Book round-up: March 2022

[sixthlight]

This month’s reading was a mix of stuff I’d been looking forward to for a while and stuff I hadn’t known I wanted to read. Literally everything else about March 2022 can get in the sea so I’m glad that books were (mostly) reliable.

Fiction

The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Shannon)

One of the big sapphic epic fantasy doorstoppers of 2021, which I know a lot of people loved. I thought it was…fine…but 1) it’s very heavy on the Arthuriana inspiration (I don’t care) and 2) it really should have been a duology or trilogy. Stuck the ending on its many plotlines in a very satisfying way, though.

Jade Legacy (Fonda Lee)

The conclusion to a generational secondary-world martial arts fantasy/Godfather-esque saga, and a very good one. I laughed, I cried, I want to go back and re-read the whole thing from the start. Not everybody gets a happy ending but this isn’t a world where everybody was going to.

Escape from Yokai Land (Charles Stross)

As a novella, quite steeply priced - unless you like this series a lot I’d wait until it comes down. This is a glimpse back in the Laundry to what Bob was doing that kept him offstage for The Nightmare Stacks. He’s definitely worn out his welcome as a protagonist and I’m not sorry the world is moving on, but this is still a reasonably fun romp, if ‘fun’ is the right word when the Eater of Souls is concerned….

The Defiant Heir and The Unbound Empire (Melissa Caruso)

The sequels to The Tethered Mage, which I read last month. The political fantasy raises the stakes magic-wise over these two books, though the politics is never lost. I really enjoy Amalia’s balancing act between her various duties and relationships. However, her potential love interest continues to be deeply annoying - which gets worse when she meets someone who is more interesting in every regard. Recommend depending on your tolerance for love triangles, even if her reasons for indecision are political as much as personal.

The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley (Mercedes Lackey)

Historical fantasy starring, yes, Annie Oakley the sharpshooter. This is quite a good short story buried in a novella/short novel that didn’t need to be one, and padded out with Lackey’s usual (for this series) extensive descriptions of food, clothing, and architecture. I don’t regret reading the novella exactly but I would have loved to read the short story.

The Lord of Stariel (A J Lancaster)

Regency-adjacent fantasy (het) romance; I read it largely because the author is local. Absolutely fine but I found the worldbuilding about 300x more interesting than the romance, and the pacing needs work. Not interesting enough for me to follow up with the sequels.

Servant Mage (Kate Elliott)

Secondary-world revolutionary fantasy novella, following a young woman who has been made an indentured servant by the government which overthrew a magical monarchy, and is offered an out - by a group seeking to restore the throne. Takes a very sceptical eye to the effects of this sort of story on ordinary people, as does its protagonist. Left me wanting more, but didn’t fail to finish its main arc.

Non-fiction

Too Much Money (Max Rashbrooke)

Essentially boiling Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century) down and applying it to New Zealand specifically. Grim reading if you’re under fifty, or don’t already own a house, or have a very large mortgage, or any combination of the above. God, capitalism sucks.

The Bright Ages (Matthew Gabriele and David M Perry)

This book is nominally an attempt to push back against the Game of Thrones-ification of medieval European history in the popular understanding, as well as its attempted use by white supremacists. It certainly does that, after a fashion. However, it is highly selective in its sources and points of focus (rich people and royalty, mostly in Western Europe - parts of North Africa get a look-in, but Eastern Europe outside Constantinople sure as hell doesn’t). In attempting to cover everything it doesn’t cover anything very well. The Children of Ash and Elm, from last year, is a much better overview even though it’s much more tightly focused on Vikings and Scandinavia.

Comments

[sixthlight]

I keep up reasonably well because the library gets them all and I search the library's new SFF acquisitions every couple of months. But I don't think any individual novel of hers has been unmissable lately, though I enjoy them enough to get them out.