I am reading a series I love, but it has a LOT of books in it. They’re really good, but I’m starting to think I need a series-reading rule. Like stop after six and give myself and the author a break before I go back and finish. It’s hard, good series books are like popcorn, the just-one-more urge is compelling, but when you get into the teens, it’s time to take a break. Which makes me worry a little about more Burney and Rocky Start books. Bob’s talking about doing the sequels as novellas, and his novellas tend to run to about 50,000 words so I think I’m okay with that (I’m arcing YEC here, I need some page space), but I worry about readers thinking, “We did this movie, why are we back here?” I mean, that’s our job, to make the stories necessary not just fan service, but still. Argh.
So what did you read this week?
130 Responses
I do love a good series, and sometimes do take breaks on the re-reads, or on first reads if I am getting them out of the library. Not a big fan of novella’s though (she says shyly) I read paper books and novellas are expensive to buy and not a long enough read to be satisfying for me. Don’t let tell Bob, I don’t wanta die!
Read this week:
Books & Bewitchment by Isla Jewell – thank you whoever recommended this to me it was wonderful. A delightful cosy mystery/romance, a bookshop in the making. Just the right amount of laughter and pathos and romance (and sex scene well handled without TMI). Know there is another novel being written/published and am guessing it is a trilogy as there are three sisters. Hope the library will buy them all and not just this one.
Papers by Hollie McNish. It is a small book with only 30 poems in – her first published. Hollie is a British Poet and I love her style and content. After seeing her at the Edinburgh Book Festival this year (promoting her latest book) I remembered how much I had enjoyed some of the previous books through the library and managed to buy her back catalogue on-line inexpensively. As this is the first published, it is the first I read, turns out I hadn’t read it before as the library doesn’t have it. Some good poems. She has some on YouTube if you want to sample.
Other than that some re-reads, and DF’s.
Movie of the week at the library was The Man on the Ledge with Sam Worthington. It was just what I needed to escape my flat on a rainy afternoon. Good thriller/suspense/caper movie and hugely enjoyable. Good crowd again, and the regulars back now the Festivals are over.
I liked Isla Jewell’s book too. It might be me who wrote about it here. I can’t wait for her next book to come out.
I’m reading Donna Andrews’ new book in her long-running Meg Lanslow series. It’s called Probably Caws, and it is remarkably, the 39th book in the series, and just as good as the first one. (As an author and a reader, that’s just stunning.) But I started them at the beginning, and haven’t gone back to read from the beginning (although I always think I will), so taking breaks isn’t an issue.
I don’t mind novellas–I write them–but I often wish for a longer story.
Me two. I found Donna Andrews when she was about three books into this series, and it’s wonderful. As Deborah says, they are STILL intelligent and funny, with good mysteries and likeable characters. Her Christmas Meg books are the best. I, too, am amazed at how she maintains the quality of this series.
Probable Caws. Sigh
I always try to limit myself to two of a series (or author or genre) before switching it up. I still enjoy a good long running series, and am happily reading through Meg Langslow at a rate of one every 2-3 months.
Speaking of series, best thing I read this week was the collection “Blind Date with a Werewolf” by Patricia Briggs (2025) – I’ve read some of these stories before, but they hang together nicely and I really really liked how it ended with Asil as matchmaker. I love Asil!
“Tikka Chance on Me” by Suleikha Snyder (2018) is a solidly enjoyable very sex-forward m/f contemporary with a head fake towards bikers (SPOILER: thankfully we quickly find out the MMC is undercover). I rather liked the Punjabi American FMC.
Finished “The Milkwood Permaculture Living Handbook” by Kirsten Bradley (2023) with ideas about connecting to your local place and community, and ideas on gardening or cooking your own food are mixed in with ideas like keeping a nature diary, writing a will or having an emergency plan. I really like the idea of slow and steady, of forming each habit and embedding it your life before going on to the next one (and avoiding the guilt trips about not being able to do everything all at once). This is a book that could be usefully worked through over a period of weeks, months or years and at the end of it I think you’d have a pretty good life, even if you’re living in a city apartment and working nine to five. *Sigh – goals*. Definitely a book to revisit.
“Here for the Right Reasons” by Jodi McAlister (2022) is the first of her linked trilogy set on a dating reality show. Took a while to hook me, largely because it feels non-specific – which Uni does the FMC belong to, why no discussions of Jobkeeper etc, but by the end I really liked it and I though it had a strong finish. I think it also helped having read the third book already, as I knew what was going on behind the scenes.
And back on fanfic: “Runs In The Family” by narceus (2013) is a Teen Wolf AU retelling and was solidly enjoyable particularly if you love Lydia, which I do.
Ooh and forgot to mention, binged the first season of “We are Lady Parts” which was adorable and funny (just this side of cringe for me), about a biochemistry PhD accidentally joining a punk band. Half-hour eps and British so six eps to a season.
A series is very addictive and it’s lovely to enter another world and lose yours sometimes…sometimes that’s necessary for sanity to prevail!
Try Emylia Hall, Shell House Detectives, a series set by the sea in Cornwall, England. An unusual mix of characters of all ages. I love them.
I don’t like reading a series straight through. It’s like eating nothing but cheesecake every day for every meal. Too much of a good thing.
Like everyone here, my TBR list is very long (6 pages right now). I have a “working on” section at the top of the list with about 10 authors, and I alternate them. I read a book by one author and then he or she goes to the bottom of the list to rotate back up to the top. That way I don’t OD on any one particular author or series. Once I finish that particular author or series, I add someone new to the working list from the other section of my TBR list.
I was thinking as I read your post, Pam, ooohhh I’d love cheesecake every day for every meal – how do I make that happen?? 😂
I can appreciate how methodical you are.
•Andrew Wareham, The Grass is Greener, The Agricultural Lord Palfrey, Book 6, 2026
Wareham’s long historical novel in installments continues. Of Book 5, I wrote, “This installment lies more in the way of preparation than of payoff. I would not even count it as a real novel, since it has next to no resolution.” That remains mostly true Book 6. We open in 1830, in the last days of Wellington’s premiership. Both men agree that further reform will be necessary to avert revolution, but that the problem will be to limit it so as to preserve the social order. Palfrey, however, is happier when away from national politics and back on his estate. To avert both uprisings and starvation in the wake of overpopulation and the declining price of wheat now that the Napoleonic Wars are over, Palfrey has been trying to encourage his tenants to leave, either to go overseas with the free passage and modest start-up money that he provides, and go to a place where they will have at least a chance at a decent life, or, for the more timid, to go to the industrial north of England, where they will likely be wretched but probably will not starve.
Palfrey pays for passage for those willing to go to New South Wales, where he has agricultural investments, in the expectation that emigrants probably will choose to work on his lands there, although they are not indentured. I wonder about this offer, since transported convicts who had served their sentence but were forbidden to return to Britain were an alternative labor source, and the voyage to Australia was a much longer and more expensive trip than passage to the US or “Canada” would be. (“Canada” at the time meant only Ontario and Quebec, not the whole of British North America, which I am not sure that Wareham realizes, although the way he uses the word is not unambiguously wrong. Per the Wikipedia, the more correct usage circa 1830 would have been “the Canadas.”) Palfrey had not been very successful in finding willing emigrants even for North America until the development of the small steam utility engine for farms means that the the tenant farmers have little use for hired laborers, leaving them not merely, as before, impoverished, but now jobless. (Wareham seems to be anachronistically early with this introduction; per the internet these engines were not practical until the 1840s.) Even before the foreseen end of the Corn Laws, not yet repealed, the raising of wheat has become entirely uneconomic on Palfrey’s marginal land, and he forbids tenants to grow it after their current leases fall due, shifting production to things like dairy farming or vegetable-raising. This is more labor-intensive farming than raising wheat and is a novelty besides, increasing the incentive to emigrate, but enough tenants prove desperate enough to take over the new smaller plots.
Palfrey has to deal with other issues such as his dauntingly precocious two elder children, still preadolescent, and the social consequences of the appearance on the scene of highly assimilated wealthy Jews now looking for country estates. But nothing much is decided and the installment breaks off without any resolution.
Since one of the things that I most enjoy about this series is the social history and in particular the view of the impact of the Steam Age on the English countryside, I am annoyed by the anachronism about farm utility engines, which suggests that I am not being accurately informed. But I find the series interesting enough that I am willing to continue despite potential anachronisms and the lack of resolution in each of the past two installments. Recommended, but one should start the series from Book 1.
Oh Jenny you must tell us what series you are reading! Don’t leave us on a cliff here!
And speaking of series – I’m a gobbler when it comes to a series I like. So I’ve gobbled the last of Ilona Andrews’ Innkeeper series, Sweep of the Heart, which involves an intergalactic competition to marry an important king, all of which happens at Dina’s Inn. 12 competitors and their unruly retinues. It’s The Bachelor meets Monsters meets Star Trek. Delightful fun.
I finished listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl and…it’s one of the few series I have no real impulse to move on with. I thoroughly enjoyed it – very witty writing and characters, obviously tons of action. But no real character development – no character pathologies to resolve, no character arcs. So it’s not sticky with me. A number of you have been reading this series – what are your thoughts about the books afterward? Are they much of a sameness?
And the Book of the Week for me was CM Nascosta’s newest, Full Moon Frenzy. For any of you who like a paranormal F/M romance with explicit sex, this might be a great entry point into Nascosta’s Cambric Creek series. I don’t think you need the back books in the series. It’s clear the town is a multi-species world and the two MC’s are shifters and there is a lot of what was missing from the Dungeon Crawler Carl – true character development. Plus a really stark enemies to lovers plot – no rolling over in chapter two in this one.
I agree that you could start here with Nascosta if you wanted. Pretty much any of her books are loosely connected stand-alones except for the girls weekend series. I do keep finding Easter eggs that I missed or forgot, which is fun.
Interesting (re: Dungeon Crawler Carl). I’ve got similar thoughts.
I think Matt Dinniman is an extraordinary storyteller, but mostly with respect to plot, and I was always surprised (and impressed) when he pulled off a truly emotional quiet moment. That said, I just finished the last one (so far), and while I enjoyed them all, and was a little obsessed toward the end with needing to finish them all (did you know the author used to do cat portraits at cat shows? I think that’s so cool!), and I tried to read other stuff in between but just wanted to see what Carl and Donut were up to.
BUT. I’m quite sure I’ll never re-read them (except maybe that one scene where Donut explodes emotionally when she realizes Beatrice was going to trade her in for a younger model, which I thought was a fabulous scene in so many ways), and I’m not entirely sure I’ll bother with the final two books. I zoned out a lot while listening to the last two books, so I think I’m ready to move on. I think there was good escalation in the first five or so books, but a lot of the impossible-to-resolve complications (see, e.g., the Bedlam Bride) seemed to be resolved anti-climactically, to be immediately replaced with a new, but no worse, problem.
At the same time, I do wonder if the author will be able to escalate in the final two books, so I may end up reading them just out of curiosity about that as opposed to being truly invested in the characters.
I may just live vicariously through your reading of this series. Although I would like to find out what happens to the people from the long term care residence. And I haven’t read the Donut exploding scene which also sounds good. Maybe when I run out of things to listen to…
I just realized you’ve only read the first book (if I’m re-reading your post correctly). Highly recommend reading the second book before you decide to stop. I was iffy after book 1, and got hooked with book 2. The Donut scene is in book 4, I think.
In any event, I will report back in two years (best guesstimate of when the final book is available) if I do indeed read the end of the series!
Okay I will try book two! Thank you, Gin.
I just got book 1 of Carl. After chapter 4, I thought “A dust bunny would love this book, if dust bunnies could read.” It’s a real adrenaline rush. Not really my kind of book, but I am forging on.
And… did you read Maud’s book, Tammy?
Um…no? I haven’t read Nikoles yet either.
Maud before Nikoles. Nikoles is fine, but not outstanding.
Do you think the Maud book is outstanding? Really? Hmmm….
Tammy, Maud’s book is a huge amount of fun. You have to read it just for the rippercushions really.
FINE. I’ve downloaded it. As Charles Grodin says in Heaven Can Wait: “I could not resist the power of your will.”
Well, if both I and Lupe recommend it, you have no choice 🙂
Mwahahaha. Thanks LN! Strength in numbers.
I really have no choice. I surrender to my fate.
I think I finished the third Dungeon Crawler before I wandered off. Short attention span.
The series was Jodi Taylor’s St. Mary’s books. I like the Time Police and Smallhope and Pennyroyal books better, I think St. Mary’s heroine, Max, has just had too damn many tragedies (including dying); I just want her to retire and I think her long-suffering husband would prefer that, too. But it’s a wonderfully rich world, and I hadn’t read the last four or five so I went back to catch up. The fifteenth book is out next year I think. And the St. Mary’s books cross over with the other two series, which deepens the world even more.
I have to try this series – have got the first one on my wish list. If only people would stop making me read the ONE book in a series that I skipped. Grumble. Mutter. Imprecations.
This is how I felt about St. Mary’s as well. When they switched to an alternate reality, I pretty much gave up on them and switched to Time Police.
I think I finished the third one before I wandered off. Short attention span.
The series was Jodi Taylor’s St. Mary’s books. I like the Time Police and Smallhope and Pennyroyal books better, I think St. Mary’s heroine, Max, has just had too damn many tragedies (including dying); I just want her to retire and I think her long-suffering husband would prefer that, too. But it’s a wonderfully rich world, and I hadn’t read the last four or five so I went back to catch up. The fifteenth book is out next year I think. And the St. Mary’s books cross over with the other two series, which deepens the world even more.
I just read that Gloria Steinem died. Can we all have a moment for someone who changed the lives of women in North America at least? I remember going to see her speak and at the end she urged everyone to take at least one radical act every day, even if it were to say: “Pick it up yourself.”
Very sorry to hear that Tammy, she was one of my sheros.
Sigh. Lots of icons are dying.
At least she was 92, and left an amazing legacy.
I read a collection of her essays and my favourite was actually when she was a journalist and had decided to infiltrate the Playboy Bunny gig. I’m sure she as well as everyone else thought it would be an expose of hot sex and partying and drugs and on the job harassment. Instead, she wrote about how little the Bunnies actually made in money, how they had to stuff their bras with dry cleaning bags and how the mandatory high heels hurt by the end of each shift. She because obsessed with how much her feet hurt. (Hugh Hefner was incensed by this article and harassed her for years by publishing the picture of her in the Bunny costume as often as he could. What an a-hole that guy was. ) Anyway, it’s interesting how that experience forged an economic, practical and unacademic feminism.
I love it that Gloria Steinem and Ruth Bader Ginsburg met. I read The Judge’s List by John Grisham.
I think I finished the third one before I wandered off. Short attention span.
She was 92, so that’s a good long run. And she’s like Dolly Parton, remembered most for all the good she did, which is a damn fine way to go.
I was just reading Solnit’s essay on the response to Steinem’s death and she quoted a “2006 study notes, “In states that introduced unilateral divorce we find a 8–16 percent decline in female suicide, roughly a 30 percent decline in domestic violence for both men and women, and a 10 percent decline in females murdered by their partners.” Another source says, “Looking longer term, they found close to a 20 percent decline in female suicides 20 years after the change to no-fault divorce.”
I knew no-fault divorce was super-important but I’ve never seen the suicide stats before. Things aren’t perfect now, and we need to fight to hold on to the gains, but things are so much better than they used to be, and a lot of that is to do with Steinem and every other woman who organised and protested and stood up for themselves and others, including a lot of people on Argh. Thank-you.
•Philip A. Shreffler (ed.), Sherlock Holmes by Gas-Lamp, 1989.
A collection of about 66 selected articles from the Baker Street Journal during its “first four decades,” although the range here is actually at least from January 1946 to September 1987. (Individual articles carry their original publication date, but there is no summary listing.) The collection is a publication of Fordham University Press, whose director at the time was a Sherlockian. A number of Holmes-related titled seem to have been issued there into the 1990s. Most but not all of the articles here follow the rules of the “Game” (in existence long before the Journal’s founding), whereby it is posited that Sherlock Holmes really existed, that the pieces about him ascribed to John H. Watson were nonfiction genuinely written by Watson (although in extremis it may be posited that Watson fictionalized some parts, out of reasons ranging from state secrets, through professional confidentiality, and down to simple personal privacy privacy), and that Arthur Conan Doyle here merely served as Watson’s literary agent (a profession newly emerging in the era when the early Holmes stories were written). In the Game, Doyle did of course also write nonfiction and fiction of his own, such as the Professor Challenger series and his historical novels. Players of the Game engage in various forms of scholarship based on these assumptions. They may find ways to reconcile seeming contradictions in the Canon; look for the real Victorian personages represented in the Canon under false names to protect their privacy; or may explain Victorian implements or customs unfamiliar to later readers, and so on. (Incidentally, in either the Canon or in Trollope I once found “expediter” used in a context suggesting that it means “gas ring,” but I’ve so far never found confirmation.) Of substantially less interest to me than the Game, some pieces are written in the person of minor characters such as Mrs. Hudson, who voice their opinions of other characters, some articles detail the origins of the Baker Street Irregulars organization, some describe how their authors first discovered the Holmes stories, and we find several other variants on a Sherlockian theme.
I ordered this book in a used copy primarily because I wanted to reread Poul Anderson’s essay “A Treatise on the Binomial Theorom” (1955), speculating on the content of Moriarty’s eponymous treatise. Many decades ago, I had come across a reference to this essay (I imagine either in Baring-Gould’s annotated Holmes or in some Anderson bibliography). Back then, I was in grad school at Princeton University, whose library had the back volumes of BSJ on its shelves, so it was easy to read Anderson’s work. Fifty or so years later, I vaguely remembered that the essay had also dealt with another Moriarty work, The Dynamics of an Asteroid. I found enough information online to confirm that point, and I accordingly reproached the late Isaac Asimov in a review here in July. But the Anderson essay itself was to be found nowhere on the internet, and its only republication proved to be in the present book. Fortunately, the volume was inexpensive, and in due course I had my hands on a like-new copy.
I enjoyed rereading the essay, and I discovered that the collection also had a second Anderson essay, “The Archetypal Holmes” (1968). In that one, Anderson proposes that new archetypes appear as society develops, sometimes first emerging in the public mind as represented by fictional characters and sometimes by real people such as Holmes (Anderson is still playing the Game). I saw that much as credible, but I found much less plausible many of the people or fictional characters that Anderson sees as partial realizations of the archetypal perfection eventually embodied in Holmes. I find little Holmesian in Hamlet, and I find preposterous the idea that Machiavelli was proto-Holmesian, unless we are operating with a worldview where every archetype has its own Dark Side. I can, after all, see Machiavelli as a proto-Moriarty. Anderson concludes by stating that after its full florescence in Holmes, further appeances of the archetype were limited by the First World War, “when Western Civilization cut its own throat.” Per Anderson, many examples remain, however in fantasy and sf, such as Asimov’s roboticist Susan Calvin, or in the then-current TV character of Mr. Spock. Anderson suggests that whenever Star Trek should leave the air, Leonard Nimoy would make an excellent Holmes. (It seems that, oddly, in the event Nimoy only ever managed that in a touring stage play.)
I found many other interesting essays in the collection, along with much dross, but I think it is clearly worth its modest price as a used book (lowest I saw when rechecking on September 2 was $8.27 including US shipping) .
I can usually read about four before they start to feel same-y. The exception is something like the first series of Psi-changeling books by Nalini Singh where I’ll sometimes read more in a row to pick up clues in the series arc.
This week I read The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan which I have mixed feelings about. On the plus side, there were interesting characters and settings and I really liked the writing, particularly the almost poetic treatment of one of the two love interests. On the minus side, there was essentially no character growth of the MMC and I was not convinced by their romance. FMC’s business plans and goals seem unsustainable and could have been more detailed and I found the ending a bit ‘easy’. Conclusion: overall enjoyable but not a re-read by any stretch.
I also read How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin, which I found very good. A woman who was convinced all her life that she would be murdered and then actually was, challenges the beneficiaries of her estate to solve her murder in order to inherit. Diary entries from the murdered woman’s teenage years are interspersed, revealing to the reader the same clues that the MC is using to investigate both a decades old disappearance and the present day murder. Well plotted!
Lastly, I read A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett which I highly recommend. Well written, interesting details, character driven.
Thanks to anyone who may have recommended these in the past – I can’t remember why I picked them up, but it was a good week!
I was supposed to go camping with a friend on the weekend, and I thought he just in case we have some time to read, I’d pull a couple short books off my shelf. She got called into work so I had a bunch of time all to myself which was great.
Between Saturday’s naps I reread Anyone But You and What the Lady Wants.
Sunday I started Rescuing the Rescuer: with a Box, a Ball and a Button by Jeff Smedley. It’s about his frustrating navigation trying to get help for his PTSD acquired as a search and rescue team manager. My intention was to read a chapter while I ate breakfast before packing up to go home, and I ended up reading the whole thing before going home in the afternoon.
Then Sunday-Monday I reread The Cinderella Deal.
I enjoy series books but reading a bunch right in a row it can sometimes feel as if the author is repeating themselves. Same church, different pew.
I gave up on the Maisey Yates book, Rustler Mountain, and went ack to rereading. I reread Cold Truth by Toni Anderson and Once and Always by Julia Harper (aka Elizabeth Hoyt). Next, I’m thinking of reading Getting Rid of Bradley and/or Maybe This Time each for the umpteenth time.
I definitely get fatigued with series and usually try not to do two in a row. I think that I used to have more tolerance, but it seems like all my rules changed in the last year or so.
And I broke my own rules this week. I really liked Neumeier’s Invictus part one, and went right into part two, which fell pretty flat for me. All the character was in book one and all the action was in part two and my mind kept wandering off. Character dump stuff at the end, but by then I wasn’t invested. Pacing issue, really. And then I went right into her witch series, A Year of Midnight (?) and had to pause that at about 40 percent. I don’t know if it was too much in a row or if Midnight reminds me too much of 90s sci-fi into Urban Fantasy. It has a very Peter S Beagle or Charles De Lint feel to me and I really have to be in the mood for that anymore. I plan on going back, but it might not be the series for me.
And I am also reading Full Moon Frenzy. No audio yet and I am a very slow reader, but wanted to stay in Cambric Creek so I started listening to Moon Blooded Breeding Clinic, which I had only read once. I liked it better this time, Lowell specifically. I can’t relate to either mc much but at least he knows himself. I still have mixed feelings about Moriah. I think maybe I was just never as young as she was making very emotional decisions. I think the author did a very good job building those characters, they just aren’t my favorites.
And I probably shouldn’t have read two different Hemming brothers simultaneously because the vibes are sort of laying over each other iny brain and Trapp is very different from Lowell. Ditto Adrianna. Man, the author took the enemies to lovers trope very seriously. I also appreciate seeing the darker side of living in a small town. I really appreciate that Nascosta does that. Some of her characters love it there, some of them hate it.
And now I have to find something else to listen to that isn’t by someone I have been reading all week. Gah.
Yeah, that’s another problem with series books, she said as she struggled with Anna. The first one has to be both set-up for the series and a good story on its own, and then after that you’re playing in the world you made in the first one, so it feels thinner somehow. I insist on adding new characters because that gives the protagonists something new to work with and help change the arc. And also because Bob keeps killing characters so we run low.
And Invictus is really one very very looooong book, just split into two parts. There isn’t a new plot line for the second part, just finishing up all the stuff from part one, which was establishing a relationship between potential enemies that would later help keep them all alive. I am a person who skims or fast forwards over action sequences, which was pretty much all book two was.
I agree that after a while a given series needs a rest, or sometimes just to be abandoned, but I think that exactly when that point arrives depends on too many factors for there to be a rule. Especially since one of the factors is personal mood. For example, several readers have mentioned Donna Andrews’s Meg Langslow series as one that always stays fresh, but I recently let the recent Probable Caws go back to the library unfinished because for at least the third time it opens with Meg’s father, without consulting Meg and Michael, having volunteered their country home and land as a temporary refuge for huge numbers of animals left homeless by the failure of some institution. My frustration with this ploy is partly my own fault for having read the series out of order and getting these occurrences too close to each other, but still. Twice is coincidence, but three times may be overworking it. (I’ll undoubtedly come back to Probable Caws later, after I give it a rest.)
Patrick, that’s not what happened in Probable Caws at all. Meg’s father did ask for her help, but the land in question was Ragnar’s huge estate, and the help was with a bunch of rescue horses that needed to be rehomed because of a fight between two brothers over the family land after their father died. It makes sense that she would help with them because she is a blacksmith.
Deborah, I just rechecked from the sample, and you’re right, and I misremembered (I read it as far as I did long enough ago for memory to fade.) But it’s still the basic situation, except with more asking of permission and this time the horses of animals at Ragnor’s instead of Meg and Michael’s.
*Hordes* of animals; autocorrect at work, even if the hordes are indeed composed of horses.
Tryna keep this short because I need to get my workday rolling!
1. ‘Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy’ by Jacqueline Firkins, which is a FM romance novel despite having “A Novel” on the cover. Girl, we know it’s a novel, stop it. I mostly enjoyed this – it’s about an unhappy academic leaving her awful job and retreating to the falling-down coastal Maine house left to her by her beloved grandmother which is currently tenanted by grandma’s late-in-life writing assistant, who was also her cover model, and … slow burn, all one POV, interfering family, good character development for the FMC, could’ve done better with the MMC.
2. ‘Until I Feel Safe’ by Kirk Holland, MM starring high school students in Texas. One is deeply closeted, very active in his homophobic church but aspiring musical theater student desperate for a way out; the other is out, taking an acting class where they meet, from a supportive & wealthy Mexican American family. High conflict, high risk, loads of family drama, many adults are manipulative trash. Climax is closeted boys’ two brothers helping him stage an intervention for their religion-blinded parents along the lines of, stop this or you will never see any of us again. Hopeful conclusion but a tough read.
3. ‘Time Out’ by Sean Hayes (yes, that one, he played Jack on Will & Grace) with Todd Milliner (his production-company partner) and Carlyn Greenwald (their book-writing partner). Very personal-feeling fiction with romantic elements, again starring a high-school student, small-town Georgia basketball star who decides to come out at a pep rally and is shocked when it goes very, very badly. This kid has a lot of work to do on himself, the family is shaky, his growth is very much one step forward and two steps back. Small scale story with big themes. Another hopeful conclusion, another tough read.
4. [re-read] my own FM novella ‘Drawn Out,’ the one about an animation artist and an interior designer who both make films on the side.
5. ‘Yellow Belly’ by Kim Fielding, MM fairy-tale retelling (prince / frog), a little on the dark side for me. The eventual solution’s a good one, but I needed less despair.
6. ‘Burn it All Down’ by Nicolas DiDomizio, more Disaster Teenagers and their Disaster Families. This is a mother/son caper which for risk-averse me was anxiety-inducing because they make so many bad decisions and get into very serious trouble. But the book answers the question “why are you like this” quite thoroughly (and affectionately), plus the POV 18 yr old boy does learn and there’s reason to believe the lessons will stick.
I love a series and have discovered I’m ok with binging it straight through as long as the characters are learning and changing a bit in each book. If I’m thinking in my head, “You’re doing this again? You almost died / got someone you love killed the last time you did this!” I’ll drop the series after about the 5th one, even if I love the universe and the characters and rashly bought all the available books in the series.
I know that the “In Death” series is kind of mid, but I eagerly buy them when they’re available and will occasionally even do a re-read of some of my favorites because I’m happy to see my friends again and find out what they’re up to, because it feels like there’s intentional development for all the characters. (Actually, now that I think about it maybe not Feeney, but it doesn’t bother me.)
I think that’s the real draw of a series, that created world that feels real, populated by characters that you know through multiple books. I’ll buy the next Smallhope and Pennyroyal just to see how they’re doing.
I have two series that I’m reading as part of KU. A PI and then a legal series. I’ll read one and when I’m finished, I’ll pull the next then delete the one I just read and put the new one in rotation. In the meantime, I’ll go on to other genres so as not to get bogged down by repetition. Somewhere in the recent past I was reading Marie Force’s State of Affairs First Family series but backed off from it because every time the FMC who is a detective would get clobbered by a villain even after her husband begged her to bring a colleague with her for interviews. In every book she went it alone.
After yesterday’s discussion I found Psych on Amazon and saw the first episode last night. I’m in it for Corbin Bernsen and Dule’ Hill. I think those two will smooth out the main character who seems a bit manic.
A bit? Try “nuts.”
I am having the same quandary, Jenny. I’m reading the Harmony series books by Jayne Castle that I missed before, and I’m reading some set in a different part of the area, with a whole new cast, and it’s leaving me a bit meh. The one I just read was Canyons of Night, and the dust bunny is possibly gay or Bi, and carries a rhinestone beaded clutch around with him. He saved the book.
I reread Crazy for You, which is not my favorite Crusie because of the stalker male MC. There’s a point in the middle of the book where literally all of the men are being stubborn and TSTL. They finally catch on, and move on, but it’s frustrating to read about. It does have a great HEA, which helps. Katie is a great little dog, too.
It’s frustrating to live, too. That was before Me Too, when the general world starting listening to women. It’s an interesting plot to gauge right, you want people to feel outrage, but you don’t want them throwing the book against the wall because the characters are so damn dumb.
That book was published in 1999. Me Too started in 2006. Think of it as an historical novel. It will actually be an historical novel in another twenty years.
The scary possibility is that in 20 years it will feel contemporary.
I just re-read it, and I think I found Bill much scarier than I did when I first read it. I still really like it, and I like that they’re in their mid-thirties, early forties (still revolutionary in romancelandia). And I love Quinn & Katie. And Nick. And Jason, who rescues his teacher from his coach, which is such a mature thing for a teenager to do. And Zoe – I really rather want her book 😉
Oh and that Quinn’s parents are low key poly.
I do like the development of Bill from small town hero to scary crazy stalker – you can really see how it could happen, and I like that Nick has some insight into Bill’s feeling that he doesn’t want to let Quinn go. He’s crazy, but Nick gets where he is coming from. I’ve always considered it well done.
Yes Bill’s spiral is well written. However while Nick may understand possessiveness, I think Nick is being far too generous in thinking he understands where Bill is coming from. Nick wants Quinn, and he wants her to be happy, he wants to support her, he sees her as an equal, he helps her achieve her goals up to and including committing illegal acts.
Bill’s desire is, and always was, selfish – he only wants Quinn for what she can do for him and is fundamentally uninterested in her happiness or anything she might want out of life. He’s controlling, manipulative and uncaring from the outset, and when that doesn’t work, graduates to violence. He’s very convincing but I have no sympathy for him. Bill and Nick may both be attracted to Quinn but that desire comes from completely different places.
I agree Bill is well written. However while Nick may understand possessiveness, I think Nick is being far too generous in saying he understands where Bill is coming from. Nick wants Quinn, and he wants her to be happy, he wants to support her, he sees her as an equal, he helps her achieve her goals up to and including committing illegal acts.
Bill’s desire is, and always was, selfish – he only wants Quinn for what she can do for him and is fundamentally uninterested in her happiness or anything she might want out of life. He’s controlling, manipulative and uncaring from the outset, and when that doesn’t work, graduates to violence. He’s very convincingly developed but I have no sympathy for him. Bill and Nick may both be attracted to Quinn but that desire comes from completely different places.
I wanted to show Bill deteriorating while Nick got stronger. I knew a lot of potential Bills back when I was writing that (have you ever met a high school coach?) so used to being Masters of the Universe that it truly never occurred to them that they weren’t right. They lived and died on game day. Most of them were sane, of course, but so was Bill in the beginning. But most of them couldn’t stand losing. I think when Quinn walks out, Bill’s world starts to crack because she was the foundation he build everything on, without knowing her at all, of course. And then he starts losing games. The principal who thought he was god starts to talk back to him. And he’s sure he can get it all back if he just gets Quinn back. She’s just made a mistake, that’s all. The scariest people are those with rigid ideas because they can’t bend and adapt. When they’re challenged, the world goes sideways, it’s just WRONG, and they have to be heroes and fix it.
I just saw him living in an increasingly unrealistic world as the real world went so wrong for him, and the solution was to get Quinn back.
I see that and the contrast absolutely works. Aussies don’t do coaches the way it appears from TV that the US does – despite being a sport-crazy nation, so maybe I’m not getting the cultural resonances.
On re-reading it seems to me that Bill doesn’t respect Quinn long before she breaks up with him – he moves in without asking, rents a new apartment without asking, buys furniture without asking, ignores her objections along the way, and his vision about their joint future is that Quinn’s life will revolve around him as wife and mother of his sons. The real kicker for me is that he doesn’t respect her work either – he pushes her to have her art kids to make a mural to glorify the football team, but doesn’t use that as a platform to make sure the art department gets more funding. All that happens before Quinn takes a stand about keeping Katie. And yes, none of that is violence but its still selfish and controlling, and the biggest predictor of gendered violence is lack of respect for women. That’s part of why I think Bill is very well written and his spiral downwards is entirely plausible!
Jenny, coming late today, but before I ramble about the two books I read/listened to:
I don’t like long long series, because Series Burnout is real.
I loved the Marcus Didius Falco series by Lindsey Davis, but when our Roman private eye who used to live in a squallid apartment and was a free spirit turned into a family guy (with a great wife, but still) with an extended family I still followed along for a bit, but dropped the series around book 12 and never picked it up again. Davis continued/spinned off the series with his adopted daughter as a Roman female private eye (kind of) but the train had left the station for good for me.
I guess my favourite length/attention span is around 5-6 books, 8 as a maximum (Dorothy Dunnetts Lymond series with 6 books is perfect, her Niccolo books with 8 never topped it imo).
That said, I LOVE interspersed novellas where you get a glimpse into my fav characters live without having to commit for a whole book. Ideally those novellas enrich the whole series without an obligation to have read them to follow the main arc.
However, I found that a series consisting of novellas (see Bujold’s Penric) is not enough to satisfy my need to spend a chunk of time with my protagonists to establish a stronger bond with the MCs. I like them, but I don’t necessarily watch out for the follow up.
Actually, a series of interconnected trilogies or even standalones is my preferred series format. Where I can even jump in midway and feel at home (I’ve repeated myself too often, but EJ Russell does this format really well).
What I read this week is a meagre two books: I finished Playing his Game by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James. It could have done with a bit more work, the reason for the MCs fake dating was too flimsy imo, the beginning wobbled between weak and good, but I essentially liked the protagonists enough to enjoy the ride and hit the preorder button on my kobo. The blurb for the next one sounds good, also I’ve never read a romance with an aromantic MC. I cannot imagine what this must feel like, so I’m curious to learn.
A re-listen: Rachel Reid’s The Shots you Take. I didn’t like it too much when I listened for the first time last year in Spring. By now I’ve learnt to appreciate/love the narrator’s work a lot (Greg Boudreaux, I love his bariton, but he’s also not bad with tenor voices and female ones which isn’t a given for male narrtors). Also, I liked the story so much better. But that’s usually the case for Reid’s books for me: most of her stories I liked from the start but fell in love more with each re-read. Which is fantastic because those are the stories that keep on giving.
Now I have to choose which book to continue reading – with most I’m around 20%: On Your Six by Eleonora Larsen (ebook), CT Whistle’s Werewolf-detective story (#1 in the series, I liked #2 a lot), or The Prince and the Bodyguard (I made the mistake to skip to the end and got an overdose of sugar reading the epilogue which is not conductive to keep on reading the middle).
Ah, watching Sterling Point on Amazon Prime ate into my reading time. Kiddo strongly recommended it – it’s selling spending the summer in Muskoka quite well.
And going to the movies: Family outings to go and see the sneak preview at our (now) fav arthouse cinema. Yesterday we cheered when Finding Emily came on. Now we love the Mancunian (?) accent. Go figure LOL.
I found out that Philip Pullman (who wrote the extraordinary (and apparently extremely difficult to adapt) Golden Compass trilogy) returned to Lyra’s Oxford and has another trilogy out. About Lyra, aged 12 in the first books, who is 21 and struggling with adulthood. I am well into the second book – the first was an extended exploration of Lyra’s life as a baby, from well before the events in the Golden Compass, and introduced a very cool suite of characters. The second book is set a decade after the Golden Compass, and I like it a lot.
Forgot to mention that I also read my own book, The Cranky Crone’s Guide to Life and Other Difficulties, for final edits before I sent the finished manuscript off to my Llewellyn editor. Huzzah!
But I’m really frustrated with my new publishers. They didn’t like the original title of my magical cozy (Death is in the Cards–apparently there were too many other books with the same title, so I get it). Or any of my alternative suggestions. Sigh. And they’re insisting that it have to word “tarot” in it, but didn’t like either of my suggestions that included it (The Tarot Dealt Death, and Tarot and Trouble). Here’s what I come up with. I hate them all, but let me know if you like any better than others, or if you have ideas I didn’t come up with. Thanks in advance!
Tarot Tells a Tale
Tarot Takes a Turn
Tarot Talks Trash (the dead body was found in a dumpster)
Tarot Turns the Tables
Tarot Turns Deadly
Tarot and Treachery
Tarot Spells Death??
Sending sympathy—titles are so hard for me! And I liked Tarot and Trouble, which doesn’t help.
I have no idea what would fit your book best, but throwing a few ideas out there in case one sparks something:
Trouble, Trash, and Tarot
The Tarot Files
Tarot Me a Rope
(only if there’s a romantic element) You Had Me at Tarot
Best of luck finding something perfect!
Tarot tales ? Tarot tells a tale ? Tarot foretold death ? A death tarot foretold ?
I’ve been reading Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series very slowly, about one a year. In part because they are sometimes very dark and always totally absorbing. I loved all the Gaslight mysteries by Victoria Thompson, but I consumed them mostly as they came out. Percy Jackson and Murderbot, I can read one after another because there’s so much going on and so many names to remember. Mostly, though, I agree that sometimes binging on a series can be like overeating. Too much is too much.
This week I’m reading Georgette Heyer’s Talisman Ring and loving the overly romantic Eustacie and Ludovic and the rather adult Tristram and Sarah. Very funny. Last week I began a long trip through Rutherford’s Sarum. I’m up to the end of Roman times in Britain now. It’s educating to see places I’ve visited through a concentrated view of history, especially the neolithic period. Recently there was a PBS show about a dig that unearthed spear heads and mastadon bones in the same area.
Oh, yeah. The Talisman Ring is a blast, probably one of her best novels.
I love that book.
I’ve been slowly reading Louise Penny’s series, too. I started about 6 or 7 years ago, and I just finished THE MADNESS OF CROWDS. I just have a few more to go.
Louise Penny’s Gamache books are on my re-read list–but only the first 10 in the series. Though I have read all but the last few, the series for me just was enough by book 10. The fact that the original narrator only did the first 10 books is also a factor, as I really enjoy his voice.
I usually take a break from an author after a while, but am breaking my rule with my Catherine Cloud binge. I finished the AO3 stories, reread Love and Other Inconveniences, which it turned out I already had, though I must have read it some years ago. I’m now on to Caught Off Guard, which I had to buy, and I daresay I’ll also buy Call It Home. Not really sure why they’re so addictive, but I’m obviously hooked – even though I’m still not into sports.
Catherine Cloud is a good one to break your rule on.
I like novellas. Two of my favorite series consist mostly of novellas: Murderbot and Penric & Desdemona.
Reading-wise, it’s been re-reads all last week, but I have another book-related news to convey. I live in Vancouver, Canada. Of course, I’m an avid reader, as everyone here is, and in the years past, I frequented several second-hand bookstores in our city. Unfortunately, in the last few years, most of them closed. There are still one or two left, but it is not enough for a city with the estimated population of 3 million. Now, I buy the majority of my books online, half of them in digital format. I thought everyone does that nowadays.
Then, the last weekend, the Vancouver Public Library announced a 5-day used book sale. I decided to check it out – I wanted to spend some time surrounded by old books and maybe buy one or two – and I met with a shock. The lineup to get into the sales room was about 3 or 4 persons deep and a few hundred meters long, at least. It spilled out of the library building and curled up around the corner. I didn’t see the end of the line, so I can’t estimate how many people stood in that line, but I think probably a couple thousand. I didn’t stand in that line; I’m too old to stand in line for hours. The only lineup I’ve seen that would even compare would be a lineup to pass an airport security. In some larger airports.
Now, I can tell with absolute certainty: Vancouver needs more second-hand bookstores. More than one. Most of the people in that monstrous line were young or young-ish. And they all wanted to visit a store that sold cheap used books. Paper books. I wanted that too. Maybe the library would open its own second-hand bookshop to operate year-around? Judging by that line, it would definitely be a success. One could hope.
The library system of Montgomery County MD has or had such a bookstore. I used to pass it when driving a certain route, but usually when it was closed; I don’t live particularly close. My local library in another county, however, mostly just sells the discards and the book donations it has received to an online bookseller and uses the money, although in the past they sometimes held small sales for the public. I think my town still has one brick and mortar used book store, although I haven’t visited in a while.
The MoCo one is still there. I actually need to drop off several boxes of books.
I use Alibris to buy paper used books.
Wow, Olga, there’s obvs a need for more used book stores in Vancouver!!
Our public libraries sll have a bookshelf eith oldish books and donated ones. They only accept donations of recent books in good condition. Those are sold for 1 Euro each (you just grab one and put a coin in a box).
There’re also a couple of open libraries/Bücherschränke: everyone can donate whatever books they want to set free. The one in our neighbourhood is at the “Anger”, a tiny park next to the bakery/ice cream shop and has a bench next to the bookshelf (protected against the weather).
There’s even an open reading area with such shelves in our local mall that also has a bookstore.
And the big bookstores re-buy books from customers – I guess a good way to keep customers connected.
Considering this, it’s understandable that we don’t have many used bookstores either.
Our library system has a used book store at the airport! The Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport features SkyLib, a cozy, 24/7 honor-system used bookstore run by the library and Friends of the Library. I love getting to the airport early just to browse the books and I often pick up a few to take with me. I always make sure I have some cash with me to pay for the books.
My local library has its own little bookstore called Twice Sold Tales just outside the main library doors. Culled library books and donated books are sold for 50 cents to a dollar. They occasionally have sales when the number of books overwhelm the shelf space. I love browsing for titles I’ve missed or would like to take a chance on. Proceeds go to support the library. Plus, they sell movies, music, and audiobooks, too.
How does Vancouver have so few used bookstores? Winnipeg has more than that, and we are smaller. I’m lucky, because there is one in walking distance from my home. Also, a library.
I’m rereading Shadowheart (T Kingfisher), because I’d forgotten what it was about, and the sequel, Daggerbound just came out. I remember Shadowheart as being primarily fantasy, romance secondarily, more like the mix in the Saints of Steel books, but it’s actually more romance-heavy than I prefer. Obviously, other readers preferences here will differ, and there’s lots of fun banter.
I never reread my published books (it makes me crazy because I want to “improve” them with skills/ideas I’ve developed since writing them), but the first book I ever published, the first of the Helen Binney series, is free through tomorrow if anyone here missed it during prior sales. https://www.amazon.com/Dose-Death-Helen-Binney-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B08Y82MXVW/ It’s a not-too-long series (6 novels, I think), and I occasionally add a novella whenever I come up with a premise that’s not quite enough for a full novel.
I’m starting Daggerbound tomorrow morning!
Swordheart?
Sorry, yes, Swordheart. Not sure where I came up with Shadowheart!
Laura Kinsale?
Oh yeah, that’s one of her titles. That’s an author I read and found fascinating and have no desire to reread but her books all live in my head. Judith Ivory is another.
Curious which authors are like that for others here.
Thanks! I just got your book.
I loved Swordheart, but read it so long ago that I need to reread before I read Daggerbound. That was my intro to Kingfisher. I kind of dip back in every now and then, as long as it doesn’t look too much horror-ish, but I haven’t felt the need to reread most of the books I’ve read by her. I don’t know why, because I’ve already liked them.
Maybe – back on topic- because most aren’t series.
I finished The Art Spy. It turns out to be really about what she did to keep records about the Nazis stealing the art in WW 2 and almost nothing about the art recovery using her records.
So it was only half of a fascinating story.
Finished the Eight days of Diana Wynne Jones podcast.
I read Daggerbound, which was a great follow-up to Swordheart. I really love this whole world Kingfisher has created, particularly the Temple of the White Rat, and the gnoles. And because one book wasn’t enough, I am now rereading The Clocktaur Wars. I’ve finished The Clockwork Boys and am halfway through The Wonder Engine. Apparently these two books were pretty much written as one, but it got too long.
I loved Daggerbound (and the world of the White Rat) too!
Daggerbound is next for me once I finish Anna and Carter and Nadine. There’s still at least one more book, and I’m betting I’ll cave and read it before then because I loved Swordheart.
Swordheart was SO GOOD! As was Daggerbound. And it was fun going back to read The Clockwork Boys afterwards, and seeing what a prat Learned Edmund (protag of Daggerbound) was at 19.
Nobody Told Me that Thriftshops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms by Lindsey Devin. Paranormal Romance. She’s an intern at a law firm trying to get noticed so she’ll be hired for one of the two available junior associate positions (there are 6 interns). He is the heir to a dragon shifter clan, also a wolf clan (he’s mixed race but shifts into a dragon), hiring her law firm to reclaim lost family heirlooms now possessed by other people/museums. When she accidentally buys one of them at a thrift shop. Her price for returning it is she wants in on the case. Hijinks ensue. She also has adopted a retired military dog, Max, who is absolutely fabulous. If you like paranormal romance it’s a fun read.
Sounds fun Gary, thanks!
Gary, I just went to look this up. The author profile on Amazon says:
“Lindsey Devin is proof that two writers sharing one pen name can accomplish far more than either could alone, especially when the alternative is paying to market two separate author brands. The money saved is immediately invested in overflowing bookshelves, excessively pampered pets, and caffeine in quantities that would concern a medical professional.
Their publisher handles the marketing while they stay happily hidden behind keyboards, writing the stories instead of talking about them. It seems to be working, judging by the occasional AI scammer who decides the fastest route to becoming an author is stealing their books instead of writing their own.”
It sounds like there is a story here. Anyone know what it is?
I downloaded it, but haven’t read far yet.
I read “No Man’s Land” by Richard K. Morgan in which Duncan Silver – a survivor of the Great War – makes a living by rescuing people from the Huldu – a fae-like people who popped up during the aftermath of the Great War along with a massive and mysterious Forest – which has nearly destroyed human civilization. Apparently, the Forest can only be destroyed by magic and humans don’t have much magic. I love Richard Morgan’s stories, they tend to be very interesting to me. Duncan Silver has a lot of rage and anger for good reason – which helps him to survive the Forest and the Huldu.
I re-read “To Say Nothing of the Dog” by Connie Willis which is a hilarious time-travel story where Oxford graduates in a University time-travelling program try to fend off demands from the overbearing Lady Schrapnell while trying to figure out why time travel is operating so weirdly.
I read Barbara Hambly’s series “Silver Screen Historical Mysteries” which is set during pre-talking movies in Hollywood and features a widow (Emma Blackstone) and her sister-in-law who is a fictional silent screen star (Kitty). Murders abound in the series and Emma, Kitty and assorted friends, poke around to find out what’s going on, while navigating corrupt cops, bootleggers and the Hollywood bigshots. I like it and the mysteries tend to keep me guessing.
I’m currently reading “Daggerbound” – the second in the Swordheart series by T. Kingfisher. I really hope we get the 3rd one soon.
Love “To Say Nothing of the Dog” – its so much lighter than Willis’ other time travel books.
The Richard K. Morgan book sounds intriguing, but is the Forest framed as the enemy? I really don’t want to read about people destroying a Forest, even a dark and dangerous one, far too triggering given IRL happenings!
Connie Willis is a treasure. I love “Take a Look at the Five and Ten” and The Road to Roswell and Crosstalk and so many more of hers.
Just now finishing Tell Me Lies yet again. I LOVE Maddie’s internal monologue of sarcastic remarks (especially those re her kind but gossipy and disaster-predicting mother), and I respect and admire Maddie being polite to her mother on the surface. No one does banter like Jenny, even when it’s internal!
Currently reading “Daggerbound”.
I like both novels and novellas. I think novellas are great as part of a series for fleshing out characters’ stories. (“Red Rain” comes to mind.)
I’ve been bingeing “The Apothecary Diaries.” Viz is releasing a new version of the manga. It sounded cute so I read the first book via NetGalley. I was so hooked I googled it and found that there was anime, manga, and “light novels” all already out and available. I watched the first season of the anime on Netflix – 24 episodes ~20 min long each. In December when I’m on holiday break, I may sign up for CrunchyRoll’s 7 day free trial to binge seasons 2 & 3. Next I read books 1-14 except #2 as it wasn’t in my library when I checked the series out. (I fear it has been lost.) A few of the days, I read as many as 4 books in a day. I think I read all 13 graphic novels within 4 days. And while this is a series, since it is manga, each book is more like a chapter or two in the story, so I don’t think it counts quite the same a regular novel. I probably will read 3-6 books by the same author in a row if I’m in love with the series or author before moving on to someone or some other genre.
As for The Apothecary Diaries, it takes place in a blend of feudal Japan/China. Maomao was raised in the pleasure district by her Pa, who’s an apothecary. She’s picked up quite a bit of knowledge from him. She’s 17 years old and gets kidnapped and sold to the palace. She starts off as a laundry maid but when she overhears an argument between 2 of the emperor’s top consorts – both of them have recently had given birth and the babies are ill – she quickly recognizes what’s killing the babies and leaves notes for each consort. One follows the instructions and her child lives, while the other child perishes. Master Jingshi finds her and ends up promoting her. He is so gorgeous that he sparkles and people practically faint around him. Maomao is so annoyed with him that she’s immune. This makes him fascinated with her. There relationship is so much fun! She continues to solve mysteries with her knowledge of medicine and eventually puts together the larger picture. I LOVE this story. I now have the first “light novel” checked out. It has been a treasure for escaping reality.
Two very different new authors and some re-reads.
I’ve been searching the GBT for new authors, and this time found two very different ones.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman reminded me of the old SF Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams which I read an awful lot of years ago. Dystopian dark humor, and a tale driven almost entirely by action with very little character, which normally isn’t what I prefer, but I liked the book and intend to read the next ones.
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is a very good tale about a boy inheriting an Elven throne he isn’t in anyway prepared for. Good character development, and a good story arc, but unfortunately the author chose to use a homemade – and quite complicated – language for names, places and certain items. This didn’t bother me in Tolkien’s books, but having to stop reading and search a not very good appendix for an explanation up to five times per page, repeatedly threw me out of a story I would otherwise have enjoyed very much. I remember reading the novel Melusine written by the same author but under another name but didn’t like it. All in all I’ll not be trying this author again, despite liking The Goblin Emperor.
The rest of the week I stuck to re-reading the first Hidden Legacy trilogy by Ilona Andrews. A bit too violent but with a world build complex enough and interesting enough to stand up to any number of re-reads. The same is true for the Covenants series by Lorna Freeman, which she unfortunately never finished. Still, I might re-read the three books she did write next.
You have to read the Goblin Emperor several times before you can get round the unnecessarily complicated naming system but the other 3 books in the same world about a minor character, Thara Celehar, the witness for the dead are really good too if not quite in the same class.
Thank you. They are at the local library, so I’ll give it a go.
The audiobook version of The Goblin Emperor helped a lot for me. Love, love love the story, but it took me several reads on my own to understand the titles for miss and mr, lady and lord, plus the fact that female names in that setting often end in o sounds where male names end in a, which is the opposite of what we are used to with Latin based language a lot of the time.
Anyway, the narrator does a great job and the different voices he uses helped me recognize the characters with their names.
The Melusine series is more geared towards horror, I hear and was originally published under a different pen name for that reason. I haven’t attempted them yet. I read Addison’s Sherlock Holmes retelling, and didn’t hate it but it also didn’t really stick with me. The Goblin Emperor really is her masterwork, although I liked Celehar. More mystery based. I have mixed feelings about the end of the series, but not enough to put me off rereading them.
I read all the Sarah Monette books and yes they were dark and geared toward horror. Definitely not on my re-read list but they stuck with me.
They stuck with me too. I think I read them twice but haven’t revisited them in the last ten years. My recollection is dark but worth it. I remember really liking the last book where they go off to another kingdom where they could heal from their trauma rather than living in the pain.
I got irritated with fantasy authors who carry the convention of masculine names in O and feminine names in A over to languages that supposedly are unrelated to Spanish, Italian, etc. On the other hand, just switching the pattern is liable to confuse the reader for no gain.
Has anyone read “Tentacles & Triathlons” by Ashley Bennett? It looked kinda fun in the bookshop but I’m wondering whether to spend the money on a new author so …
I read it and was underwhelmed. It had promise and good parts but didn’t quite gel for me. Light and fluffy, short. Not enough plot past will they or won’t they… Kind of mid range for everything, if I remember correctly. I finished it, I didn’t hate it, but I also won’t read it again or seek out that author. Maybe try borrowing it from a library or other service first?
CM Nascosta (yes, I know I bring her up a lot) is much better if you are looking for monster romance. She has a lot of social commentary and really diverse characters. She doesn’t do m/m though, if that is what you are looking for and is pretty sex-forward in her books. I’m also eyeballing a series by Kathryn Moon. I read some of her short stories and liked them, but again, not m/m.
I also read it and had exactly the same assessment as Lupe. Too fluffy. Try Nascosta indeed.
I’m trying to think of a m/m contemporary monster romance author I would recommend, and am coming up blank. I know I have downloaded and favorited lots, read some, but nothing stuck. I have a couple of alien stories that kind of have the same vibe? I really need Charlie Adhara to write more. sigh.
Yuri, if you haven’t tried Adhara, Tammy and I both really like her werewolf/human m/m two guys falling in love and solving mysteries books. Not the light and fluffy vibe though.
Thanks Tammy as well. I really liked Adhara, and I’ve read Ruby Dixon.
I think part of the issue is mostly I read from libraries and my libraries are very low on monster romance content! Plenty of shape-shifters, but monster not much, and the wave of smut inspired by 50 Shades has pretty much washed out of their collections by now (although I snaffled quite a bit from their sale trolley on the way out!).
Thanks Lupe, good to know. You have saved my mountainous tbr from growing too high 🙂
I read pretty much everything so m/f is all good. I’ve read Morning Glory Milking Farm and liked it quite a lot. I keep meaning to try more but haven’t quite made it as yet.
I filled out a “recommendations, please” form at my library, and read _Mad Mabel_ by Sally Hepworth as a result. I loved the voice – a cranky 81yr old woman who swears more than she smiles. The story is hers, now and then, alternating timelines. I have say it’s not as light as I was hoping it would be, considering how much I loved the “now” scenes. I believe it’s my first book from this author, and I’m not sure I’ll go find others.
I went and reread “What the Lady Wants” – I have it in paperback, of course, but I grabbed an ecopy from the library because I needed some Mitch and Mae, and kindles are easier for me to read in the evenings.
I completely agree about the longer series – my example would be the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I’m good with one or two, but if I start reading them back to back, the main character’s self-sacrifice starts to annoy me to no end.
Smaller series – Murderbot (with the novellas) or Ancillary/Imperial Radch books 1-3 – I will dive back into happily and consume all at once. Oh, and Clockwork Boys/Wonder Engine. Man alive, I just love the adventure books with your ragtag teams trying their best.
I like to alternate smaller books too, given I don’t want to burn out on the author/characters/style. I’m currently working my way through:
– Piper Harris mysteries
– Daisy Dalrymple mysteries (another library recommendation)
– Time Police
I love knowing there’s almost always another book out there with characters I want to follow.
And thank you VERY much to all who reread my stuff. That’s a huge compliment and I’m grateful.
Fairly sure everyone here does.
Often.
Speaking of rereading, Fast Women by Jenny and two Llewellyn-published books by Deborah Blake have appeared as new to KU. And one of Bob’s Area 51 books.
A good series is addictive, but burnout is why I try not to binge. I lose the wonder and get spoiled. So yeah, I agree with spacing them out with something else. But it’s hard sometimes.
Actually, I just read Shane and Phoebe and the Assassins! I really enjoyed it.