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Title: Got the Time
Fandom: The Adventures of Tintin (1991)
Music: Joe Jackson
Content notes: Some fast/jerky cuts. Contains brief depictions of police, though it's not visually obvious that's who they are if you're not familiar with the source.
Summary: No such thing as tomorrow, only one, two, three, go!
Notes: Festivid for

alwaystheocean <3
Download: here (2:56minutes, 111MB) | subtitle .srt
Also at: Youtube | AO3 | Tumblr

( streaming and lyrics under the cut )

The Stars Undying - Emery Robin
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072 - ME O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi
The Map and the Territory - AM Tuomala
Even Though I Knew the End - CL Polk
Lent - Jo Walton
Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks
Paladin's Strength - T Kingfisher
Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes - Rob Wilkins
Thud! - Terry Pratchett
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance - Atul Gawande
The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist - Ceinwen Langley
Unreal Alchemy - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Holiday Brew - Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Stars Undying (five stars), The Map and the Territory (four stars), Even Though I Knew the End (five stars), Unreal Alchemy/Holiday Brew (four stars)

The Stars Undying
Deeply entertaining start to an SF series with the premise: what if Cleopatra, Caesar and Marc Antony, but in space (and also Marc Antony's a woman). I feel like I had just the right amount of historical knowledge for this to work incredibly well for me, ie I could go "I understood that reference!" every now and then, and it was very satisfying. (Possibly people with more knowledge would get even more out of it, possibly they'd get less, I don't know!) The worldbuilding and character work was very solid, and this was one of two books I read this month where the last line basically earned the fifth star all by itself.

OH ALSO here is the tweet that originally sold me on it: https://twitter.com/emwrobin/status/1566548504503353345?s=20

The Map and the Territory
Very solid fantasy novel in which a wizard and a cartographer are thrown together in the immediate aftermath of a series of world shaking catastrophes, which follows them as they attempt to piece together what's happened and who has survived. It's just quietly very good - I especially enjoyed the variety of ways the people they met were choosing to deal with what they'd experienced.

Even Though I Knew the End
Really excellent novella featuring angels, demons and magic in 1940s Chicago, as well as a beautifully written central f/f relationship. The writing is very good - this was the other book I read this month with a killer final line.

(Content notes: state sanctioned homophobia, medical violence)

Unreal Alchemy/Holiday Brew
Very fun compilation of... long short stories, I suppose, about a group of Australian undergraduates in a world where magic is real (and also some of them are in a band). They're mostly pretty light on the whole, but very enjoyable - definitely recommended if this is the sort of thing you're in the mood for. (Note that Holiday Brew gets into some slightly heavier stuff about dysfunctional families.)

Didn't finish:

How High We Go In the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu

How High We Go In the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu
This is about a deadly plague, specifically one that largely affects children, at least in the initial stages, and it turns out I was just not prepared for that level of bleak. Other reviewers found that it was ultimately hopeful, but either that didn't come through as strongly for me, or I just didn't get far enough (I noped out around 32%). I suspect it didn't help that it's structured as a series of loosely connected vignettes, which hit my pickiness around short stories: I really liked the first one, in which an archaeologist goes to the site of his daughter's death to both pick up her work and make sense of his grief, but the next two I struggled with. So this was just really not for me, rather than necessarily being a bad book.

(Though I will also note that as per a reviewer on goodreads, sounds like the protagonists of each section continue to be mostly male, and that there are no indications that queer people exist at all in this world.)

The Scratch Daughters - HA Clarke
Slippery Creatures - KJ Charles
On the Come Up - Angie Thomas
The Stardust Thief - Chelsea Abdullah
NW - Zadie Smith
Children of Memory - Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rivers of London: The Fey and the Furious
Penric and the Shaman - Lois McMaster Bujold
The Language of Roses - Heather Rose Jones
Monk's Hood - Ellis Peters
A Tip for the Hangman - Allison Epstein
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
Nothing But the Truth: A Memoir - The Secret Barrister

(Let's just all agree to politely ignore the fact that it's almost February, shall we?)

The Scratch Daughters (five stars), Children of Memory (four stars), The Language of Roses (five stars), A Tip for the Hangman (four stars)

The Scratch Daughters
This is the sequel to The Scapegracers, which I reviewed last month and loved. Everything I loved about that one is still true of this one, but even more so.

Children of Memory
I find Tchaikovsky's writing a little bit hit and miss, and I thought this was going to be more of a miss, until we hit the twist around the halfway point and just like that, it had me. The rollercoaster from hope to tragedy and back again was so beautifully done, it was wonderful. And the truly alien aliens in this series are excellent.

The Language of Roses
This aromantic take on Beauty and the Beast was really wonderful. It captures the feel of the original story whilst taking a whole different angle to examine love and compulsion, and it manages to follow the beats while not feeling like it's being forced or contorted to fit them. Just excellent all round.

A Tip for the Hangman
I really enjoyed this fictionalised version of Kit Marlowe's life: it's a really solid historical novel, with occasional flashes of excellence. I was particularly impressed with how Epstein handled the ending, it hit the perfect note of feeling both avoidable and yet also inevitable, which is a testament to how carefully the characters and the world had been established.

Didn't finish:

The Final Strife - Saara El-Arifi

The Final Strife - Saara El-Arifi
This should have been a solid 3.5 stars (pretty good overall, some slightly stilted prose/exposition balanced by some excellent ideas), but the fatphobia really killed it for me. About a fifth of the way in the book introduces a fat pov character, but even while we're in her point of view, we're immediately hit with a ton of fatphobic clichés (which I'm cutting for anyone who doesn't want to know the details):

she's clumsy, she's messy (specifically her dress is stained because she's stashed some fried food in her pocket), she's self indulgent and she's over privileged (the aforementioned stained dress she justs drops onto her bedroom floor for her servant to dispose of). Although her body shape gets some positive comments, there's also a lot of negative stuff, including a scene of the thin main character trying on her clothes and thinking about how huge they are on her. She's unfit and she eats a lot, especially fried food - so here comes the thin main character to change her diet and force her to exercise, how novel. (There should definitely be space for fat characters to be clumsy or messy or unfit, of course, but context matters! As far as I can tell, she's the only fat character, and, although she has other stuff going, on a lot of her personality is dominated by these fatphobic tropes.)

I did really like her, and I'm given to understand she becomes the main character's love interest later on, which isn't nothing, but I just couldn't get beyond how much of a stereotype her portrayal starts out as.

Current Music: Anti-Hero - Taylor Swift

A few days late, but happy new year! This isn't a full end of year round up post, because I am bad at that kind of reflective thinking, and am really more of a just trying to make it to Friday person than a goals and achievements person, but here's a few things:

2022 was quite a hard year in a lot of ways: between the ongoing pandemic, work feeling like it was constantly busy, and some really sad and hard things happening to some of my favourite people, I just feel like I spent the whole time getting more and more tired. But there were also some really wonderful times with said favourite people, real beacons of joy and care and community. <3

One definite good thing was that I got back into vidding this year, by which I mean I was finally hit with an idea both strong enough and easy enough to get started on that it managed to override all the bad brain stuff that had got itself attached to vidding over the last few years. I only made a couple of vids this year, but I've never been hugely prolific, and the most important thing is that making them felt easy and fun again (aside from the usual yelling about what a terrible hobby vidding is) in a way that didn't seem possible a year ago.

I didn't watch much new-to-me TV this year, other than new episodes of Taskmaster and Critical Role, but I absolutely loved The Legend of Vox Machina (of course) and A League of Their Own. I'm also halfway through a group watch of Nirvana in Fire, which I've never seen before and am absolutely loving. Everything about it is just so good??? All the time??? How???

Oh and I've also picked up my very slow Classic Who rewatch again, I'm two thirds of the way through The Dalek's Master Plan and having a great time. Maybe a post about that soon.

I read a lot of books this year, and more to the point, read a lot of books that I loved. A few of this year's books were rereads, which is something I've been really struggling with these last few years - I'm still not doing amazingly at being able to reread in general, but I do seem to be able to reread Discworld, which is a huge relief.

I'm not really doing resolutions at the moment, but this year I do want to try and finish at least one of the books that have been hanging around on my "currently reading" tag on Goodreads for years, plus maybe knock a few more things off the "owned, unread" tag (a holdover from when I imported my LibraryThing account approximately one hundred million years ago). I'd also like to try and keep my "want to read" tag out of triple figures (possibly by doing some judicious pruning of things that I'm not sure I actually do want to read at this stage), but if I don't manage that, that's ok - I'd rather have a ballooning tbr list than not make a note of a book I might love.

The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming: Book Two: Practice - Sienna Tristen
Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Ocean's Echo - Everina Maxwell
The Virgin in the Ice - Ellis Peters
A Restless Truth - Freya Marske
Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore - Emma Southon
The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War - Camestros Felapton
Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor - Xiran Jay Zhao
The River of Silver - Shannon Chakraborty
The Scapegracers - HA Clarke
The Red Scholar's Wake - Aliette de Bodard
Rivers of London: Action at a Distance
The Old Guard, Book One: Opening Fire
Empress of Forever - Max Gladstone
Matrix - Lauren Groff

I wrote this all up forever ago and then just... didn't post it for some reason.

The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming: Book Two: Practice (five stars), Ocean's Echo (five stars)/A Restless Truth (four stars)/The Red Scholar's Wake (four stars), The Scapegracers (four stars), Empress of Forever (five stars)

The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming: Book Two: Practice
I almost don't know how to talk about this and the previous half of the duology, I loved them so much. They're a very in depth exploration of anxiety, of friendship, of trust and of trying to be a good person and to be yourself in the face of a complex web of other people's situations, opinions and expectations, and they're so quietly intense and powerful. I don't know that they're for everyone, but they had a profound effect on me.

Ocean's Echo/A Restless Truth/The Red Scholar's Wake
Lumping these together because I have quite similar opinions about all three. As we know romance is not my fave, but these three still really worked for me, I think largely because there was also a lot of other stuff going on? All three had for me what was a really good balance between the romance plot and the sf (for Ocean's Echo and The Red Scholar's Wake) or fantasy (for A Restless Truth) plots, not just in terms of page time, but in terms of how all the different elements worked together, and as a result the romances worked for me when they otherwise might not have. I highly recommend all three.

The Scapegracers
Really excellent YA novel about four teenage witches figuring themselves out. It does a great job at capturing the intensity of teenagerhood, when everything is so important and so fragile and so much. I also really liked that it managed to have some good adults, who might not quite get the teen characters' concerns or priorities, but are at least trying - I know terrible adults are a YA/children's literature trope for very good reasons, but it's also nice to see something that bucks the trend every now and then.

(I have since also read the sequel, which is a) even better and b) even queerer than this, excellent stuff.)

Empress of Forever
Wow I loved this. Big, sprawling sf novel that's ultimately about how caring about other people is the most important thing you can do. Fantastic.

Kaikeyi - Vaishnavi Patel
Be the Serpent - Seanan McGuire
Secrets of the Stormforest - LD Lapinski
Because Internet - Gretchen McCulloch
The Leper of Saint Giles - Ellis Peters
Notorious Sorcerer - Davinia Evans
The Obsidian Tower - Melissa Caruso
Eyes of the Void - Adian Tchaikovsky
The Return of Fitzroy Angursell - Victoria Goddard
The Queen of the High Fields - Rhiannon A Grist
Africa Is Not A Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa - Dipo Faloyin
Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson

Notorious Sorcerer (four stars)

Notorious Sorcerer
This was incredibly fun! Disaster bi sorcerer just trying to earn enough money to buy himself some more magic lessons accidentally ends up caught up in the fate of the city, shenanigans ensue. Lots of good stuff about power, class and opportunity - all of the four main point of view characters are in some way trying to figure out what they want from their lives and how to get that, and the book is very clear on how all their choices are constrained by the circumstances they're in, but also on how big a role class and money play. I loved it.

Didn't finish:

The Sunbearer Trials - Aiden Thomas, Nophek Gloss - Essa Hansen

The Sunbearer Trials - Aiden Thomas
This was an enjoyable YA novel, but I'm just not really feeling YA at the moment, unfortunately. It had some great things, mostly the casual diversity and the intriguing setting, but overall it felt weirdly low stakes despite the threat of death hanging over our heroes - I think for me the characterisation and worldbuilding weren't quite there to make the premise feel as high stakes as it should have. I did really love Thomas's previous book, though, so this was probably just a mismatch between what I wanted from the book and what it was trying to do.

Nophek Gloss - Essa Hansen
I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood for this, or if I was put off by the really brutal thing that happens very early on, or if it was because I was reading it in a sweltering tube and feeling a bit sick, but I really bounced off this. It was a bit grimmer than I usually prefer, which on its own might have been fine, but I was also struggling with the slightly overcomplicated prose style (goodness knows I love writing that isn't just functional, but not when parsing it out is getting in the way of what it's trying to say). It also really felt a couple of times like the adults in the book were rushing the fourteen year old protagonist into making massive, life changing decisions, and I just really did not enjoy reading that.

Lud-in-the-Mist - Hope Mirrlees
Sisters of the Neversea - Cynthia Leitich Smith
African Europeans: An Untold History - Olivette Otélé
The Bruising of Qilwa - Naseem Jamnia
The Grief of Stones - Katherine Addison
Nettle & Bone - T Kingfisher
Nona the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Book of Night - Holly Black
Gender Queer - Maia Kobabe

(trying out the new way of doing spoiler cuts, give me a shout if anything looks weird!)

Sisters of the Neversea, (four stars), Nettle & Bone (four stars), Book of Night (four stars)

Sisters of the Neversea
Very thoughtful updating of Peter Pan, in which Lily, a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation and a precious anxious bean, follows her impulsive stepsister Wendy and their brother Michael to Neverland to save them from Peter. It doesn't pull its punches on revealing everything that's messed up about the original, but it's also a very kind book - even Peter is seen as the child he is and given the opportunity to change and grow out of his monstrousness. Really lovely.

Nettle & Bone
Really excellent quest fantasy about a woman trying to kill a king before he can kill her sister. It starts out quite bleak, but the tone shifts fairly quickly and it's full of the author's trademark humour. It also has a romance that I personally didn't care about, but it's a very standard T Kingfisher romance (she: capable, independent, In Difficulties probably due her family; he: older, physical strong, noble, but in Emotional Pain due to actions in his past for which he has not forgiven himself), so if you like those, you'll like this. And like a lot of Kingfisher's work it's very concerned with power and choice and the obligations we have to the people around us. I loved it a lot.

(I do have to add, though, I love T. Kingfisher's writing, but this is the third book of hers I've read in a row that had some comment along the lines of "of course they noticed [person's attractiveness], they weren't DEAD", and every time I've had to put the book down for a bit until the fury abated, it's exhausting)

Book of Night
This is in many ways a very standard urban fantasy, but it completely sucked me in. I was even invested in the main m/f pairing, which as you know bob is really not my thing: they're both traumatised, closed off and secretive, and I was really rooting for them to find it in themselves to be honest with each other and manage to work together to defeat the bad guys. It also has an interesting magic system and some twists that I didn't quite see coming. Looking forward to the sequel!

Stormsong - CL Polk
Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances - Aliette de Bodard
The Crossing Places - Elly Griffiths
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985 - ed Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre
Son of the Storm -Suyi Davies Okungbowa
The Jade Setter of Janloon - Fonda Lee
What Souls Are Made Of - Tasha Suri
A Snake Falls to Earth - Darcie Little Badger
Victories Greater Than Death - Charlie Jane Anders
Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
Rivers of London: Water Weed
The Seven Ages of Death: A Forensic Pathologist's Journey Through Life - Richard Shepherd
True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee Abraham Riesman
Fevered Star - Rebecca Roanhorse
Trans Britain: Our Journey From the Shadows ed Christine Burns
Night Watch - Terry Pratchett
Circle of Magic: Sandry's Book - Tamora Pierce

Touchstones - Stephanie Burgis
Minty Alley - CLR James
Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ablism - Elsa Sjunneson
Circle of Magic: Tris's Book - Tamora Pierce
Have Spirit, Will Duchess - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins Volume III
The Oleander Sword - Tasha Suri
Twelve Percent Dread - Emily McGovern
Paladin's Grace - T Kingfisher
Under Fortunate Stars - Ren Hutchings
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Yasha Nydoorin
Circle of Magic: Daja's Book - Tamora Pierce
mulberry down!! - Nicole Kornher-Stace

One day I will have the brain to write things up again, but until then I will just say that I highly, highly recommend A Snake Falls To Earth and The Oleander Sword, and leave it at that.

(ETA apparently I can't even list things properly any more, I left three whole things off the end of the list, whoops)

Title: Unwritten
Fandom: The Legend of Vox Machina
Character Keyleth
Music: Natasha Bedingfield
Content notes: brief shot of a zombie, brief shot of a dead child, some bright lights/flashes
Summary: Reaching for something in the distance / So close you can almost taste it
Notes: Premiered at Fanworks 2022
Download: here (2:30 minutes, 95.3MB) | subtitle .srt
Also at: Youtube | AO3 | Tumblr

( streaming and lyrics under the cut )

Current Music: Entering Zephrah

You know right up until last night I genuinely thought I might get the May post up before it was time for the June one? Oh well, at least I'm caught up now. Lots of stuff here, most of which I enjoyed but couldn't quite summon up words on, as ever please do yell at me for opinions if you want to! <3

The Unstoppable Wasp: G.I.R.L Power
The Discord of Gods - Jenn Lyons
Critical Role: The Chronicles of Exandria: The Mighty Nein
Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado
A Thousand Steps Into Night - Traci Chee
Rivers of London: Black Mould
Lumberjanes: A Summer to Remember
Defekt - Nino Cipri
The Edge of the Ocean - LD Lapinski
Scales and Sensibility -Stephanie Burgis
The Mercies - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Sovereign - April Daniels
Fugitive Telemetry - Martha Wells
The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice - Shon Faye
Swordheart - T Kingfisher
Monstress: The Vow
DIE: Bleed
The Chosen and the Beautiful - Nghi Vo

Chaos on Catnet - Naomi Kritzer
Lumberjanes: End of Summer
Elder Race - Adrian Tchaikovsky
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles
The Family Trade - Charles Stross
The Past is Red -Catherynne M Valente
Never Say You Can't Survive: How To Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories - Charlie Jane Anders
Rivers of London: Detective Stories
Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet - James Goss
Buried: An Alternative History of the First Millennium in Britain - Alice Roberts
Far Sector

( The Discord of Gods (four stars), The Mercies (four stars), The Chosen and the Beautiful (five stars), The Past is Red (four stars) )

A short story I enjoyed this month:
Give This Letter to the Crows, Iona Datt Sharma: Really beautiful and really a lot, gosh this was good. (Content note: bereavement from covid)

Title: King and Lionheart
Fandom: The Wheel of Time
Characters: Lan and Moiraine
Music: Of Monsters and Men
Content notes: None
Summary: "As the world comes to an end, I'll be there to hold your hand."
Notes: Premiered at VidUKon 2022! Turns out that what it took to break my three year vidding block was a beautifully filmed show with only eight episodes, featuring a very important platonic friendship. Many thanks to

alwaystheocean,

cosmic_llin and

walkthegale for feedback and cheerleading! Also if you like vids to King and Lionheart about powerful women whose coiffure reflects their emotional state and their quietly loyal bffs, I strongly recommend

cosmic_llin's Voyager vid about Janeway and Tuvok, it's wonderful. <3
Download vid (2:08 minutes, 81MB) | subtitles (.srt file)
Also at: Youtube (with subtitles) | AO3 | Tumblr

( streaming and lyrics under the cut )

Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Team Queen - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Petty Treasons - Victoria Goddard
King of Scars - Leigh Bardugo
The Witness for the Dead - Katherine Addison
Lumberjanes: Parent's Day
Last Stand in Lychford - Paul Cornell
Lumberjanes: Time After Crime
The Heretic's Guide to Homecoming Book One: Theory - Sienna Tristen
Lumberjanes: Jackalope Springs Eternal
Concrete Rose - Angie Thomas
A-Force: Hypertime
Lumberjanes: Indoor Recess
The Lost Plot - Genevieve Cogman
Lumberjanes: X Marks the Spot
A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K Le Guin
Lumberjanes: Birthday Smarty
Amongst Our Weapons - Ben Aaronovitch
Lumberjanes: Mind Over Mettle
Vidding: A History - Francesca Coppa
Saint Death's Daughter - CSE Cooney
The Man Who Died Twice - Richard Osman
Lumberjanes: Smitten in the Stars
Spear - Nicola Griffith
Critical Role: Mighty Nein Origins: Caleb Widogast
Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments - TL Huchu
Lumberjanes: Horticultural Horizons
The Fat Lady Sings - Jacqueline Roy

( Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (two stars), King of Scars (four stars), Concrete Rose (four stars), Saint Death's Daughter (five stars) )

I also read a ton of Lumberjanes, because my library got e-copies all of a sudden! I don't have much to say about the individual volumes, but despite the odd slight misstep here and there it remains a delight overall and I'm glad it exists.

Daughter of Lies and Ruin - Jo Spurrier
Once Upon a Crime - Robin Stevens
Lagoonfire - Francesca Forrest
The Strangeworlds Travel Agency - LD Lapinski
Nina Is Not OK - Shaparak Khorsandi
Submergence - Arula Ratnakar
Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2: The Dead City & The Dark Earth Below - Martha Wells
Saint Peter's Fair - Ellis Peters
Critical Role: The Tales of Exandria -The Bright Queen
The Actual Star - Monica Byrne
Anne of Avonlea - LM Montgomery
Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths - Natalie Haynes

( Nina is Not OK (four stars), Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths (five stars) )

Didn't finish:

( The Lover - Laury Silvers, Unconquerable Sun - Kate Elliott )

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome - Emma Southon
The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
A Curse of Ash and Embers - Jo Spurrier
The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry - CM Waggoner
The Thousand Eyes - AK Larkwood

Bit of a contrast to last month numbers wise, but everything I finished this month I loved.

( A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome (five stars), The Thursday Murder Club (four stars), A Curse of Ash and Embers (five stars), The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry (five stars), The Thousand Eyes (five stars) )

Didn't finish: ( We Hunt the Flame - Hafsah Faizal )

(we are in no way three quarters of the way into February, everything's fine here, no one's super late with this, shhhhh)

A Clash of Steel - CB Lee
Anastasia, Absolutely - Lois Lowry
Critical Role: Vox Machina: Kith and Kin - Marieke Nijkamp
A Song Below Water - Bethany Morrow
Critical Role: Mighty Nein Origins: Jester Lavorre
A Marvellous Light - Freya Marske
Unnatural Magic - CM Waggoner
Invisible Kingdom: In Other Worlds
Jillian vs Parasite Planet - Nicole Kornher-Stace
Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices
The Black Tides of Heaven - Neon Yang
The Red Threads of Fortune - Neon Yang
The Descent of Monsters - Neon Yang
The Ascent to Godhood - Neon Yang
The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett
A Spindle Splintered - Alix Harrow
The Citadel of Weeping Pearls - Aliette de Bodard
Incomparable World - SI Martin
The Foretelling of Georgie Spider - Ambellin Kwaymullina
The Companion - EE Ottoman

( A Clash of Steel (three stars), Critical Role: Vox Machina: Kith and Kin (probably also three stars), A Marvellous Light (four stars), Unnatural Magic (five stars), Jillian vs Parasite Planet (five stars) )

Didn't finish: ( The Grace of Kings - Ken Liu, Crier's War - Nina Varela )

A short story I enjoyed this month:
To Embody a Wildfire Starting - Iona Datt Sharma: Aftermaths and reconstruction and duty and art, and also socialist dragons. I just have a lot of feelings ok.

I watched The Wheel of Time! It was kind of a mess but had a lot of good stuff as well, some of which I loved A LOT.

( the good and the bad )

Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Bone Witch - Rin Chupeco
Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise
DIE: The Great Game
Jade Legacy - Fonda Lee
A Stranger in Olondria - Sofia Samatar
Fanvids: Television, Women, and Home Media Re-Use - E. Charlotte Stevens
Sword Dance - AJ Demas
The Liar's Knot- MA Carrick
My Own Devices - Dessa
Masks and Shadows - Stephanie Burgis
One Corpse Too Many - Ellis Peters
Anastasia Krupnik - Lois Lowry
Anastasia Again! - Lois Lowry
Anastasia At Your Service - Lois Lowry
Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst - Lois Lowry
Anastasia On Her Own - Lois Lowry
Anastasia Has the Answers - Lois Lowry
Anastasia's Chosen Career - Lois Lowry
Anastasia At This Address - Lois Lowry
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life - Ed Yong

One of those months where I didn't really have much to say about anything I read. I loved the second Rook and Rose book, The Liar's Knot; I thought Jade Legacy was an excellent conclusion to the trilogy; and DIE continues to be extremely relevant to my interests. And I thoroughly enjoyed my Anastasia marathon (the library didn't have the last book in their ebook collection, but I have now read it) - I never read them as a child but they are such a delight.

This is the time of year where I would usually do that fandom year in review meme that's doing the rounds, but it's been such an average year fannishly and such a terrible year otherwise that I'm not really feeling it this year - maybe if it had been a particularly bad or particularly good fannish year I might have been able to work with it, but as it is, nope. Instead here are some bullet points about 2021:

I got through it? I did my best at the things I had to do, and had a lot of good times despite Everything.

I've been swimming fairly regularly at my local fancy gym (which has a pool with NO DEEP END, exactly what I want), I'm not amazing at it but I'm definitely better than I was and that's all that matters.

It was actually a really good year reading wise - I'm so grateful that this is something I've still been able to do, and very cognisant of the fact that a lot of people haven't. I feel like I've been getting better at figuring out what exactly it is that makes a book work for me, and at stopping when something isn't working for me. I read slightly fewer books than last year, which I'm actually really pleased about: I think uncoupling "good reading year" from "year where I read more books than last year" is going to be helpful.

I got really into Thea Gilmore's music and it's been so good. I've also been trying to buy more of the music I love and only use Spotify for trying out/discovering new things, which is going ok, I think.

Fannish productivity is still almost zero (this predates the pandemic but I'm sure it didn't help), but I did make a vidshow that I was pretty pleased with.

I watched a lot of Taskmaster this year and it was truly a joy in dark times. I also finally finished Farscape, which I loved and am contemplating rewatching. And I'm nearly finished with Killjoys, which I started many years ago and finally came back to a month or two ago: it has SPACE and HUMOUR and a glorious platonic friendship at its heart, and Dutch is exactly the kind of character I love, what a good all round.

( grief thing )

So that was 2021. Here's to better, kinder times in 2022.

Earth Logic - Laurie J Marks
One of Them - Musa Okwonga
The Poppy War - RF Kuang
The City We Became - NK Jemisin
Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise - Tansy Rayner Roberts
Miles Morales: Straight Out of Brooklyn
Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett

( The Poppy War (? stars), The City We Became (four stars), Lady Liesl's Seaside Surprise (five stars) )

Didn't finish: ( Legendborn - Tracy Deonn, The Old Drift - Namwali Serpell )

A short story I enjoyed this month:
Open House on Haunted Hill - John Wisewell: Very charming story about a haunted house that doesn't want to hurt anyone.

Lifelode - Jo Walton
Winter's Orbit - Everina Maxwell
Ancestors: A History of Britain in Thirteen Burials - Alice Roberts
Descendant of the Crane - Joan He
Redemptor - Jordan Ifueko
Sistersong - Lucy Holland
Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao
The Councillor - EJ Beaton
Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
A Master of Djinn - P. Djèlí Clark
Invisible Kingdom: Walking the Path
Invisible Kingdom: Edge of Everything
Monstress: Warchild

( Winter's Orbit - Everina Maxwell, Ancestors: A History of Britain in Thirteen Burials (four stars), Redemptor (five stars), Sistersong, The Councillor (five stars), A Master of Djinn )

Didn't finish: ( The Oracle Stone - Talli L. Morgan, After the Dragons - Cynthia Zhang, Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki )

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