Kate Forsyth's The Pool of Two Moons
This was a very interesting follow up, and I think I liked it more than the first book! I liked how it didn’t seem predictable, and how things I worried would be strung out through several books (reunions, quests, etc) were resolved in this one. I also appreciate that most of the main characters—and the antagonists—are women. I am intrigued to see where this series goes next. A-.
Kate Forsyth's The Witches of Eileanan
I don’t even remember where I heard about this series, but I’m always determined to find a new multi book fantasy adventure to escape into, so here we are. This has a whole Celtic thing going on, set in a world where witches and fairies were outlawed, but one little foundling has been raised by a witch in the old ways. And they’re determined to restore the witches to their rightful place and being down the evil sorceress that’s controlling the kingdom! Lots of interesting characters here, lots of unexpected stuff, and partway through the book it’s revealed that the witches descend from humans who colonized the planet from outer space??? Well, obviously I have to see what happens next. Content warning for a very unpleasant/rapey torture scene (this was originally written in the 90s). B+.
Shauna Robinson's The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks
So, this was cute. This is the sort of book I’d recommend to certain members of my book club who like cute books. It’s about twenty-something Maggie, who's at loose ends in life, who drives cross country to work in her college best friend's bookstore while her friend is on maternity leave. But the bookstore is in a small town where everything is about their one famous author, and the bookstore isn’t allowed to sell books that were published after the author died in the 1960s. Plus, Maggie hates reading, especially boring classics! At least until she meets a local romance author and discovers that some books are fun! Soon she’s secretly selling modern books and hosting secret silly book events and trying to hide it from the Society who runs all the town's businesses—including her new love interest. All very cute. Buttttttt a lot of things in this book don’t 100 percent make sense—lots of suspension of disbelief required. And I lost interest in the second half when I was ready for it to just come to its inevitable conclusion already (it does pick back up toward the end). A pleasant enough diversion for me, but I think ppl who like cute books and contemporary romances would be into it. B/B+.
Cherie Dimaline's VenCo
I really WANTED to love this book. It’s blurbed by Louise Erdrich! It’s about a group of diverse witches who have to unite to form a coven (take a second look at that title) to save the world from being, you know, our current world! But there is just too much going on, too many characters, too much stuff that has to be explained that gets interrupted, it just keeps jumping around way too much. Also an immortal witchhunter is trying to stop them by any means necessary and he has some creepy sex magic going on, and all of that made me anxious (I said “what the fuck” out loud a lot during his scenes). But the main problem here is that I never got invested in these characters /felt like they were real. The dialogue never feels real. I'm bummed that I didn’t like this. B.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on February 7th.
Victoria Goddard's Plum Duff
The first time I read this, I was a little disappointed, because it wasn’t about what I was expecting it to be about. But actually, reading it all in a row with the others, it’s so much about magic and /home/ and absolutely follows on with everything that came before. Plus Jemis knits a sweater for a unicorn, so. Very enjoyable on a reread.
Victoria Goddard’s Love-in-a-Mist
The fifth Greenwing and Dart book finds our intrepid crew trapped in a stranger's manor house during a storm, and of course a murder occurs and they must solve it! There’s also a baby unicorn, which is perhaps even more relevant to my interests.
Victoria Goddard’s Blackcurrant Fool
Ah, this one makes me laugh and cry in equal measure. Things start off simply enough, as Greenwing and Dart head to the big city for various reasons—looking at a grad school, dealing with banking, meeting up with more long-lost relatives, going to a book fair, etc, but things soon take a more serious turn. I will NEVER stop cackling that the back half of this book depends on a good literary analysis! Perfection!
Victoria Goddard’s Whiskeyjack
I will admit that one of the reasons I’m rereading this series is that a recent short story revealed one character had a crush on the protagonist, which I had NEVER picked up on, though he does hold Jemis' hand for a while in this one and so now I see it, haha. Anyway, LOTS of adventures with highwaymen, cults, long-lost relatives, natural phenomena, magic, etc. And an ending that makes me cry every time! We also learn more about Jemis' academic studies, which become even more relevant in the very next book!
Victoria Goddard’s Bee Sting Cake
Now that is how to tell a story! The second Greenwing and Dart book is way more tightly plotted than the first, plus it features old and new friends, family reunions, dragons and riddles, and a cake baking competition! (Plus, the first time you reread this after Hands of the Emperor, you will GASP at the introduction of a very minor character.) Just a solid and satisfying read.
Victoria Goddard’s Stargazy Pie
I like to reread this series in winter, since it generally has cozy vibes (except for the creepy cult in this one, haha), and since my previous read left me feeling a little down, it’s Greenwing and Dart to the rescue! There are some great characters in this series and this is a fun introduction to them, even though the plot is frustratingly confusing and the last chunk drags on (I always understand the explanation at the end, and then that understanding slips right out of my head, but it honestly doesn’t matter as the relevant points will pop up in later books). It’s also fun to reread this series after exploring the rest of Goddard's world and catching all sorts of little hints and jokes. But the second book is WAY more fun so I’m gonna jump right into that.
Xochitl Gonzalez's Olga Dies Dreaming
I didn’t /love/ this when I first read it, but I did think my book club would be into it, so here I am rereading. I still love all the complicated family dynamics and relationships, but do think the second half bogs down as the story becomes more focused on politics (which is weird, because I should find that compelling, but I just think it’s not written as engagingly, and I can’t tell how much is meant to be satirical). Plus I was dreading having to revisit one particular scene (a rape) and that sense of dread kind of permeated the whole rest of the book (the scene happens toward the end) which made for a less-than-pleasant reread.
Kosoko Jackson's Yesterday is History
I love a time travel story, and this one had an amazing premise: a teenaged black gay boy receives a liver transplant from someone from a family with the genetic ability to time travel, and suddenly he is time traveling back to 1969 and hanging with the (white) teenage boy who lived in his house back then! And the (white) organ donor's family wants their other son, a surly lacrosse bro, to train him in their time traveling ways. Now, the writing here is occasionally awkward in that YA way, and I definitely wished it went a little bit deeper into some things, but did I cry a little bit at the end? Obviously. Also LOL THIS PREMISE, seriously, amazing. A-/B+.
Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle
When you’ve read three disappointing books in a row, the only solution is to reread a book you know /won't/ be disappointing. And this never is! I love all the magic and mayhem, humor and heart. And it’s so satisfying to reread and watch all the pieces come together. Not to dis the Studio Ghibli movie, but I’m still mad there isn’t a more faithful adaptation of this out there.
A.M. Tuomala's The Map and the Territory
You know how sometimes when you’re reading a novella, character development feels rushed/underbaked, and it’s frustrating? Well, this a full length novel that somehow suffered from that issue. Really interesting world-building here, as a young woman cartographer and a young wizard dude in training meet each other in the midst of a worldwide disaster, with cities destroyed in mysterious magical ways (this isn’t a romance, at least not between them: he’s gay and she’s ace), and they go to try and see if they can find out what happened and if their homes are okay. But they end up dealing with politics in one of the cities they stop in, and things king of bog down, and I don’t know, I just wanted MORE from this! I will say there is a very interesting epilogue that makes me want to read the next book in this series (assuming one is coming). The bones of a good story are here but it didn’t totally come together for me. B/B+.
Laurie Colwin's Goodbye Without Leaving
I was talking to a friend about Colwin yesterday, and I was like, she would be a good palate cleanser, and surely there won’t be any racist slurs in this one! It’s about a young white woman in the 70s who drops out of grad school to be a backup singer in a (black) girl group, and how she has to come to terms with her life/settling down after her singing job is over. But like, did white New York liberals in the 70s just throw around a lot of racist slurs? Because these characters sure do! (And I'm not talking about terms we wouldn’t use today, though those also appear.) This book was released in 1990 so even if people /did/ talk that way in the 70s, surely there is no need for such a faithful recreation. Aside from the gross language, this book has Colwin's trademark charming voice and interesting characters. But also, eye roll that I have to say “aside from the gross language.” Things improve in the second half but *shrug emoji*. B.
Tanya Huff's The Better Part of Valor
I don’t think I’ve ever made it past book two in a series by Huff, and I won’t this time either. This was the slowest and most boring book I’ve read in a long time, even though it was action-packed. I’m not really sure how that works. This book is not badly written and if you like reading battle scenes you might like it, but I didn’t enjoy it at all once I hit the like one-third mark. B-.
Tanya Huff's Valor's Choice
Huff is pretty hit or miss for me, but this definitely fell on the hit side—it’s a solid example of military sci-fi. I don’t really know much about military stuff, but Huff does a great job of showing the camaraderie between soldiers (especially soldiers of different species), and also showing the tensions between officers and non-officers. The central figure is a staff sergeant who’s assigned to a diplomatic mission under a new lieutenant (who, oops, she had a one-night stand with the night before, lol, but there’s no romance to speak of here), but obviously things are going to go wrong. I really enjoyed the characters and world-building here, and am diving right into book two. A-/B+.
Melissa McShane's Emissary
I saw this compared to Ursula Vernon's books, and on the face of it, it should have been right up my alley—it’s about a woman who's sort of a servant/priest to the God of Death, and she and her bodyguard are sent to a city to investigate some mysterious apparitions, but they’re not regular ghosts. So she has a mystery to solve! The problem is that halfway through the author decides to stick a romance into things, which means the narrative loses some focus (I also personally found everything with the romance really annoying, like I was not into it at all). The religion and the mystery are both pretty interesting, and I just wanted more of that! B.
Annalee Newitz's The Terraformers
So this wasn’t a book where I was like “omg what is gonna happen next???” but it was a book where I was like “this is pretty interesting and I like these characters! Let’s keep going!” It’s set in the far future and, as the title suggests, is about people terraforming a new planet. There are some interesting conflicts between corporations and environmental groups and lots of cool reveals along the way. The description makes it seem like it’s just one person's story, but it actually covers several generations on this planet as we see the situation, and the planet, evolve, and each new cohort tries to figure out the best way to thrive. Like I said, /great/ characters here, I was partial to Whiskey (a moose), Moose (a cat journalist), and Scrubjay (I won’t say more about Scrubjay as that’s a spoiler). There are human-y people too, and some cool robots. I will just say that like, if you think current capitalism is bad, just wait till you get a load of future capitalism. Big yikes!! This is being marketed as “hopeful” and I don’t think that’s /quite/ the word I’d use. But a good read. A-/B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on January 31st.
Mizuki Tsujimura's Lonely Castle in the Mirror
This book centers on a Japanese middle-school student who has stopped going to school because of severe bullying; one day, the mirror in her bedroom starts glowing, and it turns out to be a portal to a mysterious fairy-tale castle, ruled by a little girl in a wolf mask, where seven middle-schoolers are told they can hang out. And oh yeah, there’s a magical key that can grant one of them a wish, if someone can find it. It took me a little while to warm up to this—I didn’t love the writing style, but I’m not sure if that’s a translation issue or not—but I was all in by the second half and sobbing buckets by the end. I will pat myself on the back for correctly guessing most (but not all) of what was up, but that didn’t make me like it any less. SOBBING BUCKETS. A/A-.
Cat Sebastian's Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots
I wanted to start the new year off with something on the lighter side, so a queer Cat Sebastian romance it is! (This is the second in a series, but it works fine as a stand-alone—I didn’t read the first one and I don’t think any of those characters even appeared here.) Anyway, it’s 1970s New York and our heroes are a prickly pediatrician (a Ukrainian immigrant) and a music writer/gardener from a wealthy family. They’re best friends and secretly in love with each other, it’s very cute. I loved them and all the secondary characters and just the vibe of this book in general. I personally could have done with maybe one fewer sex scene, but that’s not really a complaint, I just find sex scenes repetitive after a certain point. A/A-.
