Book 33: Briarley by Aster Glenn Gray

This is a lovely queer Beauty and the Beast retelling, in which the standard beauty's father ends up in the cursed house with the beast instead. It's set during the early days of WWII on the south coast of England, and the beast in this instance is actually a dragon. There's not much more to say about the plot than that; if you know the original fairytale, the queer version of it is fairly straightforward, but the writing is brisk and draws you in, and the ending satisfies. A good read for a cold evening under a blanket. 

Grade: B

Book 32: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

Man, I knew going into this book that it was going to go in directions I wasn't expecting, and boy did it. This is the final book in the Scholomance trilogy, and it also picks up immediately after the end of The Last Graduate. El has made it out of the Scholomance, and now she has to attempt to deal with the aftermath of the escape and whatever is happening outside of the Scholomance, and neither of those processes go at all how I was expecting. This trilogy engages with and subverts so many of the magical universe tropes and archetypes, and it does so knowing exactly where that should lead. There are three separate reveals in this book that made me gasp and stare off into the middle distance, and the commitment to the worldbuilding and no easy answers is really incredible and frankly rare. I loved how complicated it all is, and how satisfying I found the ending both in spite of and because of that. 

Grade: A 

Book 31: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Note: I know the author of this book socially. 

For some reason, after I read the first book I took months and months to pick up the second one, I think in part because I knew that once I read the second one I would then immediately need to finish the trilogy, and I wanted to save it or something? I definitely end up putting off doing some things because otherwise I won't 'savor it' or something, and it's not my favorite habit! What is my favorite, however, is this book! 

The Last Graduate takes place immediately after A Deadly Education ends, so now El and her friends are in their final year in the Scholomance and are staring down the barrel of the final gauntlet. Plus the school is now attempting to kill El and a flock of freshman she's unexpectedly in charge of in all new ways, and something weird is going on with Orion!!! This book is a great example of a narrative arc following the internal logic of worldbuilding and then attempting to actually address it, with fantastic tension and development, and it's also a story that as soon as things start to feel like they're going well, you get nervous because that means a rug is about to get pulled, and boy does it. A perfect middle novel of a trilogy. 

Grade: A

Book 30: The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

As soon as I heard that there was another book written for adults by the author of The Binding, one of my favorite books that I read in 2020, I knew I had to read it. I think I went into it expecting it to feel more similar to that book than it actually is, but what definitely is similar is the way it drops you into a world that feels familiar but has distinct differences from our world and history. It is set primarily at a remote academy where young men are taught the art (and science) of the grand jeu, while the larger society around them begins to crumble. The story is told from three alternating points of view, as well as a journal belonging to Leo Martin describing his experience at the academy ten years prior as a student. 

Part of the thrill of The Binding is discovering how incomplete a version of reality you're initially shown, in wild swings of revelation. The Betrayals is more gradual; it draws you through the current day and the past, all while ruminating on the role of art and creation when basic freedoms are being sanded away. It has made me want to read Hermann Hesse, who is a noted inspiration for this novel, and it made me think a lot about the desire for the remove of an ivory tower, a place that doesn't need to concern itself with something as dirty as politics, until suddenly it does. 

Grade: A 

Book 29: The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

This is a fairly standard speculative novella about a young woman in a village who needs to find her inner Joan of Arc to stand up to oppressive strictures of the Emperor, and specifically the Order, a band of consecrated men who travel from village to village hunting out wizards. She and her father are on the road when they ride by, and they threaten her father because she doesn't want them to ruin his paper, and that sets them both on a path where they have to hide from the Order and eventually fight back. 

I enjoyed this fine while I was reading it, but the longer I sit with it after the less it lands. Heloise is described as being nearly a woman grown during the first scene, but I kept reading her as much younger, and in general something about the world building didn't quite work for me. Not a bad way to spend an evening, but there are also much better imo. 

Grade: C 

Book 28: The Border Keeper by Kerstin Hall

A fantasy novella about a woman who keeps the border between our world and a version of the afterlife, and the man who comes to her and asks for her to guide him through in order to find someone he lost. I kept waiting for the world and their relationship to click into place for me, but it never quite did, and by the time they arrived at the end all I could really think was I mean I guess. On the plus side it was short! That's what I've got.

Grade: C 

Book 27: The Black Tides of Heaven by Jy Yang

A novella! Another one in a collection from Tor that focuses on stories with LGBTQ themes. 

This story focuses on twins Mokoya and Akeha, who have been sent to a monastery by their mother the Protector. It's a authoritarian matriarchal society in which children do not declare their gender until they reach puberty and are then accepted in that way, and there was an interesting tension when Mokoya identifies as a woman and then feels separate from her twin for the first time when Akeha identifies as a man. Akeha leaves his mother and sister as they continue to wield power and tries with his limited magic to help the people stand up against his mother, and as a result misses getting to have a relationship with his sister's child, but finds a love of his own. 

I like a lot of this story, but I found the ending ultimately unsatisfying - I wouldn't be surprised if this is a novella that's actually intended to be a prologue of a novel, because so much is set up but not fully resolved by the end of it. Akeha was a great character but in the end it wasn't quite enough. 

Grade: B