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: 6/23/20
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: 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: 5/6/20
Finished: 5/16/20
A young adult book probably about vampires where the protagonist is only 15….yeah, we’ll see.
Update: it was NOT about vampires (whew), but it was about a special group of people who hunt them (and other supernatural beings), only when they break the law. I called two major plot points early on. I was 100% right about one, inconclusive but probably wrong about the second (it’s a series – I could still turn out to be right), and a little surprised by something at the end that I think will turn out to be a misdirect.
I don’t mind guessing plot points, but I HATE when they’re SO OBVIOUS and not a single character has a clue about it. But I will probably continue reading these.
Started: 3/27/20
Finished: 4/1/20
The last book in the psychics/witches/preppy school boys/etc. series that I like entirely too much. It’s about time something happened. I mean, stuff has been happening in all of the other books to move the story forward, but this thing they’ve been working toward since the first book is FINALLY HAPPENING.
The ending is good, it’s both unexpected and expected, and I feel like it happened a little too quickly. I’d realize I was 80% done and think there’s NO WAY it can be done in only the pages remaining. But it was, and it was good and yay.
Started: 2/14/20
Gave up: 3/9/20
I really liked that other Holly Black trilogy, so I picked this book up from the library. I couldn’t find time to start reading the physical copy, so I borrowed the audiobook a few days later and listened to it in the car…for as long as I could. Teenagers and vampires and the angst that goes with a centuries-old vampire who finds something deep and unique and irresistible and different and blah blah blah about a 17-year-old girl and I cannot count the ways in which I do not care.
Started: 2/26/20
Finished: 3/4/20
Third book in The Raven Cycle (witches, psychics, magic, prep school boys, etc.), and it’s a really good continuation of the story. We get more forward movement, more characterization, more good storytelling, AND it has teenagers being teenager-y and grown-up and all over the place in what feels real, despite the magic. I am waiting impatiently for the 4th book to be available from the library.
Started: 2/18/20
Finished: 2/26/20
Second book in the Nyxia trilogy, and while I still enjoyed it, I have some major problems with the aliens. I mean, they’re fine, but they’re written as humans on another planet – hardly any differences, barely even cultural ones. Doesn’t feel well thought out.
Started: 2/14/20
Finished: 2/18/20
Second book in the trilogy with psychics, witches, magic, ghosts, and prep school boys, and it started with a swerve that took me by surprise in a very good way, and I liked this book a LOT. Also, turns out it’s not a trilogy, it’s a…tetralogy?
Started: 2/2/20
Finished: 2/7/20
I picked this one up from the library after a Tor.com post about science fiction that provides hope for humanity. It’s the first in a trilogy, and I liked it. I don’t know if it’s officially YA, but the focus is on a bunch of teenagers, and aside from a few kind parents and parent-figures, the adults are Evil-with-a-capital-E. So, yeah, it’s YA.
Started: 2/1/20
Finished: 2/2/20
A novella about the main characters of the Folk of the Air trilogy, set between the first and second books. Nice to have part of the story told from the point of view of the other sister.
Started: 1/24/20
Finished: 1/28/20
Last in the fairy trilogy by Holly Black. Satisfying.
Started: 1/18/20
Finished: 1/23/20
First in a trilogy with psychics, witches, magic, ghosts, and prep school boys, and I liked it far too much.
Started: 1/4/20
Finished: 1/16/20
Book 2 of the Alanna books. She’s 14-16 (at least in the first third of the book), so it’s a little easier to take, but she can do EVERYTHING and kick ass at it. So, yay for her, but also COME ON. Still fun, though.
Started: 1/11/20
Finished: 1/16/20
Second in the fairy trilogy by Holly Black. Good middle book. Great ending.
Started: 1/4/20
Finished: 1/10/20
I’ve read (and liked) one other fairy story by Holly Black, and she’s a guest of honor at a convention we’re going to, so I figured I’d read more of her stuff. This is the first in a trilogy, also about the Fae (you can’t just call them fairies when they’re trying to kill you). It starts off DARK (bad stuff happens to some kids under 10 before they get packed off to live in Faerie), and then we jump ahead ten years and follow them as teenagers.
Started: 12/14/19
Finished: 12/16/19
First in a series a girl who wants to be a knight. I would have eaten this up if I’d found it when I was 10 (it was published in 1983). I enjoyed the first book (and I’ll keep reading), but I’m having a little bit of a hard time believing that this 10-year-old girl would talk the way she does, have the power (magical) that she does, know all these things, be able to do all this stuff, etc. She makes it to age 14 or so by the end of the book, so hopefully her ability to master EVERYTHING will get a little easier to swallow as she gets older.
Started: 11/3/19
Gave up: 11/10/19
Young adult, time travel, heist/mystery. At around 50%, I’m not sure I’m going to finish it. I’m intrigued by the complication that arose around a quarter of the way in that has not been explained yet, but a) I feel like I can live without knowing what’s going on, and b) I’m not convinced it’s going to be explained in this book. Is this part of a series? I should find out.
I gave up at 70%. That’s when they explained exactly how they were going solve their problem. I’m sure it won’t go exactly as planned, but that’s close enough for me to know how it ends, and I put it down. Meh. Also, not part of a series.
Started: 10/9/19
Gave up: 10/12/19
In my calendar, I wrote that I put this book “on hold”, but who are we kidding? I gave up. I liked the idea of it – the protagonist is the daughter of a pirate captain who, with her help, can navigate to any place, real or imaginary, in any time, as long as the map is well-drawn and the mapmaker believed in it. That’s a cool idea. The issue I had was with the writing. The author kept talking about maps, but ships use charts. I can ignore the use of walls instead of bulkheads and floors instead of decks and doors instead of hatches, but for some reason, despite my near-total memory loss of everything I learned in the Navy, I can’t get past saying maps instead of charts.