I intended to have this post up well before this, but halfway through writing it something happened to the file and I could no longer open it to finish, so I had to start again and that threw me off. And then of course the coronavirus went from “hey this is a not great thing that’s happening” to “oh my god what is happening?!” I’ve been working at home for a little more than a week, trying to adjust to life where everything from barre classes to writing group has gone virtual. So here I am, finally, to tell you about the books I read in February. If any of these sound interesting to you and you can get your hands on them, these might be some good quarantine reading.
At this point I am mostly over my flu and related sinus infection adventure of January and February, but it took all of February to get to this point and it was quite a saga. I am really hoping that I don’t get this coronavirus because I have been sick enough thanks. In February I also finished my next round of revisions for my middle grade fantasy project. And I read eleven books.
February was a great reading month. I read one whole series and two stand-alones. I finished another series I’ve been reading. And I started six new series this month. I also read a variety of genres and age-groups: a bunch of middle grade, as usual, but some YA and adult too, and also some contemporaries, sci fi, and fantasy of all stripes. Ten of these books were audio, but I did read one book in Braille, the first entire book I’ve read in Braille since last July.
Let’s dive in to the actual books I read.
First, I read The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. This is the first book in the Thursday Next series. I actually started this book in Braille during spring semester last year, but stalled when I started studying for the bar. This month I got the audiobook out of the library and tried again, and the audio worked better for me with this book. More on that in a second. The Thursday Next books take place in an alternate 1985 Britain where time travel is possible, genetic engineering has brought the dodo back from extinction, and literature is very, very important. Like people regularly change their name to John Milton, proponents of different literary movements regularly get into violent clashes, and Richard III is this world’s Rocky Horror. It’s a bonkers world, but all the details are integrated so well it’s pretty amazing. Our protagonist,Thursday Next, is a Literatec, or literary detective, and when her old college professor steals the original Martin Chuzzlewitt (Dickens) manuscript, she’s pulled into the investigation and crazy adventures ensue. For me, this book shone in its worldbuilding. It’s brilliant at making the wildly weird seem perfectly normal. The plot is exciting, and I enjoyed the characters, though this might be the first book I’ve read in a while where I shimped two characters and it turned out not to be canon. The part where I struggled with this book was the pacing. After a fast and furious opening, the book slows way downin the middle. This is where I got stuck last year, and because I read audio faster than I read in Braille, this is why audio worked better for me this time around. I got through the slow part faster. Later on, there was a moment where the plot takes a detour and the characters go on a weird time adventure that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the main plot of this book, though I’m hoping it will be relevant in the sequels. On the whole this was not my favorite book, but it wasn’t bad either, and the friend who recommended it also said the later books are stronger. I definitely plan to continue this series, and I’m looking forward to what comes next.
Next, I read the final book in The Thickety series, The Last Spell by J. A. White. I don’t want to say too much about the plot in this book because I don’t want to spoil the earlier books, but The Last Spell wrapped up this series so nicely. It was everything I wanted from a series finale and more. I particularly loved the growth that we saw from all the characters in this book. And of course I just love this dark and twisty world. This whole series is one that I definitely recommend now.
Next, I read A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. Full disclosure, I listened to the audiobook and I can’t remember or spell any of the character or place names in this book, so I’m not even going to try. This is a sci fi book about the ambassador from a small space station traveling to the heart of the empire that has conquered most of known space. She is tasked with both finding out what happened to her predecessor, who has gone silent, and trying to prevent the empire from annexing her station. But the empeare is teetering toward a succession war, something is eating ships on the edges of human-inhabited space, and someone has tampered with the ambassador’s memory link machine which connects her to the past ambassadors to the empire. This is the best I can describe it. There was so much I loved about this book: the worldbuilding was really cool, the characters were great, it was political in tffigue that didn’t make me feel stupid, and there was a great queer romance! But I also felt like the plot built and built and built, and the ending just didn’t seem like enough for all that buildup. That being said, the sequel comes out next year, and I’m still onboard to read that. I’m holding out hope the sequel will strengthen the ending of this book. I do want to say that there is a very graphic brain surgery scene in this book. It was well-done and totally justified for the plot, but it also freaked me out, so if that’s not your thing I’d be aware going into this book and possibly skip over that section.
Next, I reread Tamora Pierce’s two trickster books, Trickser’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen. Goodreads tells me the actual title for this duology is Daughter of the Lioness, but I super don’t like that so I’m pretending it’s not the case. These books follow Ali, daughter of Alanna the Lioness, who is captured by pirates and sold into slavery in the Copper Isles. The trickster god enlists Ali to help the native, brown-skinned islanders overthrow the white colonizers. I’kl say right away that these books aren’t perfect. Ali is an almost ridiculously perfect character, and there’s a big white savior problem. And I’m not even going to talk about the romantic subplot. The love interest is a crow and that is all. Trickster’s Choice also has a lot of fanservice moments where we glimpse characters from the other books (fun but not strictly necessary for this plot), and in a lot of ways it feels like setup for the second book. But Trickster’s Queen will always have a special place in my heart, because it was the first Tamora Pierce I ever read and also probably my first introduction to medieval fantasy. The plot of Trickster’s Queen is really great. There are a couple excellent twists, and it moves along at a really good clip. The characters in these books are also amazing. I think I have to agree with the folks on the Tortall Recall podcast that I would love to see these books from pretty much anyone else’s point of view, but acknowledging that these books do have some problem, they’re still favorites.
In between the two Trickster books, I read Blastaway by Melissa Landers. This is a middle grade space adventure, so it was right up my alley from the start. When Ky accidentally steals his parents’ spaceship—seriously it was an accident—he decides he might as well capitalize on this opportunity and go see the Fasti Star Festival, where manmade stars are unveiled and sent off to new homes in the galaxy. On the way, he runs into a spot of trouble with some space pirates, but he meess a girl named Fig at the festival who helps him shake off the pirates in exchange for a ride back to Earth. What Ky doesn’t know is Fig was hired by the same pirates chasing Ky. Fig is the best sharpshooter in the galaxy, and she’s been hired to blow up the star, which the pirates have loaded with dark matter. She also totally intends to steal Ky’s ship. Crazy space adventures ensue. This book had pretty much everything I love: space, space pirates, science nerds, characters keeping secrets from each other, complicated families, and fun hijinks. One thing that pulled me out of the story is that some of the basic science was just plain wrong. Traveling through wormhols? Cool. If you tell me that in the future humanity can manufacture stars and tow them across the galaxy to create new solar systems to colonize, I’ll follow you there. I’ll even go with it if you tell me one of those stars could be filled with dark matter. But space is a vacuum, guys. No amount of technological advancement can change that. Say it with me, folks: space is a vacuum. And sound cannot travel in a vacuum. There is no sound in space. So every time the characters were out in space and heard two ships crash into each other, or heard an explosion, or even talked to each other without radios, it pulled me out of the story and made me angry all over again. There is no sound in space! But if you can get past what really is a small detail, this was a really great book, and it’s definitely a great MG space adventure and I would totally recommend.
Next I read the first Dark Tower book by Stephen King, The Gunslinger. I got all the way through the fifth book in this series in college and then stopped. I don’t remember why. But The Dark Tower came up at trivia a few weeks ago and I remembered it and decided to take another whack at the series. The Gunslinger follows Roland, who is following the man in black and seeking the dark tower. It moves back and forth between the present as Roland journeys through the desert and into the mountains and Roland’s childhood growing up as a gunslinger in training. It’s sort of like a fantasy western. There are demons and weird magic and some hopping between worlds. Honestly, this was a wild book. I spent a lot of the time having no idea what was going on, honestly. There are also a lot of moments and descriptions in this book that made me really uncomfortable and probably wouldn’t hold up under a critical social justice reading today. If I didn’t remember really enjoying the next few books I probably wouldn’t continue with the series. As it is, I do remember really enjoying the next few books, and if that holds to be true I’ll continue the series. If it doesn’t hold to be true, well maybe there was a reason I stopped reading them in college. We’ll find out.
Next, I read Renegades by Marissa Meyer. This is the first in her superheros trilogy, and I really liked it. Nova is an Anarchist, and Adrian is a Renegade. The Renegades are the superheroes who ended the age of anarchy and brought order and justice back to the city, but Nova has a reason to hate them. This book is brimming with secret identities and cool powers and fun spy stuff. Nova infiltrates the Renegades to try to bring them down from the inside, and Adrian picks her for his team, and all of the feelings get complicated. This was a fast, fun read. It’s hard not to compare it to The Lunar Chronicles, but I couldn’t help myself sometimes. I’ll refrain here. I will say that the plot was pretty predictable. I saw almost everything coming long before it happened, which was a bit unfortunate, and I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head for a good chunk of the climax, but other than these issues, I really enjoyed this book and can’t wait to finish the series (at this point I’ve already read the second book).
After that, I read Forever, or a Long, Long Time by Caela Carter. This was my Braille book of the month, and I couldn’t put it down. Flora and Julian have been in so many foster homes that they don’t trust it when their new adopted mom says she’s theirs forever. They also don’t believe that they were ever actually born and ever actually had a birth family. So Flora, Julian, and their new mother set out on a journey to discover Flora and Julian’s past. This was just such a sweet, heartfelt book about found family and I loved it to pieces. One reviewer on Goodreads points out that the kids’ questions could have been answered by a trip to city records to see their birth certificates, and I sort of agree, but given the trauma the kids had, I’m not sure it would have worked that easily. But if you’re looking for a middle grade book about foster care and found family that will give you all the feels, I’d definitely give this one a read.
Then I picked up the second Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. In February, I read the first book, The Alloy of Law. Apparently Sanderson is planning multiple trilogies set in different time periods in this world, which sounds really cool. This trilogy is a western, set three hundred years after the end of the first Mistborn trilogy. Wax is a nobleman-turned-constable out on the wild frontier, until he has to come back to the city to save his financially struggling house and gets embroiled in trying to stop a gang that’s stealing from railroads and taking hostages. I really liked the plot and the characters of this book, but I feel like it struggled from being connected to the first Mistborn trilogy. I got too hung up on trying to figure out which religious figure was which character in the original trilogy and how we got from there to here in the development of the world.
Finally, I finished off February with The Strangers by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This is the first book in her new Greystone Secrets series. The second book comes out this spring and I can’t wait. Chess, Emma, and Finn are perfectly normal kids living perfectly normal lives in Ohio (I think?), until one day three kids from Arizona are kidnapped, and these three kids have nearly identical names, the same birthdays, and even look similar to the Greystone kids. And then their mother leaves on a mysterious business trip, and everything just gets really weird. Won’t say more than that because I don’t want to spoil it. This was a fun, fast middle grade book, and I really enjoyed it. The way it’s structured, it does kind of feel like it switches genres two thirds of the way through the book—from contemporary mystery to sci fi—and that isn’t great, but it also makes sense for the plot and I’m not sure how else something like that could have been accomplished. I loved how the author captured each kid’s voice and age so well, and I was so invested in the story. And oh the ending! It’s incredible! Sidenote, if the sequel goes awry I could wind up hating this series but as it stands I loved this first book and would definitely recommend.
And that’s it for February. If any of these books sound interesting to you, they’d certainly make great reading during these socially distant times if you can get your hands on them. And now that I’m getting settled into my telework routine, I’m hoping to get some more blogging done soon. At the very least, I’ll be back next week with my reading roundup for March.