THE TRUE QUEEN by Zen Cho introduces Muna, a young woman venturing to foreign Britain to obtain magical help in rescuing her vanished sister. 

Where SORCERER TO THE CROWN dealt specifically with racism and misogyny, THE TRUE QUEEN is more about misogyny and the particular combination of racism and xenophobia that is exoticism. I love the book's overall tone, it has relentlessly upbeat feeling, a kind of optimism borne out of either not understanding how grave the danger might be or from understanding the risks and persevering anyway. Which one is happening shifts throughout the story and from narrator to narrator as characters other than Muna briefly lend their points of view. Even though it was several chapters in before I came across characters I recognized from the first book, this upbeat style was recognizable and immediately make it clear that the books were connected. It didn't retread much ground from the first book in terms of worldbuilding, only re-explaining as much as was immediately necessary, preferring instead to focus on Muna's perspective and the parts of the setting which affected her directly. It's the same way that the worldbuilding was handled the first time around, but seeing the effect centered around a different character made it more noticeable. 

As a sequel this was very self-contained. THE TRUE QUEEN is unmistakably part of the same world as SORCERER TO THE CROWN due to the tone, characters, and magic system, but as a story it didn't need the first book at all to be understood. It doesn't really wrap up anything left hanging from the first book, but it does involve characters from there in ways that advance their personal storylines. In particular I appreciate seeing a lot more of Henrietta, and some updates on Zacharias and Prunella. The main storyline follows a new character, Muna, and her story is introduced and resolved here. How this was handled as a sequel makes me think that there's room to cover a lot of kinds of characters who have been marginalized from magical society in this version of England. I also need to see more of Muna, given how the book ends. The main character, Muna, is newly introduced here. Some characters like Prunella briefly reprise their role as narrators, and everyone has distinct narrative voices while keeping an overall tone to the book that works well. Someone could absolutely read this without having read the first book, as relevant information is briefly explained. I had a gap of over a year between reading each book and while there could be more reference I'd catch if I'd read them closer together, that helps me be more sure that someone who enjoys historical fantasy could pick this up at random and have a good time. 

FLIGHT OF MAGPIES beautifully wraps up the trilogy "A Charm of Magpies" with serious discussions and passionate sex while Crane and Stephen try to reconcile one's overly demanding job investigating murders and the other's need to leave England. 

This was a great end to the trilogy, I feel good about where the characters are literally and emotionally at the end of it, and I have a sense of what they’ll do next. There is a related book which continues the story of a minor character from FLIGHT OF MAGPIES, but as far as I can tell the story of Crane and Stephen is finalized here. It wraps up a bunch of stuff from the previous books, even reaching back to close things left open or ambiguous from book one. There is a storyline (the murders and immediate danger) which start here and weren't present previously, but this is by no means a stand alone book. It has a major thing introduced and resolved wholly within this volume. As the last book in the series, does a great job of wrapping up things from the trilogy as a whole and it feels finished. I'd happily read more in this world, but my immediate questions are answered. The main characters are the same as the previous volumes. They have very different styles from each other, but are consistent with their characterization in the other books. This wouldn't make much sense without reading the rest of the trilogy, even the sex is intertwined with their past history and current circumstances in a way that makes it matter to the plot. 

The ending is fantastic, one strength of this trilogy has been the heart-pounding danger which is inextricable from the love between the protagonists and this takes it to a great and beautifully literal place.

I love the relationship between Crane and Stephen, and I'm very happy about new developments for Merrick (which I will not spoil). This has an appropriate amount of tumult in figuring out how to fit together such different lives as the ones they led before their first meeting, and it feels like the story takes that seriously without slowing down the sexiness or distracting from the murder investigation. I had a great time and I'll definitely be checking out more from this author.

THE MIME ORDER is a slow-burn fantasy of allegiances and betrayal as Paige figures out what she wants from her newly reclaimed freedom, and starts to chafe under the formerly familiar restrictions of her Mime Lord. 

The first book told a little of what Paige remembered about her Mime Lord and the rest of the Seven Seals. Now, in THE MIME ORDER, she's returned to find things on edge. The world building continues to be excellent, this time around Paige is noticing what's different from before she was away, and it helps give a real reason for the narration to explain so much in book two. Even when it possibly shouldn't be new to her, it is because things have changed a lot. The politics of interrelationships between the factions and people are complex and absorbing, but the way Paige keeps her ambitions clear and (usually) simple keeps it from being overwhelming. There's a dizzying array of options available to her but because of her goals it feels like only one or two are truly available. As she changes what she wants, the narrow world of her choices swivels to a new set of goals. In a setting with endlessly nested factions and motivations (e.g. the Syndicate vs Scion, the Sargas vs the Ranthem, the various Mime Lords and Ladies vs each other), it would be easy to get lost in the details. I appreciated both that this level of detail was present, and that I could choose how much I wanted to try and track it while still understanding the main story. 

THE MIME ORDER wraps up a few things left hanging from the previous book. Its whole main storyline starts here and wasn't present previously, and includes a bunch of major things that are both introduced and resolved in it. It leaves some very big things to be picked up by the sequels. The main character is unchanged from THE BONE SEASON, and her voice is consistent across both books. This might make sense if someone started here and didn't know about the rest of the series. Part of that is because it's book two of a planned seven books, and so it doesn't quite yet have the depth of backstory as later entries will inevitably contain. The other part is that (probably because it's a seven book series) the main storyline is largely self contained. It matters that any reader knows Paige was imprisoned, and by whom, and that she has certain allies (both those she obtained during THE BONE SEASON and ones from before her imprisonment), but all of that can be picked up from the way events are handled here. I like this style, it works a little better than in THE BONE SEASON, where I constantly felt like Paige was talking about some earlier book I hadn't gotten to read, since The Seven Seals matter so much to the series as a whole but were mostly only described by Paige rather than shown in that first book. They matter here, and having learned about them previously helps that transition from her imprisonment to being back home. 

I love this book and I'm definitely going to keep reading the series. The ending is great, it's a perfect blend between resolving the main tensions from this book and setting up clear stakes for a conflict in the next one. I feel like I have closure as well as knowing what questions I want answered next time, which is ideal for such long books in a long series.

THE NEVER TILTING WORLD is a  journey fantasy told by four sides as two separated sisters and their companions travel to the rift at the heart of their world to try and fix their parents' mistakes.

I like the world building, so much is shaped by the central conceit that something went wrong a decade and a half ago and the planet stopped spinning. I would like to know how gravity is still functioning, but other than that it has an internal logic that was pretty easy to follow. I like the magic system, there's enough information for it to make sense but it's not overexplained. I love this premise, and I love how it's carried out. The price of the gifts was a nice touch, the effects begin subtly and then cause a dramatic turn in the plot, making it clear both why anyone ever would have thought accepting them was fine, and how (from my perspective, at least) it's not worth it.

The four main characters all felt very distinct from each other, with different things they wanted, and many differences in what they were willing to give up and what they sought to protect. They had four very different backgrounds and it's shown well. I felt like I had room to like the book without liking all four main characters. I loved one, liked two, and have complex thoughts about the last one. That character undergoes a gradual change in mental state, it’s very well written. It’s marked by certain milestones, specific plot events that cause it to progress. It wasn’t until several of them it happened that I realized the shift they have been building, but when I looked back I could see its early stages. I love stories where a character undergoes a drastic change in how they perceive the world and interact with it, and this did a great job of portraying that shift. I liked how they were written, and my complex feelings come from initially loving them, feeling strange as their personality shifted to be wholly unlikeable, then realizing that it was shifting due to events in the story. At that point I didn't resume liking them as a person, but I love how they're written. I like the pair journeying in the desert the best, their duo was more relatable to me but one of the strengths of this book is that, as I said the main characters are so different that you'll probably like at least one of them, and the narrative doesn't hinge on whether you like all four of them as people.

The ending was good, it does make me want to read part two, and given that this is a duology the second half of the story is waiting in the sequel. It felt a little abrupt, but the characters both literally and emotionally arrived at a place that made sense as the ending before the next book. Sometimes duologies can feel like two intertwined stand-alone books, and sometimes they feel like a larger work split in two. This is very much that second type, I don't know if my impression will change once I read the sequel.

I read this a long time ago and forgot that the asides by the narrator are randomly sexist in a way that doesn’t contribute to the narrative and unpleasantly distracts from the main story.

THE RAVEN KING is the perfectly fitting conclusion to The Raven Cycle. Blue and the Raven Boys search for Glendower one last time as a nearly defeated foe begins to unmake everything they've fought to protect. The teens crumble at their edges while fighting not to shatter, and a new friend helps them hold everything together.

I'm so happy about Henry as a character. He had a slight presence in the previous books and is very welcome here. The pit scene with Henry and Gansey was chilling, dripping with threats, promises, and hope, all at once. The central group of Blue and the Raven Boys shifts even more as they start facing things they weren't ready to handle before, speaking truths previously left unsaid. The plot is more nebulous than the previous books, this time they're mostly existing and trying not to die, staving off a destructive force that eats up the narrative and any more complex plans they might have had. It works very well as the conclusion to a quartet, but I don't know that I could recount the actual story of this book. The narration for the four main kids (especially but not only Blue) is such a perfect encapsulation of a certain way of being a teenager, my favorite example of this is the whole of chapter 32 when Blue is waiting for the bus to move. It captures the way her thoughts skitter and circle around a sense that something is deeply unfair and structurally wrong, that the course of her life which led to this moment didn’t have to go this way. The whole series has been filled with moments like this, quirks of thought that aren’t limited to the transitory time that is the late teen years, but which belong perfectly there. 

This wraps up a lot of things left hanging from the first book, since it is the last book it also wraps up things reaching back all the way to the first book. This includes but is not limited to the book-one prediction that Gansey would die. Henry was introduced previously, but has a much stronger presence here and his inclusion helps bring the feeling that this volume has its own storyline separate from the previous three, but everything bends back towards continuing and resolving things from earlier in the quartet. If I'm being honest, I don't quite think it has something that starts here and wasn't present (or heavily implied) before. It's not new that people are coming to Henrietta to try and get the magic, though that ramps up here, Henry isn't new though he feels fresh here, and the emotional core of the book is to settle whether it's possible to find Glendower, and to resolve the fates of Gansey and Cabeswater. If there is a small thing which is both introduced and resolved here I think it must relate to Henry, but I can't actually bring anything to mind. All the narrators have been point of view characters in at least one of the previous books. Their voices are distinctive from each other, and one of my favorite parts is the way they're all quintessentially teenage while being different flavors of teenager. This would not make sense if someone picked it up at random and didn't know about the series. It's stuffed with magic and mystery, doesn't pause to explain the why of Cabeswater, Blue's family, Ronan's family, really it doesn't explain the origin of any of their families, except in ways that answer questions you would only have if you'd read the first three books, without answering any of the things someone would ask if their first exposure was here in book four. This is perfectly fine for a series finale, and I think it does enough to connect this volume to the previous ones in ways that would provide a refresher if someone picked this up a while after reading BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE, but it's not intended to stand alone and makes no pretense of it.

I liked the ending overall, but I did come away with a few questions about what happens next. The ending does a pretty good job of conveying the trajectory after the story is over, so I think my feeling of something being missing is mostly that I just want to spend even longer with these characters. I love this series as a whole, and this is a strong conclusion to a wonderful quartet. If you like YA fantasy in a contemporary setting, give The Raven Cycle a try.

ACE OF SPADES is a dark academia thriller thriller where two high-achieving students suddenly have everything they thought they knew come crashing down after a mysterious texter begins revealing their secrets one by one. 

The pacing is amazing, starting out with hints, whispers, and strange inconsistencies before building into series of much-needed confrontations and gripping turns. The eventual reveal of Aces' identity is narratively satisfying, immediately begging for a re-read once the solution is known. This is a thriller which can absolutely survive that re-read, but this review won't spoil the ending. The alternating perspectives kept things moving, and contributed to the sense of missing information as often events would happen where the other main character would get information and the current point of view character would just get rumors or partial glimpses. 

I love Chi and Devon as protagonists, especially the way they interact with (or, early on, avoid) each other. They're very different people who end up having to work together to figure out what's been happening to both of them. They have a lot of time on their own, trying to deal with everything. 

The secondary characters are complex without taking over the narrative. Their parents and other figures from home have enough attention to feel like real parts of their worlds while not not being the focus. 

This is a thriller with much needed aftercare in the form of updates after the main events. It's just enough to give closure and a sense of where they end up, and it works really well. This is a hell of a debut, I wish there were something else I could read right away because this is just fantastic. 

The way different slices of their lives and identities were used to torment them and which parts Aces carefully danced around was very well handled.

Because Aces' plan relied on tormenting Chi and Devon for their existence as Black people, but they also didn't want to reveal that that was the reason, they attacked them for everything but that. Everything from outing one of them for being queer, to making them doubt their memories of past events, even the confusion and fear from making sure the target of each particular text was the only one to miss the message each time. All of it came together to make them even doubt that racism was the reason for the bewildering and never-ending harassment. Aces (and the narrative as a whole) used the tension inherent in it being very obvious to an outside observer that race is a motivation when the only two Black kids are the targets of the bullying, but the Black protagonists immersed in their very white school felt like if they said Aces was racist then they would be wrong somehow for pointing out this possibility. It's a facet of how white supremacy upholds itself that it treats the people who call out racism as being as bad (or worse) than the people actually being racist, a point which is made explicitly in the book. The intersection of Blackness and queerness then was used for additional torments, because while both were loathsome to Aces, only one (queerness) was treated like an okay aspect to openly hate. It shows how neither kind of marginalized identity was safe from Aces and their hatred of these characters.

There's a series of final confrontations which I loved but can't say much about without major spoilers. Some of them ramped up the existing tension and some were more emotionally complex where catharsis was sought and not received, or where a confrontation was expected and then didn't go the way they thought. 

I wasn't liking it much and then I got to the bit with the former classmate and I got really frustrated so I stopped. I didn't like the combination of how long it took for the main character to get what was going on, plus how little the people with actual answers were willing to tell her. I don't know whether I would have liked this as a kid or not, but it's definitely not for me now.