In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle
Started: 5/28/18
Finished: 5/29/18
A crotchety old man with a farm in Italy finds a unicorn. It’s a lovely story.
What I’ve Been Reading
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
Started: 5/26/18
Finished: 5/28/18
A girl at a remote boarding school is determined to solve a decades-old mystery about a disappearance from that very school. Fun read, but only the first in the series is out. The first book does NOT wrap everything up neatly. You’ve been warned.
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
Started: 5/23/18
Finished: 5/26/18
There’s a secret society whose members steal rare books from all the universes to store in the invisible library between the universes. Sounds awesome. The execution was not awesome. It was okay and sometimes interesting, but I felt let down.
The Future Falls by Tanya Huff
Started: 5/20/18
Finished: 5/22/18
Third in the Enchantment Emporium series. The world is actually ending. What can the family do to stop it? Let’s find out!
The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff
Started: 5/17/18
Finished: 5/20/18
Second in the Enchantment Emporium series. We take a step away from the family and focus on one character and selkies, which was a surprise. Fun, but not as fun as the first.
The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff
Started: 5/13/18
Finished: 5/17/18
First in the Enchantment Emporium series. Intro to the family who takes care of the world, largely with a lot of infighting, power grabs, and squicky incest. That last bit was a surprise and a pretty big departure from other Tanya Huff novels. The story was good – one of the family is trying to carve her own path (and find her grandmother, who is missing) – but this series isn’t my favorite by this author.
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Started: 5/6/18
Finished: 5/13/18
I feel like I’ve read this book before. The story is too familiar. It’s The Stand, it’s World War Z with vampires. It’s about a government experiment that unleashes the apocalypse and then, decades later, how what society is left is dealing with it (and eventually, hopefully, defeating it). This is the first in a trilogy (something I didn’t know when I started it). I will admit here that I read the summaries on Wikipedia and Goodreads to see what happens in the other two books rather than read them myself.
Provenance by Ann Leckie
Started: 5/2/18
Finished: 5/6/18
Set in the same universe as the Imperial Radch series, it’s completely different. The plot hinges on whether or not someone is who they say they are (or rather, who they say they aren’t) and whether a certain artifact is real. Also, there’s some fun with proxies. It doesn’t sound riveting, but it kept my attention. I really need to read the other two books in the Ancillary series.
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Started: 4/29/18
Gave up: 5/1/18
It’s a thriller, but I didn’t like the protagonist, and the whole thing felt weirdly paced and plotted. I don’t think I made it a third of the way in before I gave up.
A Window Opens by Elisabeth Egan
Started: 4/29/18
Gave up: 4/29/18
Supposed to be in the vein of Where’d You Go, Bernadette, which I LOVED, and Today Will Be Different, which I strongly disliked (both by Maria Semple). This one fell into the strongly dislike category. The main character and the overall situation should be relatable, but I just can’t with her character, her decisions, her choices. So I quit halfway through.
Warcross by Marie Lu
Started: 4/27/18
Finished: 4/29/18
Random girl is chosen to compete in a worldwide video game tournament AND find out what shady dealings are going on behind the scenes. A little meh. I’ve heard good things about the Legend trilogy by the same author, so maybe this one just didn’t grab me.
The Trespasser by Tana French
Started: 4/20/18
Finished: 4/26/18
Newest Tana French Dublin Murder Squad novel! ‘Nuff said. I love the prickly detectives on the Murder Squad.
Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews
Started: 4/20/18
Gave up: 4/20/18
It’s urban fantasy, or maybe paranormal romance, or maybe both. I like that genre (duh), but I just didn’t care about this one. Couldn’t get into it. There’s one series like this that I heard was really good starting with the second book, but I can’t remember if it was this one, and Twitter wasn’t able to help me when I asked. So I gave it up. There are lots of other books in the sea.
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
Started: 4/15/18
Finished: 4/20/18
This one was odd. I liked it, but the technology in this universe is, I think, deliberately inscrutable. It could be really interesting – it relies on calendars, dates, and the population’s belief in those calendars – but the way it’s described is not clear at all. The characters are interesting, and the plot is interesting, but there’s a space battle and how it’s being waged might as well be in Greek.
I was really looking forward to this one, too.
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
Started: 4/13/18
Finished: 4/15/18
Another Holmes and Watson take, but this time the Holmes character is an unstable Vietnamese woman and Watson is a sentient spaceship. It’s a novella, just long enough to solve one mystery, but while I liked the characters, I found the mystery (so basically, the story) a little…not hard to understand exactly, because I followed the plot, but hard to explain, maybe? Like, I read it, but I don’t think I could describe what happened.
Revelations by Jennifer Carole Lewis
Started: 4/10/18
Finished: 4/12/18
Urban fantasy (or paranormal romance? both) with a new take on vampires/werewolves/other supernatural beings. Not bad.
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
Started: 4/8/18
Finished: 4/10/18
The first in a new series by John Scalzi. Normally I love his stuff, but this one took a while for me to get into. The story is good (as usual), but the characters felt like a bit of a departure, one in particular. Usually his characters are all likable, and this one was decidedly not. That’s not a bad thing, actually, but it was unexpected and took me a bit to come around on.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Started: 4/7/18
Finished: 4/8/18
Fascinating story that follows two families, descendent by descendent, across the centuries. One stays in Africa, one is captured by slavers and goes to the US.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
Started: 4/2/18
Finished: 4/7/18
I REALLY enjoyed this book – it’s all court intrigue, not a lot of ACTION-action, but lots of maneuvering and politics. It’s not perfect, though, and if you’re going to read it (and I think some of you should), maybe don’t read this next part. The new emperor is young, only semi-educated and only about some things, never expected to be emperor, and knows nothing about governing or court life. He has a head for logic and reasoning because of his guardian, but that’s about it. So he ends up the emperor, and…then he never makes a mistake (not any serious ones). He picks the right people as his close advisors (when he has the opportunity to make a choice), even though he knows NO ONE, and he says the right thing to the right people when it counts. You’re in his head, and he’s scared all the time and you like him and you want him to succeed, but shouldn’t he stumble over something? All of his problems come from outside forces. I really did like this book, and I would absolutely read more about him, but this tiny thing gets to me a little.
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Started: 3/28/18
Finished: 4/2/18
LOVED LOVED LOVED this book. It’s like a Russian fairy tale (it certainly has roots in existing Russian fairy tales). It starts small and the stakes keep getting higher, and I LOVED it. (This is the author who wrote the Temeraire books, which you may recall I also LOVED, but this couldn’t be more different, and that is equally wonderful.)