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lady_ragnell) wrote2022-08-27 09:40 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2022-08-27 09:40 pm
2022 Books, Post 13
For comparison's sake and my future records, I hit my 13th book post last year on October 30th.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
I liked Henry's first two books fine, but this one blew them out of the water! For one thing, I'm a sucker for stories about sisters, and that's a major component here, but also it's both a deft romance and an affectionate but firm and deliberate deviation from the Hallmark movie tropes it's sending up. Not everything about it was perfect by any measure, and I continue to not love the current contemporary romance thing where you don't get POV from the love interest just because of the way that I like this kind of story to work, but overall, one of the better contemporaries I've read this year.
Castles in Their Bones by Laura Sebastian
Remember right up there where I said I'm a sucker for stories about sisters? This one, with sisters and political intrigue fantasy, was a very easy sell for me even if I don't have a lot of patience for YA these days. Anyway, this was an interesting read! Yeah, it had some YA problems and I continue my streak of "oh, but I want to see this but with the full maturity of adult fantasy," but it kept things going at a good clip despite being quite long. I found it more stressful than fun while I was reading, but the epilogue recontextualized the whole book in a way I found fascinating and sold me on looking out for the sequel when I might not have otherwise (especially when I continue my trend, begun with Little Women, of getting attached to the wrong sister). Not to everyone's taste for sure, but worked for me.
Salt Magic, Skin Magic by Lee Welch
My second Welch of the year! Seducing the Sorcerer is the one that got buzz in the winter, but I liked this one heaps better (though Welch sure has some patterns about class and its use in sex scenes). The worldbuilding was cool, the tension was high, there was a nice little mystery that I solved satisfyingly quickly, just overall a very good read. I really want to compare it to a book and say "if you liked [x] as a kid you'll probably like this one," but unfortunately the comparison would majorly spoil the mystery. However: major warning for parental abuse.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
My book group needed a transition between Tolkien and getting back to Tamora Pierce, and we settled on some Pratchett! Oh how I love this book, and Moist, and how Pratchett wasn't afraid to let his fantasy world change over time, with culture and technology and a dozen other things. I feel like this book primed me to love Leverage when I got there, with the criminal skills used for good. And Pratchett's point about contributing to deaths even if Moist wasn't killing people remains very relevant. Finally, I spent a lot of this read thinking about how the Moist books feel to me, looking back, like Vetinari training his successor (though I don't think Vetinari knows that till midway through this book). It really makes me want to reread the other two where he's the main character to see if that holds steady.
The Reluctant Heiress by Eva Ibbotson
I do inevitably start reading Ibbotson at some point every year. My two major new thoughts with this particular reread were: 1. Ibbotson's books for older readers (and some of them for younger readers) are perfect candidates for slightly cheesy Netflix original movies and this one in particular would be great for it, who wants to hire me to write the script? 2. It's funny to me that this book and Addison's Witness for the Dead contain operas about factory workers that seem to have some overlap in themes and plot, though Fricasee, here, is treated with affectionate scorn, whereas Zhelsu is clearly meant to be revolutionary, if ahead of its time. I really wish that I thought Addison were commenting on Ibbotson here, because I always love finding out that people have read Ibbotson. Instead, I suspect they are both referencing a similar piece, if not the same one. The best I can come up with is Wozzeck? That's about a soldier, not a factory worker, but it seems to be the right era and cultural place to be the right opera.
Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope
A fantasy romance, the start of a series of them! Truly, my genre of the year. This one had some cool worldbuilding, both an excellent magic system (even if I wish Earthsong meant literal music magic, for which I am always trash) and, for once, a world where the technology is at a slightly different era than usual (the small town where the story starts has a phone in the post office! What a great detail!). Plus the start-of-chapter bits of folktale worldbuilding were interesting, if not the most integrated with the story (the quotes had to do with the themes, but the folktale characters weren't referenced outside of the folktales much that I noticed). There's nothing wrong with it, when I think over it. Nonetheless, it took me six days to get through, because I just kept putting it down. Sometimes mid-paragraph, a few times mid-sentence, I'd just wander away from it. I've got no clue if it's that the book could have used some more tightening up or if it's that I was having A Time of things, but either way it was frustrating.
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie
I'd seen the Marple show's version of this, so I already knew the murderer, except there were still a lot of twists I didn't see coming, because the show must have smashed this one up with a different mystery when they added Marple herself into it! (This is a mystery not solved by Marple or Poirot, which was fun.) Not much to say about this, I enjoy Christie's mysteries even if I can't really read much Poirot for Hastings reasons, and this was a perfectly enjoyable one. Apparently there's been a recent show of it, I'll have to go looking.
Aphrodite and the Duke by J.J. McAvoy
Tragically, not very good. Multiple first person POVs, which I tend to be a hard sell on, a set of parents for the heroine I was supposed to like more than I did, some interesting things that didn't pay off in favor of going for a family drama plotline in the second half that puts Mary Balogh's wild moments to shame, and the unfortunately common trope of "the heroine expresses reasonable doubts about getting into a relationship with anyone in general and/or the hero in particular (both, here!) and gets told she doesn't know her own mind and it's obvious she wants to get married/loves this one dude and the people telling her that turn out to be right." There are some glimmers here, but I was disappointed. Also, this is value neutral, but whoa, the extent to which this was very clearly written right after s1 of Bridgerton came out, right down to Queen Charlotte playing a much larger role than she does in other Regency romances.
Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater
Good Omens by way of The Good Place, with much smaller stakes and some romance dashed on top. This one was a lot of fun! I like Atwater a lot, her Regency Faerie series was also very good and I'm looking forward to her future work. I wish I had more to say about this one, I just very simply enjoyed it! It dealt with grief and depression and hard family relationships, but it was also genuinely both fun and funny. The romance part of it was so low-key that it was hardly one, to the point where I don't know if it was needed at all, but it didn't detract from the book either, so I imagine Atwater wrote exactly what she wanted to, and it worked out to a lovely read.
A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson
I can never just reread one! This is one I reread a bit less, because it's a little less about that iddy romance that Ibbotson is so good at in her other ones. This one's a lot sadder, more wistful, taking place as it does in Austria in 1938 or thereabout. The love interest is smuggling a few people out of Germany, it takes place at a school where a lot of misfits have collected themselves together that is about to run out of money and scatter everyone all over the place, it's just so much about places and times and people you can't go back to. It's bittersweet, and I have to be in the right mood for it, but as the title implies, it's a good read for summer, and particularly the end of it, so it seemed like the right moment.
Not a bad group, but it's still been a few posts since I really had a book properly carry me away! I have a few upcoming that I have high hopes for, though, so maybe I wil be able to triumphantly say otherwise next time. I will be pausing my Ibbotson reread because I want to reread the first two Locked Tomb books before Nona the Ninth comes out mid-September, so there likely won't be any more of that next time, but I can yell about necromancy and POV instead!
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
I liked Henry's first two books fine, but this one blew them out of the water! For one thing, I'm a sucker for stories about sisters, and that's a major component here, but also it's both a deft romance and an affectionate but firm and deliberate deviation from the Hallmark movie tropes it's sending up. Not everything about it was perfect by any measure, and I continue to not love the current contemporary romance thing where you don't get POV from the love interest just because of the way that I like this kind of story to work, but overall, one of the better contemporaries I've read this year.
Castles in Their Bones by Laura Sebastian
Remember right up there where I said I'm a sucker for stories about sisters? This one, with sisters and political intrigue fantasy, was a very easy sell for me even if I don't have a lot of patience for YA these days. Anyway, this was an interesting read! Yeah, it had some YA problems and I continue my streak of "oh, but I want to see this but with the full maturity of adult fantasy," but it kept things going at a good clip despite being quite long. I found it more stressful than fun while I was reading, but the epilogue recontextualized the whole book in a way I found fascinating and sold me on looking out for the sequel when I might not have otherwise (especially when I continue my trend, begun with Little Women, of getting attached to the wrong sister). Not to everyone's taste for sure, but worked for me.
Salt Magic, Skin Magic by Lee Welch
My second Welch of the year! Seducing the Sorcerer is the one that got buzz in the winter, but I liked this one heaps better (though Welch sure has some patterns about class and its use in sex scenes). The worldbuilding was cool, the tension was high, there was a nice little mystery that I solved satisfyingly quickly, just overall a very good read. I really want to compare it to a book and say "if you liked [x] as a kid you'll probably like this one," but unfortunately the comparison would majorly spoil the mystery. However: major warning for parental abuse.
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
My book group needed a transition between Tolkien and getting back to Tamora Pierce, and we settled on some Pratchett! Oh how I love this book, and Moist, and how Pratchett wasn't afraid to let his fantasy world change over time, with culture and technology and a dozen other things. I feel like this book primed me to love Leverage when I got there, with the criminal skills used for good. And Pratchett's point about contributing to deaths even if Moist wasn't killing people remains very relevant. Finally, I spent a lot of this read thinking about how the Moist books feel to me, looking back, like Vetinari training his successor (though I don't think Vetinari knows that till midway through this book). It really makes me want to reread the other two where he's the main character to see if that holds steady.
The Reluctant Heiress by Eva Ibbotson
I do inevitably start reading Ibbotson at some point every year. My two major new thoughts with this particular reread were: 1. Ibbotson's books for older readers (and some of them for younger readers) are perfect candidates for slightly cheesy Netflix original movies and this one in particular would be great for it, who wants to hire me to write the script? 2. It's funny to me that this book and Addison's Witness for the Dead contain operas about factory workers that seem to have some overlap in themes and plot, though Fricasee, here, is treated with affectionate scorn, whereas Zhelsu is clearly meant to be revolutionary, if ahead of its time. I really wish that I thought Addison were commenting on Ibbotson here, because I always love finding out that people have read Ibbotson. Instead, I suspect they are both referencing a similar piece, if not the same one. The best I can come up with is Wozzeck? That's about a soldier, not a factory worker, but it seems to be the right era and cultural place to be the right opera.
Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope
A fantasy romance, the start of a series of them! Truly, my genre of the year. This one had some cool worldbuilding, both an excellent magic system (even if I wish Earthsong meant literal music magic, for which I am always trash) and, for once, a world where the technology is at a slightly different era than usual (the small town where the story starts has a phone in the post office! What a great detail!). Plus the start-of-chapter bits of folktale worldbuilding were interesting, if not the most integrated with the story (the quotes had to do with the themes, but the folktale characters weren't referenced outside of the folktales much that I noticed). There's nothing wrong with it, when I think over it. Nonetheless, it took me six days to get through, because I just kept putting it down. Sometimes mid-paragraph, a few times mid-sentence, I'd just wander away from it. I've got no clue if it's that the book could have used some more tightening up or if it's that I was having A Time of things, but either way it was frustrating.
Why Didn't They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie
I'd seen the Marple show's version of this, so I already knew the murderer, except there were still a lot of twists I didn't see coming, because the show must have smashed this one up with a different mystery when they added Marple herself into it! (This is a mystery not solved by Marple or Poirot, which was fun.) Not much to say about this, I enjoy Christie's mysteries even if I can't really read much Poirot for Hastings reasons, and this was a perfectly enjoyable one. Apparently there's been a recent show of it, I'll have to go looking.
Aphrodite and the Duke by J.J. McAvoy
Tragically, not very good. Multiple first person POVs, which I tend to be a hard sell on, a set of parents for the heroine I was supposed to like more than I did, some interesting things that didn't pay off in favor of going for a family drama plotline in the second half that puts Mary Balogh's wild moments to shame, and the unfortunately common trope of "the heroine expresses reasonable doubts about getting into a relationship with anyone in general and/or the hero in particular (both, here!) and gets told she doesn't know her own mind and it's obvious she wants to get married/loves this one dude and the people telling her that turn out to be right." There are some glimmers here, but I was disappointed. Also, this is value neutral, but whoa, the extent to which this was very clearly written right after s1 of Bridgerton came out, right down to Queen Charlotte playing a much larger role than she does in other Regency romances.
Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater
Good Omens by way of The Good Place, with much smaller stakes and some romance dashed on top. This one was a lot of fun! I like Atwater a lot, her Regency Faerie series was also very good and I'm looking forward to her future work. I wish I had more to say about this one, I just very simply enjoyed it! It dealt with grief and depression and hard family relationships, but it was also genuinely both fun and funny. The romance part of it was so low-key that it was hardly one, to the point where I don't know if it was needed at all, but it didn't detract from the book either, so I imagine Atwater wrote exactly what she wanted to, and it worked out to a lovely read.
A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson
I can never just reread one! This is one I reread a bit less, because it's a little less about that iddy romance that Ibbotson is so good at in her other ones. This one's a lot sadder, more wistful, taking place as it does in Austria in 1938 or thereabout. The love interest is smuggling a few people out of Germany, it takes place at a school where a lot of misfits have collected themselves together that is about to run out of money and scatter everyone all over the place, it's just so much about places and times and people you can't go back to. It's bittersweet, and I have to be in the right mood for it, but as the title implies, it's a good read for summer, and particularly the end of it, so it seemed like the right moment.
Not a bad group, but it's still been a few posts since I really had a book properly carry me away! I have a few upcoming that I have high hopes for, though, so maybe I wil be able to triumphantly say otherwise next time. I will be pausing my Ibbotson reread because I want to reread the first two Locked Tomb books before Nona the Ninth comes out mid-September, so there likely won't be any more of that next time, but I can yell about necromancy and POV instead!