Posted in Booktalk, reading list

Reading List: March 2021

Posted on by aesaerugo

Good thing this is a book blog, wherein regular updates are recommended but not required.

  • Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
  • His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik (Temeraire book 1)
  • Severance by Ling Ma (partial)
  • The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
  • A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
  • The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan
  • Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik (Temeraire book 2)
  • The Blackwing War by K.B. Spangler (Deep Witches book 1)
  • The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
  • Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (Malazan Tales of the Fallen book 1) (incomplete)
  • The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
  • Black Powder War by Naomi Novik (Temeraire book 3)
  • Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik (Temeraire book 4)

Temeraire! Those books are fun and I do enjoy that they went places I wasn’t expecting for an unsuspecting human winds up paired with a dragon now series. The characters are fun, the alternate history is solid (disclaimer: to me, not a history buff), and it was exciting to see the various cultures involved (Napoleonic War era China!) get fleshed out as the story developed. Even more so in the later books, which I promptly queued up from the library and devoured over the next few months. We’ll skip the specifics for now, since they’re spoiler-filled and more developed in the later books.

Gardens of the Moon is an interesting read, but whew, there are a lot of characters and perspectives to keep straight at first. It took a while to get into it but that’s another series that’s got a lot of worldbuilding detail; it’ll be a long haul, for sure – as of this post, I’ve only gotten partway through book 2, partly due to wait times – but it seems like it’s going to be an interesting long haul. A nice change from the Wheel of Time long slog that I abandoned!

Smaller author shout-out to K.B. Spangler with The Blackwing War and The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher. Both books were really good; The Hollow Places is a horror novel spiced with a of absurd humor that was fun before but is even more relatable after the terrible past few years, and The Blackwing War is a brightly imaginative fantasy novel that grew out of a kids book into something flavored with the complexities of adult life. Counterintuitively the horror novel is a lighter read for me than the fantasy novel in this case, since it doesn’t have the interspersed moments of furious grief that are especially striking and clearly draw from the past few terrible years. I recommend both books, although K.B.’s book Stoneskin is a gentler entry point to the story world and might be worth the read first.

Additional commentary: I’m always surprised how different the first Discworld book (The Color of Magic) is compared to the bulk of the series. It starts rough compared to what it turns into. The Left-Handed Booksellers of London has some of the familiar thematic hallmarks of Garth Nix’s work, and I did enjoy it in both its own right and as a book written by someone who clearly loves books, but it was a bit of a miss for me because it was also set in an era (London in the 80s) that I am not familiar with, so I went away feeling like I’d just finished a fun read that I’d missed a bunch of context in. Severance by Ling Ma was kind of interesting, and recommended by a family member, but the vibe was a better fit for the city sibling than the forest sibling (me) so I put it down in favor of more Temeraire.

Posted in Booktalk, reading list

Reading List: February 2021

Posted on by aesaerugo

February, that month wherein everyone tried to decide the cutoff for swearing at the 2020 Overtime of it all and just moving on to swearing at 2021. I picked a lot of unread books from known authors out of the library.

  • Dead Reckoning by Rosemary Edgehill & Mercedes Lackey
  • Rose Red (Elemental Masters) by Mercedes Lackey
  • Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir (novella, but long)
  • A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher
  • Magic’s Price by Mercedes Lackey
  • Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher
  • The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher
  • The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
  • Hunter by Mercedes Lackey
  • The Hills Have Spies by Mercedes Lackey
  • Magic’s Promise by Mercedes Lackey
  • Calculated Risks by Seanan McGuire
  • Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
  • Apex by Mercedes Lackey
  • Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher

Despite a couple misfires – I don’t think I’ve read a collaboration book by Rosemary Edgehill yet that I’ve really cared for, and I misremembered which Elemental Masters book I was after – most of this month’s pull was a good read. Two books I was looking forward to came out this month; of the two, Paladin’s Strength can be picked up as a standalone and Calculated Risks should… not. It picks up where the previous book leaves off and there is some context to understand first.

This month’s slate of books also drew my attention to the distinctive author voices – you can always tell Mercedes Lackey’s books, and Martha Wells’ are a little different by series/genre but still definitely hers, and T. Kingfisher’s certainly have a sharp and recognizable voice of their own. Even across the kid/adult book divide, which is something that stands out to me less often, I think – but then, Kingfisher’s stories for kids have more than a little of that old-school fairytale grimness to them, which is why they’re cool. Muir’s Florelinda novella also shares a distinctive voice with her Locked Tomb series, but I think I’ll have to let that one settle a bit before going into specifics.

Martha Wells and Naomi Novik come through again – The Cloud Roads is an old favorite that I return to sometimes, because the Tales of the Raksura series it’s part of displays the sort of wild imagination that I associate with older, drier books in the genre. Everything is a new discovery and weird things abound for the Raksura. Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is a new riff on an old story, a fairytale retelling (Rumpelstiltskin) that comes with nuance and thought put into the setting. The protagonist is Jewish and Jewish culture is spread throughout the whole story, which was great to read because Jewish characters or culture are not something I see very often in retellings of European fairytales! I don’t think I’ve disliked a story I’ve read by her yet, and look forward to getting her next book in from the library.

Posted in Booktalk, reading list

Reading List: January 2021

Posted on by aesaerugo

The year is dead, long live the year.

  • Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin (novella)
  • Thud! by Terry Pratchett (maybe? Might have been end of 2020)
  • Snuff by Terry Pratchett
  • Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
  • A Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire
  • Jingo by Terry Pratchett
  • Network Effect by Martha Wells
  • Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
  • Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
  • Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
  • In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant
  • Rolling in the Deep by Mira Grant (novella)

Not a ton to say about this month – Discworld remains a stellar set of books, especially in the mid-to-late range, and we know I like Murderbot. Emergency Skin is a fun little read, especially since it’s clearly written with certain elements of the times in mind. I read Song of Achilles for a book club and it’s outside my usual range, but was interesting nonetheless and effectively character-driven (plus in looking up familiar-sounding references I stumbled onto a clue I missed in Gideon the Ninth).

I remain, as ever, impressed with the prolific publication rate Seanan McGuire manages; of the three books of hers I finished the month with, In the Shadow of Spindrift House was easily my favorite. Teen detectives in a modern Lovecraftian setting, a skin of Scooby-Doo over the rising inevitability of the deep. It’s a good and atmospheric read, available directly from Subterranean Press if you don’t like Amazon. The other two were also good, but not as suited to me personally – I read Into the Drowning Deep, the sequel, before I read Rolling in the Deep, so I already knew how that one ended and that always takes a bit of the shine off. Across the Green Grass Fields, part of the Wayward Children series, was a perfectly enjoyable read that happens through an accident of personality and publishing order to run up against impossibly high personal standards – the series has something for everyone, and the first book in the series was the one that resonated with me, so all the subsequent books are at a bit of a disadvantage in my eyes, fun as they are in their own rights. I’m sure other readers will have different favorites from among the series, and I look forward to the next books.

Posted in reading list

Reading List: December 2020

Posted on by aesaerugo

I read a bunch of books in the first half of the month and then spent the winter holidays face-down doing nothing much, which in retrospect seems like a fitting cap for this particular year.

  • Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher (very good!)
  • A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (twice, oops)
  • Elite by Mercedes Lackey
  • A Study in Sable by Mercedes Lackey
  • When the Villain Comes Home ed. Gabrielle Harbowy
  • The Bartered Brides by Mercedes Lackey
  • The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
  • Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong
  • Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
  • Industrial Magic by Kelley Armstrong
  • Haunted by Kelley Armstrong

Lot of good reads this month despite the relatively short list!

I picked up Paladin’s Grace after seeing some buzz about it on Twitter and it is exactly my type of romance novel, which is to say that the romance part has to compete with humor, the main plot, and a subplot of monster murder, plus the main characters actually like each other before we get to the spicy bits. I went in with no real expectations and enjoyed it quite a bit. There’s also a sequel now!

Naomi Novik’s take on the magical boarding school in A Deadly Education was a lot of fun – breaks the magical boarding school mold, adds some good characters, builds up a whole new fun world around it. It’s about teenagers but they’re not the dumb 2D ones I’m tired of reading about, and the broader world that adults created around them. When I looked Novik up after reading this one and discovered that she went to an Ivy League college some things about the book started to make sense. I’m really looking forward to the sequel (expected this fall, probably September).

Otherwise, I was overdue on my Night Watch reread this year – it’s usually a May book – and I picked up Dime Store Magic because a writer I follow on Twitter mentioned a specific element of the magic system that I was interested in, but the plot wasn’t quite up my alley (possibly because Dime Store Magic starts in the middle of the series). Still read a couple more books in that series to make sure, because why not.

Posted in reading list

Reading List: November 2020

Posted on by aesaerugo

Pandemic hell continued, as exemplified by the continued rereading, this time of Murderbot and zombie journalism books.

  • Ruthless Gods by Emily A. Duncan
  • Spell Breaker by Charlie Holmberg
  • Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
  • Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
  • Blindsight by Peter Watts
  • Feedback by Mira Grant
  • Network Effect (Murderbot 5) by Martha Wells
  • Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi
  • Crown of Thunder by Tochi Onyebuchi (continued into Dec)
  • All Systems Red (novella)
  • Feed by Mira Grant
  • Deadline by Mira Grant
  • Blackout by Mira Grant

Stand-outs:

Blindsight got knocked off the list not even a chapter in because I was not remotely in a mood to read something that started by talking about how its characters are bad people. I hear good things, and will revisit it some time, but… wasn’t feeling it then. Pass.

Three Parts Dead was fun! I guessed the final twist relatively early but that was on purpose – this was clearly a book where the big final reveal was left in the open as bait so the other twists and turns would catch you by surprise. Lots of interesting worldbuilding in this one, and a series I’d cheerfully read more of.

Feed remains my favorite zombie book, and I wanted to like Beasts Made of Night and Crown of Thunder but while Beasts Made of Night was interesting, Crown of Thunder got into some more meandering territory that wasn’t for me.

Posted in reading list

Reading List: October 2020

Posted on by aesaerugo

October, still a stressful month, as exemplified by the Holly Lisle comfort reading:

  • Courage of Falcons by Holly Lisle
  • The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
  • The Unkindest Tide by Seanan McGuire
  • That Ain’t Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire
  • Imaginary Numbers by Seanan McGuire
  • Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood by Holly Lisle
  • Warpaint by Holly Lisle
  • Tales from the Longview (6 short stories/novellas) by Holly Lisle
  • The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson
  • Dead Things by Stephen Blackmoore
  • Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw
  • Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
  • Angel Mage by Garth Nix

Station Eleven was a departure from my usual genres, but it was good; the beginning of the story involves a major pandemic, so be warned if you go to read that these days, but I didn’t find it similar enough to be distressing. It did really strike me as being an example of a distinction I don’t entirely share with literary fiction reviewers, because in a reality-adjacent world like Mendel’s a string of coincidences like that, while they did neatly wrap the various plot lines together, strikes me personally as requiring more suspension of disbelief than an impossible fantasy scenario that then plays out along logical lines. More on this later, possibly, once I nail down what exactly it is that causes me to raise an eyebrow at a story’s twists and turns.

Instead, I want to talk about Holly Lisle’s books for a moment, because her worldbuilding is some of the best I’ve come across. She absolutely nails it, even in the books I’m not as immensely fond of as I am the ones above. No matter how fantastical or futuristic the setting, it all makes sense, from how the magic works to the way people talk about their inventions to ways that culture might shift under these conditions. It’s all laid out with an internal logic that feels very like our reality and therefore intuitive, even when there’s nanotechnology or magical shields or dimension-hopping. It’s a balance I greatly appreciate. She’s also got a wonderfully honed ability to choose her descriptive details to sketch out a setting without slowing down the progression of the scene at all. Holly Lisle, everybody, one of my favorite and most underrated sci-fi and fantasy writers! My favorite series by her start with Diplomacy of Wolves or Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood respectively.

Posted in Uncategorized

Reading List: September 2020

Posted on by aesaerugo

Fall, my favorite season and continuing pandemic hell part 30095

  • Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan
  • The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood Book 2) by N.K. Jemisin
  • The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time book 5) by Robert Jordan
  • Some of the Best of Tor 2019 (short story collection, about novel length)
  • Vincalis the Agitator by Holly Lisle
  • Diplomacy of Wolves by Holly Lisle
  • Vengeance of Dragons by Holly Lisle

I can tell it was a rough month because I didn’t read much and abandoned some of what I did read half-finished. Best of Tor 2019 didn’t deserve that treatment and I’ve since picked it back up to finish, but Wheel of Time, oh, Wheel of Time…

See, the thing about Wheel of Time is that it sounds much cooler as a Blind Guardian song. I gave it a shot because it keeps getting talked up as a fantasy classic despite its age, as part of my determination to read some of the genre classics I’ve managed to miss. The first book was all right, decently entertaining if nothing groundbreaking; books 2 – 4 were erratic and got to be a slog, but I got through them. Book 5, though… nope, I’m out. I watched the story bloat creep in through books 2 – 4, I tolerated the winding plots and contrived rom-com misunderstandings, I tried to see good points about the protagonists, and book 5 blew basically all of that. Especially the one scene, which somehow managed to be the worst execution of that fanfiction trope I’ve ever seen despite being in a published “classic” book. Nah. I’m going to go read something else that doesn’t involve watching Jordan remember how to write Nynaeve in real time.

Posted in reading list

Reading List: August 2020

Posted on by aesaerugo

What’s worth reading in high summer?

This month:

  • Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey
  • Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
  • (then more Harrow again)
  • Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
  • Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
  • Artificial Condition (Murderbot 2) by Martha Wells
  • The Time of the Dark by Barbara Hambly
  • The Blade Itself by Joe Abecrombie (half read, library loan expired 9/1)

The Good: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. This was probably going to be my book of the month anyway, as a much-awaited sequel to Gideon the Ninth, but it did not disappoint. Space necromancy! Terrible decisions! Plot twists! Unexpected memes! It’s going to be a long wait for the final book. There will definitely be more thoughts on this one.

The Bad: The Blade Itself by Abecrombie. In fairness I did not finish the whole book before the library ebook returned itself, but I got about halfway through. It suffers from ye olde ahistorical fantasy sexism of the world (everyone knows medievalesque women didn’t do things or have thoughts! They were decorative!) and all our main characters were kinda crap people. Not entertainingly crap either, like in Harrow, just crummy and unpleasant. The worldbuilding wasn’t disinteresting and there were hints that there’d be more interesting stuff down the road, but did not feel compelled to put this one back on the library list.

The Pleasant Surprise: I picked up an older copy of The Time of the Dark by Barbara Hambly at a library sale because the cover looked like this and I expected a funny read, but somewhat to my surprise it turned out to be a pretty solid book? Upon some very basic further reading it turns out Hambly is an established author, and the person who wrote a book (Dragonshadow) the cover of which has stuck with me for years but I had not tracked down til now. That’s two pretty good takeaways from a impulse purchase. Additional points to the Murderbot Diaries series, which are more novella-sized but a fun read so far.