Started: 11/19/19
Gave up: 11/19/19
Marketed as a sweeping political drama series with battles and intrigue, it sounded great, but OH the writing. I had hoped it was just the prologue, so I pushed through. It wasn’t just the prologue. I didn’t make it through the first battle.
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.
Started: 9/14/19
Finished: 9/23/19
This is billed as a companion book to Seraphina (which I liked a lot), but it really is a sequel, and it’s just as good, if occasionally a little weirder, than the first one. Although it is a little hard to remember that the main character is supposed to only be about 17 or 18. She’s written older than that, I think, but as long as I didn’t focus on that, I was fine.
Started: 8/12/19
Finished: 8/18/19
Another book that was good but one I don’t know if I liked. It’s a coming of age story, but the framing device was a little confusing…and then I was totally engrossed in the story, and the framing device sort of starts to make sense near the end (most of the story is within the frame, so it doesn’t matter in the moment), but then the very end made NO sense to me. The book includes an essay by the author about the themes and inspirations, and I can tell you I missed all of that. It did make everything make more sense, and I don’t mean to say that the book didn’t make sense (except for the end, which was confusing), and now I’m not making sense, so I’ll end by saying that this book could be taught in a literature course and the students would get a lot out of it.
Started: 8/4/19
Finished: 8/12/19
A gender-swapped take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, but with magic (okay, like explicit magic). And demons. And sword-fighting! I didn’t love it. It was slow to start, and the two main characters were pretty annoying (they got better), and the demon plot took FOREVER to roll, and the two main characters got the same information from different sources, but the information was identical, and WE, the lucky readers, got to read about it both times, and okay, maybe I didn’t like it, either. I mean, I didn’t hate it. But I probably won’t read the sequel.
Started: 7/28/19
Finished: 8/3/19
Sequel to Updraft, which I enjoyed, but I have nearly put this down more than once. It’s plenty good, and the main character is a somewhat realistic 20-year-old (which is kind of annoying, but I guess good?). The problem is that I DO want to know how this world is constructed (at the moment, my best guess is that the towers these people live on and fly between are spines on the back of an enormous turtle), but I don’t care enough about the plot to keep reading to find out.
Update: I kept reading, I DID finish it, and I’ll tell you offline what I know about how the world is constructed if you ask nicely. Also, I don’t plan to read the third one. These books aren’t bad, but I just don’t care that much.
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
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.
Started: 7/27/19
Finished: 7/27/19
LOVED this novelette – the style, the voice, the story. It’s about a woman who has just returned to her academic research after losing her mother (who she took care of for years). It rocketed to the top of my voting list for novelette this year.
Started: 7/27/19
Finished: 7/27/19
SHORT short story, with a cute twist on the sly faerie folk genre.
Started: 7/26/19
Finished: 7/26/19
Oh, how I liked this novelette. A bad leader, a long-term revenge, pain and suffering. Really good stuff in a very small package. And food! Delicious food!
Started: 7/25/19
Finished: 7/25/19
An eerie short story by the author of that portal fantasy with clones from last year that I liked so much. This one was pretty good. Learn the rules before you use magic!
Started: 7/24/19
Finished: 7/25/19
I loved the voice of the narrator in this short story. Same author as the sad elephant novella, but I would never have guessed that. I feel like the plot is given away in the title, and I’m okay with that.
Started: 7/1/19
Finished: 7/8/19
I read this a LONG time ago. Like, I think I bought it in an airport bookstore on our honeymoon in London in 2000, and I didn’t like it. I wasn’t ready for Terry Pratchett, and it was my first experience with Neil Gaiman. This time I was totally ready, reaching for it with both hands and a foot (the other foot was preventing a crawling Jack from reaching for the trash can), and I read as quickly as I could in an era where I’ve lost my free time. Ridiculous, absurd, and funny. I am ready for the TV show.
Started: 6/1/19
Finished: 6/7/19
I’ve been meaning to read this one for a year, and then it got nominated for a Hugo and I got it in the voter’s packet, so yay for me! It’s a story about monsters and monsterslayers in a post-apocalyptic US, set on a Navajo reservation, and it’s pretty great.
Started: 5/7/19
Finished: 5/10/19
A good novella, interesting magic. The story is the member-of-nobility-hides-with-the-common-people-and-learns-a-lesson type, but it’s done well.
Started: 5/4/19
Finished: 5/7/19
The third Cecelia and Kate book was the 2nd best. Told in letters like the first one, although we get Thomas and James’ POVs, too, which is fun. Best, though, is what happened to the mislaid magician in the title. Fun, light, ridiculous, and fun. (Did I mention it was fun?)
Started: 4/9/19
Finished: 4/14/19
The second of the Cecelia and Kate novels, maybe not quite as delightful as the first one, but close and still fun.
Started: 4/7/19
Finished: 4/9/19
Steampunk fantasy novella set in post-Civil War New Orleans. I’m not always a fan of stories that use gods to fuel the magic system (capricious gods that act like children annoy me), but I liked it this time. Details built an alternate New Orleans without a lot of exposition, and the characters were well done.