Ann Patchett's Tom Lake
Taking a quick break from paladins to reread this for book club (which is... in half an hour lol) and it was just as good the second time! Just totally engaging writing and characters, about a women telling her three twenty-something daughters /most/ of the story of her early career as an actress and how she came to date a now-very-famous movie star, as they all pick cherries on their family farm in the early days of the pandemic. Very moving and bittersweet.
T. Kingfisher’s Paladin's Strength
The second Saint of Steel book involves a nun searching for her kidnapped sisters, who all share a Secret, and what happens when she encounters one of the paladins and his troops escorting some fancy wine barrels around (but really trying to get info on the creepy things from the first book). Cute romance, more horny pining, lots of action, lots of humor. I do especially love the nun (and all her sisters), great characters.
T. Kingfisher’s Paladin's Grace
A new book in the Saint of Steel series is coming out December fifth, so of course I had to reread the first three to get a refresher on the various paladins and various creepy mysteries and various romances! (Really I should have waited a few days to start but I was too excited!) Anyway, in this first one, we are introduced to the remaining paladins of the Saint of Steel, a god who died and all of his followers went mad. The seven remaining are all struggling with PTSD, and yet somehow even with that and with someone leaving decapitated heads around, this is a super cute romance between one of the paladins and a local perfumer, who is caught up in politics. I mean there is so much horny pining and yet I’m rooting for these two goofballs. So entertaining.
Linda Nagata's Edges
This had interesting worldbuilding, but I think it was a little too hard sci-fi for my tastes—there was a lot of business with alien spaceship technology that was just super slow. It’s all set in a world where people can sort of create versions of themselves, and then have memories of both selves, unless they get too far away to reunite. So then there’s like a centuries-long spaceship expedition to find out the secrets of humanity's past, and people send versions of themselves and they'll never know what happened to the selves they left behind (and vice versa). I was very into this concept but the plot of the book itself ended up being kind of blah and I really wanted more character development. It’s the first of a trilogy and I don’t think I’ll read the others. B.
Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow
Woof, this was tense! It’s set on an Anishinaabe reservation in Northern Canada, and the story kicks off when all the power/communications/etc stuff stops working, which is mildly concerning as winter is on its way. And because the communications have failed, they don’t know what happened. But some of them are more prepared to survive without modern luxuries and are planning to make do—and then a white dude from the south shows up asking to be let in. And as a reader you’re just like oh noooooooo. I will say as tense as I found this, I actually think that part of the story needed to be built up a bit more. But I loved the main characters, their relationships, and their desire to connect to their traditions. There’s a companion novel/sequel coming out in 2024 and I’m looking forward to it. A-.
Naomi Kritzer's Liberty's Daughter
I honestly thought I was depressed bc I was feeling so meh about reading, until I picked up this book and was immediately into it! Turns out I was just reading books I felt meh about! Anyway, this is I think based on a bunch of short stories of Kritzer's turned into a novel—it reads really seamlessly, anyway. The central character is a teen girl in the near future who lives on the “seastead,” which is a libertarian-founded community out on the ocean, and her father is one of the prominent community members. She has a job tracking things down for people, and thing really kick into gear when, in exchange for a pair of sparkly sandals, she’s asked to find a missing woman. Everything about this was great—the characters, the world-building, the politics. Just super engaging and satisfying. A.
S.L. Huang's The Water Outlaws
I’ve seen this on a few best-of lists and it seemed intriguing, inspired by classic martial art stories and about a group of mostly-women bandits. And there were some very cool characters and some cinematic fight scenes, but I also thought it had some issues with pacing and didn’t service all of the characters well. The main characters are a woman martial arts instructor who's sentenced to prison bc a powerful asshole gets mad at her, but she escapes and joins the bandits, and her friend who somehow gets roped into a government scheme to make magical bombs (more or less) (that storyline dragged a lot). I really wished we'd gotten to see more of some of the other characters, particularly the enthusiastic monk/adopted sister. I will also say one of the plotlines involved a lot of torture and there’s some cannibalism for no real reason, so this was a little bit darker than I usually go for (also an attempted rape, if we're listing content warnings). An interesting story though. B+.
Andrea K. Host's Gratuitous Epilogue
I wasn’t initially planning on rereading this after the main Touchstone Trilogy, but as the title suggests, this novella is mostly very sweet and chill (with the occasional big alien attack), everyone getting married and having babies and going on shopping trips and finally communicating with Earth. A very satisfying wrap up.
Sharon Shinn's Whispering Wood
Shinn's latest is a return to the Elemental Blessings series, so I was super psyched for it! And I mostly liked it a lot—the main character is the new king's sister, come to the city for the coronation and persuaded to stay even though she’s grumpy about it. And she was great, and I loved her gradually opening up and getting caught up in the politics. But the whole time I was like, maybe this is the first book in the series that won’t have a romance, bc the love interest is her childhood friend, and I would have liked to see a book about friends! (I was also not into him as a love interest at all until the very end.) I wonder if this is the end of the series, bc there’s now been a book for each of the major elemental categories, but there’s also definitely room for more (I secretly hope for lesbians in the next one—there are several queer women side characters). B+.
Andrea K. Host's Caszandra
Satisfying and action-packed conclusion to this trilogy (though it does have a full Gratuitous Epilogue novella and other assorted stories). SO MUCH happens and I enjoyed every page.
Andrea K. Host's Lab Rat One
I do really love the narrative voice in these, to the point that a) I don’t at all mind how much of the story is a teen girl fretting about the boy she likes and b) her discovering her abilities doesn’t feel Mary-Sue-ish, bc she’s so cranky and afraid about it. This one also adds in the hilarious element of a tv character being based on the main character. Very satisfying and action-packed.
Andrea K. Host's Stray
I’m sure I have said this on here before, but sometimes I hit a reading slump where everything I start just isn’t working for me (even if it’s part of a series I was reading) and the only fix is to reread something I know I like. So here I am trading one YA series for another, but this one is soothing instead of irritating me. In this first volume, an Australian teen walks through a wormhole onto another planet, struggling to survive until she's rescued by space people with special abilities. It’s told as a diary and it’s very engaging, funny and moving.
Tricia Levenseller's Daughter of the Pirate King
I read this several years ago and always meant to get back to the series, but the third one was released this week which reminded me to actually do it. Still a fairly enjoyable story, if a bit slow to start, but I do like a sassy girl pirate. I remain pretty meh on the romance but the sequel should involve MORE girl pirates which I am here for.
Juliet McKenna's The Green Man's Quarry
The latest book in the Green Man series finds Dan and his friends on the trail of a murderous panther, introduces more interesting new things from folklore, and seems to be laying the ground for bigger mysteries to come. I am very intrigued by where things ended and hope the next book comes out soon! I’m pretty invested in the characters and their world at this point. A-.
Sharon Shinn's Unquiet Land
Now, if the new one in this series was coming out tomorrow, I’d have timed this perfectly, but alas,,not for another week! This one isn’t my favorite, though it does have some great moments—it involves the spy from the previous book returning home, starting a shop to do some undercover work on some foreign dignitaries, and trying to reconnect with the daughter she gave up at birth. I do like her love interest as a character but I really don’t like the romance in this one, it’s all very overwrought. The daughter is cool though, and I like when the protagonist gets to do spy stuff.
Sharon Shinn’s Jeweled Fire
I do love this third volume of the Elemental Blessings series, which focuses on the second princess dealing with the politics of a foreign court—and then with a murder mystery! There is of course a romance but the other stuff is much more at the forefront—and interestingly, the other POV character is a woman sou who works for the princess' father, and not a love interest (the romances in this series have all been straight so far, but several of the secondary characters are queer in some manner). But court intrigues are my jam and this book has a ton of them.
Sharon Shinn's Royal Airs
The second Elemental Blessings book is set a few years after the first and has two POV characters—the oldest princess from the previous book, who is now running a shelter/soup kitchen, and a young man who makes a living playing cards in a bar, who rescues one of the other princesses. This one is a little more romance-focused, but there’s still a lot of political intrigue, action, revelations, flying machines, etc, to balance it all out.
Sharon Shinn's Troubled Waters
Shinn is releasing a new book in this series in like a week and a half, and I meant to wait a bit before starting a reread, but patience is not really once of my virtues (and this book is full of virtues, called blessings, that can reveal much about a character and their path, and honestly I want to reach into a bucket of coins and see what my blessings are). Anyway, in this first one, a young woman is supposed to marry the king, but instead runs away to make her own life, and is eventually caught up in all sorts of political intrigues (and a little romance) as she discovers her inheritance. I’ve read this a few times and always find it satisfying.
Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Secret of Lillian Velvet
The latest in the Kingdoms and Empires series involves a lonely little girl in Australia, who receives a pickle jar full of gold coins on her tenth birthday and suddenly finds herself bouncing in and out of another world, where she encounters various Mettlestones (so nice to see all those characters again), tries to save a little boy, and gets involved in all sorts of magical shenanigans. Beautiful, sweet, and a little bit sad, like a lot of Moriarty's work. But whatever she writes, I’ll be reading. A.