Book round-up: May 2023

[sixthlight]

NB: Thought I posted this in June! Apparently did not!
Basically everything this month was a real cracker or not for me; luckily they fell more on the side of real crackers. Less time for reading though as the long breastfeeding sessions got shorter and the baby has got more awake. Not that I’m missing being on the couch or in bed 24/7, mind you! 

Fiction

The Destroyer of Worlds (Matt Ruff)

Follow-up to Lovecraft Country, the TV show of which I did not see because I can’t do visual horror but sometimes I can manage written. Still very solid on the main thesis (viz., white supremacy is scarier than monsters from beyond) and also just really fun at many points. 

The Faithless (C L Clark)
Sequel to The Unbroken, continuing the very difficult story of how to escape the consequences of colonisation when you’re complicit in through responsible for it. Uh…hard to discuss without a lot of spoilers for the first book, but you’ll like it if you liked that I think? Also, the cover, wow. *fans self*

Lord of the White Hell (Ginn Hale)

MLM secondary world fantasy romance and, uh, not one of the crackers for me; I found it tediously predictable and not very well written and noped out not too far in. May have largely been that the romance tropes in play were not my faves but…yeah. 

Untethered Sky (Fonda Lee)

In fantasy ancient Persia, a young woman aspires to become a rukh trainer, hunting alongside her enormous bird for monsters that prey on people. A compelling little novella which leaves space for a wider world outside its tight focus, but feels entirely complete in itself. 

The Mimicking of Known Successes (Malka Older)

Gaslamp scifi detective story set on Jupiter (it makes sense in context) as humanity contemplates a return to a ransacked Earth. A little clockwork for me to be deeply in love with it, but very neatly written. 

Goliath Tochi Onyebuchi)

In the too-near future, the rich have escaped to space stations and everybody else is making their lives on the too-hot Earth as best they can; most of the main characters are Black people living in Connecticut. I was reasonably engaged by the setting in a part of the US I know very well and which I witnessed the extreme modern-day class and racial divides in personally, but…nothing was happening and I gave up eventually. Just not quite enough plot for my reading tastes; this is why I don’t read literary fiction by and large. 

Dead Country (Max Gladstone)

Gladstone is coming back to the world of the Craft with a new series that feels like it will be as timely as the first. This one is basically a Western as Tara Abernathy returns to her home town to bury her father and confront the townsfolk who drove her out, which is not my genre of choice but Gladstone makes it interesting anyway. Very curious to see where this series goes. 

Terciel and Elinor (Garth Nix)

In Sabriel, nearly thirty years ago, the eponymous main character’s nameless mother appears only long enough to give birth and die, like so many fantasy characters’ mothers before her. This is the author coming back to say: hang on, who was she, before that? And the answer is: a very engaging person named Elinor. More of this sort of thing, thanks, although better if we don’t kill off the mums to start with (tbf, Sabriel herself lives to be a very involved mum in the rest of this series.) 

Non-fiction

The Body Keeps The Score (Bessel van der Kolk)
A seminal text about trauma and how it resonates through people’s lives, and how (as best the author knows) it can be treated. I thought it was about 50% too long for what it actually had to say, mostly because he clearly had a bunch of case studies he couldn’t bear to not include, but I think really unmissable if you want or need to think about this. 

 

Comments

[hebethen]

I really liked Tara's apprentice and how very much her outlook reflected her experiences (and lack of experience in another sense). Didn't realize it was to be counted a separate series in the 'verse!

[labellementeuse]

MLM secondary world fantasy romance and, uh, not one of the crackers for me; I found it tediously predictable and not very well written and noped out not too far in. May have largely been that the romance tropes in play were not my faves but…yeah.

Yeah I don't rate this series overall nearly as highly as E does, but I enjoy the middle duology quite a bit. Much less predictable and the writing is better although still not incredible. (Better romance tropes too.)

[sixthlight]

Oh that's good to know. I think the only way to get hold of it is to pay for it though (I read a LOT of library books these days) which makes me a bit leery since I really did not enjoy this one very much. Maybe when I'm in more of a romance novel mood.