Books and comics read in April, May and June 2023
Monday, 3 July 2023 09:36![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhatsThe Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken - The Secret Barrister
Luna: Moon Rising - Ian McDonald
The Sanctuary Sparrow - Ellis Peters
Gate Sinister - Tansy Rayner Roberts
The Iron Children - Rebecca Fraimow
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina - Zoraida Córdova
The Ministry of Unladylike Activity - Robin Stevens
Tread of Angels - Rebecca Roanhorse
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language - Arika Okrent
City of Last Chances - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
House Perilous - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The Druid's Call - EK Johnston
Godkiller - Hannah Kaner
The Widows of Malabar Hill - Sujata Massey
Rose/House - Arkady Martine
The Absolute Book - Elizabeth Knox
Two Serpents Rise - Max Gladstone
Babel: An Arcane History - RF Kuang
Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree
A Scatter of Light - Malinda Lo
The Faithless - CL Clark
Babylon 5 Season by Season: The Coming of Shadows - Jane Killick
The Hidden Witch - Molly Knox Ostertag
The Serpent's Egg - Caroline Stevermer
Sweep of Stars - Maurice Broaddus
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days - Alastair Reynolds
Once Upon a Tome: Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire
Witch King - Martha Wells
Midnight at Malabar House - Vaseem Khan
Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare's Fantasy World - Jonathan Barnes, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emma Newman, Kate Heartfield and Foz Meadows
Ink Blood Sister Scribe - Emma Törzs
To Shape a Dragon's Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose
Rule of Wolves - Leigh Bardugo
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley - Charlotte Gordon
(forgot to do this at the beginning of May, then was ill at the beginning of June, hence the backlog!)
Really excellent novella - the elevator pitch is that it's a locked room mystery where the room is also a suspect, but it's not a traditional whodunnit, more of a mood/atmosphere piece meditating on identity and personhood, with Martine's usual excellent prose. It's very different to her Texicalaan novels in a lot of ways, but shares some thematic resonances. I loved it.
A Scatter of Light
I liked this a lot, though at times it felt like it was trying to throw in too many elements and not quite doing justice to them all. There's a significant event towards the end of the book that felt particularly underserved, and which ended up being a choice I really disliked as a result. Which is a shame, because whenever the characters were allowed to just be, it was really excellent. Malinda Lo is just so good at pinpointing and conveying what it's like to be a specific person at a specific moment, and whenever the book was just doing that, I absolutely loved it.
(I also really loved that this is a novel about a teenager figuring out she's bi in a world where that's not that much of a big deal? Like, she's confused and trying to work out what she wants, but she's not panicking about the possibility of being queer, and that's so great to see.)
(content notes: non-consensual sharing of explicit images, infidelity, death/grief)
The Serpent's Egg
This secondary world fantasy is a bit of an odd duck, in that the fantasy elements (including the eponymous egg) felt a bit disconnected from the main plot - I wonder if it would actually have been stronger without them? I did enjoy this very much nevertheless (other than one choice towards the end) - it's a very satisfying and well imagined Elizabethan-esque world, and it was overall a good time.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
This mostly missed out on being a five star read thanks to the cursory m/f romance that popped up towards the end, but otherwise it was GREAT: magic! books! sisters! queer characters! casual Jewish rep! a really lived in world! Good times all round, tbh. (It felt like the author had read Practical Magic and grabbed all the bits she liked, but in a good way.)
Content notes: parental death, grief, abusive parental figures
To Shape a Dragon's Breath
Magical school novel set in an alt-nineteenth century US, with a queer, poly Indigenous lead. I really liked this - it was a great read, and although it wasn't perfect, it was very solid, and I think it's the author's first book, so I'm excited to see how she levels up in future books.
Content notes: anti-Indigenous racism
I also really really loved The Iron Children and Some Desperate Glory, thoroughly recommended, though with a note that the provided content warnings on the latter are NOT messing around, caveat lector. And I still don't know what I thought of The Absolute Book overall, but I'm glad I read it.
Luna: Moon Rising - Ian McDonald
The Sanctuary Sparrow - Ellis Peters
Gate Sinister - Tansy Rayner Roberts
The Iron Children - Rebecca Fraimow
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina - Zoraida Córdova
The Ministry of Unladylike Activity - Robin Stevens
Tread of Angels - Rebecca Roanhorse
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language - Arika Okrent
City of Last Chances - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
House Perilous - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Strong Female Character - Fern Brady
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: The Druid's Call - EK Johnston
Godkiller - Hannah Kaner
The Widows of Malabar Hill - Sujata Massey
Rose/House - Arkady Martine
The Absolute Book - Elizabeth Knox
Two Serpents Rise - Max Gladstone
Babel: An Arcane History - RF Kuang
Legends and Lattes - Travis Baldree
A Scatter of Light - Malinda Lo
The Faithless - CL Clark
Babylon 5 Season by Season: The Coming of Shadows - Jane Killick
The Hidden Witch - Molly Knox Ostertag
The Serpent's Egg - Caroline Stevermer
Sweep of Stars - Maurice Broaddus
Diamond Dogs, Turquoise Days - Alastair Reynolds
Once Upon a Tome: Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller - Oliver Darkshire
Witch King - Martha Wells
Midnight at Malabar House - Vaseem Khan
Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare's Fantasy World - Jonathan Barnes, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Emma Newman, Kate Heartfield and Foz Meadows
Ink Blood Sister Scribe - Emma Törzs
To Shape a Dragon's Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose
Rule of Wolves - Leigh Bardugo
Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley - Charlotte Gordon
(forgot to do this at the beginning of May, then was ill at the beginning of June, hence the backlog!)
Rose/House (five stars), The Serpent's Egg (four stars), A Scatter of Light (four stars), Ink Blood Sister Scribe (four stars), To Shape a Dragon's Breath (four stars)
Rose/HouseReally excellent novella - the elevator pitch is that it's a locked room mystery where the room is also a suspect, but it's not a traditional whodunnit, more of a mood/atmosphere piece meditating on identity and personhood, with Martine's usual excellent prose. It's very different to her Texicalaan novels in a lot of ways, but shares some thematic resonances. I loved it.
A Scatter of Light
I liked this a lot, though at times it felt like it was trying to throw in too many elements and not quite doing justice to them all. There's a significant event towards the end of the book that felt particularly underserved, and which ended up being a choice I really disliked as a result. Which is a shame, because whenever the characters were allowed to just be, it was really excellent. Malinda Lo is just so good at pinpointing and conveying what it's like to be a specific person at a specific moment, and whenever the book was just doing that, I absolutely loved it.
(I also really loved that this is a novel about a teenager figuring out she's bi in a world where that's not that much of a big deal? Like, she's confused and trying to work out what she wants, but she's not panicking about the possibility of being queer, and that's so great to see.)
(content notes: non-consensual sharing of explicit images, infidelity, death/grief)
The Serpent's Egg
This secondary world fantasy is a bit of an odd duck, in that the fantasy elements (including the eponymous egg) felt a bit disconnected from the main plot - I wonder if it would actually have been stronger without them? I did enjoy this very much nevertheless (other than one choice towards the end) - it's a very satisfying and well imagined Elizabethan-esque world, and it was overall a good time.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
This mostly missed out on being a five star read thanks to the cursory m/f romance that popped up towards the end, but otherwise it was GREAT: magic! books! sisters! queer characters! casual Jewish rep! a really lived in world! Good times all round, tbh. (It felt like the author had read Practical Magic and grabbed all the bits she liked, but in a good way.)
Content notes: parental death, grief, abusive parental figures
To Shape a Dragon's Breath
Magical school novel set in an alt-nineteenth century US, with a queer, poly Indigenous lead. I really liked this - it was a great read, and although it wasn't perfect, it was very solid, and I think it's the author's first book, so I'm excited to see how she levels up in future books.
Content notes: anti-Indigenous racism
I also really really loved The Iron Children and Some Desperate Glory, thoroughly recommended, though with a note that the provided content warnings on the latter are NOT messing around, caveat lector. And I still don't know what I thought of The Absolute Book overall, but I'm glad I read it.
no subject
Date: 3 Jul 2023 11:56 (UTC)- Babel (I loved it, I couldn't put it down, also it wasn't the focus for me but I did think the magic system was really interesting and original)
- Legends & Lattes (I read it in one go when it came out and thought it was lovely)
- Rule of Wolves (I liked it lots)
no subject
Date: 9 Jul 2023 17:00 (UTC)Legends and Lattes wasn't really for me, alas, but it was very sweet.
Rule of Wolves! I think I prefer Bardugo's smaller scale books (Ninth House my beloved), but I really really liked a lot of this - Zoya's storyline really worked for me, Hanne's journey was excellent, I really liked Ehri and wanted so much more of her, and also, I can't remember if I felt this way in the original trilogy, but I really loved Dimitri
no subject
Date: 3 Jul 2023 11:58 (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 Jul 2023 17:01 (UTC)