Sabriel by Garth Nix
Started: 10/15/20
Finished: 10/24/20
I found this slow to start, but it eventually grabbed me, and when I finished it, I jumped straight into the second book.
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The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Started: 10/1/20
Finished: 10/10/20
Yay multiverse! I don’t think I can say much more about this book without giving away key points. I will say it went in a different direction than I was expecting, and I liked it, but I don’t want to spend any more time in this book’s world.
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Started: 9/18/20
Gave up: 9/19/20
I gave up on this one, but not through any fault of its own. I just wasn’t in the mood. It’s set in early 20th century Mexico, and maybe it’s fantasy and maybe it’s magical realism (which I generally do NOT like), but there are gods and bargains and LOTS of discussions of towns and their histories, and yeah. Not in the mood. It has really good reviews, so I feel bad about giving up, but not that bad.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
Started: 9/9/20
Finished: 9/18/20
I was really looking forward to this one – it was nominated for a Hugo this year, I loved the short story she was nominated for last year, and I liked the short story she was nominated for this year. The book didn’t start well for me. It was interesting, and the premise is interesting, but the writing felt…amateurish. It got better (I think), but the book within a book thing took too long to pay off. I did eventually get hooked, but I found myself thinking about giving up on it a couple of times. If I had read it between the ages of 10 and 18, maybe, I probably would have loved it.
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
Started: 8/28/20
Gave up: 8/30/20
It feels familiar at the beginning, and I wasn’t in the mood for another same-old story, but I’d heard good things about it and the premise is fascinating, so I kept going. Then there were hints of something really dark and awful going on that the heroine is going to find out, and okay, I’m interested, but she doesn’t follow up! Or she’s more interested in the same-old! Are you kidding me? And then I found out that it’s the first in a series, so I’m not even going to find everything out by the end of the book, and you know, I’m making up my mind to quit reading as I’m typing this.
Yup, I just read a few more pages and then skimmed a few more and NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Next!
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
Started: 8/24/20
Finished: 8/28/20
I liked the beginning, and then I got bored, and then I got interested again, and then I was disappointed. The book ends like it’s going to have a sequel, but I don’t think it’s planned to be a series, so it just feels unfinished. It’s supposed to be this feminist-thriller-climate change-body horror variation of Lord of the Flies, and some of that comes through, but then it just ends.
The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis
Started: 8/22/20
Finished: 8/24/20
This was a good book, YA, and a hard read. The teenagers all feel very real, even though I was nothing like them in high school, and neither were most (if not all) if the kids I knew, but hey, times are different. It’s emotional and disturbing, and I couldn’t put it down.
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Started: 8/15/20
Finished: 8/22/20
I wanted to love this book because I loved the one before it, but I was SO confused by it. It seemed to be rewriting the first book in flashback, with different characters and different events, and while that does get explained, it was confusing, not gripping. And then at around 70%, it got 1000 times more fun for me, for reasons I will not explain because spoilers, but that wasn’t enough. And then it ended, and what? I don’t know what happened. I don’t understand the world this series is set in. I love the character of Gideon from the first book, and I really feel for Harrow in both books, and I WILL read the third book because I just have to know, but I was disappointed not to love this one as much as the first.
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Started: 8/9/20
Finished: 8/14/20
I don’t know how to talk about this one without spoilers. First, several authors and reviewers I trust LOVE this book. I know the story of Tam Lin because I’ve read two other adaptations of it (Rose and Rot by Kat Howard, which I really enjoyed, and Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, which, according to these same authors and reviewers, should also have been a life-changing experience – it was not). Since I knew the story already, I was looking for clues early and pretty sure I was seeing them, but OH MY GOD this story took forEVER to get to the point, and then it rushed through EVERYthing right at the end. And left a lot of questions. NOT lifechanging for me. Maybe if I’d read it at a younger age…or maybe not.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Started: 8/6/20
Finished: 8/9/20
Molly recommended this book to me. She likes thrillers, I like thrillers, but I think she only recommends to me the ones she’s not sure she likes because she needs to talk about them. This is the second time I’ve read one from her that I felt I had to push through. It was interesting, and I don’t NOT recommend it, but it’s one of those where the narrator starts to make decisions that YOU know are wrong, that even HE knows are wrong, and it’s hard not to get frustrated.
Old Lovegood Girls by Gail Godwin
Started: 8/2/20
Finished: 8/6/20
I thought about putting this down shortly after starting it. Not because it was bad, it’s very much not bad, but because it wasn’t grabbing me. I wasn’t positive I was in the right mood for it. But I kept reading, and I kept reading, and I kept reading, and I couldn’t stop reading, and I stayed up late two nights running because I couldn’t stop reading, and then it ended, and I’m a little sad. It’s about two women who meet in college and then separate and how their lives went on.
The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John
Started: 8/1/20
Finished: 8/2/20
Talk about a change in tone. I went from a whole bunch of weird SFF short stories (and then Riot Baby) to this charming little story about women who work in a department store in post-WWII Australia. Wish I could remember how I heard about it.
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
Started: 7/29/20
Finished: 7/31/20
I don’t know exactly how to talk about this book. It’s about black kids with powers, set in the real world, with the backdrop of Rodney King and Watts and police brutality and the prison system, and it’s HARD. And it’s good.
Dark Light by Jodi Taylor
Started: 7/26/20
Finished: 7/29/20
SO DISAPPOINTING. I mean, it was enjoyable enough, but I was expecting a completely different story since this is supposed to be a sequel to the White Silence AND it picks up right after the other ended. It went in completely different directions (more than once!) and seemed to have nothing to do with the plot of the first book (which had not been resolved), and when it did pick up the plot of the first book (sort of), it resolved unsatisfactorily. Meh. Also, the writing felt more amateurish than the first book and both books felt like that compared to her other books. I don’t understand how that could be, but there it is.
White Silence by Jodi Taylor
Started: 7/23/20
Finished: 7/26/20
This book, or at least parts of it, scared both Corey and Mel, so I went into it gingerly. If it was dark outside and I thought it was going in a scary direction, I put it down until the next day. Maybe that’s why the parts that scared them didn’t scare me. Regardless, I liked it. Weird sinister things kept happening to the character, and I REALLY wanted to know what was going on. Super glad there was a second book.
Leviathan Sings to Me in the Deep by Nibedita Sen
Started: 7/22/20
Finished: 7/23/20
I don’t think I can say I liked this story (about a whaling ship and its crew), but I keep remembering parts of it randomly. It won’t leave me alone.
A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde
Started: 7/22/20
Gave Up: 7/22/20
I tried to read this one, and it had an interesting premise, but the writing style got to me. I stopped reading Fran Wilde’s second book – maybe I finished it, and I don’t care to the third? – and this short story had a similar style.
Blood is Another Word for Hunger by Rivers Solomon
Started: 7/22/20
Finished: 7/22/20
Weird and disturbing and think-y, like all three pieces I have read by Rivers Solomon now, so at least they have a pattern. 🙂 Available online, link below. Worth reading.
And Now His Lordship Is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas
Started: 7/22/20
Finished: 7/22/20
SO GOOD. It’s fantasy, it’s horror (even though I heard on a horror panel that the author doesn’t think of it as horror, so maybe I should just say it has an element that depending on what you’re afraid of, you could absoLUTEly think it’s scary), it’s historical fiction, and it’s emotional (I cried). SO. GOOD.
As the Last I May Know by S.L. Huang
Started: 7/22/20
Finished: 7/22/20
I read this one on Tor.com a few months ago and just re-read it this morning. It’s so good. And it made me cry, too, more sad horrified tears, but better ones than the last story.