and hopeful kind of book. I’m glad to see Cashore exploring new things in this world. It kind of makes me want to reread them all but I remember the first two being pretty grim. Anyway. A/A-.

2022 book 191

 N.K. Jemisin's The World We Make

So an author's note at the end of this book explains that this planned trilogy became a duology basically because of ~waves hand~ the world situation burning the author out (I mentioned this in my reread review of the first one, but because real life has become more like her heightened world in the last few years, it was a much more stressful read the second time). So if the end feels a little rushed, that’s probably why. I did enjoy this enough to gulp it down in one sitting, but it didn’t feel like the strongest Jemisin work. I mean, if it was stressful to read, I'd imagine it was also kind of stressful to write. I think I wanted more catharsis, but the ending just didn’t leave space for that (I did /like/ the ending though). No major complaints, just the world sucking interfered with this story. I hope she gets to write something fun next. A-.

2022 book 190

 N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became

Rereading this because the sequel is out tomorrowwwwww! This was actually more stressful than I remembered (or maybe it’s that there is a fair amount of racist/neo-Nazi/alt-right villainy in here, and there’s been more of that in real life since I read it last). Anyway, I still love the story of a bunch of New Yorkers becoming avatars of the city and fighting off Lovecraftian alien invaders (Ps I hate you, Staten Island) and I’m super excited to read the next volume.

2022 book 189

 Marie Brennan’s Driftwood

I liked the Lady Trent books, so decided to try this book by the same author, about a place where dying worlds come together, and the one man who has lived for generations and seen it all. This book gets at some profound things but it still kind of left me cold. It’s told as a series of stories about the maybe-immortal man, and some are more compelling than others, but also it doesn’t really /lead/ anywhere. I don’t need a pat conclusion but I would have liked more of a point? Very interesting stuff here, but it just didn’t totally come together for me. B.

2022 book 188

 Tracy Deonn's Bloodmarked

I really loved Legendborn, so have been eagerly anticipating/mildly anxious about the second book in the series. And it is a whirlwind, action-packed, tons going on, lots of interesting magical conflict and teen drama balanced out by discussions of serious things like racism and the lingering effects of slavery (there is some VERY COOL Black Girl Magic in this one). I did maybe wish for a little less teen drama, but it IS a YA book, and the text literally acknowledges the drama, so I really can’t complain. I will say the protagonist makes several frustrating (to me) choices during this book, but things move so quickly that it almost doesn’t even matter? At least it’s never predictable! Lots of interesting new characters and revelations, I think the fans will be pleased with this follow-up and intrigued to see where things go next (obviously myself included). A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on November 8th.

2022 book 187

 Rachel Neumeier’s The Keeper of the Mist

I see a lot of lists like “If you like The Goblin Emperor, try these other books” and I’m kind of surprised not to have seen this book on such a list, because it does have a similar plot and feel. I mean it is YA and the main character is a teenage girl, so is it just garden variety sexist dismissiveness? Anyway, this is the story of a tiny little country surrounded by magical mist that hides it from its neighbors, and when the Lord dies, the country chooses his successor—but it’s not one of the three sons everyone expects, it’s his illegitimate teen daughter, who runs the local bakery. So now she’s in charge of things, trying to figure out court politics and deal with magical crises, etc. Maybe that makes it sound fluffier than it is—things do get stressful! My only complaint is that this whole book takes place over like a week or so, and I really wished for more! A-.

2022 book 186

 Everina Maxwell's Ocean's Echo

I think this is set in the same universe as Maxwell's first book, but it seems to be another pocket of it entirely—anyway, it’s definitely a stand-alone. Interestingly, it’s much less of a romance than the first one—or at least the romance is not the focus here at all. I’m not even going to try to describe the plot/world-building because there is a lot going on, suffice it to say that a slightly disreputable dude (whose aunt is a powerful politician) and a career military guy have to pair up to deal with military/political corruption and come to respect each other! Lots of interesting conflicts and action here, a very entertaining read. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on November 1st.

2022 book 185

 Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland's Path of Deceit

I was psyched to start Phase Two of the Star Wars High Republic books, which seem to follow all new characters on all new adventures, but this got WAAAAAAAAY grimmer than I expected, and after reading the descriptions of the upcoming books, I think I’m going to pass on this whole thing. Anyway, this is the story of a master and a padawan posted to the Outer Rim who get tangled up with a weird Force cult and its mysterious prophet. The POV characters are the padawan, a cheerful dude, and two girls from the cult, a pair of cousins, one of whom is a true believer, while the other works as a thief and is desperate to escape with her girlfriend. This book was very effective but also bummed me out in a big way. B?

2022 book 184

 Andrea K. Host's Voice of the Lost

So I was pretty lukewarm on this sequel. Interesting magic stuff/action stuff, and I love all the secondary characters (who needed more screen time), but at a certain point the plot becomes ONLY about a romance that I wasn’t invested in, and drops all the other plotlines, and that was just not an interesting ending to me. B.

2022 book 183

 Andrea K. Host's The Silence of Medair

I really enjoyed the sci-fi series I read by Host, so decided to try a fantasy duology by her since it was already on my to-read list. This is an intriguing set-up, about a woman who works for the Emperor, until an invading army comes, and she goes off on a quest to find a mystical macguffin that will save them. And she finds it! Except she stops to sleep for the night, and when she wakes up, five hundred years have passed, her people lost the war, and both groups have intermarried for centuries, so who even counts as “her people” anymore? And then she’s caught up in a bunch of magic and politics, which is my jam. This fell off a little for me towards the end, but I have hope the sequel will make up for it. A-.

2022 book 182

 Gabrielle Zevin's Young Jane Young

Rereading this for book club this month, and I maintain that this book is very underrated and would have gotten much more attention if it’d come out a couple years later. Just ahead of its time! I think I liked it more the first time I read it, just was more caught up in the story and all the different narrators (and early reports from book club indicate they have all been enjoying it a lot). I mean I still liked it a lot, and especially liked the ending. I’ll be interested in this discussion for sure.

2022 book 181

 Andrea K. Host's In Arcadia

I liked this book, because I’m still very invested in this world, but I liked it a little less than its predecessors. Mainly because it doesn’t have the very likable first person/diary format, and it’s instead third person, but it also felt pretty rushed. I did like that it was about a non-teen (the protagonist of the series' mother!) and was mainly about her finding romance etc (too bad all the major plot point were spoiled by book four). Still, a nice chill read. A-.

2022 book 180

 Andrea K. Host's Gratuitous Epilogue

This is actually meatier than the title suggests, covering basically the year in the life after the end of the trilogy—lots of settling down, marriage and babies and adoptions etc (a few of the minor characters are even not-straight), building new cities and houses and lives together. And of course there are still dangers to fight. This was a nice extended visit with characters I love. A-.

2022 book 179

 Andrea K. Host's Caszandra 

Literally SOBBING about how much I loved this trilogy, talk about a satisfying ending, literal found family, space adventures, book nerdery, lots of love to go around, etc. I was going to have a full book hangover about being done with this, but it turns out there’s a novella (called “Gratuitous Epilogue”), a full length novel, and a cute-sounding short story?? There’s the rest of my day sorted. A.

2022 book 178

 Andrea K. Host's Lab Rat One

I am SUPER INVESTED in these books, I am enjoying the heck out of them. My only complaint about this one is that I wished there was just slightly less pining over her crush (honestly that is very realistic for a teen girl!), but I was still rooting for their romance. Lots more adventures and friendships and snowball fights and archeology in this one, plus a fairly entertaining subplot about a character based on the protagonist being written into a popular tv show (or the alien equivalent of a tv show). I love it. A/A-.

2022 book 177

 Andrea K. Host's Stray

I’ve seen this trilogy recommended a few different places, and I’ve liked the Australian fantasy novels I’ve read, so decided to try some Australian sci-fi. And right away I was totally into it, I love the narrative voice here so much. It’s the story of Cassandra, a teen girl who leaves school one day and somehow walks onto another planet, where she has to find a way to survive…at least until she’s rescued by a highly advanced society that has a protocol for dealing with “strays” who accidentally ended up on planets far from their homes. And then it turns out she’s surprisingly useful… Solid adventures and characters here, and like I said, I was totally caught up in it, can’t wait to see what happens in book two. A/A-.

2022 book 176

 Freya Marske's A Restless Truth

I liked the first book in this series a lot and was psyched for the second, which … was fine. It’s awesome that the romance is between two women (the non-magical sister of one of the guys from book one, and a scandalous magician heiress she meets on a ship from New York back to England), but the romance itself felt kind of rushed/all over the place (the whole book takes place over six days). Whereas solving the mystery (here, a magical murder and stolen magical macguffins) takes too long to get going. I feel like the author balanced that better in the first one—the pacing didn’t work for me as well here. It was just really slow (though I thought the very steamy parts worked well). I’m guessing the third book will be about the Lord with the mysterious past who reluctantly helps with the mystery and the journalist who gets dragged into things. I might or might not bother with it. B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on November 1st.

2022 book 175

 Patricia McKillip’s The Sorceress and the Cygnet

This was on the slower/weirder side of McKillip's stuff, but I came around to liking it by the end (I did almost give up on it several times during the first third though). It’s about a young man given a quest to complete or his people will be lost in a misty dreamland forever, the sorceress who helps him, and eventually her family (things get much more interesting once they come into play). Good stuff here about families and stories and magic. But slow as hell. B+.

2022 book 174

 Blair Braverman's Small Game

I haven’t really been into thriller-y/suspense books of late, but you betcha I’m gonna read a novel by Blair Braverman about a small group of people on a survival-themed reality show and what happens when things go wrong! It’s very stressful and compulsively readable in equal measures. It furthers my determination to never stay somewhere that doesn't have electricity and indoor plumbing. I did want a /little/ bit more from the ending, but that is a fairly minor complaint. It totally scratched that Yellowjackets itch for me (albeit without cults). I hope Blair writes more novels! A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on November 1st.

2022 book 173

 Marie Brennan's Turning Darkness into Light

This was a nice way to say goodbye to this world—the protagonist is Lady Trent's granddaughter, and we do get to hear about a bunch of the characters from the earlier books, and the impact those adventures had on the future generations. I also admit this was a little more in my wheelhouse, as the protagonist is a linguist who is working on translating some newly discovered and exciting ancient texts! (I had hopes for a lil sapphic love story between her and the socially awkward niece of her employer, but it was not to be.) Eventually the story does get pretty action-packed in a way that is slightly over the top, but still a fun read. A/A-.

2022 book 172

 Marie Brennan's Within the Sanctuary of Wings

Honestly, this was a super satisfying conclusion to the Lady Trent series! I did not expect where this went but it totally makes sense in retrospect, and it was all super compelling. I’m sorry to be done with this series, but glad there's a related book about Lady Trent's granddaughter so I can stay lost in this world a little longer. A/A-.

2022 book 171

 Marie Brennan's In the Labyrinth of Drakes

This was a very satisfying volume! It’s mainly set in the fictional analogue to the Middle East (there are a couple minor characters with distinctly Jewish names, but most of the characters seem to practice a fictional version of Islam). Anyway, our heroine and her colleague are asked to work on a dragon breeding program on behalf of their army, and have a variety of the usual adventures while attempting to do science. I’m frankly super invested in all of them at this point and am excited to read the fifth book. A/A-.

2022 book 170

 Marie Brennan's Voyage of the Basilisk

I am definitely enjoying this series more than I did the last time around, maybe because I’m reading it all at once so am more invested in the characters/world, or maybe it’s just how some books hit you different at different times. This one mainly takes place in some fictional version of what I think are the Polynesian Islands, lots of adventure and discovery and humor. Some interesting gender stuff too. This is actually the last one I’d already read of these, and I’m looking forward to new adventures.

2022 book 169

 Marie Brennan's The Tropic of Serpents

I liked this book a lot better than the last time I read it, maybe I just appreciate slower fantasy these days. And this did have a fair amount of action! I do still think the illustrations are kind of racist, but the narrator's descriptions of this fictional version of Africa bothered me less this time (maybe because I knew to expect it or it wasn’t as bad as I remembered—though it’s arguably still not great). I get that authors are playing with the trips of actual historical travelogues/writing, but I can’t think of one example where a European-analogue interacts with a “foreign” analogue that isn’t at least a little cringeworthy.

2022 book 168

 Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons

I was in the mood for a whole series, and remembered I’d never read the last few of this one, so here we are! This is basically set in historical England, except the place names and religion are all made up, but anyway, the main character wants to study the natural sciences (specifically dragons), but women are discouraged from things like that. The whole thing is narrated from the POV of her elderly self, looking back on her life and adventures (and rethinking some of them). It doesn’t seem like a lot of science actually happens in this book, but there are lots of adventures. Entertaining stuff.

2022 book 167

 Jake Maia Arlow's How to Excavate a Heart

After accidentally reading a very Christian book, I decided this would be the perfect antidote: a romance novel about a couple of Jewish lesbians….set at Christmas, lol. Anyway, our main character is Shani, a college freshman who’s come to DC over winter break for an internship, nursing a broken heart after being dumped by her girlfriend. And she keeps running into this cute girl…literally, actually: the first time Shani's mom hits the girl with their car! Anyway, I thought this book was super adorable, and I even bought the inevitable late-book communication issues bc they were teens dealing with trauma. Lots of fun secondary characters too, I would soooo watch a movie based on this. Very enjoyable, and I a, definitely making my book club read this. A/A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on November 1st.

2022 book 166

 Alice Degan's From All False Doctrine

A fantasy author I like was recommending this book, and since it’s described as “a metaphysical mystery wrapped up in a 1920s comedy of manners,” it seemed up my alley. And the first chunk was so good, I was so invested in the two main characters—an atheist woman graduate student, studying classics, and her love interest, who turns out to be a priest, but the kind that can get married—and their budding romance, and personal struggles, and their two best friends, who get engaged, but then one goes missing! I kept wondering when something magical would happen, since this was billed as a fantasy novel, but I was into it so kept on going, even as I started to suspect this book was … Christian? And eventually /supernatural/ things do get mentioned, but this is very much a story about Christians fighting the devil. Which is fine, but not what I had expected, and honestly I felt a bit misled. I also thought the ending was a bit saccharine, like once it leaned into being super Christian, it had to give some moral lessons. Not super appealing to this Jewish reader, such a bummer. B.

2022 book 165

 Naomi Novik's The Golden Enclaves

It's hard to talk about the very-anticipated third book in a trilogy without being spoiler-y, but I will try! So I'll start by saying the cliffhanger from the second book IS addressed, and also it's confirmed that El is bi. I had certain expectations for where the story would go, and Novik definitely subverted those almost completely, mostly in cool and exciting ways. This was super action-packed and had some great character moments, even if I did cry way more about the second one. My minor complaint is that the climactic scene did not feel climactic enough, and on a related note, I wanted a teeny bit more from the ending, bc I don't think Novik plans to revisit this world. But don't think I'm not into this, I totally will reread all three books front to back in the near future. A/A-.

2022 book 164

 Patricia McKillip’s The Changeling Sea

I’m still doling out the McKillip books I’ve never read, and this one was very satisfying. It centers on a young girl whose fisherman father disappeared at sea, and her mother is depressed and fairly non-functional. The girl spends her time working at the local inn scrubbing floors, and hexing the sea as a hobby. Then she befriends a prince who longs for the sea, and discovers a sea dragon, and suddenly all sorts of mysterious and magical adventures are happening. I enjoyed this very much, total cozy vibes. A/A-.

2022 book 163

 Sacha Lamb's When the Angels Left the Old Country

I am just so excited about this recent glut of Jewish fantasy novels, especially because so much of it is queer! And this might be my favorite one yet. It’s centered on an angel and a (minor) demon, who have been hanging out in a synagogue in a tiny shtetl for hundreds of years, studying/debating the Talmud, but people have started trying to leave for America due to recent pogroms, and one girl hasn’t sent any letters. So they decide to head to America themselves to find her. On the way they befriend the other main character, a young woman who planned for herself and her best friend to go to America together to make their fortunes, but her best friend has betrayed her by getting married and staying behind. Of course, things aren’t as easy as they expect and dangers are lurking! Things bog down a tiny bit in the middle but pick back up, and I really liked the ending. My only complaint is that I want more! A.

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

2022 book 162

 Naomi Novik’s The Last Graduate

Sobbed my way through this once again (not in sadness, from being moved, mostly), and liked it even more the second time. One week till I see how that outrageous cliffhanger ending turns out!

2022 book 161

 Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education

I wanted to reread the first two books in this series before the third comes out next week, so I made it the book club pick for this month (devil emoji, laughing emoji, etc). I really love this book, which features a deadly magic school and the most delightful prickly pear of a protagonist, and what happens when the school's golden boy hero saves her life for a second time. But romance is not the focus here! Survival and friendship and learning various scholarly things as well as life lessons is! Things get much more action packed in the second half, leading to a wallop of a cliffhanger (but not as bad as the one in the second book, ughhhhh one more week to see how things resolve).

2022 book 160

 Kim Fay's Love and Saffron

I wanted to read something on the lighter side after my last read (and after the excellent but mildly devastating Ducks by Kate Beaton), and this is a book about two ladies who develop a friendship writing letters about food in the 1960s! Super chill! I mean, it is /mostly/ super chill, but also really moving and did make me cry at the end. I will say for two white ladies in the early 60s talking about “exotic” cuisine, they are pretty culturally sensitive, I guess. This isn’t doing anything particularly groundbreaking but it was a pleasant read. A-/B+.

2022 book 159

 Justina Ireland's Rust in the Root

Normally I’m into Ireland's books, but this one did not work for me. Really interesting concepts here, but it’s slow, very exposition-heavy, and kind of predictable. I also wished the secondary characters had way more character development. Anyway, it's another historical fantasy, set in the 1930s in a world with magic (so slightly different version of history), but it’s complicated and way too much to type. Our (black teenage girl) protagonist wants to be a magical baker but takes a government job to get a license to do magic (bc the system is racist, they deal with a lot of racism and sexism in this book), so soon she’s off on a dangerous mission with her new mentor. (Things get grim.) Each chapter ends with a photograph and a blurb bc the protagonist has a camera for some reason, a device I found distracting, especially as the story got more tense, like are you seriously taking out a camera right now?? The end is interesting in some ways and formulaic in some other ways—I’d guess a sequel is forthcoming. This book has some important and relevant things to say about racism/race relations, but I didn’t especially enjoy reading it. B.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on September 20th.

2022 book 158

 Aimee Pokwatka's Self-Portrait with Nothing

This book has a really cool concept, but I’m not sure that was enough? So it’s the story of a woman, an academic forensic anthropologist, who has known since she was a teen that her biological mother was famous artist Ula Frost, whose portraits supposedly show versions of their subjects from alternate worlds. And now she’s vanished, and creepy art collectors and lawyers and journalists are coming for the anthropologist, who goes to Europe to see what she can find out, and maybe meet the woman she feels abandoned by (sidebar: Ula was a pregnant teen who left her baby with the local lesbian veterinarian couple, who are amazing). That’s all well and good, but the whole story is from the anthropologist's POV, and she’s kind of whiny and passive? And there’s a lot of manufactured conflict with her husband? Things get more action-packed in the second half and the end was legitimately interesting, but the frustrating protagonist bogs things down a lot. B/B+.

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

2022 book 157

 Janet Kagan's Mirabile

This was a very charming and very interesting sci-fi book about a (middle aged) woman who works as a scientist on another planet, dealing with flora and fauna imported from earth several generations ago, only they have other stuff encoded in their genes for science reasons, and sometimes weird mutants crop up. And that’s not getting into the native plants and animals! I think this was initially a bunch of short stories, but all about the same characters, so there is a bit of repetitive exposition, but I didn’t mind bc the narrative voice is so grumpy and funny. (I was especially tickled at the many times she “necks” with her boyfriend.) I just really enjoyed this. A/A-.

2022 book 156

 Hazel Beck's Small Town, Big Magic

This is another book that’s being marketed as “a witchy rom-com,” though this one does have some romance in it (the description makes it seem like the heroine's love interest is the mayor, who is a very gross dude, and I was very relieved he was NOT the love interest). Anyway, our heroine owns the local bookstore in a small Missouri town and is also the proud president of the chamber of commerce, doing type-A things to improve their little town and attract tourists, when she’s attacked by dark creatures and discovers that actually the town was founded by witches, and all her friends are witches, and also SHE is a witch but had her memory wiped when she was 18 bc the local leaders deemed her powerless. But she does have powers? Now she and all her friends (I LOVE her friends) have to fight the growing dark magic in the town and also she and one dude have to confront their history of Feelings. It’s all very entertaining, though the end is a major cliffhanger, which is extremely unsatisfying. Let me see a witch battle!! A-.

2022 book 155

 Emily Lloyd-Jones' The Drowned Woods

This was a pretty solid stand-alone fantasy book, centering on a girl with rare water-bending powers who’s taken from her family to work for the local prince. But when she realizes he’s using her ability to locate water to poison innocent people on the other side of the war, she goes on the run! Until his former spymaster tracks her down with an enticing offer—steal a bunch of treasures from a magical well, which will also destabilize the prince's rule because of magic. Soon the usual motley assortment of heist-ers are on the case, including the other POV character, a dude who works for the fairies and has some interesting abilities, and also her ex-girlfriend, the princess of thieves. Parts of this follow the typical story beats, but some parts did surprise me. I did wish the ending had kind of gone in the more interesting direction, but it was fine. Also of note, there is an excellent corgi in this book and NOTHING BAD HAPPENS TO HIM. B+.

2022 book 154

 Becky Chambers' To Be Taught, If Fortunate

I was in the mood for some sci-fi and was reminded of this Becky Chambers stand-alone, about four astronauts visiting various far-fling planets to search for life, so figured I’d reread it. I will say it is way more science-heavy than I remembered, and I was a little too tired tonight to really engage with that in a meaningful way. But I still enjoyed all the characters and their joys and despairs. Interesting ending too. 

2022 book 153

 Rachel Neumeier’s The Mountain of Kept Memory

This book… was slow. The protagonists are a pair of siblings, the prince and princess of a country whose father has offended the immortal being that protects their home, and now they’ve been weakened by a plague and foreign invaders are encroaching. I really enjoyed everything going on with the princess (secretly very politically savvy) but the prince's sections draaaagggggged. I also kept waiting for the story to be revealed to be like a far future post-apocalyptic kind of thing, but we did not get enough answers about the mysterious protector and all the gods being dead. (And one character is obviously a traitor but that takes WAY too long for everyone else to figure out.) So I was kind of frustrated by this book. Loved the princess character and everything with her story arc, most of the rest didn’t really work for me. B.

2022 book 152

 Rachel Neumeier’s The City in the Lake

After enjoying the Tuyo books so much, I decided to check out more of Neumeier’s work, which is when I discovered that a) I’d read a YA series by her years ago, and b) several of her other books were already on my to-read list, including this one! Which was just the kind of slightly weird and compelling fantasy I love! Now I will say to maybe avoid reading the official synopsis on this one, since it discusses some things that aren’t revealed until like halfway through the book. But the main characters here are the eldest son of the king, illegitimate, who’s searching for his missing younger brother, the heir; and a daughter of a mage in a small village, growing up wondering about the mother who left her, hanging with her girlfriends, and learning magic from her father (there is also a local guy who has a crush on her who is a secondary POV character). Eventually these stories comes together as the mage joins the search for the missing prince, since his loss is affecting the kingdom in sad ways, and when he never returns, his daughter goes after him. Magical forests, talking serpents, angry queens, and evil sorceresses ensue, for a really interesting and satisfying story. Definitely reading more by this author. A/A-.

2022 book 151

 Bianca Marais' The Witches of Moonshyne Manor

So first let me say that even though this is billed as “a witchy rom-com,” there isn’t actually any major romance in this book (and barely any minor romantic elements, for that matter). Instead, it’s the story of a group of 80-something witches (several are queer) who are on the verge of losing the titular manor where they’ve all lived since they were little girls, mainly because the patriarchy wants to bring them down! And I’m  not exaggerating: the villain of the piece wants their land to create “Men's World,” which features a golf course, paintball, and a strip club. So that's the level of plot we're working with here. There’s also a whole thing with flashbacks to a mysterious event thirty years earlier that sent one of their own to prison, and she’s about to be released, and also some business with the feminist teen daughter of the local mayor (whose dialogue is clearly written by a non-teen trying to sound hip). This was entertaining enough, I mean I am here for drama with elderly witches, but the last chunk was overly ridiculous and I found that annoying. B.

2022 book 150

 Patricia McKillip’s The Book of Atrix Wolfe

I’ve been saving a couple of books by McKillip for a rainy day, but book 150 of the year felt like it deserved something special. And this is really one of her masterpieces, about a mage who made a horrible mistake while trying to stop a war, and the people who are still caught up in that mistake twenty years later, particularly a young sorcerer prince and a scullery maid under an enchantment (very fairy tales vibes here). Lots of magic and sadness and hope, and I loved the ending. SUPER good. A. 

2022 book 149

 Terry Pratchett's Mort

I have a long weekend staycation thing going on, and wanted a series to read, and figured I’d try some of the Discworld books I haven’t read. I decided to start the Death books, even though I had read one of them before and not liked it that much, but that happened with one of the Guards books too, which I liked much more once I had read all those from the beginning! So I figured that would happen here too. But this one, where Death takes a human apprentice, just wasn’t really my jam. It was fine, but it didn’t exactly leave me eager to pick up the rest of the Death books. I think I'll try some of the stand-alones. B.

2022 book 148

 R.A. MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon

I don’t remember where I saw this book recommended, but I am giving it some side-eye. At first I was into it—I did have to look up the publication date (1983) because some of the language is veeeeeeeerrrrrry dated—but I was enjoying the growing friendship of a musician visiting San Francisco to meet with her daughter and the debonair guy she meets in the hotel who is very obviously actually a dragon. I was like, great, this seems cozy and philosophical! But then it turns out the daughter is missing, and we're shortly in a bad action movie. NOT the vibe. There is a sequel that looks even more grim (kidnapped toddlers and murder, apparently). B/B-.

2022 book 147

 Mari Lowe's Aviva vs the Dybbuk

I’m pretty much always going to read a Jewish fantasy book, and while I didn’t /love/ this one, I know a couple kids I might recommend it to. It’s a middle grade book about an Orthodox Jewish girl whose father died in an accident several years earlier, and now she and her mother live in a small apartment over the mikvah, which is haunted by a dybbuk. The plot beats are all pretty formulaic, but I did appreciate seeing this sort of story in a Jewish context. I especially loved all the scenes of the various women at the mikvah (there were a lot of awesome women in this book). And I still did cry a couple of times! B+.

2022 book 146

 Lish McBride's A Little Too Familiar

Basically, these days I'm only interested in romance novels if there’s a magical element, and I wanted to try this one because I remembered liking McBride's YA books I read back in the day. And this was a cute romance but parts of it were a little heavy! Our heroine is an animal mage who helps familiars and witches bond. And our hero is a werewolf whose girlfriend left him for his sister, and by the way he is afraid of animal mages due to a very traumatic childhood (his father and stepmother were abusive and also ran a cult, which does come into play as they escape prison and try and track their children down). Now I personally prefer romance novels with less immediate ogling/horny thoughts, I like there to be buildup to horniness, but I stuck it out bc the characters were interesting (I love ALL the side characters, this is a found family bonanza, and many of them are queer) and was glad I did. But like I said, things do get kind of heavy, so just a lil warning there. But if you want a romance with magic, a baby phoenix, and some pretty hilarious moments involving a flock of pigeons, this one is good. A-/B+.

2022 book 145

 Rachel Neumeier’s Suelen

Yes, I did spend the entire weekend reading this series! This fifth one is another side story, involving the summer king's personal physician deciding to go to the winter country to tend to their people who were left behind (too wounded to travel) after the battle from the first book. He has to confront his prejudices about the “barbarians” and also has to try to do his magical healing in secret bc they hate magic, which grows complicated. But this was actually a chill book and very satisfying to read. I’m glad more in this series is coming soon. A/A-.

2022 book 144

 Rachel Neumeier’s Keraunani

This is another sort of side quest book, focusing on gruff soldier Esau, who was sent off on a mission in book three. And here is the story of that mission—finding a pregnant woman and marrying her, which should be simple but immediately goes off the rails—interspersed with flashbacks to Lalani's early days with the troops and some other missions Esau did. This has a lot of cute and funny parts to balance out the violence and action, though I was kind of over the flashbacks at a certain point. I loved how this one wrapped up. A-.

2022 book 143

 Rachel Neumeier’s Tarashana

The third book in the Tuyo series picks back up with the main characters from the first one about a year later, as they’re asked to visit the winter tribes to help solve a mystery involving a vanished group of people. Great story here involving harrowing journeys, magic, gods, a new adopted brother, and a teeny bit of romance. I am really into these books. A/A-.

2022 book 142

 Rachel Neumeier's Nikoles

It seems a little odd to be to have the second book in a series be a prequel about a somewhat minor character from the first book, especially when we know the gist of the story already. I actually almost put this down because the first section is kind of depressing to read, as the winter tribes and the summer nations are having increasingly escalating conflicts, mainly bc the summer people are bigoted assholes. Just unpleasant stuff. Eventually the good leader from the previous book comes into things, and we get to see him solve a conflict, and see how the main character came to be one of his commanders. And that was all fine. Just not as engrossing as the first book. B+.

2022 book 141

 Rachel Neumeier's Tuyo

I think I saw this on a list of RIYL Hands of the Emperor, which I do, so I figured I’d give it a go. It is a different sort of story but the vibe is there for sure. It’s about a young warrior from the winter tribes who's left as a sort of sacrifice for their enemies from the summer nation, but instead their leader decides not to kill him because he finds their war suspect, and sure enough, both groups soon discover they have a common enemy. So there is a fair amount of war stuff in this, but also a lot of cool camaraderie, family feelings, friendships and alliances, honor, magic, and some amazing women (the winter tribes have an interesting structure where the women are in charge of all the social/economic stuff). I’m excited to check more of this series out. A/A-.

2022 book 140

 Lois McMaster Bujold’s Paladin of Souls

God, I love this book! I mean I can’t even think of anything else to say about it! Such great characters, pacing, action. And the glimpses of the gods! Bujold creates such interesting worlds but her Five Gods stories are my favorite.

2022 book 139

 Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion

See, THIS is why I don't usually read in bed, because even though I planned to go to sleep early, and even though I have read this book more than once before, I could not put it down! It's just so interesting and satisfying to see the whole story--involving magic, gods, court intrigue, saints, the titular curse, and a tiny bit of romance--play out. I really love Bujold's world-building in these books (and the Pen and Desdemona ones, which are also set in this world) and the characters in this one are super compelling. Just a really rewarding read. 

2022 book 138

 Claire Willett's The Rewind Files

I do love a time travel adventure, though it is rare to read one that centers on Watergate! Anyway, so it’s 2112 and our protagonist works at the Time Bureau, following in the footsteps of her famous parents, though she much prefers her math-related desk job. But when things start going wrong, she’s suddenly sent back to 1972 to try and avert World War III! (A thing that happened in their version of the world!) I appreciated that the second half of this was a solid political thriller, even though I’m not a hundred percent sure it made sense (lots of time travel shenanigans to keep track of). And I loved all the characters. Occasionally the writing was a little too over the top, but a very fun and action-packed read. A-.

2022 book 137

 Premee Mohamed's And What Can We Offer You Tonight

I got a bunch of the Neon Hemlock novellas since I enjoyed the previous one I read and several more were on my to-read list; this one in particular was high up because it won a Nebula. Really interesting world and concept—it’s set in a high class brothel in a far future city, and events are set into motion when one of the courtesans is murdered, but then wakes back up for VENGEANCE. My problem was really with the main character—I wanted just a little bit more character development. Or I wished she made different choices, though I can’t say I didn’t buy her motivations. But it was all a little vague. Still, this was interesting enough that it made me want to check out what else the author has written. B+. 

2022 book 136

 Deanna Raybourn's Killers of a Certain Age

This… was fun. I want to see a movie based on this book. It’s the story of a group of four women, who were the first all-women squad of assassins trained by an elite organization of Nazi-hunters (who’ve moved onto other targets these days). But after forty years they’re retired and on a cruise to celebrate…until they realize one of the cruise crew is a fellow assassin and the organization has put a hit on THEM. So now they’re on the run trying to figure out who’s behind this, and why! Interspersed with flashbacks to their training, early missions, etc. You do have to suspend a fair amount of disbelief that sixty-something women would be doing ~hand waves~ all that, but it is entertaining for sure. A-.

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

2022 book 135

 Emily Bergslien and Kat Weaver's Uncommon Charm

This was a very entertaining novella about the disaffected upper-class teen daughter of a lady magician in 1920s London, and what happens when they take in a teenage Jewish boy who also has magic, and is the illegitimate son of a family friend (their family are assholes who “only served him pork every other day”). I loved the narrative voice here, and this has a chill vibe even as the teens are investigating family history and related murders and chatting with ghosts. I did wish for more, but that is my usual complaint with novellas, and this does wrap up in a satisfying way. I just hope the authors revisit them! Ps every character in this book is queer and I love it. A-.

2022 book 134

 Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia

The last few books I’ve read were kind of depressing, so here is the antidote: rereading a regency-era epistolary novel that also has a lot of MAGIC! And shenanigans! Now do these letters read like real letters and not book chapters, not particularly. Are the stories they tell—between two cousins, one of whom is in London for her season and one of whom has been left at home, as they get caught up in a magical mystery—entertaining? Very. (And honestly, could these girls fix everything much more quickly if their love interests were more forthcoming/more willing to believe in the power of young women? Yes, but then there wouldn’t be a book.) I remember liking the sequels a little less so I might not jump into those, but this was a very satisfying read.

2022 book 133

 GennaRose Nethercott's Thistlefoot

So I am definitely the target audience for this book, which is about a pair of siblings with mysterious abilities who inherit a house—but if I tell you their last name is Yaga, can you guess what house it is? And if having a living house with chicken legs isn’t enough, a creepy dude who can inspire fear and hatred is hunting it down. Nethercott takes the Baba Yaga stories and explicitly makes them Jewish, weaving in Yiddish folktales and Jewish history in a really interesting way. And even though pogroms were mentioned several times, I was still surprised as how dark/grim this got (not just pogrom-related). I’m not sure the climactic scene totally worked, and some of the characters felt a little underbaked (the secondary characters felt like movie characters, where it’d be enough development for a two hour thing but I want a little more in a novel), but I liked the end a lot and I especially liked the whole VIBE here, if you know what I mean. A/A-.

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

2022 book 132

 Felicia Berliner's Shmutz

After that last book, I wanted to read something completely different, and a novel about a Hasidic girl addicted to porn felt like as far as I could get. Great narrative voice here, though the Jewish characters felt way better written than the non-Jewish characters (so much potential with the protagonist befriending a group of goth kids, and it was all pretty flat). The middle kind of bogged down/got depressing—the blurbs made me think this would be horny, but it wasn’t really; as it goes on the porn watching becomes pretty joyless. I did think the way it wrapped up was interesting. I will be curious to see what the author does next. B+.

2022 book 131

 Nadeem Jamnia's The Bruising of Qilwa

So I’ll start with a caveat that this book involves blood magic, which gets kind of gross in the second half, and I have issues with blood/bruising making me feel sick, so I really should have put this book down when I realized the titular bruising was literal. I mean, that is probably not an issue for most readers, so take my review with a grain of salt. Anyway, I thought this might have Penric and Desdemona vibes, but not so much. It’s about a non-binary trainee healer and secret blood magic practitioner who, with their family (trans little brother, mother who isn’t in the book at all, weirdly), is fleeing a genocide (I really needed more explanation of the political goings-on because some important discussions toward the end made zero sense), and gets a job working for a healer, and there's a plague, and then they meet a young girl who is also a blood magic user and needs training, and then there’s a different plague, and there are some political tensions, and thoughts about identity. I dunno, there is a lot going on, I think this wouldn’t have totally worked for me even without all the blood splatter. I liked all the sibling relationships, that part was great. But the rest… the writing is kind of awkward. The end is also…a lot. This book made me feel bad on a lot of levels. Like physically and emotionally. B/B-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on Tuesday.

2022 book 130

 Katherine Addison's The Grief of Stones

The further adventures of our fantasy mystery solver guy! Once again, great characters, solid plotting, and great atmosphere. The end indicated another volume will come someday and I eagerly await it.

2022 book 129

 Katherine Addison's The Witness for the Dead

I like that Addison returned to the Goblin Emperor world by focusing on one of the minor characters from that book and giving him a spin-off. And he’s a great and interesting character, solving various mysteries through being able to talk to the dead (and general investigative skills). I also like that there are a variety of mysteries to keep things moving, as well as a growing friendship (or moooooore?) with the director of an opera company. I enjoy reading about the clearly depressed protagonist begrudgingly accepting friendship and kindness. And catching killers! Good times!

2022 book 128

 Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor

Just in the mood to reread all the books set in this little world, and of course had to start where it started! I’m tired and don’t feel like doing a plot description so will just say I love books about court politics and this is an amazing example, I cried twice out of niceness, the characters here are so well-written and you just want to give everyone a hug. I do hope the author returns to some of these other characters—I love the Witness for the Dead books but I want to read more about the academic ladies friendship club.  

2022 book 127

 Daniel Jose Older's Ballad and Dagger

So this is apparently the first YA (instead of middle grade) book in the Rick Riordan presents line; I was interested in reading it because of the worldbuilding. It’s set in a neighborhood in Brooklyn where the people who previously lived on a mysterious Caribbean island now live in diaspora, because their island sank fifteen years ago. And the culture is so cool—it was founded by a Sephardic rabbi, a Santero (priest of Santeria), and a pirate! And they took in escaped slaves and European Jews fleeing pogroms and all sorts of other ppl! I was super into all of that. The plot, perhaps less so? The protagonist is a teen boy who only cares about music and feels like an outsider in the culture because he and his parents were often away, but then it turns out he’s the incarnation of one of the island's three spirits, and magic and politics and stuff all come into play. (Plus romance, with the rabbi's daughter who is the incarnation of their goddess of destruction.) I /loved/ the first half, but things definitely falter in the second, and some of the other characters (cool pansexual best friend and her non-binary love interest in particular) are kind of dropped. Still, I am always interested in Jewish fantasy and this is a really fun example. B/B+.

2022 book 126

 Meredith Katz' The Cybernetic Tea Shop

I always like to check out cozy fantasy books, and here we have a cozy sci-fi book for a change! I mean it is /mostly/ cozy. The main characters are a programmer with a robotic hummingbird sidekick, and a robot who kept running her former owner's tea shop after she died, but there is a lot of anti-robot sentiment and her shop keeps getting vandalized (so that is less cozy). They are both asexual ladies and eventually they cuddle and I was here for it. I’ll have to see what else this author has written because this was delightful. My only complaint, as with many novellas, is that I wanted more. A-.

2022 book 125

 Justina Ireland's Mission to Disaster

Another middle grade High Republic book (with weirdly clunky writing, like it was aimed at an even younger audience) featuring the cool young Jedi Knight from the last couple books and her emotion-sensing Padawan, off on a rescue mission when their science nerd friend is kidnapped by the bad guys. (Who are kidnapping kids to serve as recruits or slaves, yikes.) I kind of want to see how the Jedi finally take down these bad guys (I mean assuming the Jedi get a win for once) but I can’t figure out which book comes next! It’s very annoying. B/B+.

2022 book 124

 Justina Ireland's Out of the Shadows

This formed a perfect High Republic trilogy with the previous two books, as characters from both of those team up in this one. I’m not going to even start trying to explain the plot, which is way too convoluted (and I am predisposed to enjoy books with politics and double dealing), but along with our Jedis pals the other main character is a young woman pilot drawn into things—as is her ex girlfriend (who has a giant pet alien cat thing!!). I am super here for space ladies smooching but wished a little more time had been spent on building their relationship up. This just kind of bogged down a little and the end was mildly unsatisfying, but it was interesting to see more of how the Jedi Order got enmeshed into the Republic and its dealings. B+.

2022 book 123

 Justina Ireland's A Test of Courage

I think this is the first of the middle grade High Republic books, so another good starting point. It’s set a little bit after the hyperspace disaster, but still in the early days of figuring out that there’s an enemy group opposed to the Republic/the Jedi and their expansion. But they’re vicious space pirates, so not super sympathetic, especially since the plot here involves them sabotaging a luxury space cruiser, leaving only four children/teens as survivors. Luckily one teen is a brand new Jedi Knight, another is a padawan, one child is a mechanical genius, and the other has survival training, so when they end up on a jungle moon, they just might make it out. There is also a self-actualized droid, which is my jam. This is middle grade so it feels kind of short, but I love Justina Ireland's writing and this was a super enjoyable read. A/A-.

2022 book 122

 Claudia Gray's Into the Dark

I’ve been wanting to get into the Star Wars High Republic books, but they’re like a whole series by a bunch of different authors and it was weird and confusing. And I started the official first one, Light of the Jedi, and was just not into it. But I read enough to get the gist of the precipitating event, and figured I’d try this one, since I like Claudia Gray. And it turns out this is actually a perfect starting point, since it covers some of the same ground, but with other characters. Anyway, the main character here is a bookish young padawan (finally, a Jedi I can relate to), who’s dismayed to learn he’s being sent to join his master at the frontier,  because he’d rather chill in the archives. But when he and his ship (with a small crew and three other Jedi, all POV characters to varying degrees) run into the hyperspace explosion disaster, they end up at a mysterious abandoned space station. Great characters and pacing here, a very satisfying read. A/A-.

2022 book 121

 Seanan McGuire's Be the Serpent

I think this the the sixteenth Toby Daye book, and yet somehow I am still surprised when McGuire raises the stakes yet again. And she raises the stakes in a BIG way this go-round (I will warn you that I cried). I was more caught up in this one than I’ve been in this series for a while, it’s just firing on all cylinders here. It is still kind of hard to remember the backstory of every member of this sprawling cast, but it doesn’t even matter, this is getting to major popcorn emoji territory, and the end has me dying to see what comes next. A/A-.

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

2022 book 120

 Rebecca Ross' A River Enchanted

This is I think a Scottish-inspired fantasy novel (or at least everyone is wearing plaids), about a young man who was born and raised on a mysterious island full of spirits, and the island is divided in half between two warring clans, and ten years ago he was sent away to be a bard, but now he’s been summoned home because local girls are going missing and they need his help to ask the spirits. Also, he has a little sister his mother never told him about. Other POV characters are his childhood enemy, now the heiress to the clan; her cousin, the captain of the guard; and his wife, the local healer. There is a lot going on here! I was interested in the characters and the magic, though the writing was occasionally overwrought, and towards the end I was finding things very unsatisfying, but there is clearly a sequel in the works. I am invested in several of the characters so I will probably read it. B+.

2022 book 119

 Misha Popp's Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies

This book is kind of weird because it is basically a cozy mystery, except the protagonist is technically a serial killer? So she comes from a long line of magic crafters, and she can bake magic pies full of confidence or concentration or whatever, but she also has a specialized referral service where she bakes pies that will kill horrible abusive men. The author spends a lot of time trying to make this sympathetic/justifiable, and in fact apparently if the man is capable of change he will stop being a horrible abuser, but mostly they just die. But like if that is your deal, be a fucking gleeful vigilante, don’t waffle about it so much! Then we can enjoy a dark comedy about murder pies! It is very weird to have a cozy story about a murderer! (I also had too many questions about the logistics of her murder pie operations.) Anyway, the plot kicks in when a mysterious dude starts blackmailing her, and then she enters a pie baking contest, and she also has a couple of love interests (an apple orchard farm guy and a radical girl college student), so there is a lot going on. I put this down a couple times in the first half but then things kind of hit their stride. Lots of fun and interesting characters in this, I loved the idea of her RV pie shop, but not entirely successful for me. B.

2022 book 118

 Sarah Addison Allen's Other Birds

I generally enjoy this author's stuff; she tends to write southern fiction with a tinge of magical realism. This falls into that category but feels less “women's fiction”-y, focusing less on romance and relatives and more on an eccentric found family (though there is still a hint of romance). The central character is young Zoey, who’s moved into her long-dead mother's condo on a small South Carolina island (known for its candy scene), where she’s determined to befriend the other residents. Except then one dies. And also Zoey has an invisible bird. And also there are a bunch of ghosts hanging around (several of the ghosts are POV characters). I really liked the characters here, and their friendships and kindnesses, but all the plot reveals are very obvious, and the end felt really rushed. I wanted the second half to have a little more room to breathe. (My ARC also had an error where one character starts a new job, but then several chapters later finds out about said job and is then hired, so I hope that got corrected.) Still, a pleasant read, and a good one to add to the cozy fantasy lists. (Oh, except, content warning for very vague references to child sexual abuse, so maybe not.) B+.

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

2022 book 117

 Alice Oseman's Radio Silence

Rereading this for book club. I wasn’t sure I’d be as into it as I was the first time I read it, since it’s been a few years and since I wasn’t super into Loveless. But I was still into it! I’d have read it all in one go last night but I was too sleepy. I mean, the teen angst could have been turned down several notches, but it feels real enough (speaking as a former angsty teen). I like how Oseman writes friendship and how valuable those relationships are. I did wish the secondary characters were more developed, but still a satisfying read.

2022 book 116

 Katy Watson's The Three Dahlias

This was a very fun mystery centered on the three actresses who’ve all played (or are about to play) a famous literary detective created by an Agatha-Christie-ish author, who are all together as part of a fan convention. But when murder and mayhem ensue, they have to band together, channel their character, and figure out what the heck is going on. I loved all three characters and their growing friendship. The mystery itself was a little eh, parts were pretty easy to guess, but still a very enjoyable read thanks to the characters and setting. Looks like a sequel is in the works and I will probably read it. A-.

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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on July 21st.

2022 book 115

 Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog

Rereading this for the vibes, basically. I did understand on this reread why half my book club gave up on it—lots of technical talk about time incongruities. But I love that sort of time travel magical science junk, plus I am definitely here for the madcap tone and wacky antics. To say nothing of the cat, lol.

2022 book 114

 Olivia Atwater's Longshadow

I read the first two books in this series last year and thought they were cute, but the third wasn’t out yet,  and reading Atwater's Small Miracles reminded me it existed! Anyway, in this one, the adopted daughter of the couple from the first book gets involved in figuring out who’s behind the death of three high society girls, because it’s clear magic is involved. And perhaps the pretty laundress with ties to the faerie realm that escorts ghosts to the other side will assist her? And maybe she will also figure out that lesbians are a thing? (Lol.) I am super here for queer cozy fantasy, this lost a little bit of steam leading up to the end but I liked the end itself a lot. More fantasy novels with ladies smooching, please! A-.

2022 book 113

 Sangu Mandanna's The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

So this was a very cute 'n' cozy fantasy novel/British rom-com-style book full of found family and magic! It centers on a woman who’s a witch in a world where witches live secret and solitary lives, but she amuses herself making witch-themed YouTube videos. And someone who sees them realizes she has actual magic, and invites her to come and tutor three little witch girls who need to learn to control their powers (they were all adopted from various countries by a witch archaeologist which I one hundred percent took as a Ballet Shoes reference). Anyway. Obviously their main caretaker is a hot, grumpy, Irish librarian, but there is also an adorable elderly gay couple and a cheerful housekeeper around to keep things lively. This was all pretty predictable but it was fun all the same, and sometimes you just want to read something chill and pleasant with witches doing cool shit. A-.

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