This Is How You Lose the Time War is dizzying in the best ways, like discovering a secret passage, a new flavor of fruit, realizing the color of your best friend's eyes. It's seeking and hungry, content to be perfectly itself: strange and beautiful.

I read it, every passage made sense but when I reached the end I sat back and find myself unable to sum up the whole in a way that does it justice. It's a time travel story where the mechanics are fascinating but incidental, hinted but never expounded. It's a love story about enemies becoming friends, inseparable while also impossibly distant. Their address is clinical and tender all at once.

Reading this book was like the first time I tried persimmons, at a party last autumn. They taste like if a carrot were a fruit, like I ought to have known the flavor but had definitely never tasted it before. This book snaps and fizzles in my mind, every syllable feels important but ultimately is meaningful for its place in the larger whole rather than its component parts.

Beneath The Citadel plays with identity and memory to tell a riveting story of intrigue, revolution, and desperation. It's unapologetically queer in a way that feels like finally breathing, blending sweetness and exasperation to make an amazing ride.

I'm so happy this book exists, and I hope to read many more like it. The characters have complex relationships with each other that are informed by their queerness but not wholly defined by it. I only mentioned it so much because it feels amazing to read a story which doesn't treat straightness as a default. Another thing I haven't seen before is a teen friendship between former lovers where there's no jealousy about one of them moving on to exploring new relationships. I'm always looking at how YA books handle relationship triangles, and I like how this kind of dodges that entire premise while also keeping some of what makes that dynamic fascinating as a trope. As for the flow of the book, there's a really good mix of figuring out the tumult and constant stress of the main action, while also having quiet intimate moments where everyone gets a moment to breath and reassess.

I love the book, I love the premise, I love heist stories... I wish this were a series, but I also feel like it would be a betrayal of the conclusion of the book to try and have a related story in this space. It would be interesting to read more things in this world, but due to its nature as a portrayal of the last gasp of a dying and defunct societal paradigm, it's probably for the best that it's standalone.

All The Birds in The Sky is about connection and isolation. It plays with the scale of reality and the drama inherent to lived experience to show two lonely kids learning how to grow up, and distributed consciousnesses connecting.

I love how this book takes the dichotomy of magic and technology and just... runs with it. The narrative has a kind of shuffling structure, where some plot thread is being advanced in every scene, but not evenly, and sometimes a lot of things happen all at once. It meant the first part of the book felt very slow, but about a fifth of the way through it began picking up and there was a snowball effect. Every scene is doing many things, some of which take a while to show up, and some which are evident immediately. I read this in less than two days, and still there was enough of a slow burn that some threads closing were able to surprise me because they had space to develop and close.

There's a lot of sorrow here, because it's about learning how to be better and how to cope, there's a lot of early stuff where things are terrible and they don't know how to handle it yet. That part was pretty rough, but even though not everything gets better, they learned ways to deal.

Patricia and Lawrence are quirky and cute, their dynamic changes throughout the book as they become different people. I really like how they change over time, how they grow (positively and negatively) throughout. It's not a linear progression, and that makes it feel more real.

It's about witches, magic, wormholes, technology, talking birds, a talking tree, and self-aware AI. 

Seriously, check this one out.

‪Slowly alternating between vivid and dry, “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” by Norman Ohler describes how use and abuse of drugs inluding meth, cocaine, and morphine fueled the German war machine and made the Blitzkrieg possible. Well worth the read.‬

There’s a lot of mood whiplash, and an obligatory CW/TW for descriptions of drug use, side effects of addiction, and experimentation on soldiers, children, and concentration camp victims. The roughest sections are at the end so if you hit your limit go ahead and stop because it’s not going to calm down.

Salamandastron by Brian Jacques is a story of parents and children, legacy, siege, battle, epidemic, and feasting. It’s about passing the torch. A good introduction to Redwall (almost any book will work) but can also stand solo if you just want a good story.

Reading Salamandastron, I love the Redwall books, but now I know a little about the historical and current discrimination against Scots as a language and against the Scottish in the UK, passages with comments of not understanding “Northern” speech of the falcons and eagles are concerning. It’s not subtle, it happens several times that MacPhearsome or Rocangus or Laird Mactalon say something that seems to me (as an American) understandable but very Scottish and then someone declares they didn’t understand the bird at all, but everybeast understands the moles with no trouble. I love the work that went into conveying all the dialects onto the page, it just reads strangely now to have someone keep commenting one how hard it is to understand this particular accent, especially when in the real world it isn’t just an accent, it’s a separate language that has shared roots with English. 

I like the contrasts between different parent/child pairs in this book. We have Urthstripe and Mara, Ferhago and Klitch, Log-a-log and Nordo, Laird Mactalon and Rocangus, and Loambudd and Urthwyte. All their relationship dynamics are unique and shown pretty well, and it feels like a thematic decision in this particular book.

River of Teeth is a dark and fun revenge caper/operation alternate history with hippo steeds and self-confident queer sexiness. If that doesn't make you want to read it immediately, I'm not sure what else would convince you. Check this one out.

I love heist stories, caper (sorry, "operation") stories, anything where we get the crew together for one very dangerous job. I also love alternate history, twisting the past into something a little bit different, a little more weird (or at least differently so). Unsurprisingly, I loved this book. The premise is weird and wonderful, everyone who wants to be sexy is very sexy, the revenge plot is established without weighing down the story... it hit all the right notes for me and I'll definitely check out the sequel. 

I don't think it goes quite as far as to have queerness as a default, but it gets most of the way there in very excellent form. Hero is great, their dynamic with Houndstooth is sexy and fun without distracting from the main plot. There's a lot of little things to appreciate and I don't want to spoil them, this just felt very good to read.

That the seed for this premise comes out of a real historical proposal is pretty great, but even if that weren't the case, this would still be a dark and fantastic story. 

It moves fast and has a lot of fun, but it's also a revenge story and it has some pretty bloody scenes. Not everyone is up for that, so please take care of yourselves. It somehow manages to be gruesome, edging up to explicit without quite getting there, all without having a dark tone. If you are up for that, go read this.

**After much reflection, I think that the problematic treatment of fantasy-indigenous people in this series is inextricable from the story and, as much as I personally enjoyed these books as a teenager, I don’t recommend the series.

Furies of Calderon is sword and sorcery, political machinations and longstanding grudges, elemental familiars, interpersonal drama driving the fate of nation-states, and some really good action scenes, all kicking off one of my favorite series. 

If you like high-ish fantasy stories with political machinations and elemental familiars, then this is the series for you. The action is described vividly, gruesome scenes are given an appropriate mix of description and implication, and it's the first book of a series that lives up to its start and then goes on to be even better. If you wanted to like [a:Jim Butcher|10746|Jim Butcher|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1400640324p2/10746.jpg]'s writing, but The Dresden Files just aren't for you, try this series.

Several years after I first read it, I heard that the premise resulted from combing two disparate inspirations, Pokemon and the Lost Roman Legion. Whether or not that's true, this is a series with elemental-based creatures bonded to humans, all of whom have names of Roman derivation, who came to this place through a portal some thousand years ago... so I'm inclined to believe the internet rumor on this one.

Regardless of the inspiration behind the premise, I feel at home in this series. I love witty banter, interpersonal and national politics, and while I don't read books just for their fight scenes, I do appreciate when they're descriptive and evocative enough that I can follow the action and get a sense of the physical space the characters inhabit in the heat of battle. This sense of space starts when the book is calm and continues as things heat up, so it makes everything feel like it happened in a real place that you could visit and walk around in.

This book, in particular, needs content warnings for discussions of human trafficking, sexual assault, murder, cannibalism, and body horror of various kinds. But, to borrow language from our ratings on the podcast, these are often moderate to severe, but generally handled with care (or at least enough care). Often the depictions within the text involve someone slowly understanding the horrific implications of another character's actions (current or intended), with many of the more horrifying details either relayed flatly or heavily implied instead of described in detail. There's a lot of aftercare, and whenever it's missing, that absence itself serves a narrative purpose.

*I do feel it’s important to mention that this series canonically doesn’t take place on Earth, but there are several types of quasi-indigenous peoples in this series that are clearly inspired by real peoples. I’m not in a position to speak to whether these portrayals are insensitive or triggering, but the series does a lot of specific work to fight against the idea that they are lesser in any way. It also sets up the idea in the first place that they could be lesser, so I don’t know how much leeway the author should get for solving a situation he also created.

**After much reflection, I think that the problematic treatment of fantasy-indigenous people in this series is inextricable from the story and, as much as I personally enjoyed these books as a teenager, I don’t recommend the series.

Academ's Fury is a good follow-up to Furies of Calderon, introducing new players (Varg, Tavi's classmates) & clarifying what's at stake. It's layered and intense, introducing new levels of secrets and intrigue, mixing the political and the personal.

This book has a lot to handle, moving between rural Calderon and the Academy in the capital. In some ways it's a second introduction, basically doubling the number of key characters by adding those around Tavi in the city. This means it has a lot of ground to cover, and it does it admirably, but while the later books will get to use this as a foundation it doesn't have that luxury and ends up dragging in a few spots. 

That being said, the various heist-y escapades are intense and fast-paced. The fights are detailed enough to mean you can follow the action, but not so finicky as to bog down the story. I love every scene with Varg (he's my favorite), and the stakes set up early in the book make all the little things come together very well in the end, plot-wise. I like politics in world-building, and this book brings a lot of that in where it was merely implied in the first book. The layers of relationships are complicated enough to be interesting without being so confusing as to make the characters inscrutable. You don't know everyone's reasoning, but you learn enough for their actions in the moment to make sense. It's a delicate balance, and I think it's working here.

*A continued note from my review of the first book: The way the Marat are set up as “savages” while also borrowing Indigenous signifiers is troubling. The narrative fights back against characters who view them negatively, but also I don’t know how much the author should get credit for “solving” a problematic characterization that he himself created.

**After much reflection, I think that the problematic treatment of fantasy-indigenous people in this series is inextricable from the story and, as much as I personally enjoyed these books as a teenager, I don’t recommend the series.

Cursor's Fury is my favorite book in The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. This is where the series hits its stride, and does it beautifully. It works to understand the villains without diminishing the impact their actions have and without asking them to be forgiven. 

I love this book. I'll see how I feel when I get to the last two books, but this one just makes me so happy every time I read it and I think it's my favorite. It's a solid middle-of-the-series book which is also complete enough to stand on its own (which not all middle books can do). It builds on the previous books and has a great balance between recapping what's happened and not worrying about the nonessential stuff. The action continues to be great. The addition of ludus in book two pays off here in a pretty spectacular way. Tavi really comes into his own here, he's been trying to do that for a while but it's paying off. There are several story-lines without it feeling crowded or leaving any of them unattended for too long... I just really really like this book in particular and this series in general. 

As always for this series, there's a lot of interpersonal politics, very intense conversations, and excellent fight scenes. This book is almost more driven by dialog than by battles, and both feel intense when appropriate. I like books that are dialog heavy, and this one does that without ever letting the conversations feel stale. It really embraces the idea that war is an extension of politics, leaving space for politics to finish what war started, and war to finish what couldn't be settled with politics. For good or ill, they aren't separate here, and the series as a whole reckons with that (and with the consequences of it).

I mentioned earlier that it works to understand the villains. It makes sure to show that some villains are antagonists because their fundamental goals are at odds with the protagonists, but also that just because their goals temporarily align that doesn't change the basic situation. Lady Antillus is a different kind of villain from Lady Aquitaine, who is different from Fidelias, all of whom are separate from Kalarus... they all have their own motivations and their own space.

I wish we saw more of Kitai in this book, but that's mostly because she's awesome and not because I think the book is missing anything with her current level of presence.

*Not much as changed in this book as far as characterization of the Marat. They still have Indigenous signifiers while being sometimes referred to as savages. Once I realized it, it’s hard to miss. Again, they’re mostly referred to in charged terms by antagonists, and there is a narrative around changing the Alerans’ perceptions of them, but I don’t know if that’s enough to justify this portrayal.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms plays with the shape of power, winding it like a strand of hair on one finger with a slowly widening grin, esui; terrifying and sensual. The stuff of gods, crammed and cramped until they creak and groan as pages turn: Read this.

I loved this book. I tend to be positive about the books I read, but I truly loved this book. The gods have qualities I normally see in depictions of the fae, while also being sufficiently different and complex as to be their own kinds of entities. They are essences, understandable in some ways but inscrutable in some very important ways. Sieh, in particular, is handled very well, his behavior has consistency, but the way in which we are led to interpret it as part of a whole is shaped by Yeine's slowly shifting understanding of life in Sky. The interstitial narration is really good, it makes sense even before you learn (or figure out) why it's happening.

This book is very good and I'm very excited to see what happens in the next one. It ended so well that if it were a stand-alone book I could be content, but I want to spend more time in this world, preferable with these characters.