Kat: You haven’t heard from me in a while because this past academic year was so busy. I had no time for pleasure reading. It’s over now, so I’m back at it. Recently I’ve read The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Jupiter Knife by D.J. Butler, Wool by Hugh Howey, and Heaven’s Queen by Rachel Bach. Expect a review of the Bach and Butler books very soon.
Marion: I finally read Nghi Vo’s novella The Empress of Salt and Fortune. I enjoyed it a great deal. I also finished another excellent “folk horror” novel by T. Kingfisher, A House with Good Bones. I can’t figure out how she dies it — keeps the great, upbeat, shivery but ultimately optimistic creepy folksy humor coming with one book in the pipeline after another. “House” features one of my favorite variety of bird, the useful and maligned vulture; plus a rose garden that is just… well, you’ll have to read it.
Sandy: Moi? I recently read a pretty terrific supernatural thriller written by Herbert “The Gangs of New York” Asbury and entitled The Devil of Pei-Ling, which was originally released in 1927.And right now I am tearing through an African adventure/lost-race novel by Sean M’Guire called Beast Or Man?, which first came out in 1930 and which I am absolutely loving. I look forward to sharing some thoughts on both of these fine novels with you all very shortly….
Tim: This week, I read about half of Robin McKinley‘s Spindle’s End. It’s a fun Sleeping Beauty retelling with some excellent writing, though the pacing is rather leisurely so far.
Just finished Barbara Hambly’s fantasy, Iron Princess, which I didn’t enjoy as much as some of her other books (too many elements packed into a short number of pages). Before that, Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales, depressing stories of unhappy spouses and mismatched lovers who come to bad ends (I loved those depressing Hardy and Dostoevsky books as a teen). Before that, Conclave by Robert Harris, a very marginally genre-adjacent novel about the election of the next Roman Catholic pope, mostly entertaining but a bit far-fetched. And Fahrenheit 451, which I somehow had missed in my other Ray Bradbury reads over the years; very good, but with a sensibility that may seem quaint to new readers now.
Paul, I recently purchased a bunch of audiobooks by Barbara Hambly. I have never read anything by her before.
I liked Sisters of the Raven and Circle of the Moon (a duology) quite a bit. I also read the first of the Darwath books, from the big heyday of portal fantasies (the latter 1970s and early 1980s), and liked that, but not enough to continue with the series. And I was very fond of the Benjamin January mystery novels, especially the first five or six. Still planning to at some point try the Sun Wolf and Starhawk series. Iron Princess felt like it may have been scoped out as a trilogy or another duology but then compressed down to a single work, with the result that the characters and thematic concerns that Hambly introduced never developed any depth.
Thanks for this, Paul! I hope I can get to these soon.
I loved Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey. A solid 4.5 star book for me!