imyril seeks magic and mayhem in 2017

Happy new year! I am still mulling my goals for the year (heck, I'm still trying to decide what my first read will be), but getting a thread set up ready to go.

Total read: 31 / 60
Game of Books score: 151

Jan (9 | 2/6/1)
Resistance (Divided Elements) - Mikhaeyla Kopievsky* (ARC)
The Drowning Eyes - Emily Foster* (OTS)
Gilded Cage (Dark Gifts) - Vic James* (ARC)
A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula Le Guin
The Edge of the Abyss - Emily Skrutskie (ARC)
A Darker Shade of Magic - V E Schwab* (OTS)
The Moor's Account - Laila Lalami* (OTS)
Sunbolt - Intisar Khanani (OTS)
Tongues of Serpents - Naomi Novik (OTS)

Feb (5 | 2/2/1)
Wintersong - S Jae-Jones* (ARC)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K Dick*
Crucible of Gold - Naomi Novik (OTS)
A Gathering of Shadows - V E Schwab
The Book of Etta - Meg Elison (ARC)

Mar (6 | 1/3/2)
I am Legend - Richard Matheson
Up the Walls of the World - James Tiptree, Jr* (OTS)
Blood of Tyrants - Naomi Novik
The House of Binding Thorns - Aliette de Bodard (ARC)
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk (OTS)
Proof of Concept - Gwyneth Jones* (ARC)

Apr (7 | -/3/4)
Surface Detail - Iain M Banks
A Conjuring of Light - V E Schwab (OTS)
League of Dragons - Naomi Novik
The Djinn Falls in Love - ed. by Mahvesh Murad (ARC)
The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula Le Guin
Crossroads of Canopy - Thoraiya Dyer* (ARC) | abandoned
Spellslinger - Sebastien de Castell* (ARC)
Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch

May (4 | -/4/-)
Lock In - John Scalzi (OTS)
Rotherweird - Andrew Caldecott* (ARC)
A Natural History of Dragons - Marie Brennan* (OTS)
Extracurricular Activities - Yoon Ha Lee (OTS)

Currently reading:
Moon Over Soho - Ben Aaronovitch
Shattered Minds - Laura Lam (ARC)
Raven Stratagem - Yoon Ha Lee (ARC) | on hold
The Hydrogen Sonata - Iain M Banks (OTS) | on hold

Goals:
Diversiverse: 5 / 12 (17/20%)
SFF classics: 2 / 12 (rereads don't count)
Non-SFF: 2 / 12
Non-fiction: 0 / 6
Off the shelf: 10 / 36
Books bought: don't ask. Intentions. The road to full shelves is paved with them, right?

Random stats:
Male / female / trans or non-binary authors: 8 (28%) / 20 (69%) / 0 (%) + 1 collaboration
New-to-me authors: 11 (38%)
Bite-sized books: 4 (14%)
Review copies: 10 (34%)

Abandoned: 1

Happy new year! *finds herself a quiet corner to lurk in*

Happy new year and happy reading!

An enthusiastic, magical happy new year to you!

Happy new year! May it be filled with many good books!

Wishing you many hours of happy reading of interesting facts, fascinating worlds and general all round enjoyment in the year to come.

Looking forward to following along again this year!

Make yourselves comfy! I'll just be a minute while I load my book bullets - I mean, get the cheese out.

(As if any of us are fooled by that whole cheese platter thing...) But at least you know we're listening!

Lurking along! Happy new year! Burp.. Darn PGGBs.

Happy new year! Hope it's full of excellent reads! :)

Good reading!

Cheese-scented book bullets. Truly diabolical.

>14 Marissa_Doyle: also terribly confusing in the kitchen. Best not put under the grill.

>9 imyril: What kind of cheese? ^-~

Okay, I have marshalled some goals to get me started! I'm going to stick with a conservative 60 books as a target, and adjust if I do well. However, I'm adding lots more sub-goals this year - my TBR is getting unwieldy, so it needs some love (and I need some structure to give me the courage to tackle it!) I'm going to have another tilt at SF classics and see if I can stick with it longer than I did last year, as well as making an effort to read some of my non-SF and non-fiction books this year.

I shall try very hard not to acquire too many books this year, so I was wondering if there was some sort of community service I could offer to honour my Thingaversary? ;)

>16 dovelynnwriter: Goat's cheese, parmesan, smoked cheddar and a nice sharp Danish blue. With crackers. Just to get us started - I'm sure there's something smelly back here if I go rummaging.

>18 imyril: oooh, parmesan. With crackers!

Good luck on your reading goals! *waves pompoms*

Good luck with your reading goals. Even though I love SFF, I sometimes have a hard time with the classics too. Maybe I should try that as a goal one of these years.

Maybe donate books for your Thingaversary in an equal amount to make room for your obligatory Thingaversary buys? :)

I'm willing to bet there are many selfless types in the GD who would gladly take on the burden of acquiring Thingaversary books in your stead. We should ask the Enforcers about it.

>17 imyril: Regardless of the Enforcers, I'm claiming cataloguing @Railwaysoc's library as my Thingaversary community service for 2016 and 2017. Score so far: 649 and counting (and over 600 items of common knowledge, almost 500 covers uploaded and almost 50 author photos added).

I'm looking forward to following your reading in 2017, though I'm going to hide here in the corner to try and avoid the book bullets! Your aim is far too good!

>23 Sakerfalcon: fair warning: I'm about to start A Darker Shade of Magic, which looks fabulous :)

Love your title. Best of luck with your goals! The categories are a great idea.

I'll be quite un-mysteriously lurking here and cheering you on. My family makes a marvelous cheddar and ale soup in the winter. Perhaps I could bring some to share?

>25 thehawkseye: That sounds like a recipe that would be worth having! OTOH, if a beef bullet is messy, just imagine the aftermath of a soup bomb ;)

I'll be following along. :)

Happy New Year! :o) I'll be dropping by, as always.

>26 hfglen: Soup bombs are reserved for book free spaces only. Imagine the library lady catching that sort of behaviour *dies* If you (or anyone) wants the recipe I'd be happy to pm it to you... provided I can find it and it's not covered in melted cheese :)

Hi, @imyril. I see lots of interesting things in your thread already; cheese; ideas of trading Thingaversary quotas (reminds me of the Milk Quota system and the mechanism for countries buying carbon credits); beef bullets (one of which hit me yesterday); soup bombs; community service; cheese-scented book bullets.

Have a great 2017.

>25 thehawkseye: oooh cheddar and ale soup sounds very intriguing!

>26 hfglen: No food fights near the books. However, one of the advantages of the Green Dragon existing in the northern and southern hemisphere simultaneously is that it can be too cold and not too cold to take beef bullets and soup bombs outside.

>30 pgmcc: it did occur to me that I usually acknowledge my end of year sales spree as Thingaversary dues. So I may have it covered, although unlike last year I haven't done such a sterling job of buying up anthologies to earn bonus points ;)

>31 imyril: Anthologies for bonus points indeed. You make anthologies sound like indulgences. Buy enough of those and you can commit as many sins as you want.
:-)

>32 pgmcc: I never did make a good Methodist ;)

>33 imyril: No one ever expects the Inquisition!

I'm off to a slow start this year, but I've finished Resistance (Divided Elements) - which falls firmly into the category of Absolutely Fine (subcategory Lots of People May Love This More Than I Do).

In an unspecified future, the Cooperative of Otpor survives in the Wasteland, a happy, productive utopia that designs and conditions its citizens for an optimal, productive society.

Sound dystopic to you?

Damn straight.

This is as narrow as Brave New World, with its citizens even less capable of independent thought - but from time to time someone manages to stray outside their conditioning and introduce dissident ideas and encourage unorthodox behaviour.

It twists the (YA) dystopian trope of fighting the system - the protagonist, Anaiya, is an elite Peacekeeper defending the status quo, who undergoes reconditioning to go undercover and expose a Resistance movement. The result is an unexpected focus on social programming rather than good and evil. There are no characters here who are villains by choice, just people who are following a script they can't question. It's a timely message packaged in a competent novel, but it never quite set my world on fire, so I'm ambivalent about continuing with the sequels. However, it came packaged with a book on cocktails, which I'm certainly curious to read ;)

I think this would be more successful pitched as a YA novel (not how it's currently marketed), but I'm not sure how that gels with the amount of time Anaiya spends drinking heavily in bars...

>35 imyril: YA because the writing is simplistic? Or the story line? Or both?
MMMM Is that a book with cocktail recipes or a history of cocktails?

That reminds me I still need to read A History of the World in Six Glasses...

>36 clamairy: It's all fairly linear, but it's also the emotional tenor of it - although Anaiya is in her mid-20s, her conditioning means that she's spent her life sexually active, but not emotional or empathetic (but think psychopathic, not autistic). So when she's re-conditioned to align to Air and acquires a bucket of emotional baggage, her inexperience with it means her reactions feel adolescent. She's literally all at sea, crushing and angsting with the best.

It's entertaining enough though - I'd recommend it to others who were looking for something more Hunger Games and less Atwood.

The cocktail book is sort of awesome :) It is a free download from the publisher's website and includes the set-up and a few excerpts from the novel, interspersed with recipes for equivalent cocktails to the ones drunk by our heroine and little drawings of each one. They're not all to my taste, but some of them sound pretty good!

*dives for cover from the book bullet* uh, I may not have moved quickly enough to dodge that one, it sounds fascinating...

>37 imyril: Ooops, and that was aimed at myself! LOLOL

I have been industrious this weekend, sorting out a number of blog posts, completing various households chores and admin tasks, and going for a run. So I think I get to spend the rest of Sunday afternoon (and evening, unless my beloved insists on watching Sherlock) doing nothing but read until I fall asleep. Getting back into the habit of running is proving as tiring as usual, so there's a fairly high risk of falling asleep, but Lila Bard of A Darker Shade of Magic may be intriguing enough to keep my eyes open.

That sounds like an excellent plan!

It's been a good reading week - I made a start on A Darker Shade of Magic (oh my word I love Lila Bard) and Tongues of Serpents (actual pantomime hissing at the page on the reappearance of a certain young officer) for read-alongs, then settled in to devour The Drowning Eyes (a novella) and Gilded Cage (not a novella, but fairly short).

The Drowning Eyes - Emily Foster
Absurdly good - showing that it's perfectly possible to tell an epic fantasy tale in a really confined format if you're just selective with your character and world-building. Like Witches of Lychford, Emily Foster makes every sentence count without it feeling laboured as her grumpy aging captain Tazir (a woman! but she's definitely too old for this shit) takes on a young passenger who is more than she seems as foreign marauders sail in. Magic, superstition and high drama. Full review.

Gilded Cage - Vic James
I was handed an excerpt of this at Nine Worlds last summer, and it didn't grab me; but after seeing positive reviews from people I trust, I got hold of a copy - and I'm glad I did as I've galloped through it in about 3 days. Gilded Cage takes lots of familiar concepts and mushes them together to build a dystopian modern-day Britain where class is defined by magic. You have it and are Equal, or you don't - and you're not. Those without Skill are obliged to surrender ten years in slavery in what are effectively Victorian workhouses with modern machinery or in service at one of the Downton-a-like estates of the Equals (glittering, self-absorbed and often malicious - sometimes intentionally). In spite of its teen protagonists and the marketing, this didn't feel like YA to me and I loved it for all the wrong reasons (the secondary characters are far more interesting than the protagonists; thankfully this is true of their allies as well as their antagonists or I could have ended up rooting for the wrong people). Full review

...in other news, we went to see La La Land last night, which is delightful and not quite what I expected. I'll say little beyond it's a very good watch, the tunes are catchy, and while there are intermittent song and dance numbers they are intermittent. But to everyone saying this is an homage to Hollywood, I disagree. This is at least as much driven by jazz, and those with unarmoured hearts would do well to take a hanky.

...and I should probably admit that yesterday was my Thingaversary, although it slipped my attention as Friday the Thirteenth is also our anniversary (we got together in July, but as it was a Friday the Thirteenth we observe all Friday the Thirteenths).

I recalled just in time that I had wisely got a lot of my Thingaversary dues sorted in advance with a big spree in the sale at the end of the year (before my 'ye gods no more stop already' constraints on book buying kicked in):

Nod - Adrian Barnes - an insomniac apocalypse
New Pompeii - Daniel Godfrey - a corporate thriller with Romans and time travel(!)
Dragon Hunters - Marc Turner - sea dragons and magical politics
Sunbolt - Intisar Khanani - a fantasy novella
Gibbon's Decline and Fall - Sheri Tepper - for my classic SF pile
A Darker Shade of Magic - V E Schwab - a fantasy multiverse of alternate Londons
The Girl in the Road - Monica Byrne - speculative fiction
Sunset Mantle - Alter Reiss - a fantasy novella and a GD book bullet I'm certain
Ancillary Sword - Ann Leckie - altho I shall sit on this until I can pick up book 3
Up the Walls of the World - James Tiptree, Jr - for my classic SF pile

...I'm aware this leaves me short, so let me quickly assure you I'm sorting out my deficit! I shall be picking up A Gathering of Shadows and Crucible of Gold to round out my dozen; while I have also been acquiring ARCs hand over fist, I don't consider them part of my tally.

Oh dear--I think I took a hit with Gilded Cage...dystopian's not usually my cuppa but that sounds good.

>44 Marissa_Doyle: well it's more Fight the Evil Overlords fantasy in feeling if that helps - magic stops it feeling like a dystopian novel

>41 imyril: Well, The Drowning Eyes is now added to my ever expanding wishlist. Your comment caught my interest, then the stunning cover sealed the deal.

Edit: Well, it was only 1.24$ on Amazon.com now, so not on my wishlist anymore, but on my Kindle.

>46 LunaticDruid: that cover. I think $1.24 is well spent just on the art, but thankfully the story is great too :)

>43 imyril: It's probably a good idea to sit on Ancillary Sword until you can pick up the third book as well. I recall it didn't stand on its own as well as the first book.

>48 dovelynnwriter: I'd second this! I read them as they came out and I think they would be best read back to back.

>48 dovelynnwriter: >49 sandstone78: I'm in no rush. Plenty to keep me busy until I find a copy of Ancillary Mercy ;)

>50 imyril: When you do, I hope you'll enjoy them both! ^_^ And until then, may you enjoy the other books you're reading!

>51 dovelynnwriter: I'm off to a pretty good start so far this year :D

This week, I have cheerfully romped through The Edge of the Abyss, sequel to last year's lesbian pirate / kaiju adventure The Abyss Surrounds Us. It's YA - or maybe NA - as all hell (major uptick in sex and swearing in the sequel), but knowing this going in meant I didn't spend time getting frustrated by the first person present narrative and romantic angst - I was braced for it and could enjoy the action.

Because The Edge of Abyss goes all out for go big or go home. This is sea battletastic - more fights and more scale, from small boats and rocket launchers against one sea monster to a no-holds-barred finale with all the monsters and all the pirates. Literally.

Why I like it: it's stupidly cinematic, and Cas Leung is a great heroine - spiky, conflicted, lesbian, and determined - but I'm at least as fond of pirate captain Santa Elena. She's basically Zamira Drakasha in a speculative near-future (and that's a face-off I'd break my fan-fiction-free diet for), although we get fewer fabulous coat-swishing moments and a lot more sight of the ruthless manner in which she manipulates her trainees.

There's also two themes woven through it that I really liked: nobody stands alone (ecosystems are bigger than states, and we need to put aside our differences to save them) and everybody has a choice (with side helpings - largely left on the table undigested - of intergenerational conflict and privilege, which I would like to have seen explored more in retrospect, although at the time I was distracted by the sea monsters).

>53 imyril: I was following you quite well until I hit the word Kaiju... Then my brain shorted out. Seriously?

>54 clamairy: well, genetically engineered sea monsters (because clearly that's the best way to take down pirate ships in the future. Um. Well, anyway, yay sea monsters?)

>55 imyril: Ah, so not a giant robot in hot pants, at least. :o)

I have been much distracted by work and the real world the past couple of weeks (neither of which is doing me much good, frankly, so it's lovely to dive into The Green Dragon for a breather). After a year of trying to get a plan together, it looks like we have a green light to go ahead and Do The Thing, so I shall be kept rather busy until (possibly next) summer I suspect! I'm certain this is why two other interesting conversations have popped up. It's definitely not commitment issues; just like buses - interesting jobs come in threes, apparently.

As do books, delightfully (no wait, I think these are in at least fours - it was a good run through January)! After romping through The Edge of the Abyss (full review), I picked up A Darker Shade of Magic, which I'd avoided previously on the vague preconception it was YA. It's not, it's great and I gasped and giggled from start to finish. London exists in multiple parallel worlds, although only rare magicians can cross between them and it's strictly forbidden to take things from one to another. The adopted son of the king of Red London is a well-practiced smuggler, so inevitably this goes wrong for him. I adored the outrageous over-the-top villainy of the Dane twins of White London and was swept off my feet by spiky, unreliable, self-interested Lila Bard, the Grey London street thief with a heart of polished brass and good taste in well-tailored coats. I never really warmed to protagonist Kel, but Lila soon stole the limelight from him anyway, after which I got on just fine.

I followed it up with The Moor's Account, my non-SFF read for the month, which is a retelling of an early Spanish expedition to Florida. We have one historical account from the 4 who men survived, including a Moroccan slave - this is his version (needless to say he wasn't consulted in the 'official' Spanish record). There's not really any surprises here - colonial militants are hypocritical, immoral and violent, and our narrator is cut from much better cloth - but it's a fascinating glimpse into a bit of history I have never studied and I enjoyed the implications around reliability of historical narratives. Thankfully, Laila Lalami is good at giving the impression of violence without going into detail, so it's not too hard going. It's a bit dry and some of it feels forced (historical records can be so inconvenient), but it was intriguing.

I read Sunbolt as a palate cleanser - another fast-paced fantasy novella that achieves surprising depth of world-building and character in spite of its length. Hitomi is a teenage orphan stranded in a foreign country, targeted for her race - but she has a bigger secret to keep: she has magical gifts. A brave do-gooder with a stubborn streak, she uses them to resist the tyrannical Archmage - until she is arrested in a raid and must survive his malice first-hand. While Sunbolt is dark and violent in places, I didn't find it overwhelmingly so - it's written as YA, and it shows - and I was grateful that it skipped angst and romance in favour of determination and a delightfully untrustworthy ally. Full review.

I also read Tongues of Serpents this month as our Temeraire read-along kicked off again. Sadly, it was a huge disappointment: even slower than usual, and unexpectedly dull given how excited I was to be heading Down Under. I felt the Aboriginal Australians were given short shrift by the narrative (sidelined in favour of the Chinese) and there was altogether too much floundering in the desert. I thought I might soften up on reflection - there's an argument to be had that Will's state of mind in particular is still badly affected by the events of the previous 2 books - but ultimately this aspect is under-played, so Serpents feels like a bridging book that would have been better left on the cutting room floor (see me making an assumption that Crucible of Gold will pick back up). I think I'm particularly bitter by comparison to the epic world-building and plot machinations of Empire of Ivory, which are still making themselves felt 2 books later (much to my delight).

I've kicked February off with Wintersong, a debut novel that has swept me off my feet and surprised me by not developing as I expected in the third act. Think Labyrinth by way of German fairytale traditions, with a steamy edge and a lot of music. Keep your fans at the ready.

>57 imyril: book bullet bullseye for A Darker Shade of Magic. And my library has it! Yay! I put it on my "for later" shelf.

>57 imyril: I think both your "Edge of the Abyss" and "Wintersong" touchstones are going to the wrong things. :( They sound like things I'd like to check out, though!

>58 catzteach: It's a good concept, and by the time it gets into full swing it's marvellous. My copy of the the sequel has just arrived at the library for pick-up. HOORAY!

>59 lohengrin: Ah, good catch - thank you, fixed.

I've seen Wintersong mentioned in a few places now. Your response to it could be the key to whether I give it a try or not.

>61 Sakerfalcon: eep. Pressure's on imyril!

>61 Sakerfalcon: >62 majkia: *dabs forehead with handkerchief*

Okay first impressions then - I finished it this morning, and my reaction is that I need to sit on it for a day or so to distil my response. It's a tale in three acts: I loved the first two, but was ambivalent about certain aspects of the third.

First up, I don't think this reads as YA, but maybe that's just because I'm a prude and don't expect YA to get so steamy - this has a few scenes that wouldn't be out of place in a bodice-ripper, although they are few (and you'd be right in guessing they're mostly in the third act). Secondly, there's subtext about sex and sexuality that I need to unpack a bit before I write a full review (and which hold me back from a 5 star rating - so yes, it's good. Very good. But it's not entirely for me).

However, I love how it plays with fairytale tropes and shamelessly channels Labyrinth in its Goblin King and Underground realm. It's beautifully written, if perhaps a little heavy-handed at the end.

As a fairy tale about love and sacrifice, I suspect mileage will depend on your responses to those two themes and the way they tend to be handled in fairy tales - and be sure to go in expecting Grimm not Disney. It may be by way of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, but the Goblin King is never one to be taken lightly.

63> I've been seeing a lot about Wintersong too and actually requested an ARC a few days back. I'd heard it was YA, and I hadn't heard it was steamy... If I do get a copy, it should at least be interesting to see what my reaction is to it.

>63 imyril: I'm sold. Just added Wintersong to my wish list.

For those with an interest, Wintersong appears to be heavily discounted in the UK Kindle store.

>64 pwaites: The sex scenes are suggestive rather than explicit, at least. I alternated between grinding my teeth and giggling. Jae-Jones is entirely too fond of her characters exploring one another's 'hills and valleys': I might have given her a pass once, but on the third or fourth repetition it was just silly :) However, steamy or silly, thankfully there aren't very many sexy scenes.

I read YA a lot and I've noticed the genre is getting steamier and more sexual.

>66 imyril: & 67 I read Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and it struck me as a children's book with some sex added to make it YA.

66> Good to know! I'll keep an eye out for that if I get it.

>63 imyril: Thank you for the initial thoughts. I did see that it was discounted on kindle and actually bought it before reading your comments, but nothing you've written has made me regret my actions. Good to have a warning about the steamy stuff and the rather silly metaphors, but as you say there aren't too many of those scenes I'm sure I'll be able to deal with it.

>63 imyril: I am intrigued by your initial impressions of Wintersong but not yet persuaded. I'll wait for your more formal review.

Where did the last two months go? It's been a bit of a blur, with 2 trips to California for work (3 weeks away in total) meaning I've felt like a bit of a yo-yo and have struggled to juggle work with physical recovery - getting tired (or jetlagged) remains the best way to cut my strings and leave me whimpering with a sore head in the corner. But it has been worth it from a project point of view, and there's more to come so I mustn't get too down on it - I can expect monthly trips from here until midsummer.

The one thing it hasn't interfered with too much is my reading, just my reviewing and socialising :)

I won't go through all the details - I've updated my reading log at the top of this thread with my star ratings, and the reviews I've caught up on are all posted to the book pages - but I will take a minute to run through the highs and lows.

I think I flailed happily about A Darker Shade of Magic on my last round-up - I'm delighted to say I enjoyed the sequel A Gathering of Shadows even more (not least because it introduced a mysterious privateer with broad appetites who was more than capable of handling Lila), and if the finale in A Conjuring of Light didn't quite hit the same high note it remained thoroughly enjoyable. These are lightweight (if not always light-hearted), entertaining romps - portal fantasy where our world (or well, Regency London) is one of the worlds accessed through the portal, rather than driving the point of view. I loved them for embracing fun and feelings over the finer details of world-building (although there's enough incidental world-building to carry it all off). | More detailed reviews of the first two.

Aliette de Bodard also gets a double thumbs-up for her latest Dominion of the Fallen novel, The House of Binding Thorns. It's nominally a stand-alone, but relies heavily on the world-building done in The House of Shattered Wings; here, the cruel House of Hawthorn and its ruthless Head, Asmodeus, take centre stage. I do love a proper villain, and Asmodeus fits the bill - he's glamorous, amoral, driven and unexpectedly loyal; we see him mostly through mistrustful eyes, leaving it wide open for us to decide whether his ends justify his means or whether the city would be better off if he comes a cropper. | Full review

Last but not least, I'll mention James Tiptree, Jr - I was blown away by Up the Walls of the World, mostly because it laughed in the face of all my preconceptions about SF classics. So many traditional tropes are up-ended here; it feels like a far more modern novel than it is. I understand it's also far more optimistic than much of the rest of her work - I'm definitely seeking upbeat in my reading, so I'll sadly hold off diving into her back catalogue for now. | Full review

Dishonourable mention goes to the second half of the Temeraire series; having loved the first five books last year, I found the last four ranging from adequate (League of Dragons) to disappointing (Tongues of Serpents, Blood of Tyrants) if not outright enraging (Crucible of Gold). I stuck with it because I adore my bookclub partners, but I'd strongly recommend that others pretend there's only 5 books. | Detailed whinging reviews.

Settling in for a holiday long weekend, so I will endeavour to do the rounds and catch up on threads!

>72 imyril: That traveling sounds exhausting! Glad it is for a good reason. Have a restful weekend. :)

>72 imyril: Thanks for the warning about the Temeraire series.

>72 imyril: Good to see you in the threads again. It sounds like you have had an exhausting but productive and interesting time.

I'm glad you're back and have still been reading amidst all the busyness. I'm looking forward to the new Aliette de Bodard.

Popping by to jump up and down excitedly about the new Sebastien de Castell book Spellslinger out next week. I haven't read de Castell before, and I was a bit sceptical about a book with a teen boy protagonist. I needn't have been. I enjoyed this immensely.

Kellen is 15, the astonishingly untalented son of the Jan'Tep's greatest mage. Struggling to cast even the simplest spells, he's the butt of jokes and bullying. And if he can't pass his mage trials before he turns 16, he'll be relegated to the Sha'Tep servant class, reliant on his family's charity if he's lucky, sent down the mines if he's not.

But Kellen is bright and resourceful; never one to back away from a fight he can't win if he believes he can think his way through it. When a nice bit of trickery - or cheating, depending on your point of view - sees him through his first trial, the stage is set for Trouble. Then he befriends a newly-arrived foreigner as the clan prince dies, and the tribe's prejudices boil over as political ambitions escalate and scapegoats are required.

It's a catalogue of disasters, with some sharp social commentary in between the escapades and some delightful secondary characters, including a fast-talking con woman, a short-tempered Dowager and a belligerent talking flying cat. Way too much fun.

>77 imyril: That does sound fun.