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.