lightreads

City of Others

3/5. Urban fantasy about a middle manager in a government agency in Singapore intended to keep the supernatural elements of society quiet.

Okay. Kind of Rivers of London but with a queer protagonist and far less voicey. Though it turns out the voiciness goes a long way to selling all the infodumping you need to do in a fantasy like this.

A good time, with a particularly interesting set of magical ideas. But I suspect someone made him cut, like, 25% of his manuscript or something, because there’s a lot of jerky pacing and weird gaps where I’m like ‘wait, we just met this person and now she’s a core part of the team and we all care about her? Did I miss something?’ Also, it’s all trying just that bit too hard to tie into a neat thematic bow (grief and letting go). Very debut, is what I mean. Naturally it is going to be a series; I might keep going, I might not.

Stone and Sky

4/5. New Rivers of London book. Rated for nostalgic fondness as much as for the book itself. This one takes Peter – and most of the main cast, including the kids – to a community on the North Sea to either vacation or solve a weird magical mystery, depending on whom you ask.

He is now giving Abigail POV chapters, which I will allow because I like Abigail, and also because this is a vast improvement over the American FBI agent (who he is still trying to make a thing, please stop). Anyway, it’s a pleasant mystery written to formula, complete with local cop that Peter befriends. There’s a lot of formula here, actually – Abigail builds a relationship that has a frankly astonishing amount of Peter/Bev DNA. Anyway, it’s a good time, and it is gesturing towards opening up another arc, which I am in favor of. I think he is intending to draw in some of the international elements he keeps so pointedly raising, but in what direction, I’m not sure yet.

House of Earth and Blood
House of Sky and Breath
House of Flame and Shadow

3/5. Trilogy of urban romantic fantasy doorstops about a half-human who ends up with a fallen angel bodyguard while she tries to solve the murders of her friends, also lots of overthrowing evil autocrats stuff.

IDK, these are stupid long, have some bullet point thoughts.

• Thing is, parts of the first book were doing what people say she does well: slow trauma integration, relationship building, coalescing a strong group of complicated friends. All of that drew me in. Then the second and third books got all excited about a macro plot, I got less and less interested, and by mid third book it was a real slog.
• I will never get over how these books exclusively, and I do mean exclusively, use “male” and “female.” You have to see it to believe it but trust me, it is incredibly off-putting.
• An incomplete list of major plot reveals I figured out sometimes 500 pages in advance: the murderer in book one, the identity of the mysterious unnamed doctor, the identity of the super-secret spy in book two, I could go on. It’s a bit hard to really surprise me, but come on, my hit rate should be a bit lower.
• At one point I was like oh no, do I have to read ACOTAR now and the answer is yes, these books want me to, but no, after this experience, I decline.
• It is not great that, in my boredom during the third book, I started daydreaming about how much better the whole series would be as a femslash AU where Danika lives and the two of them actually tell each other important shit and have all the plotty adventures. Totally different books. Books she would never write. But probably more to my taste.
• All these sadsack men (excuse me, males) really weigh down these books. If I cared less about any of their endless crap, my head might fall off.
• Someone please take science fiction away from her. Do not touch, SJM. You are bad at it, and not in a fun way. Just in a baffling way where I’m like are these literal different planets or different dimensions? Who even fucking knows. Not her. Also, that is not how black holes do anything, please stop, I’m begging you.
• I did read all of this though? I’m not entirely sure why. I didn’t even particularly like the main character by the end. And yet I did it. It’s true, SJM has something going for her. It’s a messy, under-edited, kind of stupid thing, but she’s got it, I guess.

Content notes: Violence, death, torture, references to rape, drug use, fantasy racism

Diamond Fire, Sapphire Flames, Emerald Blaze, Ruby Fever

3/5? 4/5? Urban fantasy romance trilogy plus novella about the second daughter in a magical family (the first daughter got her own trilogy). I’d say read that one first but it honestly doesn’t matter as these stories are remarkably the same – scrappy young woman carrying the responsibility for her scrappy, delightful family ends up in magical trouble and also makes the hottest richest man ever get obsessed with her, also family history stuff.

It's funny that these are published by a romance imprint considering the romance is last on the list of things I care about here. The family feels are first with a bullet (really terrific grade A stuff, if you’re into that), and the interesting magical society, and the power conflicts. The he’s-so-hot-because-he’s-violent romance, which is their only play as authors, apparently, does not make the cut for me.

That said, I read these in a weekend, and enjoyed them a lot. Just not, you know, for what I was supposed to.

Tales from the Folly

3/5. All the Waterstones short stories plus a few extras. And published too soon – this is more of a chapbook by length, and really needed an anchor novella. However, the audio production is a well-done multi-voice effort with intros from the author (who never sounds like I expect him to). I am also bemused that he can't/won't use the word ficlet so has to invent a whole new word for what are, 100% no question, ficlets.

On the whole, a nice way to expand the universe with more non-Peter content, but like I said, published too soon, too lightweight.

American Demon

3/5. A new entry in this urban fantasy series that I thought had finished years ago. Presumably she needs an infusion of cash or something. /snark. Unobjectionable first person magic nonsense that knows the relationships are more important than the plots. That's why this series works – it's good at putting together nontraditional families of many sorts, then shaking them up at the right time. Case in point, we have the heroine, and her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's daughter, and her boyfriend's platonic long-time bodyguard, and the bodyguard's daughter being raised as a sister with the boyfriend's daughter, with the ex-fiancée and bio mom floating around the edges as a sort of fourth parent.

Still features one of the more lolarious urban fantasy sex creations: witches with extra vaginal muscles that clamp down after orgasm.

Nice Dragons Finish Last and One Good Dragon Deserves Another

3/5. I was hoping this would be my pre-delivery/post-delivery reading* – something long and relatively undemanding – but I just . . . never liked it that much? Not enough to continue with the rest of the series. This is about the youngest dragon in an ancient clan of scheming, vicious dragons, and what it's like to be the one nice one who accidentally stumbles his way into power. It comes across as anti-Slytherin propaganda, basically. On behalf of my house, I would like to say that this dragon kid would have been eaten like twenty times over before these books even start, and I'm not sure it would be more than a small loss.

*Yes, eviction accomplished. Fifteen hours of labor, one failed epidural (yes, really, I should just stop being surprised when shit like this keeps happening to me), one seven pound eleven ounce Casterbrook. :D

Burn for Me, White Hot, and Wildfire

3/5. Still pregnant. Still chewing my way through romantic suspense, this time with an urban fantasy bent. This trilogy hits a lot of the same notes as their (this is an author husband/wife team) long series: hard-bitten private investigator woman gets tangled with extremely wealthy and powerful man who she first thinks is a psychopath then ends up marrying, family legacies, great powers, etc. This one gives good family, though. Hit the spot for a couple of days where I cleaned various things, attempted to walk this baby out, and had contractions.

The October Man

3/5. Rivers of London novella, except no London. There is a river, though. Set in Germany, starring the German equivalent to Peter, who has never met him and thus has hilarious notions of him. "Oh," he thinks, "Peter Grant would have thought to measure that. He'd take notes and have charts."

Me: Yes, yes he would. This is not always a virtue.

Fun, with some interesting tidbits about the war and exactly how it was that magic slid into obscurity after, though nothing I think we hadn't all filled in already. Mostly, I'm curious to see what this is setup for – a Peter field trip, presumably.

Oh, BTW, I should mention that the audio is not read by Holdbrook-Smith. Which apparently upset some people but makes perfect sense to me, as this is a different narrator and setting, and a different delivery is entirely appropriate.

Lies Sleeping

3/5. Peter Grant book.

So it turns out the Faceless Man's big plan was to ( spoiler ). And that is simultaneously really stupid and kind of interesting. Stupid as in sigh, really? And interesting as in it sets up a thematic conversation about kinds of fantasy and kinds of fantasy fans. The fact that Faceless wrote a joke in Tolkien elvish on a death trap is funny, but also, Peter could read it. They are fans of a lot of the same texts. Recall going through his home and the careful catalog Peter took of the books. And yet what they do with that fantasy fannishness is diametrically opposed, and it kind of works that they have switched positions from what you might expect: Faceless is the one doing something arguably naïve and hopeful, and Peter is the one being like bro, it really does not work that way.

I mean, also, it seems like a metaphor for recent developments in U.K. politics, but whatever.

So that was okay, and the thing Lesley does at the end of this book is exactly right, yes, that is how that would go down. But. This book moves a huge amount of pieces and ties off a lot of plotlines, and yet it felt kind of slack. All tension going out and very little being taken up. And I'm counting the 10% of this book we spend locked in a single room as slackening tension, here.

Also, unrelatedly ( other spoiler )

So it's a pivot book, and I am interested in finding out what it's pivoting to. But this was not my favorite entry in the series by a long shot.