Sorcery & Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Started: 1/5/19
Finished: 1/7/19
Delightful! A story told in letters between two cousins/best friends, set in Regency England with a bit of magic.
fantasy
In The Stacks by Scott Lynch
Started: 1/3/19
Finished: 1/3/19
Short story about a wizard university where to pass your fifth year, you have to return a library book. Harder than it seems. Cute story.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Started: 12/27/18
Finished: 12/30/18
It got rave reviews, but now that I’ve read it, I’m not sure why. The story jumps from section to section, there are parts that don’t fit at all, and we’re inside the main character’s head, but the character’s not fully developed. There’s too much telling instead of showing, and at the same time not enough telling to understand her motivations.
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Started: 12/17/18
Finished: 12/19/18
A couple meet, fall in love, and flee their Middle Eastern city via a magic door. The writing keeps you at a remove from the characters and the story, so you know how the characters are feeling, but you don’t feel how they’re feeling, but it’s well-done. There have been several sentences I’ve read out loud to John because I liked the phrasing so much.
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
Started: 12/1/18
Finished: 12/2/18
Third in the Wayward Children series. The first book set up the premise (which is great). The second and third explore some of the worlds and follow some of the first book’s characters. I still love these books, both for the ideas and the characters. These are some real teenagers going through some real emotional issues.
The End of the Day by Claire North
Started: 11/27/18
Gave up: 12/1/18
Someone visits people before Death does. Could have been good, but there’s no plot (I got a quarter of the way in – nothing) and the main character isn’t interesting enough to carry the book without a sense of purpose to what action there is. Gave it up.
The Girl With The Red Balloon by Katherine Locke
Started: 11/23/18
Finished: 11/27/18
Young adult novel with a little time travel, a little magic, and some linked narratives. Mostly set in East Germany in the late 80s, which is a setting I don’t think I’ve ever read before. Pretty good!
The Black Company by Glen Cook
Started: 10/11/18
Gave Up: 10/13/18
I’d been looking forward to reading this – grimdark fantasy series with a mercenary army – but the writing style was impossible. I wasn’t getting any information about the characters, the action scenes were muddled. I couldn’t tell what was happening, who it was happening to, or why I should care. Good reasons to give up reading it.
Stone Cold Bastards by Jake Bible
Started: 10/10/18
Gave Up: 10/11/18
This sounded like fun – the gates of Hell open, demons possess most humans, and the only ones saved are those who make it to cathedrals which are being guarded by the gargoyles who came to life. I couldn’t get into it. The characters didn’t grab me and the dialogue was annoying.
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
Started: 9/5/18
Finished: 9/7/18
A well-off Victorian teenager with a bad attitude goes on an adventure with his best friend (who he’s secretly in love with) and his sister (who is awesome and gets her own sequel).
Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Started: 8/17/18
Finished: 8/24/18
Sequel to Six of Crows, nice wrap-up to that story. Adventure, heists, magic, plots within plots – good stuff.
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng
Started: 8/16/18
Gave up: 8/17/18
Interesting premise: Victorian missionaries travel to the lands of the Fae to try to convert them to Christianity. Our protagonist’s brother never returned, so she heads there to try to find him. And then nothing happens. For a long time. So I gave up.
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
Started: 8/7/18
Finished: 8/11/18
LOVED this. The Civil War got interrupted by the zombie apocalypse, and while slavery technically ended (because everyone is needed to fight zombies), really all the former slaves got drafted to be the front line in the fight against the zombies. Young adult, really strong voice, great main character. I think (I hope) there will be a sequel.
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Started: 7/29/18
Finished: 8/7/18
Really good, really interesting, but a little tough to start. Once I was in, though, I was all the way in. The magic is super weird but in a good way, and at the same time, this is set in our future.
The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller
Started: 7/17/18
Finished: 7/21/18
I’m really not sure if I liked this. It was interesting, and there’s an open question about the abilities the kid had (Did he actually have them? Did those things really happen?), but aside from that, it’s about a teenager, his relationships, and his eating disorder.
Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn
Started: 7/12/18
Finished: 7/17/18
Entertaining, but not great. Superheroes are a thing, but the main character is the assistant to one of the heroes because she’s afraid of her own powers and blah blah blah. It wasn’t exactly gripping.
Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher
Started: 7/6/18
Finished: 7/12/18
It’s a Baba Yaga story, it’s an Alice in Wonderland story, and of course it’s neither of those, but it was really good, and I really enjoyed the characters.
Children of Thorns, Children of Water by Aliette de Bodard
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
I’m not sure I liked this novelette. The magic was odd, the setting was interesting, but I didn’t get enough background or explanation to get into the story.
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
Started: 7/1/18
Finished: 7/3/18
I loved this book. It’s fantasy – boy finds himself in a land with elves and mermaids and so on, which is always good for me – but the characters (all teenagers, followed from age 13 to 18) are written so realistically it’s easy to forget this is fantasy. (Fantasy novels don’t always do characters justice.)
Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente
Started: 6/24/18
Finished: 6/26/18
This version of Snow White is Native American and lives in the American West, around the Gold Rush period. It’s a neat way to look at the story, but I can’t say I really liked it. It’s more a style issue than a story issue for me.