The Witchwood Crown 2/5
Empire of Grass 3/5
Into the Underdark 4/5

I'm not convinced these books need to be so long. My favourite plotlines included Unver's ascension to Shah, Tzoja's multiple career changes, and Morgan's treetop adventures with Reeree. And not having read the original trilogy I can totally believe Simon and Miriamele as former swashbucklers. However I did not sign up for the Nezeru/Morgan hookup, the fake deaths in books 2 and 3 happened too closely together (and to the same two characters), and the plot, though interesting, takes altogether too long to emerge. Now that it has, I'll definitely read the fourth book, because it's guaranteed to get to the point and be good. I'm a sucker for things entitled The Last X, and I'm deeply, deeply worried for the survival of the royal family. So thanks, Tad Williams, for stoking that anxiety and also for including a synopsis of the story thus far at the beginning of each book. 

Old Man's War 5/5
The Ghost Brigades 2/5
The Last Colony 3/5

John Scalzi is an incredibly expedient writer, which is generally a good thing, except when the genre works against him. The first book was fantastic: Starship Troopers, but what if they're all retirees, and the protagonist names his brain implant/personal assistant "Asshole?" I never thought I'd ever read the phrase "Activate Asshole" and am grateful to Old Man's War for bestowing that gift upon me. The second gave me a bit of whiplash, because I really missed John Perry's viewpoint and Jane Sagan was only a minor presence. The Last Colony reunites the two, but with an entirely different genre. And that's where I think he could've slowed down a little. I like a complicated political gambit as much as anyone else, but I think he could've dwelled a little bit more on the colonists in between moves. 

The Collapsing Empire 5/5
The Consuming Fire 4/5
The Last Emperox 2/5

Ditto here. I thought the Collapsing Empire did a great job laying out the premise, and coming fresh (ish) off the Expanse, I could immediately grasp the stakes at hand. Scalzi's gambits work better on a smaller scale when dealing with a prison escape, a kidnap attempt, or a bomb threat. But everything falls apart in Book 3. Did the Flow Theories end up right? Did the empire collapse neatly? And how, how, could anyone think that the emperox turning into a supercomputer is a good plot ending? It's a literal deus IN machina and feels like it undermines the entire point of the first and second books. The Expanse did this better in its last half-dozen chapters. 

Blackout 3/5
All Clear 4/5

All Clear is brilliant but I don't think the entirety of Blackout was necessary to set it up, since the first of this duology involves a lot of people trying to blend in, not disrupt the pillars of causality, and make their very important appointments. Even though, the atmosphere of WW2-era Britain was THICK. I loved seeing people from all walks of life in the war. Sir Godfrey's last conversation with Polly was the best thing I read on vacation. I didn't even mind all the fake deaths. 

Palimpsest 1/5

What the hell? 

Alright. It wasn't bad. It's poetry, good poetry. I just was not in the mood to read poetry where people fuck to enter a city of dreams. It was beautiful but also self indulgent, filled with cool stuff for the sake of being cool. And succeeding consistently, but to what end? I don't think I'm ever in the mood for that kind of book.

Uprooted 2/5

The antagonist, an entire forest, was compelling, creepy, and consistently several steps ahead of the protagonists. So I liked that. But I didn't like the main character, or the unexplained magic system, or the romance that robs the mentor character of all the mystique he had at the beginning of the book. Also, ew, the romance. Spinning Silver was ten times better than Uprooted. 

1) I participated in Inktober. I half-assed it on some of the days (particularly when I was on vacation), but here are some from last month that I was proud of. Mostly portraits, because you can't hide bad proportions when doing a portrait. 



( more pics under cut )
I'm still keeping to at least one drawing per day (even if it's a doodle) but now I'm also working on my Nanorimo project. It's a Good Omens fic where Upstairs wins (not currently pursuing either of the Tristan/Iseult crossover or Sixth Crusade ideas). I don't think it's worth 50k words, but I'll be happy to get 20k out of it. Currently, I'm about 9k words in and I have most of the plot ideas (finally) in place. 

Other Books I've Read

The Fifth Season
The Obelisk Gate
The Stone Sky


The Fifth Season was brilliant. There's an event in the middle that happens where I think, damn, I should've seen that coming. Then something similar happens AGAIN and I'd never been so happy to be blindsided. The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky didn't have that WOMP factor, the same sense of newness and progression and volatility, to carve out a trilogy-shaped niche in my heart where this story could live rent-free. Don't get me wrong, I think the story is really well executed: there are characters that objectively should be loathed, but are written tenderly all the same. The world is full of bitterness and hate and vengefulness, but also incredible resilience and love. The trilogy as a whole is worth a read and easy to respect, but difficult to love unconditionally. 4/5

Ducks
I have friends that worked in Fort Mac, though I never did myself. This is a memoir of the author's time in Fort Mac between 2005 and 2008. She does a brilliant job showing the inhumanity born of isolation, the pervasive sexism, and the brutal casualness of violence and assault. I would consider this essential reading for anyone of any gender in a male-dominated industry. The only reason that this is not a 5/5 because it's so harrowing I do not want to read it again.  4/5

The Lies of Locke Lamora
Red Seas Under Red Skies
The Republic of Thieves
 
By the end of page one, I knew I was in for a treat. By the end of the first chapter, I was completely in love. I shotgunned all three books in two days and they never stopped being propulsively fun. Characters occasionally juggle the idiot ball but I don't care. Locke is fundamentally incapable of being anything but a flashy mad genius. Everyone should have a friend like Jean Tannen. I think I'm going to buy the paperbacks, and I can't believe that it's been ten years since book 3. 5/5

Space Opera
This would've been funny if it was half as long as it actually was. I got pretty sick of the music genres that seemed to have been generated by an AI pretty quick, but I guess I was invested enough to finish. 2/5. 

Spinning Silver
There were a few POV characters with only a few chapters apiece, which I'm not sure was necessary. Executing a key midbook climax from the perspective of the youngest of these POV characters was also not a good choice. Otherwise, I was hooked from the opening chapter. I've never read a book with a moneylender as the protagonist, and her schemes are clever, and despite familiarity with all the fairy tales inspiring this story, I could not guess how it was going to end. 4/5. 

A Memory Called Empire
The protagonist's perspective as a person who wholly loves a neighbouring culture but will never be considered anything but a barbarian was a great choice, as was the Mayan-inspired worldbuilding. I wasn't moved to tears or anything by this book, but it was skillfully and carefully written platonic ideal of space mesoamerican murder mystery with memory-lineages. 4/5. 

A Desolation Called Peace. 
The highs were higher than in A Memory Called Empire. Namely Eight Antidote's tutelage, Three Seagrass's slow realization that she was being kind of racist, and Twenty Cicada's kitten. Yet I had both too much and too little of the translation process - Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" is the gold standard of this, and I think it was a disservice to give the "transformation" to a secondary character very abruptly and offscreen. 3/5.  




Started, couldn't keep going. 
Fonda Lee - Jade City (just kind of grim, but not in a fun way) 
The City We Became - N.K. Jemisin (I just don't care about New York City) 
Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon (I got a fifth of the way in, but the plot is leaving me cold)
Steven Erikson - Gardens of the Moon (What is even going on, just give me a bit of handholding or at least make it fun) 

Kieran Gillen - Die
Kieran Gillen - The Wicked + The Divine
Kieran Gillen - Once & Future
It's hard to end a series satisfactorily, and I can't say I'm 100% happy with how any of these ended. All three of these comics are stories about stories, the danger of labels and mantles, and the temptation to define yourself by a role. If I had to rank em I'd put Once & Future up top, because I love the grail mythos, because Bridgette is a badass, and because Duncan and Rose are real snacks. I found the ending a little rushed, and one character's background and evolution could've been more heavily foreshadowed. Also, I did like the comic better when it was just dipping its toes into the Otherworld, rather than being fully submerged in supernatural nonsense. Still, the good bits outweigh the mediocre so impressively that this ranks as a 4/5. 

Die probably goes in second. Stephanie Hans' art is fantastic, possibly the most beautiful I've ever seen in a comic. The ending is extremely satisfying. The issue pacing is great. I love the stable time-loop embedded in the world, and touches on TTRPG history from Kriegsspiel to Angria. But... I don't really love the characters, they're pretty fucked up and cynical, even if the story isn't. So is the world. Made it hard to get attached and keep reading at points.  3/5 

Finally, the Wicked + The Divine -  There are amazing moments, like Morrigan/Baphomet's backstory and conclusion, and Dionysius's fate. But the plot twists are ridiculous. I point to one particular prophecy which is presented in one issue, but immediately handwaved as "but it's not what you think" in the subsequent one. W+D is also not particularly thematically consistent. During the middle couple dozen issues, I lost track of the plot - like, so Persephone is a god now, so nobody is around to keep all the other gods on rails, so what is anybody going to do about it? Mope, sing, and wait for the situation to get really critical, it seems. The story gets back on track for the last dozen issues or so, but at that point the middle third had already muddled me up too much. And despite the ending being thematically appropriate, I did not enjoy the timeskip at the end, including the romance switcheroo and the auto-eulogy. 2/5
 
Cassandra Khaw - Nothing But Blackened Teeth
This was a terrible book too weighed down by the bickering of the supporting cast and shitty word choices to achieve any proper atmosphere. "Smartphones strobed to life?" - "full of absolvement for my outburst, chin tipped to a modest angle" - "made him look like a goldfish drowning on dry air." To say nothing of the ending ritual, which starts too late and ends too soon.  1/5

Kirsten Chen - Counterfeit
I was only interested in the subject matter because I'd previously enjoyed repladies drama and have missed it sorely since it went private. This story's structure is interesting and effective, as is its use (and disuse) of stereotypes, but I could've used more of the book's second POV character, and less of the first.  2/5

Martha Wells - All Systems Red
 This was fun! But of course any book where the protagonist is called "Murderbot" would be fun. I enjoyed the social awkwardness between Murderbot and their "colleagues," Murderbot's general apathy, and determination to do the bare minimum require of their job. However, the various factions and supporting characters are not so well developed. There are some sequels, which I guess I'll read too.  3/5

Tamsyn Muir - Nona the Ninth 
This book only makes sense as part of an incomplete hole. The highs are so high, notably, everything the Sixth House is involved in, Corona's plea, Crux's reappearance, Kiriona's transformation, and the Epilogue. But. There are so many questionable choices in this. Why does so little happen of long-lasting consequence happen in the first half? Why does it take an entire space ship of plot threads to land midway through to kick everything off? And why, for the love of the Emperor, was PAUL picked as a suitable name??? 4/5. 

Gods dammit what is wrong with me, I feel like a flimsy net sack absolutely stuffed with tennis balls, except that each tennis ball is an emotion I can only exorcise by listening to the saddest music in existence

--

Current reading backlog: 

- Harrow the Ninth (again) 
- Tristan and Iseult (again)
- The Eye of the Labyrinth 
- Lord of the Shadows
- Return of the Thief
- Mistborn ( :/ ) 

Read a book - came highly recommended as one that would warm the coldest cockles of my heart and reinspire my faith in humanity and stuff. 

It was beautiful and charming. The little nods to the fourth wall at the ends of Chapter 19 and the epilogue were very delicate, very light. And somehow... I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

Linus Baker is a great POV character. I understand why so many people fall in love with him and the islanders, and I nearly cried towards the end when the wyvern gave Linus the brass button.

But did it end too neatly as the institutions responsible for the repression of magical folk began to be dismantled? Was there too much whimsy and light without enough darkness and cruelty to balance it out? Was it too preachy, or am I just a monster who doesn't care about love and acceptance and belonging? Are the child side characters just too preciously written, or am I child-hating bogeyman? Is Arthur a Marty Stu who never loses control, or does he just happen to have mysterious parentage and bottomless reserves of empathy? Is the setting timeless and quaint, or does the worldbuilding beg for details that aren't there? 

Many might also draw parallels between The House in the Cerulean Sea and Good Omens. Linus reminds me strongly of Aziraphale, but there's no Crowley analogue to balance out the lightness. And Linus's final confrontation with Management is... lacking in teeth, maybe. Or very one-sided. And then there's Lucy, the antichrist of The House in the Cerulean Sea, who could be roughly compared to Adam of Good Omens. Lucy says things about darkness and blood and the end of the world and stuff, but as Linus observes, he doesn't really mean it most of the time - it's usually in the name of shock value.  How do they know his parentage?  What exactly makes him dangerous? How will he end the world? Whereas Adam does mean it when he says he wants to remake the world. 

I think at the end of the day, I have a very low tolerance for sweetness and sentimentality. I want murder, mayhem, and melodrama. The fluffiest book I own is The Fairy Godmother, which suffers from typical Lackey flaws - the pace drags, the character development is quite on-the-nose, and everyone gets their just desserts at the end. But I love the book anyways because the characters are occasionally cruel or at least petty, the fair stands alongside the foul, and most of all, the worldbuilding and the protagonist's agency in it just hits all the soft spots in my heart. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea doesn't push those buttons for me. I strongly recommend it if you have a good tolerance for fluff. Do I still do starred reviews? If so, then this is a 2/5.

I dreamed an alternate ending for Game of Thrones, where the Starks were doin all good and fine, but then Cthulu rose out of the depths, and everyone's hands melted. 

Also, I got a Kobo on the weekend and let me tell you it is a game changer for bubble baths. I had a two hour soak and finished Retribution. I'm looking forward to Covenant but, alas, the author's still working on it according to her facebook page. At least Return of the Thief is being released in August. Gonna give The Lies of Locke Lamora and Six of Crows a try too. 

I don't think I've ever read a sequel that represented a bigger jump in quality than The Queen of Attolia, and not because the first book lacked in quality at all. The Thief is fun on the first read and brilliant on the second. The Queen of Attolia just rips everything to bits in the first chapter. It's brutal on the first read, and heartbreaking on the second. 

The King of Attolia is excellent, but suffocating in a way that The Thief and the Queen of Attolia weren't. It's probably the setting  - I'm not as patient as Gen when it comes to being nearly confined to court. Yet somehow, I also think the third act starts too soon. 

A Conspiracy of Kings is probably my second favourite after the Queen of Attolia. Sophos has a completely different flavour to his POV. He's open to his emotions and insecurities in a way that Gen, Attolia, and Eddis aren't. And the overlying message - that the actions of sovereigns can only be judged by historians and gods - is one the author completely sells. 

I haven't read Thick as Thieves yet, but I will, and there's still The Return of the Thief to look forward too. 

A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story - Jeremy Grimaldi

• Serviceable writing, as it should be
• Story follows the nonchronological-Ernst Ritter/Machete approach to watching the Star Wars movies
• Middle section bogged down with cell phone subplot
• Fascinating look at a murder close to home
• Victim impact statements (particularly Felix Pan's) were very powerful (not due to the author though)

The way they asked me, "Hey, how are you doing?" Or something it's just a "Hey" and a long pause, not sure if they should carry on... I am still barely able to think about, let alone write about, how I feel for others to read.

• Probably would not have liked this as much either if I weren't asian
• 3/5