Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo

These books are GREAT. I really really really liked them a lot. These are the "read on the subway, read during lunch, read in your spare five minutes, stay up too late to finish" kind of books.

Things I loved: the world building is so interesting! It's set in what I think of as fantasy Netherlands, although fantasy Russia, fantasy Germany (or maybe Finland/Sweden), and fantasy China make appearances. Old school fantasy used to have each country be a different type of person, as if all the people from country X are evil, and from country Y are religious zealots, and from country Q are proud but dumb (cough cough David Eddings cough). This does a great job of showing people from each country being influenced by their own culture and history, but also able to grow and change when they meet new people. There are good and bad people from everywhere.

Things I loved: the characters! A great range are assembled as part of Kaz's gang, not just "a sassy girl" and "a smart boy" and "the love interest." Everyone is complex, everyone gets flashbacks about how they became who they are, and everyone contributes. There is no whiny princess dragged along against her will, nor is there an ass-kicking warrior chick who never talks except to growl or be sexy. I liked everyone. (Okay, I especially liked Inej and Wylan.)

I haven't told you anything about the plot because book 1 is about a heist, and book 2 is about the repercussions of that heist, and you'll be happiest not knowing anything except that. I was sold on these books when I was told that Lymond is one of Bardugo's favorite hero-types, and you can see reflections of that in Kaz, but again, you'll be happiest not explicitly trying to compare this to Dunnett. It's twisty it's exciting, it's awesome.

One thing that made me laugh: everyone is a teenager, because it's YA, but also everyone is weighed down by endless tragic backstory and difficult experiences. These are some worldly, grizzled teens.

Grade: A
#88 and #89 in 2016

The Fate of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

Oh my goddddddddddddddddddd.

I am not sure how to talk about this without spoiling the very end of the series. Here is the non-spoilery review: It did not wrap up the way I expected! I think the ending works, and it definitely builds on the themes that came before it. I loved Lily and Katie and Kelsea. I liked the book's discussion of what is or isn't a utopia and what it means to create a "better world." I liked Kelsea's struggle between wanting to help people and do good things, and wanting to just destroy the shit out of bad guys once she had that power. This book was more dystopian than I usually go for, but it's not utterly hopeless. It's not a Hunger Games ending, if you know what I mean by that. It's really well written, and nearly every question that was asked, gets answered. It takes a lot of YA fantasy tropes and spins them on their heads, for better or worse. And after I finished it, I needed to run around shouting at a friend for a long, long time. I think it's well worth a read.






OKAY HERE ARE SPOILERS. STOP READING NOW. GO READ THE BOOKS. SPOILERS.




One thing that had carried me through the dystopian parts were the little excerpts of books at the beginning of each chapter, implying that Kelsea would win the war and the future would be bright. And at some point in this book you realize that although she wins, these books come from a darker future timeline where everything is even more fucked up -- and when Kelsea makes her ultimate decision to use the Tear jewel to go back in time, they vanish. I loved that.

I had spent a lot of books 1 and 2 wondering why William Tear's vision of a perfect utopia was a kingdom, not a democracy. And that question is pretty thoroughly answered in this book. Because it got fucked up. Because he got killed. Because Jonathan got killed, too, and because the Raleighs were jerks. So in the final timeline there are not and never have been any kings, only one Queen of the Tearling.

SO let's talk about that ending. I figured we were going somewhere ~it's all a dream~ about the time Aisa died horribly, but was absolutely not expecting the way it actually all came down. On the one hand, yeah, it feels a little bit cheap to erase everything. Row gets a fast death after creating centuries of suffering and violence and destroying everything in his path, including children. None of Kelsea's sacrifices or struggle really happened. She never killed anyone, she never had to deal with that. She goes back in time and undoes the major turning point in history, and then that's it. Gavin doesn't have to atone for centuries, either. (Can we talk for a second about the sexy, daring Fetch as a whiny little monster of a teenage boy? I laaaaaaughed.)

But on the other hand -- oh my god, does she pay a price for that. The scene where she murders Row is one of the creepiest things I have ever read. And then at the end, when she wakes up in what is inarguably the Better World at last, having saved her kingdom, having saved all her friends, having saved the world... she's all alone, and she will be forever. She saved the world and lost literally everything doing it. No one knows her. I still expected some kind of wink at the end, for the Mace or someone to also vaguely remember or recognize her. But no one does, not the Mace, not Father Tyler, not Pen. It's devastating. It balances out how good things are really beautifully, but oh my god, it leaves you feeling hollowed out and miserable at the same time. She saved the world! And no one knows, or cares, or remembers her. What a fucking gut-punch.

Grade: A
#87 in 2016

The Hanging Tree, Ben Aaronovitch

I have this book because one of my bffs lives in London and shipped it to me in hardcover when it was released in the U.K. It'll be released in mid-January in the states. (Allegedly. They pushed this release back over a year, and it's been driving me nuts.)

I love this series! I really should have reread all the books before I sat down with this one, because it heavily references earlier books and characters. I don't want to talk about what happens, because it's a mystery series (and this one deals with the ongoing reveal of the Big Bad) so I'll just say it's a delight to spend another few hours reading about Peter Grant. Although, thematically the whole thing didn't come together at the end the way I expected. And now I need the next one, so PLEASE don't push it back another two years, Ben Aaronovitch.

Note: I haven't read a real hardcover book in a long time and I forgot how annoying it is compared to my kindle. I needed a way to mark my page, I couldn't carry it around from room to room nearly as easily, and when I went to bed I had to leave the lights on to read it. I love turning the lights on and using the backlight on my kindle to read until I fall asleep. Also, I found I skipped paragraphs more often while reading actual paper, and had to go back and make myself read more slowly. All around kind of a weird experience.

Grade: A
#86 in 2016

Just One Damned Thing After Another, Jodi Taylor

I wanted to like this SO MUCH. It has a great premise -- time traveling scientist historians! Unfortunately, the writing doesn't hold up to the idea. The whole thing is told instead of shown -- our narrator will declare, "No one liked him, because he was such a jerk. But then I decided to give him a chance," and there is no example of him being a jerk, nor of why she wants to give him a chance. Things are just declared. The same with the historical action adventure scenes. They are sort of generally described as after the fact events. The book has the tone of wanting to be the Eyre Affair, but without the wit. I read 25% and decided I had other things to spend my time on.

Just go read the Eyre Affair, honestly.

Grade: DNF
#82 in 2016

A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J Maas

"But you didn't like the first one! Why did you read this one!"
"To see if it got better."
"...and did it?"
"NO."

So in the first book Feyre meets Tamlin, the High Lord of the Spring Court of the faeries, falls in love with him, and fights the evil Queen of the faeries to save him. She dies in the attempt and is resurrected as the strongest, most badass faery ever, but is understandably all fucked up from the terrible things she had to do.

Then suddenly in book 2, Tamlin is abusive and won't listen to her, has a secret dark past of evil running through his family, and is willing to collaborate with the evil faeries he tried to die to stop in book one. Luckily for our heroine, she had a dark and sexy maybe-evil guy in book one who loved her but whom she hated. And now he turns out to be all sad backstory and secret goodness inside, and ACTUALLY her true love after all.

Nonsense. Just hilarious nonsense.

I really like the idea of a YA novel where the heroine has a good and boring boyfriend and a sexy semi-evil boyfriend, and she chooses the semi-evil one. I was all about Elena and Damon on the Vampire Diaries. But the retconning this book attempts is hilarious. I actually liked Rhys okay, but he was a sexually harassing creep in book 1, which no amount of "but he's SAD inside!" could make me forget.

About 40% of the book is Feyre moping that she's twisted and broken inside, while trying on endless beautiful dresses. Another 40% is backstory of characters we've just met who weren't in book 1 but are now the heroes of the series which... is an interesting way to do things. The last 20% is plot, but just barely. A lot of the book is macguffin quests to do stuff that doesn't ultimately matter. The ending was particularly bizarre. It's been 1st person pov from one character for 2 books and then suddenly it isn't. There's also a switcheroo that doesn't particularly work.

I don't know. It's not TERRIBLE. I get the appeal of throwing out Tamlin and subbing in Rhys as the romantic lead. The problem is that I'm not convinced anything from book 1 supports that, and that I kind of don't like Feyre enough to care who she ends up with. She's always moping and shouting at people, and her adorable sass which wins everyone over, is mostly just not that sassy.

Will I read the 3rd book just to shout about it? Signs point to yes, as long as my library has it.

Grade: C
#81 in 2016

A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J Maas

There is a trope in YA fiction, where the heroine's arc is to learn about the world and how people (or aliens, or fairies, or vampires) aren't the way she assumed they were, and she's going to have to grow up and realize everyone can be good or bad. A lot of the book is her assumptions, and her finally realizing how wrong she is. And there is another trope in romance, where the heroine hates the hero for some reason, and just when she's starting to thinks he likes him, she overhears part of a conversation that seems to confirm all the things that make her hate the hero. Then she runs away, and then dumb terrible stuff happens to her.

Neither of these tropes are bad; they just aren't my favorites. I'd always rather have a clever heroine, and a romance where the tension of "will they or won't they?" is built on actual problems rather than overheard, imagined ones. So this book wasn't my favorite, because to some extent it's built around both these tropes. The romance also felt a little.... Well, he's handsome, and he's nice, so now she LOVES HIM, even though he represents everything she always thought she hated. And he loves her for no reason I ever totally understood (she's not that nice, and she's not that smart). Of course, some of that gets explained with a twist toward the end, but it still felt a little unearned.

I really liked parts of the book. Feyre is a human, and she kills a faerie so her family won't starve to death. Then another faerie comes for revenge, and rather than murder her, demands she come live with him forever instead. (Yes, it's Beauty and the Beast.) She haaaaaates faeries, and spends a lot of the book plotting escape, and being a huge brat to someone who is instantly only nice to her (for reasons that are explained later, in fairness to the book). Eventually a Thing happens, I won't ruin the twist, but she has to go rescue him, because now she LOVES him, and to do that she has to survive a bunch of trials and solve a riddle. I bet you could solve the riddle even if I don't tell you the riddle, but sure, okay; it's a YA book.

The problem was that by the time we got to Feyre standing up to the evil queen, I didn't believe she was smart enough to survive the traps set for her, or to bargain her way out of tricky faery deals. And frankly -- she's mostly not. She solves the brute force puzzle okay, but needs help to solve the thinking puzzles, makes terrible deals, and only solves the obvious riddle on the verge of death. She's bad at rescuing; she isn't even plucky and stubborn and determined. By the end she's sadly resigned to lose and die.

Oh, and there's what I think is going to be a love triangle in the sequel, which might be the dumbest love triangle I've read in years. (There is an evil faery who is dark and beautiful and saves her, but ONLY FOR HIS OWN SELFISH REASONS, or did he, or does he have SECRET FEELINGS??????? This subplot features a lot of sexual harassment, and being saved from sexual harassment, and although he has a reason, I didn't like it.)

I think I really really would have liked this if I were younger; the heroine rescuing the hero from the evil person who has stolen him away to be her consort is a great twist on a fairy tale. But Feyre just wasn't the kind of heroine who I like reading about, and so for me, this book wasn't great.

Grade: C

#69 in 2016

The Invasion of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

The second book in a trilogy can be hard to pull off, but I loved this book. It added to what we knew from book one, it advanced the plot, it was full of great exciting moments. And it ends on a cliffhanger, which I figured it would, but.... Now I have to wait a couple of months for the last book to find out if the series sticks the landing. (I really hope it does.)

In case you forgot: the Tear is a fantasy land, and Kelsey is its queen, raised in seclusion so she couldn't be murdered by her mother's enemies. In book 1 Kelsey comes back to her kingdom, realizes how messed up things are, and tries to make it right -- which kicks off a war with a much more powerful country on the border. We also know that Kelsey and other characters read books from our world, reference the Bible and Shakespeare, and came to the Tear on something called "the Crossing," in boats, a few centuries earlier. All the technology and history from before that is more or less lost, though.

In this book Kelsey has to figure out what to do about the invading army. She has magic, and she has the potential to use it to destroy her enemies, but just like Luke Skywalker could have told her, once you go down the dark path forever will it control your destiny. Kelsey can't save her people without doing some potentially terrible things. And meanwhile, she's having visions of the life of a woman before the Crossing, back in Manhattan, dealing with a dystopian slight-future where a terrible US president has seized power and is using censorship to make life terrible, especially for women. But maybe there is hope for a better world...

This story gets dark (if you have trouble with sexual assault or self-harm I wouldn't recommend it) but I loved the story Kelsey finds herself watching, and I loved Kelsey's story, too. I really liked how it expanded what we know about the Crossing, and the Tear, and I liked Kelsey's arc here. I also like Pen, and the Fetch, and the Mace. So many good characters! So much going on!

And who the heck is Kelsey's dad, you guys. Seriously, I need to know.

Grade: A
#67 in 2016

The Queen of the Tearling, Erika Johansen

I know my goal for the month was NOT to buy any new books but JUST ONE isn't bad. And this one was on sale when I picked it up, it barely counts as a purchase!

This is fantasy -- our heroine is a princess who has been raised in a cabin in the woods because her uncle the Regent would kill her if he knew where she was. The Red Queen in the next country over would kill her, too. And so would the assassins who've been hired, and maybe a whole bunch of other people, including the soldiers who are supposed to be protecting her. When she claims her throne she finds out just how screwed up her country is, and she has a lot of difficult choices about how to fix it, when changing anything will mean inevitable war with the neighboring countries that have been preying on it in her absence.

This is a familiar story, but I still found it really interesting. I liked that the main character is a girl, and that her kingdom seems to have been ruled by lots of queens, good and bad. The main antagonist is a woman as well. I like that our heroine isn't beautiful or thin. She isn't a great swordswoman, but she has a very firm sense of right and wrong. She's driven by a need to be better than her mother -- I can't remember a lot of high fantasy where that's a driving character motivation. I liked that instead of a generic fantasy land this place was settled by the English and Americans after some kind of "crossing" that destroyed all their technology. It means historical references and books and religion can all be familiar. It also adds a vague dystopian element to the world, which I hope is explored more in later books. (On the other hand, some of the language is jarringly not fantasy; royals and nobles suddenly shouting "fuck you!" breaks the mood of the book a little.)

This is so compulsively readable that I wonder if it's YA -- if it is, there's a lot of fairly graphic sex going on, most of it creepy or non-consensual, and lots of referenced rape and murder. There are also a bunch of mysterious elements I want explained. Who is the evil spirit? What's the deal with The Fetch? Who is Kelsea's dad? I'm going to pick up the second one to read on summer vacation next month and I'll let you know.

Grade: B
#56 in 2016

Rivers of London: Body Work, Ben Aaronovitch

I usually don't even try to read graphic novels because I am terrible at figuring out what the hell is going on. I like words, not pictures. When I read a graphic novel I usually just look at all the dialogue, and end up super confused about what happened.

But I love the Rivers of London series, and the newest book was delayed (now a friend in the UK is going to send it to me in August instead of waiting for November -- November! What kind of bullshit is that, releasing a book months earlier in one country? It doesn't even require translation!) so I decided to look at the graphic novels. Body Work is the compilation of the first set of comics that go along with the Rivers of London books -- kind of a side adventure for Peter and everyone.

I liked it a lot! I'm not great at decoding pictures, but it only confused me a little here and there, and I stopped and went back and double-checked what was going on. Peter doesn't look quite right (he looks too cool, honestly; I never pictured Peter as suave at all) and Toby is cuter in my head, and Molly-in-my-head is eerier. But this is a great mystery story about a killer car that's been broken up and sold for parts, all of which seem to be trying to murder people in various ways. And then Peter and Nightingale find another cursed car from the 1920s, which also tried to murder people. Are the cases connected? (Of course). Is there a twist ending? (Of course).

It's a great little side story while I wait (INCREASINGLY IMPATIENTLY) for the release of the next proper book. It's not as funny as the novels, and it doesn't have some of the things I particularly love about Peter's narration, like the description of architecture and London history. But I liked reading it a lot, and I'll pick up the other one, too, when it's compiled.

Have you read Rivers of London? Because I kind of can't recommend it highly enough.

Grade: A
#46 in 2016

Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay

This is the kind of book that's so obviously good that most of what I want to talk about is poking holes and asking questions. I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but when I watch or read something that's GREAT, I want to deconstruct it and look at all the insides.

This is a classic fairytale; evil wizards have taken over the land, and there's a missing prince who has to figure out how to get rid of them, unite his people, and reclaim his country. This is difficult because the evil wizard has cast a spell so no one except people born there can even remember the name of his country. But Kay goes in for all the nitty-gritty. It isn't easy and it isn't particularly romantic.  It has a lot of classic tropes -- the young singer who gets swept up in the adventure, the prince and his best friend from childhood, the fiery young redheaded girl who's part of the team... these are people I've run into in lots of books, which probably borrowed them in part from this one. I wish I'd read this one when I was a teenager, when they would have been fresher for me. It's like when I finally watched Annie Hall in my late 20s. None of the jokes landed especially well, because I've seen them ripped off and redone (not always as well) so many times.

Anyway, there is adventuring and singing and traveling and romance and wizards and a couple of BIG surprise twists and some very sad backstory, and evil badguys, and romance. Sort of. Kay is kiiiind of part of the school of romance mixed hand-in-hand with tragedy. Which can be beautiful, and one of my clearest book memories is bawling my eyes out over the Lions of Al-Rassan. (Oh man, the end of that book.) I liked the mix of romance and tragedy here, and all the musings about how we'll be remembered, and what it means to make choices. Just a really lovely, thoughtful story. A fairytale with meditation.

Before I go into the other thing here, I want to make it clear -- I liked this book a lot. I enjoyed reading it. I love these tropes and I got VERY misty-eyed at the end. The epilogue is LOVELY and all I want is a thousand stories about after the epilogue. I'd read all of them.

Okay, but: if I had one noticing about this book (that's what we do at work, we "notice," we don't judge) it's that there is a very odd undercurrent with regards to women. None of it on its own would be much to talk about, but taken all together there's a pattern. Mild spoilers follow.

So many of the female characters are defined by their sexual availability. Our firey red-headed heroine, whom I like a lot, fucks Devin in a closet in a very early scene to stop him overhearing plans. Then in flashback we see that she's made a big deal of how she isn't going to sleep with anyone. One of our main characters, in order to get revenge on the evil wizard, has become a member of his harem, and one of his most favored ladies. She likes him (specifically sex with him) so much that she hasn't been able to bring herself to murder him (maybe). We meet a queen (kind of) who has clearly slept with everyone involved in our hero's group; she comes to Devin's door in the middle of the night and has crazy sex with him all night, including tying him to the bed when he's not sure he wants to continue. It's a real learning moment for him, we're told. There's a woman fighting midnight evil monsters, who brings one of our main characters into her fight, and then sleeps with him after they triumph. Oh, and there's a country that had a matriarchy, which is uniformly presented as a negative thing that has destroyed trade, but now a guy has murdered the high priestess and taken over, and everything is going to be better.

None of these female characters would bother me on their own, but as a group it seems like this book has a very specific view of women and power, and how women get and wield power. (In fairness, there is an elderly mother who isn't presented in terms of who she slept with, and there is a romantic interest, whom I liked a lot, who doesn't sleep with anyone. She is kind of a classic Good Girl, though, contrasted with all these sexy, powerful women, including her little sister who is desperate for sex and marriage.) Just... taken together, it all felt like a lot. This is one of those things that isn't going to bother or even ping most people. For me, it felt like a pattern that I'd like to talk about more. I haven't read enough Kay as an adult to know if it's pervasive or specific to this book.

So there are all my thoughts! This was a long, lovely book that honestly felt like it could have been even longer, and I would have enjoyed it. A three-book series, maybe, with a set of sequels that went on and on and on, and I'd read all of them.

Grade: .......value is undefined. Can't do it. Either a B or an A, depending on how you're looking at it.

#36 in 2016

The Last Light of the Sun, Guy Gavriel Kay

Oh boy! This is part of my "please read my favorite book exchange" with N at bb&b -- I'm reading a bunch of Kays and she's reading the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. I have an advantage, though; I already know I like Kay a lot. I have vivid childhood memories of reading Sailing to Sarantium and The Lions of Al-Rassan (which made me cryyyyyyyyyyy, oh man, inevitable noble self-sacrifice is my favorite).

This book is... kind of hard to describe? It's more of a book ABOUT stories than a story, and it feels like it's taking place almost between stories. Half the characters are fathers who've already lived and survived their own adventures; the other half of the characters are young men and women who are just going out into the world to start making their names and futures. This book is very much about the passing of the torch from one generation to the other, but it ended just about the point where the story I really really wanted to read was starting.

It's haunting and lovely and slightly hard to describe because Kay doesn't write history, he writes alternate history, even though all the characters are really clear people. (Carloman, for example, is a not-very-subtle Charlemagne.) I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who people were and substituting Kay's made-up places and names for the real ones in my head. At the end, Kay thanks all the people who helped him with research on early England and Vikings, and... if you're going to do that, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just write about the real places. You could easily add fairies to a story about Aeldred (clearly Alfred the Great). And since I'm just going to read Anglycn as "Anglican" (as in Anglo-saxons) why not just write it? I don't know. It felt like I spent energy connecting those dots that I could have spent enjoying the book instead.

Anyway, it's about a not-Viking who has to make his own life since his father was exiled; it's about a not-Welsh prince who has to decide what to do with his grief and rage after he loses someone he loves; it's about the first King of not-England who successfully held off the Vikings. It has a couple of characters dealing with grief that felt incredibly real to me, and their anger at religion when it doesn't have answers to questions. There are some DELIGHTFUL women, although I wish they'd had more to do.

The book ends with something sad, and then something truly, truly delightful, and I wish this book were the prequel to the next book about Alun and Kendra and their whole generation. The book stops several times to tell us that stories turn on tiny changes, and fate is determined by tiny moments in time and coincidences. It's a really lovely read, but it's more of a meditation on what makes stories than it actually IS a story, if you see what I mean.

Grade: A

#28 in 2016

The Rook, Daniel O'Malley

Listen, if I never read another "There is a secret government agency that handles all the supernatural beasties in the world" book it will be fine with me. As a genre, I have had more than enough of it. And while it is occasionally brilliant -- Ben Aaronovitch's books are fantastic, and I love them -- it's usually not worth slogging through another one that makes me wish I were watching Men In Black or reading KJ Charles.

With that out of the way, I enjoyed this book. It's got a nice plot twist. Our heroine's mind has been erased and she starts out the book in a rainstorm, surrounded by the dead bodies of all the men who just tried to kill her. Then she has to go back to her job at the top secret government agency that handles magical whoosits, pretend she knows what's going on, and figure out who's trying to kill her.

I think the book was meant to be funny? I'm not 100% sure, though. In her former life Myfanwy Thomas was shy and scared and meek; since she's had her memory erased she has no fucks left and tells everyone where they can stick it. There's a certain type of "I've had such a long day, you wouldn't believe," narration, where I get that it's supposed to be funny, but there weren't actually... any... jokes? Like, her name, Myfanwy. (We are told early on: rhymes with Tiffany). Clearly supposed to be, if not laugh-out-loud funny, then quirky. I think the book was looking for that very-hard-to-hit line between spooky/creepy and quirky/funny. David Wong's John Dies at the End does a great job of nailing that. This book was just... I mean, it was a fun read. I read the whole thing in a weekend, which required some real dedication. I liked reading it. I enjoyed reading it. It never made me laugh, and it never got atmospheric enough to creep me out.

Put it this way: I haven't pre-ordered the second book in the series. I might totally read it, though. I just don't feel any pressing need to jump into the next one, or a burning anger that it isn't out yet. Meanwhile I've had the next Aaronovitch pre-ordered since last summer, and they keep changing the release date, and it's agony. Gimme that book! (If you haven't read that series, pick up Midnight Riot, the first one, and set aside a couple of weeks to read all of them. What a delight.)

Grade: B

#26 in 2016

Burn For Me, Ilona Andrews

I was pretty in on this book -- I like the narrator, I like her family, I like that she's a private detective. I like the magic she can do, and I like the way magic works in this world.

The hero of this romance, though... Let me backpedal. Hero is a little bit of a stretch. He's charismatic and powerful, but I am never a fan of those romances where she's just a normal lady and he's the most powerful vampire in history/the most rich and powerful and commanding duke of all time/whatever. The way the trope usually plays out is that he's unconquerable and no one on this earth can stop him from doing what he wants -- until he meets the one lady in the world who isn't afraid of him, and who brings his humanity back. As a trope it's... eh. Not my thing.

And this hero isn't JUST the world's most powerful magic user, he also likes to use it to kill people. When given a choice, he specifically says yes, his favorite thing was when he got to use his powers in a war to destroy the other side. I didn't find that especially sexy.

Oh, and THEN he uses his magic to sexually harass, if not downright assault, the heroine.

I might have let all that go, because it's the first in an ongoing series (or will be) and I was definitely thinking, "Yes! I'll pick up the rest of these!" and then the ending happened. Mild spoilers:

She breaks up with him for a list of very logical reasons, like being a sociopath, and not respecting her boundaries, and murdering people. He's pretty grumpy because he expects her to fall in love with him. He storms off, and then her grandmother, who I loved until this scene, snarks, "I'll go buy the wedding dress."

Ma'am, your granddaughter just told you he makes her feel unsafe and violated. It's not the time for a cute quip about the wedding. I just. Ick. I don't like "everyone knows you're in love when you think he's an asshole" because I don't generally like books about assholes. But that weird tonal deafness in the last scene really made me wonder if I'd misjudged the whole rest of the book.

I'd read the rest of the series when it comes out, but only if someone gives grandma a talking-to.

Grade: C

#5 in 2016

Rag and Bone, KJ Charles

KJ Charles wrote my absolute favorite romance I read in 2015, Think of England, so the bar is set PRETTY high for the rest of her books. This one is faaaaaaantastic. It's set in her ongoing world of magic, and in fact takes place kind of in the background of one of the Charm of Magpie books. Or one of the spinoffs. I forget, now.) Anyway, Crispin is an adorable human disaster of a magic user who has accidentally been trained to be a warlock, and Ned is a very sensible waste-man who loves him. Crispin is always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he always does what he has to in order to stop evil magic doers and save lives, but generally this results in him getting in to trouble with SOMEONE. And he and Ned have a fight, and then an evil magic user kidnaps Ned, and Crispin has to try and rescue him in spite of, again, being kind of a disaster.

It's a pairing type I love; give me an adorable try-hard for whom nothing goes right, and a sensible guy who is just like, "... I love you, but MAN, you make stuff difficult for yourself." I loved this book, and I loved the end, and I will read every book about the forever.

Grade: A

#10 in 2016

Rosemary and Rue (October Daye #1), Seanan McGuire

I wanted so much to love this and it just didn't work for me at all. The prologue was great -- I love a lady private detective -- and I'm in on magical realism and ongoing series.

But I was bored. Every chapter seems to open with our heroine finding another aspect of faerie that she used to know, and giving pages and pages of exposition about this fairie court or that type of monster, or this kind of selkie, or that magical area in San Francisco. She needs to solve a mystery, so she goes from person to person, and she's obviously introducing everyone and everything that will come into play later in the series. But... I just didn't care, after a while. I wanted things to happen, instead of learning about another evil fairie court. Also, because it's noir(ish), everything goes wrong for our heroine. She's lost her family, she's lost her power, she's lost her friends, she's lost her job. It was just a slog, reading her miserable internal dialogue about how sad she was.

Oh, well. It was worth a shot.

Grade: C

#15 in 2016

Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett

Still working my way (deliberately slowly) through the Tiffany Aching books. I really like her, and I really dislike Annagramma. Reading the first couple I suspect that if I lived in Discworld I'd be a witch, but I bet most people who read these books feel that way, too. I thought the Wintersmith was pretty sweet, and just happened to be reading this book as a blizzard hit, so Tiffany can feel free to come take care of that any time she'd like. I love the Feegles although I don't quite understand the bit with the cheese, and while I quite like Roland I have never 100% bought any "romance" Pratchett's written. (And Tiffany shouldn't need saving, she's awesome.)

The scenes with Granny Weatherwax and the kitten, by the way, were clearly written while spying on my dad, who has, in fact, named a kitten, "Hey you!" 

Grade: B

Originally posted 2010

The Reformed Vampire Support Group, Catherine Jinks

I'm making my way through the ALA's list of top 10 YA novels, (except I keep skipping ones that are written in the present tense or about teenage suicide). This one was great. Set in Australia it's kind of an anti-Twilight story; vampires are listless, tired, often sick, and can't do anything fun like go out or meet people. Nina, our heroine, has published a couple of books about a kick-ass vampire out of sheer boredom because her real life as a vampire is so miserable. She is stuck with the same group of vampires bitching about their lives every Tuesday night and has been for 30 years. The only people she gets to talk to are the local priest who runs the support group, and her mom. Then someone kills a member of their group, and Nina is forced to try and be the brave, smart, daring vampire she's only ever written about. 

There is a very sweet little romance, some moral debate over when (or if) it's ever okay to kill anyone, some terrible bad guys, and a lot of super annoying background vampires (and other things, too) that I had a little bit of trouble telling apart because I read it so fast. But if I were a teenager THIS would be a vampire story I'd actually enjoy and identify with, and I am totally going to read the sequel when it comes out; The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group.

Grade: B

Originally posted 2010

Leviathan, Scott Westerfeld

Cool! Alternate WWI where the British splice together animals to make flying whale airships and the Germans build giant walking robots to fight them. Sheltered-little-prince learns to be a regular boy isn't my favorite trope but I liked the way our two main characters decided to be friends instead of fighting, and I appreciated that the whole "THERE ARE TERRIBLE SECRETS WE CAN'T EVER TELL YOU BECAUSE THEY ARE ABOUT YOU" thing was basically explained and went away. I also wish there had been more background characters to flesh out the world. There was a LOT about the technology and not much about the other people, and I'm more about characters than world building. I loved the lady scientist, though. Grumpy lady scientists rule.

Grade: B

Originally posted in 2010

Luck in the Shadows, Lynn Flewelling

I enjoyed this book, and I will probably pick up at least one of its sequels.

But hey, I've been reading epic fantasy since 2nd or 3rd grade, and I have some quibbles.

I've read the Belgariad and the Malloreon a bunch of times, and all of George R. R. Martin's books; I am pretty good at predicting what is going to happen in an epic fantasy story. All this one was missing was a feisty princess. (Well. There was a feisty princess, but she only showed up for a couple of pages at a time. I demand my feisty princess be part of the plot, like Ce'Nedra or Eilonwy or Ehlana or Arya.) I didn't mind the rambling narrative or the epic backstory or the "first of seven volumes about the coming Great War" tone.

I did mind:

• Constant POV shifts, sometimes just for a paragraph or two, often for no discernable purpose. Don't leave the rising action for three paragraphs to have someone say, "By Bilairy's Balls, they might be in danger!!" and then cut back to them being in danger. It makes it way less exciting when they're rescued.
• I am mildly creeped out by how many people in this story wanted to rape Alec. I'm just saying.
• 12 year old me threw a SHIT FIT if I got to the end and there were barely any girls in the story. Queens and princesses and moms, but no one who got to go on the adventure and be feisty. (On the other hand, yay for sexually ambiguous heroes!)
• There is a LOT of infodumping. I know, I know; there are lots of Elvish Kings to be recounted and current political situations to be explained, and Alec keeps asking, because he wants to know. But after a while paragraphs like these start to sound like self-parody:
  
  "The festival of Sakor, at the Winter Solstice. I wonder what Nysander knows of all this? I'd never have taken Vardarus for a Leran."
  
  "What are Lerans, anyway?"
  
  "Bilairy's Balls. You mean I never told you about Idrilain the First?"
  
  There have to be better ways to introduce your centuries old conflict besides endless conversations about ancient kings and wizards and made-up oaths and the way different people in different cities behave.
  
  I'm pretty sure there was a ton of this in the Belgariad, too, but I wasn't such a critical reader at 12. Hey, I was surprised to learn that Garion was The One, and his name is in the freaking title. I am pretty easy if you just break up the endless exposition! (And the history of the different gods, and what they stand for, and their symbols, and their temples, and their acolytes... I'm sure there are people who eat this stuff up, but I need fewer things to remember and more feisty princesses.)
• Constant, constant, constant going to new places and endless travelogues. I'm interested in what the city they're in looks like. Having Alec describe it from the boat works fine. Then he travels through the city and there are three pages of "what it looks like," coupled with a lot of infodump history. Then "what the castle he's staying in looks like." Then he goes for a ride so he can describe each quarter of the city. I'm not planning a vacation there. Maybe a little less lovingly lavished details on what EVERY ROOM HE ENTERS looks like. I started skimming halfway through and just started substituting "generic castle dungeon," or "generic inn" because it was easier.
• If there is one plot I HATE, it's "I know a dark, DARK SECRET, but I am SWORN NOT TO TELL YOU, and I CAN'T TELL YOU WHY, but IT MIGHT KILL YOU." This book is full of that. I get that Seregil is a Watcher who knows a lot of shit he can't tell Alec. But his boss, Nysander, pulls the same shit on him over and over until he storms out, and I kind of wanted to storm out, too. He's cursed and dying and horrible things are happening, but Nysander can't tell him why and you just have to trust him that it's going to be important later!!!!
  
  Especially because, frankly, it's not THAT HARD to figure out which casually mentioned evil god is behind all this stuff.
• I was totally baffled by the politics of the end, which I think is because there were SO MANY things set up all at once that I lost track of what was important. I'd prefer my made-up history and countries streamlined. And I say that as someone who had notebook after notebook of made-up country maps and histories and songs doodled during math class in high school.
• I have some character quibbles, too, but it's a first novel in a series, and there's time for that later. I really wanted to adore Seregil and Alec, and there were moments when I was all, "Yay! 12 year old me LOVES YOU," but there was just so much training and traveling and set-up and exposition that I didn't have enough time with them. I think that's why I like the middle, where they're traveling and Seregil might die, and the end, where the two of them go on a risky mission, so much. No extraneous history and meeting the servant who works there and the centaur he knows and the beggar he pays off and the maid he bribes and the temple he visits and the inn he owns... Just two guys fighting bad guys and arguing sometimes and undoing magical booby traps. 

That sounded pretty grumpy, and I was up until midnight last night reading and then snuck more reading time at lunch, so it was clearly pretty good! But the further I read the more annoyed I was by those things. Quibble quibble quibble, etc.

Grade: C

Originally posted 2010

The Once and Future King, T. H. White

How had I never read this? I am not sure. I always assumed that Disney was fucking up the portrayal of Merlin, but as it turns out this book goes exactly how the cartoon goes. My bad!

It's an interesting meta-look at the legend in the context of WWII, and I really liked it, although it took forevvvvvvvvvvvvvvver to read for some reason. I was sort of sad that the last half of the story is totally not about Arthur at all, but, eh, that's the way the story GOES. What can you do?

Grade: B

Originally posted 2009