lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2026-01-21 06:51 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2026-01-21 06:51 pm
2026 Books, Post 1
First post of the year! It's a better start than some I've had lately, so I will take it.
Moon Soul by Nathaniel Luscombe
This one's a fairly cozy sci fi novella that has enough emotional depth to it that it didn't feel twee as cozy trends currently can. It's a quiet story about a woman finding a new path in life when the one she's been doing hurts her too much to continue. Some solarpunk vibes. Not a ton to say about it, but it was a nice quiet first read of the year!
The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love by India Holton
I kept wanting to love this one, but I couldn't quite do it, unfortunately. It's a madcap fantasy romance adventure, and if you're in the mood for something madcap it's not a bad idea, but it thinks it's funnier than it is, tragically. Also, never have a met a book that needs chapter titles formatted in the "in which x happens" way more, or at the very least the To Say Nothing of the Dog thing where it's a chapter number and then little pithy scene summaries beneath. There are quotes from an in-universe book instead, which are just excuses for bird puns, and I don't know why I fixated on this, but I really did.
Myths of Greece and Rome by H.A. Guerber
A used book given to me over Christmas, and 1890s compendium of, well, what it says on the tin. It's really interesting reading what sticks out to different authors, what they emphasize, what they do and don't conflate! This book insists that everybody surely knows the Roman names of the gods better, which is not at all true in the modern US, so that left me wondering why the shift and when it happened (I would blame Bulfinch's, but that predates this book by a solid 30 years or more, so presumably it had more time to get traction). Also, lots of focus on how the myths had survived in 19th century poetry and painting, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't! And a section at the end explaining what the myths were supposed to represent, positing that many of them were metaphors for day and night, or seasons changing, well past the point of sense as far as I'm concerned. Sure, some myths are explanations of natural phenomena, but some myths are people sharing stories because they're cool or resonant with the people aspect rather than the nature aspect.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
I'd read and liked some nonfic by Newitz before and thought I'd give this novella a try. It's another one that could be the twee kind of cozy if it had gone in the wrong direction, but it was too committed to exploring its dystopia! Definitely felt like it was primarily drafted before the genAI boom, I feel like that's something that's going to become immediately identifiable in sci fi over the next few years, but overall I did like this one quite a lot, even if there were a few things that might have tightened it up a bit more.
Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb
This started mediocre and got bad, and the only reason I finished it was because it filled in a square on my town book bingo that I wasn't excited about and at least had the grace to be epistolary so I had that to hold on to. Anyway, it was every stereotype of a WWI novel to the point that it was almost comical. Wow, plucky young lady's brother and his best friend enlist as offers and she writes to them both and bonds with the best friend! Her brother falls in love with a French girl and dies! Somehow the authors expect us to believe it's a shocking plot twist when it turns out the French girl had a baby! It has the ethical incoherence of a WWI book that wants to lionize the Brave Young Boys while also saying War Is Hell while ALSO having the main woman disparage conscientious objectors but ALSO also some people go too far disparaging them. And the frame narrative was doing some annoying Nicholas Sparks shit. Also, look. I love an epistolary book, I truly do, you know I'm always looking out for actually epistolaries that aren't diaries. But it's really hard to do the romantic climax of a love story epistolary-style, and Gaynor & Webb simply did NOT succeed. I very much hope this is the worst book I read this year.
This Princess Kills Monsters by Ry Herman
There are the bones of something really good in this one, but it doesn't manage to live up to them for me. It's a retelling of a fairy tale I adore that's often not adapted, "The Twelve Huntsmen," but has more tongue-in-cheek crossover references than a Marvel movie only with fairy tales instead of superheroes. And I like having fun and being tongue in cheek with fairy tales, but this crosses a bit over the line of "okay so why are you adapting this tale if you think it's stupid" rather than "oh, you're engaging with the tale because you want to poke and prod at the weird bits." I don't think it would be over that line for everyone! But given it's the first novel-length retelling of this tale I've ever run across, I think I wanted more of a serious take so other writers could be tongue-in-cheek later. Or maybe I'm just too much in a phase where I need sincerity and earnestness for this to work for me.
The Wolf at Bay, Thrown to the Wolves, Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, and Cry Wolf by Charlie Adhara
I read the first book in this series ... I think two years ago? On a rec from a friend. And I went "oh, I should read the rest of the series" and then, uh, didn't. And then I thought of it randomly the other day, took the second book out, and five days and four books later I've read all the books released to date. Whoops! These are really fun--more procedural than whodunnit, but the real focus is some really well-done relationship development across the books. From book one, where our main character is an asshole and the pair of them rip into each other, we end up getting a really lovely relationship progression where they help each other grow and learn to be what each other needs. With werewolf crime and politics happening in the background! In the last two books there's a bit of Chosen One shit going on, but it felt at least somewhat earned so I didn't get too irked with it. There's an Adhara about one of the side characters from a few of the books that I'll probably read, and I'll look forward to any future books in the series.
That's all for this time! Hopefully the next batch will be similarly fast.
Moon Soul by Nathaniel Luscombe
This one's a fairly cozy sci fi novella that has enough emotional depth to it that it didn't feel twee as cozy trends currently can. It's a quiet story about a woman finding a new path in life when the one she's been doing hurts her too much to continue. Some solarpunk vibes. Not a ton to say about it, but it was a nice quiet first read of the year!
The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love by India Holton
I kept wanting to love this one, but I couldn't quite do it, unfortunately. It's a madcap fantasy romance adventure, and if you're in the mood for something madcap it's not a bad idea, but it thinks it's funnier than it is, tragically. Also, never have a met a book that needs chapter titles formatted in the "in which x happens" way more, or at the very least the To Say Nothing of the Dog thing where it's a chapter number and then little pithy scene summaries beneath. There are quotes from an in-universe book instead, which are just excuses for bird puns, and I don't know why I fixated on this, but I really did.
Myths of Greece and Rome by H.A. Guerber
A used book given to me over Christmas, and 1890s compendium of, well, what it says on the tin. It's really interesting reading what sticks out to different authors, what they emphasize, what they do and don't conflate! This book insists that everybody surely knows the Roman names of the gods better, which is not at all true in the modern US, so that left me wondering why the shift and when it happened (I would blame Bulfinch's, but that predates this book by a solid 30 years or more, so presumably it had more time to get traction). Also, lots of focus on how the myths had survived in 19th century poetry and painting, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't! And a section at the end explaining what the myths were supposed to represent, positing that many of them were metaphors for day and night, or seasons changing, well past the point of sense as far as I'm concerned. Sure, some myths are explanations of natural phenomena, but some myths are people sharing stories because they're cool or resonant with the people aspect rather than the nature aspect.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
I'd read and liked some nonfic by Newitz before and thought I'd give this novella a try. It's another one that could be the twee kind of cozy if it had gone in the wrong direction, but it was too committed to exploring its dystopia! Definitely felt like it was primarily drafted before the genAI boom, I feel like that's something that's going to become immediately identifiable in sci fi over the next few years, but overall I did like this one quite a lot, even if there were a few things that might have tightened it up a bit more.
Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb
This started mediocre and got bad, and the only reason I finished it was because it filled in a square on my town book bingo that I wasn't excited about and at least had the grace to be epistolary so I had that to hold on to. Anyway, it was every stereotype of a WWI novel to the point that it was almost comical. Wow, plucky young lady's brother and his best friend enlist as offers and she writes to them both and bonds with the best friend! Her brother falls in love with a French girl and dies! Somehow the authors expect us to believe it's a shocking plot twist when it turns out the French girl had a baby! It has the ethical incoherence of a WWI book that wants to lionize the Brave Young Boys while also saying War Is Hell while ALSO having the main woman disparage conscientious objectors but ALSO also some people go too far disparaging them. And the frame narrative was doing some annoying Nicholas Sparks shit. Also, look. I love an epistolary book, I truly do, you know I'm always looking out for actually epistolaries that aren't diaries. But it's really hard to do the romantic climax of a love story epistolary-style, and Gaynor & Webb simply did NOT succeed. I very much hope this is the worst book I read this year.
This Princess Kills Monsters by Ry Herman
There are the bones of something really good in this one, but it doesn't manage to live up to them for me. It's a retelling of a fairy tale I adore that's often not adapted, "The Twelve Huntsmen," but has more tongue-in-cheek crossover references than a Marvel movie only with fairy tales instead of superheroes. And I like having fun and being tongue in cheek with fairy tales, but this crosses a bit over the line of "okay so why are you adapting this tale if you think it's stupid" rather than "oh, you're engaging with the tale because you want to poke and prod at the weird bits." I don't think it would be over that line for everyone! But given it's the first novel-length retelling of this tale I've ever run across, I think I wanted more of a serious take so other writers could be tongue-in-cheek later. Or maybe I'm just too much in a phase where I need sincerity and earnestness for this to work for me.
The Wolf at Bay, Thrown to the Wolves, Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, and Cry Wolf by Charlie Adhara
I read the first book in this series ... I think two years ago? On a rec from a friend. And I went "oh, I should read the rest of the series" and then, uh, didn't. And then I thought of it randomly the other day, took the second book out, and five days and four books later I've read all the books released to date. Whoops! These are really fun--more procedural than whodunnit, but the real focus is some really well-done relationship development across the books. From book one, where our main character is an asshole and the pair of them rip into each other, we end up getting a really lovely relationship progression where they help each other grow and learn to be what each other needs. With werewolf crime and politics happening in the background! In the last two books there's a bit of Chosen One shit going on, but it felt at least somewhat earned so I didn't get too irked with it. There's an Adhara about one of the side characters from a few of the books that I'll probably read, and I'll look forward to any future books in the series.
That's all for this time! Hopefully the next batch will be similarly fast.
no subject
Aww, how nice to hit on a book series at the right time, and then zip through so many in a satisfying way! That sounds like a delightful reading experience. :D
no subject