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+.