Bookish Thoughts

In the sixth Incryptid book, Seanan McGuire finally shines the spotlight on the youngest of the Price children, Antimony. I was half-worried going into this book. I love Verity, and the two sisters are huge rivals with very little in common. But McGuire did an excellent job of making Antimony interesting and sympathetic. And the relationship she has with Verity is fascinating now that there are two sides to it. The bulk of this book also takes place at a carnival, which made me really want to go to one. We took Gavin to a few last summer, and it was a lot of fun taking him on the rides and seeing the sights. We knew we wouldn't be able to take him to any this summer, but reading this book made me really sad to be missing that. I hope we're able to go to a few next summer. The next two books are also from Antimony's point of view, and I'm more excited than ever to get to them. I can't wait to read more of her story and see how she deals with all the fallout from ...

This one so obviously comes after The Black Tides of Heaven  I'm not sure why they were initially marketed as "read in any order". Though it could be because they are very different books. While the first charts the twin's journey from childhood to adulthood (from the point of view of Akeha), this is a much more contained story that takes place over just a few days when Mokoya is about 40 years old. As the story opens, Mokoya is still deep in grief due to the death of her daughter four years prior. She has fled from her old life as a Prophet and the wife of the Head Abbot, unable to deal with the pain of her old life. Now she's out in the desert with a small team hunting a naga that seems to be heading for the city where Akeha lives. There's a bunch of action in this book, along with some fun political intrigue. But at it's heart, this is a story about grief and letting go and moving on. It's about taking back control of your life and finding new w...

A neighbor loaned this book to me back before Christmas, right before I received a huge influx of new books I wanted to read (alongside a big backlog of books I wanted to read). With fifty books waiting for me on my shelf, one that I'd never heard of wasn't really a priority. Even if it had won a fancy award. But in keeping with this month's theme, and because I was starting to feel really guilty about not reading it, I finally picked it up. Honestly, this was the most boring book I've slogged through in a really long time. Sure it's clever and meta, which I generally love. But there's no shortage of clever, meta books that are things I'm actually interested in. Less  is essentially about a man having a midlife crisis. And I just couldn't make myself care. The midlife crisis takes the form of a trip around the world. Less has just learned that his boyfriend of nine years is marrying the man he left him for. Not wanting to endure the pity of his frien...

A couple of years ago, JY Yang burst on to the SFF scene, releasing two books in the same day. Though everyone initially said that the two could be read in any order, fans quickly reached the consensus that this one came first. Which makes sense to me. It starts on the day the twins are born and outlines the major events in their lives as they grow. This book actually focuses on Akeha, which took me a bit to figure out. In this world, all children are considered gender neutral, and they choose to become male or female (or neither) as part of their coming of age. Thus, all children are referred to as "they". And in a book told from a third-person limited perspective about twins who are close enough to share a telepathic connection...well I had to do some mental gymnastics to figure out whether any given pronoun referred to Akeha, Mokoya, or the two of them together. But after a few chapters I settled in and the rest of the story was easy to follow. (It became even easier onc...

After I finished Oathbringer , I was having a hard time deciding what to read next. How do you follow up a 1200+ page epic? But then I remembered that it was Pride month and I had this book on my shelf and things spiraled a little bit. So buckle up for a month's worth of LGBTQ+ reads, starting with this queer historical romance. I've read enough London-based historical romance at this point to recognize the trappings. The dukes and marquesses and social expectations, the balls and dinners and chaperones. There's a framework within which all of these romances must operate. And this was a fun twist on it. Charity is masquerading as her deceased employer and friend, Robert Selby in the hopes of helping his younger sister find a husband before anyone realizes that Robert is dead and the dowry disappears. They scrape together enough money to spend a season in London, and Charity exaggerates an old family connection to get her foot in the door with an influential marquess, Al...

Sometimes you manage to pick up a book exactly when you need to read it, and everything clicks in to place for a little bit. I started with the acknowledgements, conveniently located at the beginning of the book. Sanderson ends his multi-page thank you letter with a mantra from the book: "Journey before destination." It was just what I needed to read at that moment. As heavy as this book is, I felt lighter while I was reading it. Like it was carrying some of my burden for me. This series is all about deeply flawed people dealing imperfectly with impossible situations. This book focuses on Dalinar, who has done a number of unspeakably horrible things. As we enter his flashbacks and learn more about his life, his relationship with his first wife, and what finally pushed him to try and become a better person, he's taking that exact same journey. He'd had several of his memories removed, which allowed him to leave in something like peace for several years. But now he...

Rebecca Solnit always makes me feel better about the world at large. Her essays deal with heavy, depressing subjects. These latest are all about various crimes that seem baked into the very DNA of America. But she's also always able to pinpoint how things are getting better, and give me hope that things will continue to get better. The crimes Solnit discusses in this book aren't the sort that are traditionally talked about as crimes. The longest essay by far is called "Death by Gentrification" and it uses a case study to dive in to the ways the historic neighborhoods are being broken up and becoming more dangerous for the minorities who have always lived there, because of a perceived threat on the part of the new, white, wealthy residents and the system that backs them up. She also looks at the ways various voices have been silenced over America's history, the things we choose to celebrate and memorialize. And of course it all comes back to Trump and the backw...

This was a book club pick that I'd been half meaning to read ever since the movie came out. I'm glad I finally got around to it. It's a quick, sweet read about finding yourself and finding love. That said, it also deals with a lot of heavy material. The island of Guernsey was occupied during WWII, and this is basically the tale of a secret book club that sprang as an outlet and refuge for the residents of the island. As the Germans stole their food and their freedom, as they witnessed horrific acts and found themselves unable to help, as their children were sent away and their friends began to die and disappear, the residents of the island sought comfort in literature. They read books by candlelight and shared them with each other, each searching for an escape from a world that they could no longer control or escape. The main action takes place some years after the occupation and the war, when a journalist and author begins to correspond with the members of the literary...

This is the second book by Tessa Dare that I've read and the second one that I've absolutely loved. It follows Alex, who takes work as a governess for Chase's two young wards. Naturally, sparks fly. What I liked most about this book was Alex's confidence. She knows what she wants, she has a strong sense of what's right and wrong, and she never really wavers from that. While Chase is slowly putting himself together and learning how to be vulnerable again, she just keeps seeing new layers to him that make her fall more in love. Their banter is fantastic, and the two kids are pretty great, too. I also really like Alex's friends - the same core group form The Duchess Deal . I expect they'll each get their own book eventually, and I'm looking forward to reading more about the two remaining women in the group.

This book was fine, I guess. It's a heist novel in space, which is exciting and should be right up my alley. But it's populated with an entire cast of teenagers and it ended up feeling a bit insipid. It didn't help that I never really cared about the romance, which was terribly cliched. The other thing that didn't work for me was the sheer number of betrayals and back-stabbings. I couldn't keep it all straight, and I had a hard time caring about any of the characters. It undermines any trust that might have been built up. So even though there's a fairly compelling mystery at the center of this book (and it's sequel), I never really got to a point where I cared.

This was a cute collection of the online webcomic of the same name. I picked it up cheap at a used book sale and read it pretty quickly. The comics are all, of course, available online for free, but sometimes having a physical, curated collection is easier for me to read. The comics are vaguely organized by theme and interspersed with short stories and essays. They were, frankly, a bit weird, but in keeping with the overall tone of the book.

The Rithmatist  is one of Sanderson's young adult novels. As such it has his patented world-building and magical system, but is a bit more bite-sized than most of his adult works (which tend to be long and complicated). It takes place in a world similar to ours, but where the US is an archipelago with some sort of evil lurking at the center. Warriors called Rithmatists are identified at a young age and then trained and ultimately sent to hold the line so this evil doesn't spread to the rest of the country. Only now it seems like something's escaped and a teenager who's obsessed with Rithmancy but has no powers of his own is determined to get to the bottom of it all. The magical system in this book is geometry-based, which I appreciated. But it's also not quite as cut and dried as the more mathematically inclined would hope for. Sure, things that are more geometrically perfect are stronger, but artwork and intent count for something, too. And the balance between th...

If you read Wheel of Time  and wanted a series that just focused on the inner politics of the Aes Sedai, then Warrior  and Witch  are the books for you. After Miryo and Mirage through thousands of years of tradition into question in the first book, the witches have to deal with the fallout. Predictably, some are on board with the new information while others are desperate to squash it and keep the old ways alive. There's a huge rift among the leaders of the witches, ultimately threatening a civil war that will draw in the rest of the world, as the various factions use their power and influence to lend strength to their various positions. What's really refreshing about these books is the sheer number of female characters. They're brave and scared and strong and cruel and thoughtful and rash and hypocritical and because there are so many of them you get this wonderful varied cast of women behaving in all manner of different ways as they work towards whatever goal they'v...