Bookish Thoughts

Sometimes you find yourself so deep into a series, that you just keep reading beyond your enjoyment of it. Because some new twist appears and you have to find out what happens next. Even though you don't really care. I really liked the first Rose Marshall book. It was fun and inventive and told an interesting, ambiguous story. I was lukewarm on the second book. I wouldn't have read or even expected a third book. But then, over in the Incryptid series, which takes place parallel to this series, major changes happened. A big bad was defeated in a way that would have huge repercussions for Rose, and I just had to see that play out. So I guess I got my closure. But having gotten it, I'm not sure I needed it. My problem is with rose herself, who is feeling less like a character and more like a mouthpiece for the author. These books have lost a lot of the ambiguity that made them interesting. People are very definitely either good or bad, and that comes with a whole host of opini...

This was a fun adventure, though I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to spend as much time in the underworld. Rose spends the majority of the book in a living human body, trying to figure out how to get back to her ghostly state. It's a trick pulled by Bobby Cross that serves to mess up Rose's life without bringing them that much closer to a confrontation. I'm hoping that in the next book they finally face off against each other.

Seanan McGuire initially wrote a bunch of short stories about a ghost. Then she stitched them together into a book. Then she turned it into a series. I originally read this book several years ago, but I finally picked up the sequel (and saw that a third is forthcoming), so I had to go back and re-read this one. Since I first read this story, I've read the main Incryptid series, of which it's an offshoot. That meant that I picked up on a lot more this time through. The world where this takes place is incredibly rich, and I missed a lot of the references when I first encountered them. That contributed to me liking this story even more the second time around. I was also better able to appreciate the structure, since I knew where everything was headed. I didn't expect my re-read of this book to be quite so rewarding, but I'm glad it was. I'm definitely hooked on this series and Rose Marshall now, and I can't wait to see where her story goes. (especially after the ev...

If you could rewind back to a certain point in your life and make a different decision, would you? That's not really a question in this book - the main characters can do this and they do it over and over. They keep dying, the world keeps ending, and they keep going back to some key moment to choose differently in the hopes of getting a better outcome. It proves to be a tricky balance. You have to accept certain formative experiences, no matter how painful they are, in order to become the kind of person who can save the world. Happiness doesn't exactly lead to strength. Still. If you could take something back, would you? I'd like to know what would have happened if Kevin hadn't gotten the bone marrow transplant. Would the cancer have come back? Would chemo have worked a second time? Would we have decided to go through with it anyway, and just delay this outcome a few years? Would it have been better? Would it have been worse? What if the doctors caught the GVHD sooner? H...

Once upon a time I had a book blog. I updated it consistently for years and years. But then my husband died and I didn't touch it for over four months. I kept reading though, and developed such a backlog that it just got more and more overwhelming.   But this blog remains valuable to me. Writing about books helps lodge them in my memory. And I enjoy being able to go back and see what I thought about a book I read years earlier. Especially if I'm trying to recommend something or considering another book by that author.   Anyway. It's time to work through the backlog. The key to eating an elephant is to just go one bite at a time, after all, right? So, one review at a time and I'll eventually catch up to where I am now. It'll be interesting to see what I remember about these books I read weeks and months ago and should serve as a decent kick in the pants to stay up to date with this thing in the future.   Anyway, That Ain't Witchcraft is the seventh book in a ser...

Sometimes, when you're dealing with the imminent death of a loved one, the thing that helps most is reading about death. Granted, the deaths here are fantastical and involve vampires, mad scientists, sea gods, and the sort of intense rivalry reserved for blood relatives. It was just far enough removed from reality to make it easy to read and become immersed in while still helping me to process all the emotions I've been rapidly cycling through lately. This book marks the triumphant (sort of) return of Jack and Jill, who are such great characters that they have now improbably returned twice and once more just might make the series jump the shark. But for now it was great to see them and spend a little more time in the Moors. But now McGuire has suitably built up the rest of the cast, and I'm excited to learn more about some of the other characters.

This was a wonderful, quick read that Tor.com released for International Woman's Day. It's about 30 pages long and contains eleven super short stories. Each author was asked to use the famous admonishment of Elizabeth Warren as a prompt. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted. I liked some stories more than others. I knew most every author included in the book, and it was fun to get a little tasting menu of their styles. Not to mention that this was a particular balm to the soul, being delivered so soon after Warren dropped out of the presidential race. If you've got half an hour and a desire to try out several SFF authors, you can't go wrong with this small, free book.

This is my favorite of the Wayward Children books so far. In general, I prefer the even-numbered ones, which take place in the various worlds rather than the school. They're a little more focused, and there's an air of tragedy that hangs around them that makes them so bittersweet. This one follows Lundy, who died in the first book. Here we go back to her childhood, her encounter with the Goblin Market, and the actions that ultimately cursed her. The Goblin Market is all about rules, which appeals to Lundy (and honestly, to me, too. It's nice to know where you stand). One of those rules is that she has until her 18th birthday to choose to either stay in the Goblin Market or in her old life. Until then, she can travel back and forth as much as she wants. But then she has to choose one life and forsake the other. For a world that prides itself on fairness, this is a supremely unfair condition. Especially because it gets more and more difficult to make as Lundy approaches ...

While I enjoyed this book, it didn't quite grab me the way the first two books in the series did. This one is a fun adventure in which a group of students at Eleanor West's school travel through several worlds in an attempt to resurrect a student who died before her time. It's got a couple of new faces and a couple of old favorites and it delves deeper into the underlying logic (or lack thereof) of these worlds. I think that's the crux really. This story felt more like table-setting. McGuire is currently contract to write eight books in this series (of which five have been released), and there's every possibility that the series will extend beyond that. So she needed to spend some time establishing the rules and the map. It was interesting, and I'll certainly be grateful for it as the series progresses, but in the meantime it slowed this story down a bit. A lot of scenes boiled down to new-girl Cora asking questions and resident-expert Kade answering them with...

I'm starting to love Antimony almost as much as I love Verity. The two of them have more in common than they would ever admit, but Antimony isn't quite as experienced as Verity. She's competent, sure, but she's still learning how to gather and rely on her allies. It's fun to watch her put her team together, and become a force to be reckoned with. Of course she still has a lot of growing up to do. She's quick to blame herself and thinks she needs to take sole responsibility for her mistakes. Which has left her pretty isolated. As she starts to build a found family around herself, I'm looking forward to her reconnecting with her family of origin. She just needs to figure out that she doesn't have to take on the world all by herself. I also appreciate Antimony's books for their settings. Magic for Nothing  had me eager to visit the carnival and Tricks for Free  is making me want to visit Disneyland. My kids are still too young to appreciate it, but ...

As I've begun to embrace my love of horror over the past several years, I've come to understand the key to horror stories. They're not about being scared, not really. They're about catharsis. They're about facing your fear or dealing with your trauma or even just acknowledging that sometimes life is terrible. And if you can say that and share it, it gets a little better. So it makes sense, in a weird, twisted, horror-novel-logic sort of way, that Jack and Jill would escape from their stifling household and too-strict, largely absent parents and find comfort and solace in the trappings of a classic horror story. Jack as the apprentice to a mad scientist, Jill as the protege to the vampire lord. Really, though, this story is pretty light on the horror. It's got the shape of a horror story, with the details fading into the background. In the foreground we have a story about family and sisterhood, about disappointment and loyalty. It's an excellent prequel t...

When I gave birth to my son, I packed a book in my hospital bag. It was more out of habit than anything else, though I was optimistic that I'd have some time to read in the hospital. That didn't end up happening, and it took me nearly six weeks to finish reading that book after Gavin was born. Despite this historical precedent, I once again packed a book in my hospital bag when I went to give birth to the twins. I can't just not have a book with me. And whether it was because this book was shorter or because it was one that I'd already read a few years previously, I actually read the whole thing before I was discharged from the hospital. I'm really glad I decided to re-read this book. I caught a lot of things I'd missed on my first read-through, and those details led to a richer experience. It made me appreciate the ending more, too. My first time through I felt like it left something to be desired, but this time it seemed like a perfect fit. McGuire has als...

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 ...

I missed Verity. The last two books, narrated by her brother Alex, were fine. But having Verity back in the spotlight was so much fun. She's everything I loved about Buffy but more mature, and her books are an absolute delight to read. This one sees her returning to the world of reality TV to give her dance career once last chance before retiring it forever. But when it turns out that someone (or something) is murdering the eliminated contestants as part of an arcane ritual - and doing a surprisingly good job of covering their tracks - Verity gets sucked right back in to her other life. I think my favorite part of this book was the introduction of Verity's grandmother, Alice, who arrives as backup after the first bodies are found. She's incredibly rash and incredibly experienced and it makes for a really fun combination. There are also hints at all sorts of other adventures that make me want to dive in to the plethora of short stories McGuire has written in this world. ...

In the fourth InCryptid book, Alex and Shelby head to Austrailia to deal with a werewolf outbreak. In this world, werewolves are victims of a rabies-like virus. There's no cure, no treatment, and the only way to prevent a full-on outbreak is to kill anyone who's been infected before they have a chance to bite anyone else. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that you can't tell whether someone's been infected until they turn into a wolf. And further complicated by the fact that the virus isn't restricted to humans. Any mammal can contract and spread lycanthropy. The story here was exciting and well-paced. The mystery was intriguing, and expertly constructed. And the stakes felt believably high. It was just hampered by the fact that I don't really like Alex all that much. He's kind of boring and wishy-washy, and not nearly as much fun as his sister. Lucky for me, the next book turns the spotlight back on Verity. And then it's on to the final Pri...

Well I'm pretty much committed to Seanan McGuire's Incryptid  series at this point. The next two books are already sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. And after that there are only two more that currently exist. (Though I expect there will be at least one more by the time I catch up. McGuire is remarkably good at keeping to her one-book-a-year schedule. Even more impressive that she's maintaining it for at least three series while also writing other stuff. Seriously, she's been publishing books for less than a decade and she's got somewhere in the neighborhood for 50 books and novellas. And then there are the short stories.) To get back to the point, this series is great fun, and I'm enjoying it. Even if I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as the last two. But that really just comes down to the fact that I fell head over heels in love with Verity and I merely like her brother, who narrates this and the next book. (But then it's back to Verity, a...

The second Incryptid book delivers another exciting adventure. Verity is still torn between her desire to be a professional dancer and her duty to protect the Cryptid population from over-eager monster hunters. But when Dominic tells her that the Covenant's threatened purge of Manhattan is imminent, it's not much of a choice at all. Like Verity's parents, I thought it was obvious from early on that dance was never going to be her future. So while I liked the push and pull of her two lives in the first book, I appreciated that she quickly came to the same conclusion here. When the chips are down, she's going to help her friends, because that's the kind of person she is. Which doesn't mean that she can't or won't grieve that dance career, or that she didn't need her year in NYC to come to that decision. But it was nice to see her life come into focus for her. It was also fun to see a bunch of the cast from the previous book. Though now those friend...

I've dabbled in a lot of Seanan McGuire's work over the years. She's incredibly prolific, and I read and enjoy her blog. I mostly like the books of hers that I've read, though I tend to get a bit nitpicky about them. But I think I've finally found something of hers that I'm going to fall in love with. Discount Armageddon  is the first book in her Incryptid series, which follows a family of cryptozoologists straddling the thin line between protecting humans from cryptids and cryptids from humans. They exist in a grey area in a world that insists these matters are black and white. The first book follows middle daughter, Verity Price, who is spending a year in Manhattan to study the locals and figure out what she actually wants to do with her life. Verity filled a Buffy -shaped hole in my heart that I hadn't even known was there. I didn't realize how much I missed that wit and snark, that endless training that leads to exhilarating fight scenes, that re...

When this book first came out, everyone was raving about it. Well, everyone on the corners of the internet I frequent, which happen to include the author's blog. Still, the premise was interesting. A boarding school for kids who'd been whisked away to various fairy lands and then sent home and weren't sure how to deal with that. I'd been meaning to pick it up for a while, so when Tor offered a free download last month (to celebrate the release of the sequel), I jumped at it. It wasn't entirely what I expected. Instead of teenagers learning to deal with childhood trauma and finding a community of other outsiders, McGuire presents a murder mystery. Which I should have seen coming from her. It's an interesting mystery (with a culprit so obvious that I was second-guessing myself), but I felt like it left some of the characters short-changed. Instead of watching the kids die off, I would have liked to get to know them better. But there will be more books, so perhap...

This is a sweet little ghost story about the things you can't outrun, the things you can't leave behind, the things that refuse to let you go. It follows Rose, who was killed on prom night and now spends her time hitchhiking across the country. Sometimes she accompanies people to their death, sometimes she's able to save them, sometimes she's just along for the ride for a time. It's an urban legend you've probably heard of, and it's a lot of fun to see it from the other perspective. In the beginning, the story jumps back and forth through time a lot. But as it approaches the present, it becomes more linear. Which makes a lot of sense, as this is when Rose, who is telling her own story, starts to gain a sense of purpose and to care about how events follow one after another. Early on, she's just going through the motions and it hardly matters if it's the 1960s or the 1990s. But as she grows, that timeline does start mattering. It's a lot of fun t...