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.
Aerugoblog 