Marion: I finished Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias, a pulpy, blood-soaked surrealist novel. I flinched a lot from the violence as the short book rotates through literary fiction, magic and horror, but I loved the language. Iglesias channels his political anger very well in what is, largely, a political novel. Next up, Sanditon by Jane Austen — her original 60-page fragment, not the adaptation.
Bill: This week I read Leigh Bardugo’s The Crooked Kingdom, Duncan Hamilton’s Servant of the Crown, and Armies of Ancient Greece by Gabriele Esposito. I’m also currently listening to Sightlines, a quite good collection of essays by Kathleen Jamie
Terry: I finished The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons, and am looking forward to the next in the series, The Name of All Things. I tore through The Gurkha and The Lord of Tuesday by Saad Hossain, which was promising; I understand Hossain has a debut novel coming out this year, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been reading my way through The Year’s Best Horror, Volume 11, edited by Ellen Datlow, and my nightmares are ever so much more colorful now. (And I can’t believe that thumbsucking now strikes me as being downright horrific!) I’m now enjoying False Values: A Rivers of London Novel by Ben Aaronovitch, and I’ve made a start on another Datlow Anthology, Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror.
UPDATE: In the edition I read, SANDITON was not 60 pages. It was 51 pages, with Sidney Parker, the probable love interest, appearing on page 49. Esther, Lord Edward, Lady Denham and Clara are well fleshed-out and Edward is clearly portrayed as a young gentleman who ruined his character by reading novels! I laughed out loud.