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.
Aerugoblog 
