a vintage year for scoundrels

The Crown of Dalemark - Diana Wynne Jones
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right - Jordan S. Carroll
City of Bones - Martha Wells
Elephants Can Remember - Agatha Christie
The Just City - Jo Walton
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Caduceus Clay
The Labyrinth's Archivist - Day Al-Mohamed

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door - HG Parry
Star Trek: Lower Decks - Warp Your Own Way
Kindling - Traci Chee
Track Changes: Selected Reviews - Abigail Nussbaum
King of Dead Things - Nevin Holness
The Nightward - RSA Garcia
The Orb of Cairado - Katherine Addison
The Sea Eternal - Emery Robin
Water Logic - Laurie J Marks

City of Bones (three stars), Elephants Can Remember (three stars), The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door (four stars), King of Dead Things (four stars), The Orb of Cairado (four stars)

City of Bones
This definitely reads like an early work - there's some stuff around sex and relationships in particular that is not amazing - but it's still a solidly enjoyable read. It's clear that Wells hasn't yet reached the heights that she's going to, but there's still some great characterisation and worldbuilding and some really solid prose. I liked it a lot and will be picking up the other early works that Tor are reissuing.

(content notes: some non-explicit sex scenes that aren't definitively assault but also aren't definitively not)

Elephants Can Remember
The premise of this one was great: older lady helps Poirot solve a fifteen year old case by nosing around talking to people, on the grounds that eventually the patchwork of what they remember will add up to something Significant. The execution was a bit lacklustre, though; I'd love to read something with a similar premise but more spark. (Also extremely wild to me to read a Poirot set in the seventies; while I've definitely read at least one more from that decade, as well as one from the sixties, it was when I was young enough not to register when they were set. (I had a big Poirot phase as a child, for reasons I do not entirely understand.))

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door
I'm not hugely familiar with dark academia as a genre, but I know enough to know this was using a lot of familiar tropes. Which is absolutely fine because it really nailed the execution: it's a really satisfying read because of how well constructed it is. All the character work is great, it knows what it wants to do with its themes, the worldbuilding hangs together nicely. I enjoyed it a whole lot.

King of Dead Things
YA urban fantasy about four black teenagers doing magic in London, and if any of that sounds appealing to you, you should get it because it's great. I feel like there were a few first-book type wobbles here and there, but overall I liked it a whole lot and am excited to read more in the series.

(content note: the parent of one character has memory loss, analogous to but not Alzheimer's)

The Orb of Cairado
Novella set just after The Goblin Emperor; the protagonist is the best friend of the Wisdom of Choharo's pilot. This definitely feels at times like a novel with the complications taken out, rather than a true novella, and there were definitely things I wanted more development of, but Addison's a good enough writer that it's still a fun read, and I absolutely loved the ending.

The Inheritance - Robin Hobb | Megan Lindholm
Treason's Shore - Sherwood Smith
Blue Skinned Gods - SJ Sindu
Cosmoknights, Vol 1
The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland - Jim DeFede
Cosmoknights, Vol 2
River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Road - Cat Jarman
The Sky on Fire - Jenn Lyons
The Silver Pigs - Lindsey Davis
On Vicious Worlds - Bethany Jacobs

The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society - Eleanor Janega
The Bright Sword - Lev Grossman
Off-Time Jive - AZ Louise
Between Dragons and their Wrath - Devin Madson
Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power - Leah Redmond Chang
The Sunforge - Sascha Stronach
Blood Sweat Glitter - Iona Datt Sharma
The Lotus Empire - Tasha Suri
Right Ho, Jeeves! - PG Wodehouse
Swordcrossed - Freya Marske
The Stardust Grail - Yume Kitasei

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (three and a half stars), Cosmoknights Vols 1 and 2 (five stars), The Bright Sword (four stars), Blood Sweat Glitter (five stars)

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland
I read this off the back of seeing Come From Away, which I absolutely loved. It's not the best prose ever - the author doesn't quite pull off what he's trying for with the shifting tenses, and the "mosaic of smaller stories" thing suffers slightly because the musical did it better* - but I really appreciated its dedication to telling as many stories as possible, as well as all the extra detail. The book did a particularly good job at conveying how difficult a job the air traffic control had to wrangle all these displaced planes, as well as bringing home the fact that many of the people on the diverted planes, including in some cases the crew, would have had no idea what was happening or why. (I did have a slight feeling about how many people were getting their news from the BBC, ngl.)

*of course it did, it's a musical, it has all those extra tools for that sort of thing AND it can take a few gentle liberties with the material

Cosmoknights Vols 1 and 2
This comic has everything. Space! Gorgeous art! So many women! Rescuing princesses from arranged marriages through the medium of mecha space jousts! What If Liberation Is More Complicated Than Just Rescuing Princesses From Arranged Marriages Through The Medium Of Mecha Space Jousts! Team ups for great justice! It's such a good time, I cannot wait for the next volume. And it's free to read!

The Bright Sword
In which a teenager arrives at Camelot, hoping to join the round table, only to find that Arthur and most of his knights fell at Camlann a fortnight earlier, and he and the remaining knights need to work out what the world should look like now. As a big fan of both Arthuriana and aftermath stories, this premise is very well targeted! And overall I liked this so much. At times it was a slighter more pessimistic take than I would prefer, to the point where there were moments that I wasn't sure I was actually enjoying reading it, but honestly given how well targeted to me it was, that might have been for the best, because when it worked for me it REALLY worked.

I also appreciated Grossman's sincere attempts to diversify the cast a little and give the women more to do. I didn't love

spoilers

the main disabled character getting Magically Healed

but overall a really solid attempt. I loved his Guinevere and would have liked to see more of her, and was also really fascinated by his interpretation of The Love Triangle:

spoilers

Lancelot is very much the bad guy and Guinevere genuinely was completely innocent!

- I don't think I've seen quite that version before, but there is so much Arthuriana I would not be surprised if it had come up before.

Speaking of, Grossman is clearly extremely well read on that front. It really felt like he knew the material really well and knew what he wanted to do with it, which is such a good feeling to have. It felt like it was particularly in conversation with The Once and Future King, but that might just be because a) it looms so large over this kind of retelling and b) I am basically always on some level thinking about The Once and Future King. I would love to read some scholarship on this book and its place within the genre.

(content note: non graphic rape and sexual abuse)

Blood Sweat Glitter
F/f roller derby romance novella! I inhaled this in one sitting. It's an absolute joy - funny, charming, with a lot of depth and substance to it. The characters, especially the main character, Eleanor, and their world, feel real and true; there's a lot going on in a relatively short word count to establish who they are and what the world they live in is like. It's beautifully grounded in its time and place - North London, early winter, after the initial horrors of the pandemic but still very much in their shadow - in a way that really worked for me.

I absolutely adored capable, lonely Eleanor, trying desperately to hold everything together. She and her love interest, Robin, are the catalyst for change in each other's lives in a way that's wonderful to see unfold. Robin too is a delight, and gradually coming to understand who she really is along with Eleanor was such a satisfying journey.

And as ever with Iona's writing, I found myself shrieking to myself in delight at some points and choking up at others - they truly are a master at subtly building to the point where you are suddenly extremely emotionally compromised and you can't quite explain why.

(Also I am very bad at roller skating, and I am scared of pain and falling over, but now I kind of want to join a roller derby team? Actually, on second thoughts, what I want is for my friends to join a roller derby team so I can cheer them on and buy all their stickers.)

Disclaimer: I received an ARC in return for an honest review, also the author is a friend.

Didn't finish:

The Weavers of Alamaxa - Hadeer Elsbai

The Weavers of Alamaxa
Sequel to The Daughters of Izdihar, which I enjoyed very much. Unfortunately this one sacrificed a lot of the things that I liked about its predecessor (character relationships! suffragettes!) in favour of a plot that would have been fine as a scaffold to hang richer worldbuilding and characterisation from, but didn't really work as the sole draw. I got about two thirds of the way through, at which point it became abruptly apparent that the dynamic I was most interested in was not going to get any more page time, so I stopped.

spoilery explanation

To recap, in the first novel, one of our heroines, the hot headed, privileged, but good hearted Nehal, ends up in an arranged marriage with Nico, who is already in a long term relationship with our other heroine, quiet but determined Giorgina. But instead of going the jealousy route or having Nico be a monster (he's a bit spineless but he cares a lot about them both, and he's Trying), Nehal immediately decides that this means Giorgina is Family and that she'd die for her if necessary (Giorgina is somewhat bemused by this), which I loved. Nehal also decides that she and Nico might as well be friends and allies if they're going to have to be married, which I also loved. I was really keen to see how the three of them were going to make their lives work, especially after Nehal turns out to be queer, but alas, Nico is unceremoniously killed off.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport - Samit Basu
Shubeik Lubeik
When Among Crows - Veronica Roth
The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle
The Iliad - Homer trans. Emily Wilson
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins
Glorious Exploits - Ferdia Lennon
Lady Eve's Last Con - Rebecca Fraimow
Winter's Gifts - Ben Aaronovitch

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America - David Hadju
Voyage of the Damned - Frances White
The Inimitable Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez
The Book of Witches ed Jonathan Strahan
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? - Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Half a Crown - Jo Walton
The Wings Upon Her Back - Samantha Mills

When Among Crows (four stars), Glorious Exploits (four stars), Lady Eve's Last Con (five stars), Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons (five stars), Voyage of the Damned (three stars), Half a Crown (? stars)

When Among Crows
Urban fantasy novella steeped in Polish mythology. I really enjoyed this! It didn't set my world on fire, but it was very well done and I would absolutely read anything else Roth writes in this world and with these characters.

Glorious Exploits
Two unemployed Syracusan potters attempt to stage Medea using a group of Athenian prisoners of war. The summary and the googly-eyes-on-a-statue cover make it sound like this is going to be a comedy, but it's really not, although it is funny: it's a brutal world, and a lot of awful things happen (and have happened) to characters we care about. It's very moving, and in places very hard to read.

The author is Irish and the characters talk like contemporary Irish people, which works really well both in and of itself, and in support of some of the book's themes: how far can we understand people, especially those who are very different from us? And how far are we willing to try? One of the book's strengths is that it avoids easy moral lessons, but it does believe that it's important to try.

Lady Eve's Last Con
F/f con artists in spaaaaaaace! This was an absolute delight - frothy and fun, but with enough care for the characters and their world to give it plenty of substance too.

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons
Absolutely loved this take on the history of the Amazons. The first section was the best for me (not least because of how stunning Phil Jimenez's art is), but it was all great, I really hope DeConnick gets to do the rest of the planned volumes.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America - David Hadju
Really enjoyed this history of not just the moral panic around comics, but also their history more broadly - very engagingly written.

Voyage of the Damned
Definitely three stars (affectionate) rather than three stars (derogatory) here. There's a lot about this book that didn't work for me - the worldbuilding is Not Amazing being the key thing - but the main character was just so engaging that I had a great time anyway. He's a queer fat weirdo with an entirely understandable chip on his shoulder, dripping sarcasm but with an incredibly good heart; I really loved that even with the villains he would have a moment of "oh, I see how you're in pain here too, I'm sorry".

Half a Crown
I've liked a lot of things about this alt-history trilogy: they're overall absorbing and convincing, and particularly strong on how easy it is for a fascist society to back people into corners where it feels like there's nothing they can do. But WOW did this final volume not stick the landing.

full spoilers

Our plucky heroine has a quick word with Queen Elizabeth, who then makes a big speech about how Fascism Is Bad Actually And We Should Just Not, everyone cheers, the bad guys are arrested and the surviving good guys released. ...really? That's what we're going for?

Greta & Valdin - Rebecca K Reilly
A Fire Born of Exile - Aliette de Bodard
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Fjord Stone
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Nott the Brave
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Mollymauk Tealeaf
Fayne - Ann-Marie MacDonald
My Man Jeeves - PG Wodehouse
Crypt: Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond - Alice Roberts
Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World - Christian Cooper
Tiger Honor - Yoon Ha Lee
When the Angels Left the Old Country - Sacha Lamb
Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture - Sherronda J Brown
The Waking of Angantyr - Marie Brennan
Squire

Greta & Valdin (four stars), A Fire Born of Exile (three stars), When the Angels Left the Old Country (four stars)

Greta & Valdin
Delightful novel about two disaster queer siblings and their Māori-Russian-Spanish family. Very warm, very funny, I loved it.

A Fire Born of Exile
This was billed as f/f Nirvana in Fire in space, and I really wanted to adore it, but although I enjoyed a lot of it, I never quite managed to let go of the fact that it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be and appreciate it for what it was. I wanted more complexity from the plot and from Quỳnh's machinations, and less explanation of what she was up to; I wanted more sense of the political situation she was stepping into and how she was manipulating it.

This might also be the fact that I'm a hard sell for romance, but I also felt like the romance plotline undermined the book somewhat: Quỳnh is meant to be this driven figure who'll stop at nothing to bring down the people who hurt her, but she seemed to spend most of the book focussing on the woman she'd fallen in instalove with, only snatching moments for the revenge plot here and there. I also raised an eyebrow at the part where

spoilers

Quỳnh, allegedly a mastermind, goes to see her Secret Daughter in person and somehow doesn't spot the two teenagers following her until too late?

I don't know. I love the Xuya universe, I like de Bodard's writing a lot, I loved the casual queerness, but this one just didn't hit the mark for me. I thought the beginning was excellent, and nicely ambiguous, and was disappointed that the rest didn't really live up to it for me, but I can't really tell how much of that is the book, and how much is that I was expecting political manoeuvring and what I got was romance.

When the Angels Left the Old Country
This book is about a Jewish angel and demon leaving their shtetl in Poland to go to America, and it was an absolute delight. Along the way they meet an excellent lesbian, get drawn into union organising, spend some time considering morality and identity, and it's all a very good time, I enjoyed it immensely.

These Burning Stars - Bethany Jacobs
Starling House - Alix E Harrow
The Principle of Moments - Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson
System Collapse - Martha Wells
King's Shield - Sherwood Smith
The Last Devil to Die - Richard Osman
The Mimicking of Known Successes - Malka Older
Ace Voices: What it Means to be Asexual, Aromantic, Demi or Grey-Ace - Eris Young
Paladin's Faith - T Kingfisher

Very strong start to the year with These Burning Stars and Starling House, plus my favourite Murderbot book yet!

These Burning Stars (five stars), Starling House (four stars),
The Principle of Moments (? stars)

These Burning Stars
What a great start to the year! This was a compulsive slice of character driven space opera, with an excellent twist that I did not see coming, and a really thoughtful and unexpected ending. Cannot wait for the next one.

Starling House
Gothic novel, set in Kentucky, that's about finding the line between taking out your righteous, justified anger on the people who hurt you, and on taking it out indiscriminately on everyone around you (especially yourself), as well as being about extending compassion to those who haven't been able to find that line. I usually wouldn't bother with anything that leans this hard on an m/f romance, but I took a punt on it because I love Alix E Harrow's writing, and I ended up really loving it. (Particularly because the female main character's other relationships are just as important as the romance, and the romance itself is extremely grounded in both the personalities of the two characters and in the themes of the book as a whole.)

The Principle of Moments
Very torn on this one, tbh. On the one hand, there are certainly some things that would usually put me off: it's being marketed as adult but it feels very YA (possibly because it was written when the author was a teenager), the writing isn't always the best, ditto the characterisation and worldbuilding. On the other hand, it has such a wonderful inventive exuberance to it that it's hard not to get swept up in. It's a blend of space opera, time travel and queer regency romance, and it's having such a wonderful time rolling around in a million tropes and ideas that it's hard not to have fun reading it. On the OTHER other hand, there's a plot beat towards the end that I really hated - both a personal dislike and a feeling that it needed more build up to fully land. So I don't know. I feel like I probably won't end up reading the rest of this trilogy? series?, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for what Jikiemi-Pearson does next - whatever its flaws, this was a wildly imaginative and confident book, and I feel like she has the potential to grow into a tremendous writer.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty
The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire Part One
Masquerade in Lodi - Lois McMaster Bujold
Can't We Just Print More Money? - Rupal Patel and Jack Meaning
A Day of Fallen Night - Samantha Shannon
Circle of Magic: Briar's Book - Tamora Pierce
Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies - The Secret Barrister
Lords of Uncreation - Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire Part Two
Paladin's Hope - T Kingfisher
Island of Whispers - Frances Hardinge
The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire, Part Three

S.W.O.R.D. Vol 1
Captain Carter: Woman Out of Time
Magnificent Ms Marvel: Destined
Magnificent Ms Marvel: Stormranger
Magnificent Ms Marvel: Outlawed
Ms Marvel: Beyond the Limits
Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth - Natalie Haynes
The Helios Syndrome - Vivian Shaw
American Hippo - Sarah Gailey
A Theory of Haunting - Sarah Monette
The Dance Tree - Kiran Millwood Hargrave
A Power Unbound - Freya Marske
Shadow Baron - Davinia Evans
A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women - Emma Southon
Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus
Ace! The Inside Story of the End of an Era - Sophie Aldred and Mike Tucker
Untethered Sky - Fonda Lee
Bishop's Opening - RSA Garcia
The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD - Fergal Keane

I had covid in the middle there (shout out to my library for getting a ton of comics in ebook format, which kept me going when I didn't have the brain for prose), hence no post last month!

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi (five stars), A Day of Fallen Night (two stars), A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women (four stars), Untethered Sky (five stars), The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD (five stars)

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi
I loved this! It's a delightful romp with a strong thread of figuring out who you want to be, and how to balance that with the fact that your decisions affect other people. The main character, a middle aged pirate dragged out of a quiet retirement with her young daughter for One Last Job, and thereby confronted by the fact that she loves adventuring, tackles this most obviously, but it comes through for other characters too. Goodreads reckons it's the first in a trilogy (though I think it does work as a standalone) and I am EXCITED.

A Day of Fallen Night
I thoroughly enjoyed Priory of the Orange Tree, so I had high hopes for this prequel, but unfortunately it turned out to be a bit of a dud. It all felt really flat and underdeveloped, and a lot of the arcs basically went nowhere, possibly due to the constraints of it being a prequel? I also kept feeling like it was constantly swerving away from the stuff I was interested in exploring in favour of pointless runarounds. It wasn't completely without merit (I finished it, after all) - there were some nice moments and some interesting ideas, and a few characters I was at least a little invested in, but overall, a frustrating reading experience.

A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women
OK, first of all, the US title is much better (A Rome of One's Own), this one's a bit Ronseal, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. Southon charts the course of the Roman Empire via the lives of her 21 women, persuasively arguing that this is a much better way to look at it than through lists of emperors and battles. Which is not to say those things don't feature, but Southon makes the case that we can tell a lot about Rome via how these women lived and were treated. Her prose is chatty and irreverent, but I could feel the weight of scholarship behind it, and I enjoyed it very much.

Untethered Sky
This novella, about a young woman bonding with and training a roc to hunt monsters, was fantastic. Fonda Lee is great at creating characters and worlds extremely economically, so it felt dense and rich in the way novellas don't always manage for me, and the plot is exactly the right size for the length. I loved it, highly recommended.

The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD
As the title suggests, this is a lot, but it's also a really compelling read, with a clear and compassionate prose style that worked incredibly well. Keane doesn't belabour the horrors he experienced and encountered, because there's no need, they speak for themselves

Didn't finish:

The Surviving Sky - Kritika Rao

The Surviving Sky - Kritika Rao
This had some really cool worldbuilding and centred on a couple who've been married for over a decade, which I thought sounded interesting. When we meet this couple, their marriage is on the rocks, and we're supposed to root for them to rebuild their relationship, which could have been great if it wasn't for the fact that the husband seemed... pretty terrible. When we meet him, he's spent seven months giving his wife the silent treatment, but has decided that he just HAS to talk to her now, so he uses his magical abilities and the societal power they give him (and which she does not have) to muscle his way onto the important expedition she's about to set out on, even though she asks him not to. He then proceeds to lecture her about how busy he's been and how important he is, and how worthless her own work is. According to Goodreads their reconciliation is a big part of the rest of the book, and maybe he sees the error of his ways, but I just couldn't face it. Which is a shame, because I liked the female main character a lot and the world seemed potentially really interesting!

The Pomegranate Gate - Ariel Kaplan
Inda - Sherwood Smith
The Satapur Moonstone - Sujata Massey
I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World - Kai Cheng Thom
Flight and Anchor - Nicole Kornher-Stace
Neon Roses - Rachel Dawson
Blood on the Tracks: Railway Mysteries ed Martin Edwards
The Lies of the Ajungo - Moses Ose Utomi
Labyrinth's Heart - MA Carrick
Practical Witching - Tansy Rayner Roberts

The Pomegranate Gate (five stars), Inda (four stars), Neon Roses (four stars), Labyrinth's Heart (five stars)

The Pomegranate Gate
I absolutely loved this - portal fantasy in a slightly AU Inquisition era Spain, centring on two Jewish characters. It took a while to get going, but once I was through the setup chapters and the plot was up and running, it really sang (and I specifically really enjoyed its sense of humour). It's very definitely book one in a series, but it does wrap up plenty of elements while also setting up for the next volume. Highly recommended.

Inda
I wasn't expecting to love this secondary world fantasy* as much as I did, but the character work really made it - the characters and their relationships just drew me in more and more as it developed. It was published in 2006 and feels really dated in some ways, but it's also really nice to read a really good example of the kind of epic fantasy that isn't as popular now, especially one that knows that queer people exist. I loved it and would have gone straight into the next one if it had been available as an ebook in this country.

*the glossary at the end casually drops the fact that actually all the people arrived through a portal from our world many generations ago, I looked it up and apparently there's a whole multiverse thing going on?

Neon Roses
So this definitely feels like it might be Pride fanfic, but for me that was absolutely a selling point - it's about a young woman in Wales in the 1980s who figures out she's queer when LGSM comes to town. I didn't always love its stylistic choices, but I did love how rooted in its specific time and place it was, and also how many of the people in Eluned's immediate circle were kind and supportive.

Labyrinth's Heart
Absolutely loved this. I feel like this trilogy has definitely had its issues, especially around pacing, but I'm just so happy with all the choices the authors made and all the things they considered important in this final volume.

relationship spoilers

I did spend a fair bit of time OT3ing Ren, Grey and Vargo, but as soon as Carrick was like "hear me out: what if FRIENDSHIP was as important as romance?" I was ride or die for Vargo's relationships with Ren and Grey remaining platonic. Also I don't know if this was the intention, but I am 100% reading Vargo as aromantic allosexual and I'm very into it)

Didn't finish:

The Light at the Bottom of the World - London Shah

This had a great premise and a great opening (underwater London!), but I'm just not really that into YA - the things I want to read are not the ways YA wants to write, and that's not a flaw in either of us, it's just a mismatch of expectations.

The 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!)

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/House
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.

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 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.