Started: 7/5/20
Finished: 7/8/20
Fourth in the Wayward Children series, this one takes one of our characters back in time to when she found her door. It’s so good, and the ending is so sad. It felt sadder than the others, but I’m not sure why – they’re all sad stories because they can’t find their way back to where they feel they belong. I should re-read the first one, at least.
Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20
First in a new series that could be really good, but again, I had formatting issues I can’t get past. It’s a PDF with a watermark across every page that says something like “DO NOT REPRODUCE OR WE WILL COME AFTER YOU”. The watermark is okay, but a PDF on a Kindle is annoying because I have to keep resizing the pages. I tried to convert it to a readable Kindle format (Amazon tells you how), and that process put the words from the watermark into the text of the book. But not in one sentence on each page, no. No, it broke up the watermark sentence and inserted the individual words into the text, making the actual book unreadable because it made no sense. I would like to read this book, but I’ll get it from the library or something. I’m not going to get it done in time for Hugo voting.
Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20
13-year-old goes to space to rescue her older brother, and I am not in the mood. The writing is good, the premise is good, but the formatting on my Kindle is atrocious (it’s a converted PDF), and the mind of this 13-year-old is not as comfortable to live in as the mind of the 12-year-old wizard was (from my last book). I’d like to come back to this later, but I’m not going to finish it in time for Hugo voting.
Started: 7/2/20
Finished: 7/5/20
Young wizard goes on an adventure! Light, quick read, good characters.
Started: 6/25/20
Finished: 7/2/20
Seanan McGuire is amazing. She writes SO many books, in SO many different universes, and they’re all fascinating and DIFFERENT. This one is weird but not hard to read, compelling while also making my brain work, and I really really really liked it.
Started: 6/23/20
Gave up: 6/25/20
YA, possibly Lovecraftian (at least insofar as it includes monsters in the ocean deeps), with an Artful Dodger-like main character, but it didn’t grab me. It seems perfectly readable, and maybe I’ll go back to it, but I have a limited amount of time to read Hugo-nominated books, and I don’t want to spend time on this one.
Started: 6/10/20
Finished: 6/23/20
The setting here is immediately weird and a little hard to understand, but fascinating, and I really want to know what’s going on and how it works. I still feel that way having finished the book. Good? Yes. Easy? No.
Started: 6/5/20
Finished: 6/10/20
Last in the Winternight trilogy, with a really satisfying ending. I LOVED this trilogy.
Started: 5/29/20
Finished: 6/4/20
Sequel to The Bear and the Nightingale, which I raved about two years ago. It came out last year, and I have the third book already, so I am behind. I flew (using my current definition of “flew”) through this – it’s so good.
Started: 5/19/20
Finished: 5/23/20
LOVE the author, so excited about this book, and it was good! Young adult, but with realistic teenagers (thank goodness), near-future tech, but not about the tech. It’s a thriller, and a good one.
Started: 3/26/20
Finished: 3/27/20
A Green Man story, but completely different from any other Green Man story I’ve ever read. Really good, and it has a sequel…which isn’t out yet, but it’s due out in June! And there are only supposed to be two, so anyone worried about getting stuck in the neverending wait that comes with a new series can stop worrying.
Started: 3/19/20
Finished: 3/26/20
I LOVED this book. It’s super-weird, but the main character is hilarious (I laughed a LOT and had to force myself to stop reading parts out loud to John), and I LOVED it. So excited to read the next one when it comes out (THIS SUMMER!!). Queer necromancers in space. With swords. And hilarity. And death (because necromancers). Also lots of drama – despite the funny character, it is NOT a comedy. I got this from the library, but I need to own it. And re-read it.
Started: 2/29/20
Finished: 3/19/20
First book in a new series, and I nominated it for a Hugo before I finished it. Big space empire, with an ambassador from a little space station, who has really neat advanced tech and has to navigate a complex imperial language with cool linguistic details. A lot of stuff was introduced and much of it didn’t get far – I think this is going to be a big series, and I’m super excited. Not so much about the wait, but I’ll live.
Started: 1/11/20
Finished: 1/16/20
Second in the fairy trilogy by Holly Black. Good middle book. Great ending.
Started: 12/2/19
Finished: 12/13/19
First in a series about magic based on Indian culture, set in a desert country with gods and spirits and power-hungry emperor-priests. Really good. I think the sequel follows a different character, and I’m a little bummed about that.
Started: 11/24/19
Finished: 12/1/19
Military SF with some weird circular time travel and a narrator who doesn’t know what’s going on, with a prisoner interrogation going on as a framing device, and really, I liked it. I’m not sure it got fully explained, or maybe I need to read it again, but it reminded me of Starship Troopers, and I liked it.
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
This was the very last Hugo-eligible story I read, and it took a serious run at the top of my novelette list (I landed on #2 for it, but it was close). It’s a refreshingly NICE story, and I am moving the author’s novels higher up my to-read list.
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
Super short, and very moving, but it’s mostly in the footnotes and the editing comments, so it takes a little maneuvering to get at it.
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
I LOVE THIS STORY SO MUCH. I am not ashamed to admit I cried at the end. I was reading it out loud to Jack and he wasn’t sure what to do with me.
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 7/28/19
The style of this short story was interesting – like encyclopedia entries – and I appreciate how each of the “donors” affected George Washington, but this was both a little too weird for me (I’m shuddering at the whole teeth thing) and a little not enough.