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Books and comics read in April and May 2025
Wednesday, 11 June 2025 13:18The Sapling Cage - Margaret Killjoy
The Butterfly Assassin - Finn Longman
Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
A Sorceress Comes to Call - T Kingfisher
James - Percival Everett
Those Beyond the Wall - Micaiah Johnson
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins - P Djèlí Clark
The City in Glass - Nghi Vo
Return of the Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
The Brides of High Hill - Nghi Vo
The Practice, the Horizon and the Chain - Sofia Samatar
Navigational Entanglements - Aliette de Bodard
The West Passage - Jared Pechaček
Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro - Andrew Martin
We Called Them Giants
The Hunger and the Dusk, vol 1
Saint Death's Herald - CSE Cooney
The Butcher of the Forest - Premee Mohamed
The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson
In Universes - Emet North
So Let Them Burn - Kamilah Cole
The Time of the Ghost - Diana Wynne Jones
The Gentleman and His Vowsmith - Rebecca Ide
The Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones
This took me a bit to get into, partly because I was struggling to get a handle on the world, but it picks up once Lorel joins the witches, and has some really interesting stuff on duty, responsibility, power and how to live in a world that has other people in it. I felt like it faltered a bit in the second half when the action picked up, though, partly because it stopped addressing those questions and partly because writing action scenes is not Killjoy's best skill - they're not bad, exactly, but they are a bit awkward. And while I see what the author was trying to do with the denouement and the villain's motivation, it just didn't really come off.
What did work really well, however, was Lorel's debate on whether she wanted use magic to transform her body because she wanted a different body, or because having that body would make it easier for her to exist in a transphobic world. I particularly liked that it doesn't really factor into her internal debate that the magic to make it happen is difficult and painful and needs the participation of another person: she can tackle how to get it if she decides it's something she wants.
So definitely a mixed bag: the aspects of it I loved, I REALLY loved, but I'm still on the fence about whether I'll read the next in the trilogy.
A Sorceress Comes to Call
Two stars is probably a little ungenerous, but I was so frustrated by this book by the time I finished it, because it's two books, and they're both good books, but they are fighting each other. Part of this book is an incredibly well done horror novel about domestic abuse and control, and part of it is a delightful Regencyesque comedy of manners, and maybe those two things could mesh, but they don't here: the comedy of manners defangs the horror novel, and the horror makes the comedy of manners feel frivolous, even though both taken individually are great.
I could also have done without the comedy of manners heroine banging on about how OLD and DECREPIT she is, she's just SO ANCIENT, an OLD LADY, when she is in fact... fifty one. (Definitely a known problem with Kingfisher's writing, and this is at least older than her previous "I'm just SO OLD" heroine was, so... progress?)
The City in Glass
Absolutely loved this. Gorgeous prose, incredible images, wildly compelling - Nghi Vo does not miss.
The West Passage
This book was a wild ride and I had a great time (even if it contains slightly more cannibalism than I would ideally prefer). It's a medieval inspired fantasy, but not in a knights and peasants way, in a mysticism and weird little guys from the margins of illuminated manuscripts way: there's definitely some Gormenghast in its DNA, as well as some of the odder corners of Arthuriana, but it is absolutely its own thing. And the ending absolutely elevated the whole thing.
Saint Death's Herald
I absolutely adored Saint Death's Daughter, but this sequel didn't work as well for me. I still love Lanie, but the new supporting cast and their relationships with her weren't as strong as the previous books, so I was a lot less invested overall (especially in the incredibly drawn out fight sequence around the 60% mark), and the more peripatetic plot meant there was less of a sense of place to this one. I also felt like the prose leaned into the elements that I liked less from the previous book. I didn't dislike it, though, and I'm hoping this is just a touch of middle-book-itis (it did feel like there was a lot of mopping up from book one and manoeuvring into position for book three) - I will definitely be finishing the trilogy.
The Raven Scholar
Definitely a three stars (affectionate) here. I loved the middle of this book, as our (not stated but very obviously) autistic heroine navigates the situation she's been flung into and grapples with her own past choices, but the beginning was a bit rocky and I felt like the end collapsed down a lot of interesting complexities in the interests of having a more standard Villain Plot to defeat. It's a very long book, though, so I spent more time in the fun middle than the shaky beginning and end, and am excited for more in this world!
The Gentleman and His Vowsmith
I feel like this book couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. It tried to be a romance, a fantasy novel, a murder mystery and a gothic novel all at once, and ended up not really doing justice to any of them. And while it's definitely possible for this kind of genre mishmash to work, it has to be better integrated into the whole; here it felt like we were just skipping from one to the other, and as a result none of them were managed in a completely satisfying way - I forgot who the murderer was almost immediately after it was revealed, for example, because the solution was such a damp squib. The dialogue in particular also couldn't decide if it wanted to be period or modern, and overall it felt it was never sure if it wanted to be Regency-with-magic or full AU.
I do think that all of those things would have been easier to overlook if it had been shorter and faster paced though, it did have some fun stuff going on, but its flaws got more evident and more frustrating the more I read.
The Butterfly Assassin - Finn Longman
Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie
A Sorceress Comes to Call - T Kingfisher
James - Percival Everett
Those Beyond the Wall - Micaiah Johnson
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins - P Djèlí Clark
The City in Glass - Nghi Vo
Return of the Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
The Brides of High Hill - Nghi Vo
The Practice, the Horizon and the Chain - Sofia Samatar
Navigational Entanglements - Aliette de Bodard
The West Passage - Jared Pechaček
Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro - Andrew Martin
We Called Them Giants
The Hunger and the Dusk, vol 1
Saint Death's Herald - CSE Cooney
The Butcher of the Forest - Premee Mohamed
The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson
In Universes - Emet North
So Let Them Burn - Kamilah Cole
The Time of the Ghost - Diana Wynne Jones
The Gentleman and His Vowsmith - Rebecca Ide
The Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones
The Sapling Cage (three stars), A Sorceress Comes to Call (two stars), The City in Glass (five stars), The West Passage (five stars), Saint Death's Herald (three stars), The Raven Scholar (three stars), The Gentleman and His Vowsmith (two stars)
The Sapling CageThis took me a bit to get into, partly because I was struggling to get a handle on the world, but it picks up once Lorel joins the witches, and has some really interesting stuff on duty, responsibility, power and how to live in a world that has other people in it. I felt like it faltered a bit in the second half when the action picked up, though, partly because it stopped addressing those questions and partly because writing action scenes is not Killjoy's best skill - they're not bad, exactly, but they are a bit awkward. And while I see what the author was trying to do with the denouement and the villain's motivation, it just didn't really come off.
What did work really well, however, was Lorel's debate on whether she wanted use magic to transform her body because she wanted a different body, or because having that body would make it easier for her to exist in a transphobic world. I particularly liked that it doesn't really factor into her internal debate that the magic to make it happen is difficult and painful and needs the participation of another person: she can tackle how to get it if she decides it's something she wants.
So definitely a mixed bag: the aspects of it I loved, I REALLY loved, but I'm still on the fence about whether I'll read the next in the trilogy.
A Sorceress Comes to Call
Two stars is probably a little ungenerous, but I was so frustrated by this book by the time I finished it, because it's two books, and they're both good books, but they are fighting each other. Part of this book is an incredibly well done horror novel about domestic abuse and control, and part of it is a delightful Regencyesque comedy of manners, and maybe those two things could mesh, but they don't here: the comedy of manners defangs the horror novel, and the horror makes the comedy of manners feel frivolous, even though both taken individually are great.
I could also have done without the comedy of manners heroine banging on about how OLD and DECREPIT she is, she's just SO ANCIENT, an OLD LADY, when she is in fact... fifty one. (Definitely a known problem with Kingfisher's writing, and this is at least older than her previous "I'm just SO OLD" heroine was, so... progress?)
The City in Glass
Absolutely loved this. Gorgeous prose, incredible images, wildly compelling - Nghi Vo does not miss.
The West Passage
This book was a wild ride and I had a great time (even if it contains slightly more cannibalism than I would ideally prefer). It's a medieval inspired fantasy, but not in a knights and peasants way, in a mysticism and weird little guys from the margins of illuminated manuscripts way: there's definitely some Gormenghast in its DNA, as well as some of the odder corners of Arthuriana, but it is absolutely its own thing. And the ending absolutely elevated the whole thing.
Saint Death's Herald
I absolutely adored Saint Death's Daughter, but this sequel didn't work as well for me. I still love Lanie, but the new supporting cast and their relationships with her weren't as strong as the previous books, so I was a lot less invested overall (especially in the incredibly drawn out fight sequence around the 60% mark), and the more peripatetic plot meant there was less of a sense of place to this one. I also felt like the prose leaned into the elements that I liked less from the previous book. I didn't dislike it, though, and I'm hoping this is just a touch of middle-book-itis (it did feel like there was a lot of mopping up from book one and manoeuvring into position for book three) - I will definitely be finishing the trilogy.
The Raven Scholar
Definitely a three stars (affectionate) here. I loved the middle of this book, as our (not stated but very obviously) autistic heroine navigates the situation she's been flung into and grapples with her own past choices, but the beginning was a bit rocky and I felt like the end collapsed down a lot of interesting complexities in the interests of having a more standard Villain Plot to defeat. It's a very long book, though, so I spent more time in the fun middle than the shaky beginning and end, and am excited for more in this world!
The Gentleman and His Vowsmith
I feel like this book couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. It tried to be a romance, a fantasy novel, a murder mystery and a gothic novel all at once, and ended up not really doing justice to any of them. And while it's definitely possible for this kind of genre mishmash to work, it has to be better integrated into the whole; here it felt like we were just skipping from one to the other, and as a result none of them were managed in a completely satisfying way - I forgot who the murderer was almost immediately after it was revealed, for example, because the solution was such a damp squib. The dialogue in particular also couldn't decide if it wanted to be period or modern, and overall it felt it was never sure if it wanted to be Regency-with-magic or full AU.
I do think that all of those things would have been easier to overlook if it had been shorter and faster paced though, it did have some fun stuff going on, but its flaws got more evident and more frustrating the more I read.
