Book 41: Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict

My final Christmas mystery of 2023! This one was pretty entertaining - it's an obvious riff on Murder on the Orient Express, only it's a Christmas Eve train to Scotland that's been delayed. Our main protagonist is a retired police detective who's traveling to the Highlands to see her daughter; their relationship has always been fraught and distant, and now her daughter is having a very difficult delivery of her first baby and so time is of the essence! Without wanting to spoil too much of this book, I will say that there's a lot more sexual assault trauma than I was really looking for in my Christmas murder mystery. It ended up feeling pretty dark in a way I wasn't expecting. Still, with that caveat, it was a good read. 

Grade: B

Book 40: An Heiress for Christmas by Samantha SoRelle

Well, one of the best things I can say for this novella is that it was short, except that its main flaw was also its slightness. Two best friends from Oxford become master and valet when one man's father loses everything and ruins his son's prospects in the process, but then the master needs to get married by Christmas or get cut off by his father, and honestly none of it matters. Perfectly readable but with no real story, and not enough Christmas to make up for it. 

Grade: C

Book 39: A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles

The sequel to The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, this book is just as delightful and captivating as the first one. The focus of this book is on Joss's nephew Luke, who becomes the secretary for Rufus d'Aumesty, a new Earl. They develop a relationship, but Luke has secrets and Rufus has his own problems attempting to fend off his uncle's attempts to strip him of his title and property. Will it all work out???? Indeed. 

Grade: A 

Book 38: The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles

Man, I loved this book. Two men who have been sleeping together but don't know each other's real names at a pub in London part on bad terms, only to encounter each other again when one of them moves to Kent after the death of his estranged titled father. Sir Gareth is completely unfamiliar with the smuggling families that control the Kentish Moors, but is introduced to all aspects of it when he discovers that his former bed partner is Joss Doomsday of the Doomsday clan. Hijinks and misunderstandings ensue, and it's just a delightful story from start to finish, with real conflicts that are resolved in satisfying ways. My favorite book by this author in quite some time. 

Grade: A 

Book 37: The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

Another Christmas mystery novella! This one is about a woman living in New York in 2019, who always spends Christmas alone, and rereads an old journal that tells the tale of a Christmas in the Cotswolds in 1989 that involved an old country manor house and murder. Halfway through the story, it takes a twist and we discover the real truth, etc. 

I liked this story a lot, but it felt a bit unbalanced--I think it would have been better if rather than the two parts being about equal in length, the first part was longer. I felt like the latter half suffered from being overexplored, and lessened the impact of the Christmas haunting themes of the story. But it was another one that I enjoyed overall, and I'd definitely read another story by this author. 

Grade: B

Book 36: The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

Next up on the Christmas-themed stories, the first mystery of the month! Apparently this is a sequel novella to a very popular full length mystery called The Appeal that focuses on the same amateur theater group in a small English village. This explains why it felt like there were a bunch of references to characters or previous events that never got resolved, but I still enjoyed it quite a bit! It's an epistolary style, with lots of emails and text messages and ads in church programs, and it felt like a Christmas special on a cozy mystery show that would air on Acorn. The mystery and resolution wasn't particularly shocking, but then it fits with the holiday season that way. 

Grade: B 

Book 35: Once Upon a Christmas House by A.D. Ellis

We have once again hit the time of year when I stop pretending there's any chance of me getting to Book Zero and finishing my To Be Read pile in order to read a whole bunch of Christmas-themed gay romance novels and mysteries. First up, we have a classic pretend relationship for the sake of appearing on a home improvement reality TV series, with a side of magical Christmas house nonsense. I will be honest, this is a book that is a much better idea than execution, but I also failed out of five other gay romance novels before I hit this one, so at least it was that level of good! The backstory for the emotional damage one of the protagonists has was extremely silly, and this is definitely a novel that would have been much stronger if it had just been novella-length, but I had a nice time on a December evening reading this, so I can't complain much. 

Grade: C  

Book 34: The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

A book club book! This is a vampire-esque story set in modern England, only instead of them surviving on human blood, they eat--you guessed it--books! The story centers on Devon who is on her own and caring for her son, a particular kind of book eater who eats people's brains if they don't have access to a medication. The narrative alternates between following them in the present day and her childhood and young adulthood showing us how they ended up there, and the specific cultural institutions she's fighting against to survive and raise her son. 

There's also a whole plot about the women of each family being controlled and married off in order to strengthen family lines, and the difficulty they have with breeding because women can only have two (at most) children before they become infertile, and a whole lot of nonsense society construction around all of this. The narrator is well-aware of how nonsense it is, because it's not as if the patriarchy is a sensible system, but it's also not exactly an uplifting story. There was a lot to chew on (heh) in this book, but it never quite coalesced into something greater than the sum of its parts, for me.

Grade: B  

Revisiting Guy Gavriel Kay Part 1

So most years, in addition to however many new books I succeed in reading, I often reread a fair number of books. In the past I haven't logged those books on this blog, because they seemed outside the scope of this "project," but this year I've decided that I will! This is pretty easy because so far my main rereads have been of Guy Gavriel Kay's canon, leading up to his most recent release from last spring, which I still haven't read because I had wanted to do a reread of his books first.

Here are the books I've reread so far!  

The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy

Possibly the first proper high fantasy trilogy I ever read, which I did before seeing the Lord of the Rings movies and suddenly realized some of the source of his inspiration (which makes sense given the work he did with Christopher Tolkein in the 1970s). It's a portal fantasy that also brings to mind A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and after I read the Lymond Chronicles I discovered another big influence on his work (and a couple of key character types that reoccur throughout his writing). It is definitely a fantasy trilogy written in the 1980s, with some central plot arcs that I don't entirely love, but I also cry every single time I reread these books, because boy does he know what he's doing with these tropes. 

Ysabel

This one is out of publication order, but it also kind of exists on its own. It's the only novel other than the Fionavar Tapestry that takes place in our world, and I don't always buy his mid-2000s modern day POV, but it also brings together a number of his favorite themes in really effective and elegant ways. Also I desperately need to go to Aix-en-Provence. 

Tigana

The big one. His first standalone fantasy and the one he's probably still best known for in a lot of circles, the central conceit of this story is so emotionally resonant and tragically relevant. His character work in particular gets much stronger in later novels in my opinion, but this novel is plotted perfectly, even when you wish it could end in a different way. 

A Song for Arbonne

Boy this book fucked me up when I read it for the first time as a teenager. It's very much his bridge novel between high fantasy novels that are clearly set in worlds based on specific cultures and historical events, and his later novels that are historical fiction about fictionalized versions of cities and nations that also have some magical realism. This one really got to me; it's not as sweeping or just as big as either Tigana or the novel that follows it, but the central battle between a society that wants to have a public role (however flawed) possible for women and one that demonizes them and keeps them subjugated really resonated for me, and there are many scenes from this book that have stayed in my head for decades even if some of the other details had faded since my last reread. 

Next up is Lions of Al-Rassan, and let me tell you that's always a fraught read but it's not going to be easier this fall, sigh. But that's also of course one of its great strengths.

No official grade for any of these but honestly my view of all of his books is that they're just different shades of an A, so take that as read. 

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

Book 26: A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

This is one of the books that's been in my TBR pile since before 2016! Glad I finally got to it. 

There's a pull quote from Jane Yolen on the front of my copy of the book that compares it with Harry Potter, and I actually think that set me up poorly for what story this is telling. It's an older style of children's fantasy, and only the first third of the book are set at the college of magics, which doesn't resemble Hogwarts at all. The protagonist is a young woman named Faris who is heir to a kingdom and in a very complicated power struggle with her uncle the regent. She's sent there with two protectors, one of whom stays during her time there, and she befriends another student who becomes a dean before leaving with Faris to return to her kingdom, which is where the rest of the story is focused. 

The element of this story that really clicked for me is the relationship between Faris and her guard, which turns into the classic king and lionheart trope, and it goes into a really interesting and ultimately incredibly satisfying direction. The overall world building and focus of the book wasn't exactly what I was hoping it would be, but that aspect was so good it elevated the entire reading experience for me, and made me really love the overall arc. 

Grade: B  

Book 25: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Sometimes your reading plan gets completely derailed because a person you're on vacation with keeps reacting out loud to a book they're reading, and that book gets launched to the top of your TBR list. That's what happened to me with this book, a delightfully meta contemporary murder mystery that's also an examination of the relationship between a writer and comments from their beta reader. 

The first chapter feels like a fairly standard story about a young woman who has a writing fellowship in Boston and is working at the Boston Public Library when a murder takes place elsewhere in the building. A scream is heard, and she and the three strangers also sitting at her table all get embroiled in the mystery and with each other. But after the first chapter, we see the comments from a reader, who is corresponding with the author of this novel and providing feedback and guidance.

One of the most impressive parts of the story is how the novel within a novel at the heart of this book simultaneously feels like a draft in progress without actually having the problems that a first draft of a book inevitable does. There's a cat and mouse tension between the mystery of writing the novel combined with the murder mystery being told, and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

Grade: A

Book 24: Lone Women by Victor LaValle

A book club book! I hadn't read anything by this author before, and I really enjoyed this book a lot. It's set in early 20th century Western U.S., and focuses on a Black woman who has left California after the suspicious circumstances of her parents' deaths and makes her way to Montana, because unmarried women (including Black women) are allowed to claim homesteads in their own name. She's traveled light aside from a locked steamer trunk, which attracts a lot of attention. 

I don't want to say much more because I went into this book pretty cold, and from the very first page it just drops you right in and lets you figure out which way is up. It's described as being horror fiction, which I understand, but for me it's more horror cut with magical realism. Adelaide is a wonderful POV character, and the history of Montana made me want to read a number of the books that initially inspired this story. It's an eerie book that doesn't shy away from how harsh living on your own as a Black woman would be on a homestead, but it's not a story that wants to spotlight those challenges for their own sake. I'll definitely be reading more works by this author in the future.  

Grade: B

Book 23: A Thief in the Night by KJ Charles

A lovely novella to read on a summer afternoon! There's not a lot of conflict in this gay regency romance, but sometimes that's just what you want. Toby is a thief who robs a man after a mutually satisfying encounter in an alleyway, only to meet him again when he goes to a manor house attempting to pose as a butler. But the man in question has his own difficulties, chief among them the fact that his father deliberately ruined his estate while he was in the navy, which he now has to resolve after his father's death. Will they learn to trust each other and find the hidden jewels that will provide for their future together??? What a question. This is the final piece of the world started with Kit and Marian's novels, and I had a very nice time reading it. 

Grade: B