Book 67: Slippery Creatures by KJ Charles

A delightful start to a new KJ Charles trilogy! I enjoyed so many elements of this novel - the main character inheriting a bookshop after the Great War, Will's difficulties figuring out how he fit into life in England again, those issues becoming even more complicated when he's suddenly in the middle of a mystery of great importance, and then a man with more to his past (and present) than is initially obvious stepping into his life. Kim and Will have a dynamic that basically lets this author do what she does best: a forthright and damaged Englishman dealing with someone who cannot tell the truth about themselves for a variety of reasons, but who desperately wishes he could about this person in particular. 

There is a wonderful supporting cast to this story as well, and the central mystery is grounded in the era and complicated and all that, but truly this is the sort of book that promises a situation where one of them ends up in a tricky situation and the other comes to rescue him, while still not entirely telling him the truth about the matter, and it's all so good. I read this during a very difficult week, and it was a wonderful and desperately needed distraction. 

Grade: A

Book 66: Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

 A book club book! I knew nothing about this, other than the title, and it really knocked me back on my heels. It's a story about Ella, a young Black girl, whose brother Kev is born during the Rodney King riots. It follows them and their mother as they leave South Central for Harlem, and then Kev's incarceration in Rikers, and his release to a place called Watts. Ella has a Thing, where she can feel and sense the violence that's coming for people, and the story is somewhere between magical realism and sci-fi and dystopia, but really it's just classic speculative fiction. 

It made me think for obvious reasons of The Deep, and how narratives can pull apart trauma, and create a new narrative, and what that requires. It was also deeply affecting to read this book that was written in 2019 now, in a post-George Floyd world, because it was a pre- and current and post-Rodney King world before it was that, and it was an Emmet Till world before that one, and so on. But I wonder how ready I would have been to have read this book even a year ago, to say nothing of ten years ago, given where the narrative lands. This book will stay with me. 

Grade: A 

Book 65: A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian

 This book was...fine? It's a historical with a female publisher, her brother who keeps writing seditious papers, and her oldest friend who she's clearly interested in, and who's clearly interested in her, but they can't let themselves to be together, for...reasons? And then they send her brother away to America so he'll be safe, and the oldest friend finds out he's not a bastard but rather he's a secret Duke, and now they really can't be together? Except there's never a really compelling explanation for why any of the wrenches thrown into their relationship are actual problems, and so as a result the actual relationship itself has very little tension, and I don't know. Not my favorite. 

Grade: C

Book 64: The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu

This was a book I reserved from the library when I saw it on a newsletter of some kind, and it's the sort of YA book that I really wanted to like more than I did. The story centers on the Mozart children: Wolfgang, who everyone knows, and his older sister Maria Anna, who is know as Nannerl in the story, and their fictional world they told each other stories of, called The Kingdom of Back. In the novel (and in real life), Nannerl is also an accomplished musician, and there are indications that she was also a composer. The story of the book involves her going through quests in the portal world and then saving the real world and her brother by making the hard but right choices, and I don't dislike the story, but I found it so frustrating that even in a fictional, fantastical version of this girl child Mozart that I had known nothing about, the best she can be is a person who allowed her brother to become what he did. The metastory is clearly that girls can be anything, but the actual story reflects how untrue that often is in actual history, and that's what it feels like the primary lesson is for the reader, too. I had a hard time with it, and wanted it to be something other than it was, even when I enjoyed it. 

Grade: B

Book 63: Gilded Cage by KJ Charles

 What a delightful read! I had such a nice time reading this book, and it was exactly the sort of distraction I wanted from a het historical romance novel. I had also really enjoyed the first book in the Lilywhite Boys series, and this second book about a couple who had been forced apart by families and a pregnancy and understandable misimpressions and all that just really worked for me--I wanted to find out what had happened while also really enjoying the current era romance as well. The ending tied up a bit too easily in some ways for me, but I didn't really mind that, and overall I really enjoyed this book. 

Grade: A

Book 62: Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron

 A retelling of Cinderella where the fairy tale is all a lie and the kingdom has been suffering as a result for two hundred years. There's still an annual ball where young ladies are paraded out so they can be chosen, and it's all very bad, and there's one girl named Sophie who wants to escape (and bring her girlfriend with her), but she can't! At least not until she meets a girl named Constance who is also determined to bring the king down, along with the whole kingdom. 

I wanted to like this book more than I did; it's a fairy tale retelling with a queer protagonist about overthrowing patriarchal authoritarianism. But the telling itself never really grabbed me, and the shift from her relationship with Erin to her new relationship with Constance didn't really work for me. The overall world and final reveal was pretty interesting, so I was glad I finished it to find that out, but overall it's more of a miss for me. 

Grade: C 

Book 61: Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

 The final book of the Grisha trilogy! And I think my favorite of the three, in a lot of ways, both because so many of the threads that had been set up in the first two books did in fact pay off, and because the payoffs were both fitting and sometimes surprising! 

The book begins with Alina having lost her power after the events at the end of book two and imprisoned by the priest, and the ragtag group of resisters conspire to free her and harness her magic again. They have to go on another adventure to find the third and final amplifier, and we learn the truth behind them and the entire system and history of magic, and it all holds together quite well. The ending is satisfying and gives Alina and Mal the happy ending you want them to have without breaking the rules of the universe too much, and it's very effective, even if I never did feel as strongly about the two of them as I would have liked to. All in all, a very pleasant trilogy to read, and I'm looking forward to Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. 

Grade: B

Book 60: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

 The second Grisha book! Alina and Mal start the story on the run, but they get brought back into the narrative of the trilogy quickly enough, with the Darkling forcing Mal to find the second amplifier, a sea serpent. Helping them find it is a privateer with a big secret, who double-crosses the Darkling and allows Alina to acquire the second amplifier, which makes her even more powerful. 

They then join forces (sort of) with a priest who has been calling her a saint, and now she has a whole following, and the privateer is revealed to be something more significant than he is, and Alina has a mindmeld connection with the Darkling now, and a whole bunch of middle book of the trilogy stuff happens where everything becomes more complicated. Things are afoot! And it continues along as the first one did for me, where there's a lot of interesting stuff going on, but I wanted a slightly deeper connection to the characters, and to the love story (or stories). Still a really enjoyable read! But it never fully dug its claws into me. 

Grade: B

Book 59: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

 I finally manged to start this series! I have been meaning to for many years, and haven't read the Six of Crows books yet because I wanted to read these first, and now I have! 

This is the story of a girl named Alina, who lives in a fantasy Russia, and who is an orphan without magical powers...until she discovers she's wrong. Her best friend and secret crush Mal is a soldier, and she saves him while they're attempting to cross the Unsea, which is what it sounds like it is. It's in her saving him that her powers manifest. 

She gets sent to go develop her powers with the Darkling, who is supposedly the good guy, but you'll be shocked to discover that in fact he's the big bad! So she runs away and Mal, who's a great tracker, finds her and helps her, and then they go on a hunt to find the mythical creature whose antlers are an amplifier for her magic, only the Darkling gets there too and manages to bind her to him with the magic. But then it turns out she can resist him, and she and Mal escape at the end of the first book. 

This is a pretty classic YA fantasy setup: girl thinks she's normal but is actually super special, along with the boy she's been in love with since she was a kid and the new hot but bad villain that she's drawn to but also knows how wrong it is. I enjoyed it, but I would have liked more from Mal; we know that she loves him, and he eventually falls for her too, but I didn't find the romance particularly convincing or engaging, which was a shame. But on the whole I enjoyed it! 

Grade: B

Book 58: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

I read this novella for my book club, and while the actual plot of the story is fairly straightforward in many ways--woman is married to an emperor when her country loses a war, is exiled after bearing him a child and heir, spends years plotting and eventually overthrows the emperor and becomes empress herself--the book itself is actually much more about narrative, and history, and the process of recording it and archiving items and facts after major events.

The story of the titular empress is being told by Rabbit, one of the empress's handmaidens who was with her from the beginning and through her exile, to Chih, a cleric, and Chih's bird, Almost Brilliant, who is part of a race of birds who have been remembering stories of the royal family for century. So the cleric reviews items that Rabbit has, and then Rabbit chooses how to tell the parts of the story to Chih and Almost Brilliant she wishes to, before the empress's daughter is crowned the new ruler of the land. It is a book that is as concerned with form as it is with plot, and while it never had the moment of true a-ha that I was waiting for, I really enjoyed reading and thinking about it.

Grade: B