Category: Booktalk

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.