I really enjoyed this novella!! It was such an interesting sci-fi space opera setup about a convent of nuns in a living spaceship traveling through the galaxy who discover that their larger leadership is corrupt. They respond in fascinating ways, and all of them have really compelling relationships with each other and dynamics and secrets, and idk! It's just WEIRD in exactly the way I want these kinds of speculative fiction novellas to be.
Grade: A
The second book in the Rivers of London series! I liked this one, though not quite as much as the first one, which had the benefit of being the introduction to the world, while this one just expands on it and gets more into Peter's family history. Luckily, that story is still pretty good! Just slightly less memorable.
Grade: B
Boy, this novella did not work for me. As is probably evident from the title, it's a story about Miranda from The Tempest living in Milan after the end of the play. This should really be my jam, or at least interesting to me. But both the story and the writing didn't capture me, and I felt really disappointed by it. This is just something that happens with books sometimes, and it's a bummer!
Grade: C
A book club book! This is a fairly standard modern retelling/adaptation of a fairy tale, in this case Sleeping Beauty, in which the princess is a young woman named Zinnia who has a chronic, fatal illness. Her best friend sets up a birthday celebration for her that turns this into a portal fantasy, and she goes through a journey to potentially save both her life and the life of the princess she meets in that other universe.
I enjoyed this novella, but I think I wanted/hoped for a bit more - there's an interaction in the portal section of the story that almost but not quite knocked my socks off, and it made me think that the story had gotten a bit held back in order to make it fit a more standard narrative. Basically I thought that this story could have been much weirder and broken more of the narrative expectations, and it would have felt both more cohesive to me and more interesting. But it was still a fun read.
Grade: B
Another mystery! This is the second one in the series that started with Magpie Murders, which I enjoyed a lot. This one has a similar framing device, except that the order of operations is slightly different: in the first book, the book editor had to solve the real life murder in order to solve the incomplete mystery manuscript, and in this one, the answer to one and possibly two real life murders can be found in a complete published mystery.
This book was something of a pickle for me - the overall structure of the mystery worked just as well for me as the first book did, where in all three mysteries the reveals and explanations were clever and fit together perfectly, even though I couldn't have predicted the outcome. Unfortunately, there is also a very clear thread of homophobia running throughout this book, one that started in the first book but didn't fully bloom until the sequel. I'm sure that the defense of it would simply be that "well there really are some gay men who are like that" and so forth, but I started to have a bad feeling about it halfway through the story, and then by the end it was about as bad and frankly cliched as it could be. I really enjoy the mystery within the mystery of the structure, but I really can't in good conscience recommend this book.
Grade: C
The next novella in the Wayward Children series! I am experiencing a bit of diminishing returns at this point with this series, unfortunately - I'm still enjoying the stories individually, but I want them to have more an arc, I think? This one definitely completes a story involving two of the major characters, and I do enjoy that element, but something about how they're all fitting together isn't delivering the satisfaction I want from a series of novellas that don't really exist as standalone stories anymore. I was happy to see Jack triumph, but the journey left me a bit cold.
Grade: B
There are times when I know that it's less that the books I'm reading aren't good, and it's more that I'm reading them badly. This is the fourth book in the Wayward Children series, and the second one that focuses on one character's experience before they make it to the school. The main character in the story is Lundy, and the world she found the door to is the Goblin Market.
The entire system of the Goblin Market is built around the concept of fair value - if you ask something of someone, you need to provide them fair value in exchange, and if you're unable to, you are in their debt. The debt in this world (and in our world, if you leave) is a physical change; once you are too far in debt, you lose your humanity and become a bird. Lundy tries desperately to have her life in the Goblin Market without giving up her life at home, especially for her younger sister. But she is unable to properly calibrate the fair value required for such a thing. It is a sad story that feels extremely unfair, perhaps especially because it is a world that presents itself as being completely in balance, and I had a hard time with it emotionally.
Grade: B
