fantasy

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

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Started: 10/28/21
Finished: 11/7/21

First in a series, YA, some of it was predictable, and some of it was very not predictable, and I liked it a lot.

The only thing I wasn’t crazy about it a thing that a lot of YA books do: the characters, teenagers all, never act like teenagers. Or, not never, but even kids faced with a ton of responsibility are still going to act like kids sometimes. I don’t think these kids did. So I was occasionally taken out of the story when I remembered that, hey, this character who said he made a super-serious decision “years ago” is only 18 right now, and then it turns out he made this super-serious decision when he was 12. Uh huh.

That aside, I really liked it, and I LOVED where it took the plot.

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

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Started: 10/13/21
Finished: 10/31/21

I’ve been meaning to read something, anything, by Roger Zelazny, and I just haven’t gotten around to it. An article on Tor.com pointed me to this, which is broken up into one chapter per day of the month of October. The article’s author reads it, one chapter a day, every October, so after playing a little bit of catch-up (since I didn’t start on the 1st), I did, too, and I REALLY enjoyed it. It’s easy, it’s funny, and it’s Halloween-y. I might buy it and do this every year.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

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Started: 10/26/21
Gave up: 10/27/21

I really liked the short story I read of his last year set in Cairo with a possessed tram car, and there’s a whole series there I’m excited to read, so I was bummed when I couldn’t get into this one. Mashing up Jim Crow and Klansmen with Lovecraftian monsters is a brilliant idea, but I’m a little leery of Lovecraft-related stories, and this one didn’t land for me.

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko

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Started: 10/20/21
Finished: 10/24/21

Slow start, but that’s based more on the formatting than the story/writing. It’s not .mobi, so the formatting isn’t perfect. Annoying!

SO EASY to get past the formatting after just a bit. Really good story, totally sucked me in, and I’m looking forward to the sequel.

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood

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Started: 9/30/21
Finished: 10/16/21

New fantasy series! It took me a little bit to get into it, then I was hooked, then I wasn’t sure I was going to finish it, and then I got hooked again. I can’t say whether this was just about my frame of mind or about slow parts in the book. Could be either, but the vast majority of it had my full attention, and I’m still thinking about it, and I’m excited about the next book, which – ugh – isn’t out yet.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

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Started: 9/9/21
Finished: 9/19/21

I LOVE Naomi Novik. There’s only one book of hers I haven’t read that’s out right now, and I haven’t read it for the same reason I haven’t read that one last book of Robin McKinley’s: I don’t want to have read everything she has written.

That said, I almost quit on A Deadly Education. Wizard school (yay!) by an author I love (double yay!), but it started out so…unpleasant. So hard to understand. So not your typical wizard school book. I didn’t quit (because Naomi Novik has earned my trust), which is great because this totally weird book turned out to be awfully wonderful and I loved it and I can’t wait for the next one.

Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner

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Started: 8/29/21
Finished: 9/5/21

Recommended by an author I like, this was a surprisingly well-written very silly start of a series about a retired demon-hunter-turned-suburban-mom who has to, surprise!, fight demons again. It was both predictable and not – some of my guesses were right and some were wrong. It’s a nice palate cleanser.

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison

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Started: 7/10/21
Finished: 7/22/21

Katherine Addison’s first book*, The Goblin Emperor, is one of my new favorites. I loved it. Picking this one up was a no-brainer, and now that I have put it down, I want more. It’s a strange book – it’s Holmes and Watson, but with different names. It’s familiar mysteries, but with unfamiliar resolutions. There are familiar characters, but with supernatural twists. I wasn’t sure if I really liked it, although I enjoyed it, but I love the main friendship and I want to read more of it. So yeah, I really liked it.

*Not really her first book. Katherine Addison is a pen name for Sarah Monette, who has written other stuff. I just learned that. I have not read Sarah Monette. I will.

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

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Started: 6/21/21
Finished: 7/3/21

This series comes up whenever anyone is talking about supernatural detectives, and people seem to like it, so I figured I’d give it a try. I liked it, and I’ll probably give it another book or two, but the main character doesn’t have much of an internal life. He gets thrown into this supernatural world, out of nowhere, and he doesn’t seem to have much reaction to it. So maybe that will improve…? Also, he (or the series) has some sexist tendencies, so if that doesn’t get better, I’m out. The mystery and story were interesting, though.

Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

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Started: 6/1/21
Gave up: 6/2/21

I like my fiction weird, and I’m happy to be dropped into an unexplained or unexplainable situation right off the bat, but this was incomprehensible to me. Two seemingly normal people dropped into a situation that immediately got super-weird, and they’re barely questioning it. Certainly not panicking like anyone else would. Am I supposed to be reading into it? Probably. Did I have the patience? I did not.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

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Started: 4/17/21
Finished: 4/26/21

I liked, but didn’t love, her first novel, but I had heard really good things about this one. Of course, then it took me a while to get into this, but once I did, I was completely hooked. Cried twice. Good stuff, and better than her first book.

Battleground by Jim Butcher

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Started: 4/3/21
Finished: 4/9/21

Book 17 in The Dresden Files, which I have been re-reading via audiobook for the last year or so. I probably should have been listing the last several as new books for me, but I’ve been lazy about it. Anyway, I’m enjoying these books more than ever, particularly the later ones, at least partly because he really dialed back the low-key sexist descriptions of women THANK GOD.

Also, something in this latest book made me cry, and there was a bonus short story at the end that made me SOB. Jim Butcher has made me yell in annoyance, shout at unexpected events, laugh many times, but he’s never made me cry before.

A Sudden Wild Magic by Diana Wynne Jones

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Started: 2/27/21
Gave up: 3/3/21

People LOVE Diana Wynne Jones, but it appears I am not people. I tried one a while back – it was okay. I tried this one about British witches saving the world in the early 1990s – what’s not to like? But I feel very meh about it, so I gave up. She wrote Howl’s Moving Castle, and it’s supposed to be amazing, so I will try that sometime, but if I don’t like that one, I think I might have to be done with her.

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher

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Started: 2/8/21
Finished: 2/12/21

T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon when she’s writing kids’ books) is one of the guests of honor at this convention I’m (virtually) attending this weekend, so I figured I’d read her next to most recent book before then. I’ve read three before this and loved them, and I love this. I love it when I find a new favorite.