A belated happy Independence Day to our American readers, and a great collection of summer reads!
Kat: Now that my freshmen are getting the hang of things, I was able to consume a few books this week: Bewitched and Betrothed is the newest book in Juliet Blackwell’s WITCHCRAFT MYSTERIES. These are so good in audio format. In The Shadow of Spindrift House was a creepy little Lovecraftian work by Mira Grant. Also Lovecraftian was The Labyrinth Index, the latest in Charles Stross’s LAUNDRY FILES novels. And the best thing I read this week was Three Laws Lethal by David Walton. I’ll have reviews of all of these soon.
Kelly: Kat broke out the Cattle Prod of Review Writing, so I’m currently rereading the OCTOBER DAYE series by Seanan McGuire. Right now I’m reading A Red-Rose Chain. I’m also in the middle of a slow, lazy reread of George R.R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series, and unfortunately I’ve hit that point in A Dance with Dragons where Dany and Tyrion’s chapters are an endless parade of misery. More misery even than is usual for this series, haha. Plus it’s very hot here, which makes the descriptions of heat way too evocative, and makes me want to run back to the Jon chapters where it’s snowing. Finally, I’m reading The Festival of Lughnasa by Maire MacNeill, which is not fantasy, but is folklore, and a truly exhaustive look at a traditional Celtic holiday that is not that well known.
Marion: I have a book coming out August 1, so tasks connected with that kept me from doing much reading this week. (Someday I will tell you all some funny stories about cover design!) I did finish an ARC of one of the most beautiful reads of 2019: Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I predict that Alix’s gentle, book-loving portal fantasy will show up on a lot of Year’s Best lists. And I started an older Book in the Kage Baker COMPANY series, The Machine’s Child.
Tadiana: In the past couple of weeks I’ve read most of Blake Crouch‘s WAYWARD PINES trilogy, which was fast-paced and highly suspenseful; a collection of literary short stories by Lucia Berlin, Evening in Paradise; and a boatload of Tor short stories (Michael Swanwick has started publishing his Mongolian Wizard stories again). And I enjoyed a family reunion in Flagstaff, Arizona, which cut down on my reading time but was a lot of fun.
Terry: I moved house this past week, which means I didn’t get a whole lot of reading done. What I’ve managed to squeeze in has been choice, though. I finished S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass and plunged directly into The Kingdom of Copper. They’re both good books, but I don’t recommend reading them one right after the other, as I have; it’s a bit too much of a good thing. I’ve also started Seanan McGuire’s latest OCTOBER DAYE urban fantasy, The Unkindest Tide, and I’m loving it. I’m bound to stay up too late the next few nights in order to finish it. I’m also reading Lucifer Volume I: The Infernal Comedy, part of the rebooting of Neil Gaiman’s THE DREAMING universe, but not enjoying it much; I liked The Dreaming Volume I: Pathways and Emanations better, though neither truly captures anything like the magic of Gaiman’s own work in comics. Finally, I’ve started Th1rt3en by Steve Cavanagh, a serial killer thriller that seems like it turns its own pages, it’s so propulsive.
Tim: This week, I began reading Lois McMaster Bujold‘s The Curse of Chalion, recommended to me by a friend. So far, it’s very solid, and I keep wondering how I’ve never gotten to reading this one before. On the other side of the spectrum, I’ve begun listening to Robert Jordan‘s THE WHEEL OF TIME on audiobook. That wasn’t originally my intention, but I just love Michael Kramer and Kate Reading as readers, and a nostalgic look back at The Eye of the World has gradually just sort of morphed into a reread (relisten?). I’m having fun, though hopefully this doesn’t mean I’m going to find myself going through all fourteen books again…
Marion, I’m jealous that you got an ARC of The Ten Thousand Doors of January! I’ve been trying in a few different ways but haven’t been able to score one yet.
Tadiana, if you read eARCs, you can find The Ten Thousand Doors of January on NetGalley.
Tim, I’ve never read those Bujolds, either, and I’ve always meant to. They made the cut for the move, I think, though I may have reasoned that I could always get them from the library (we set free about one-third of our library, which was painful). We’re not unpacked enough yet to tell. Thanks for the mention, which means I’ll probably get to them sooner rather than later.
I actually asked for it on NetGalley a couple of months ago but the publisher was just sitting on the request. But this afternoon I finally got approved! (The fact that I emailed Alix Harrow last week might have had something to do with finally getting approved. :D )
To make you even more jealous, I will tell you that the presentation was also gorgeous.