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.
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