booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

So far I've loved every book I've read by Laura E. Weymouth and I'm going to prioritize those lingering on my to-read pile. Weymouth has a way of writing about relationships and obsessions of various kinds which clearly appeals to me, and this time it's an obsession with privacy, appearance, and secrets, which are perfect undergirding for a mystery.

I love Wil and Ed’s friendship/relationship. They fit together really well as people and as friends, though for a long time they haven't been along to spend long periods of time in one another's company. When Wil starts working on Ed's estate, the change in proximity means that there are many necessary changes to their dynamic, not all of which are handled gracefully by the characters. Given that they are teenage protagonists, I like the way they’re given the narrative space to each mess up and then figure out how to put things right with each other. One of the immediate changes to their previous easy friendship is that Ed had always hidden from Will how much he was dismissed and bullied at home, treated like an afterthought within his family. Even once she’s there, it takes a long time for him to share with her the way he’s being plagued by a ghost he's convinced is his dead elder brother. This reticence is completely completely understandable, but I kept wanting him to just ask her for help because she’s able to talk to ghosts, even if they’re not able to always give coherent answers. As much as I occasionally chafed at the pacing, it took the time that it needed and I’m very pleased with how the story turned out. 

This is a genuinely suspenseful and creepy mystery, the answers (once given) completely make sense and fit what was shown earlier. Though I started to suspect some parts before all was revealed, I definitely didn’t guess the whole solution. I spent a while thinking that it didn’t make sense for certain people to be keeping the secrets that I could tell were there, because it felt a little bit like they were only being secretive because it was necessary for the plot, but I was incorrect. When I did finally get answers, everything everyone had done that didn’t make any sense suddenly made sense and it was great! Narratively, at least, I love the story. The end involves a bunch of distressing revelations and violence, which was less than ideal for those involved.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

I love time loop stories. One of my favorite things is that they’ve been around for long enough that authors can play with the conventions of an established genre. A QUANTUM LOVE STORY does this to fantastic effect, using memory, food, and a plausible but loose edition of quantum mechanics to build a story of two people trying to escape a time loop. It’s about grief, sacrifice, and care for oneself and others. There’s an emphasis on the importance of fully inhabiting moments. Not every single one, necessarily, but learning to regularly take the time to enjoy food as more than fuel, learn new things, and appreciate small interactions. 

Because the story starts from Carter’s perspective, and then switches to Mariana, pretty early on, I thought it first that the point of view would switch back-and-forth between them. Instead, most of the book is from Mariana's perspective. With Carter as the more personally spontaneous one, indulging his love of good food as his bank account resets with each loop, staying in Mariana’s perspective means that we see her growing appreciation for the way Carter surprises her, and how he chooses to cultivate moments of calm and enjoyment in stressful circumstances that seem like they’ll never end. I like the way they strategize through the iterations, figuring out how to keep their research progress across the loops, using the only seemingly durable resource they have, Carter’s eidetic memory, and Mariana’s less precise but scientifically enhanced recall. 

There’s a turning point where Carter’s memory stops helping them, and Mariana has to make the most of her time with him before, eventually, a loop starts where he has no idea who she is and she must figure out a solution to their problem on her own. I have a particular interest in stories where protagonists risk the possibility of their own non-existence in the course of trying to make things better. I don't just mean death, but the loss of other people's memories of who someone was and what they did. One of the staples of time loop stories as a genre is the frustration and futility of trying to convince those who don’t remember the loops that anything strange is happening at all. It creates this lopsided balance of access to information, where as the loops continue one person knows more and more about the other, but the non-looping person doesn’t get to reciprocate in a fully informed way. You can create an increasing sense of isolation as the closer the looper gets to someone in their life, the more intimate they feel about details that took a very long time for the other person to tell them. Having two people loop solves some of that, but the onset of memory loss means that eventually this imbalance happens anyway. It's made all the more poignant Carter and Mariana spent so long progressing as partners, with fairly symmetrical access to information once a few loops had happened where Mariana was up to speed. Having that intimacy and then losing it piles on grief and heartbreak, especially since Mariana was grieving her missing stepsister and best friend, Shay, who vanished several months ago and is presumed dead. The loop at first gave her time to process that loss in a way she hadn’t been able to before, but then it piles on new loss when Carter’s memory starts fading.

Narratively, I love the ending. It’s perfect for the story, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Emotionally, fuck you Mike Chen (appreciatively) for making me feel this much in this manner. You took one of my favorite sub-genres and added a masterwork to the canon. I look forward to how your next book inevitably shatters me in the best ways.

I love this book and I have so many thoughts they will soon be released as an essay about both NIGHT SHINE and MOON DARK SMILE. I love the way that queerness is showed in so many ways, that there's an explicit idea of generational queer connection and trans role models, Kiran's acceptance of any kind of queerness his daughter could display, and the idea that villains are those who refuse to adapt and change, thereby unlinking fluidity and monstrosity from each other. Osian Redpop is the son of the Sorcerer of the Fourth Mountain, sent by his mother to kill Kiran or Raliel in order to get revenge for his father's death. Instead he grows to care for Raliel and the Emperor's family, enjoying his time at the palace and then helping Raliel on her journey. Moon and Raliel are trying to free Moon from the palace, and much of their journey is based on figuring out how to become a sorcerer and familiar in order to free Moon from the earlier binding which enslaves him.

As a sequel, MOON DARK SMILE wraps up dangling threads related to the slain Sorcerer of the Fourth Mountain, Kiran's ascension to the throne, and the fate of Night Shine and her wife. There's a new storyline with Raliel's friendship with Moon and her heir's journey, with several big things both introduced resolved. The series seems to conclude as a duology, with a very satisfying ending which somehow develops several characters even further right as things wrap up. 

Too visual of a narrative style for me.

I liked most of the stories in this collection. My favorites are "Lights" for its take on monstrosity and genre expectations, "All My Best Friends Are Dead" for the way it plays with characterization and perspective, and "No Harm Done" for the sudden pivot into horror after an interesting but not obviously creepy opening. 

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

THE LANGUAGE OF ROSES is an excellent retelling of Beauty and the Best, with an aromantic heroine asked to love and marry a beastly man before his and his sister's transformations are made permanent. When her father plucks a rose from a garden, Alys is sent to live with the Beast (Philippe) and his sister (Grace) as payment. Alys could marry him, but he asks for love with marriage and she cannot promise that. It's an excellent portrayal of emotional abuse exacerbated by sexism and social structures. There are so many little things done so well in this novella, it stays true to the bones of the original story without forcing Alys to fit the mold of a romantic heroine against her nature. This is perfect for those who love retellings and anyone who's tired of romance being required for a happily ever after.

Oliver is autistic, and up until now he hasn't had people in his life (romantically or otherwise) who take him as he is. He's told he's too much or too little, in ways he can't change even if he wanted to. Oliver makes himself small, working as a mortician hiding the extent of his powers as a necromancer because of the social stigma from those who work with the dead (let alone raise them). He's been interested in Felipe, one of the investigators at the Paranormal Society, but doesn't screw up the courage to do something about it until the night Felipe is murdered.

Felipe likes Oliver, he's liked him for years but (as in much of his life) kept putting off things he wanted in order to go all in on being an investigator. He's missed much of his daughter's life, and he doesn't see his wife and her partner nearly as much as he should. Suddenly, he's out of time when someone attacks him in his apartment and he's killed, only brought back because Oliver, the necromancer, found him in time to raise him from the dead.

Oliver is terrified of being one of "those" necromancers, the bad ones who keep people alive past their time while they rot. He sets a time limit of one week for him and Felipe to solve the case and wrap up everything, then he has to let Felipe go. Faced with a deadline, Felipe tries to solve the case so he can enjoy his last time with his family, but putting them aside once again gets complicated pretty fast.

This is great, I love it! I keep listing things about Felipe and Oliver as characters because they're so well done and I want the best for them; they are delightful both separately and together. Their romance is sweet, the mystery is engaging and wonderfully twisty while making sense at the end, and I'm excited for where this series will go next. 

BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST is a slightly bloodier (but still very cozy) prequel to LEGENDS & LATTES. Viv is an orc warrior, wounded in the leg just as she's starting out her career with Rackam's Ravens. She spends the summer recuperating from an injury in a seaside town named Murk, helping a local bookseller turn her shop around, and getting to know the cute dwarven baker down the street. It’s a story about finding joy and meaning and impermanence, appreciating something good even when you know it won’t last forever.

BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST is an unabashed love letter to books, bookshops, and booksellers helping the local bookseller get out of a rut and fix up her store. Viv is recuperating from a leg injury which sidelines her while the Ravens go after a necromancer. She hates being left out of the action and forced to slow down, but starts to feel the benefits as her forced rest continues, discovering an interest in reading.

As a prequel, BOOKSHOPS & BONEDUST helps to explain why Viv would want to start a coffee shop when her adventuring is done, something Legends & Lattes didn’t dwell on in any detail because that wasn't the focus of its story. This can be read before, after, or completely separately from the first book, though the epilogue takes place after Legends & Lattes and contains minor spoilers. 

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

This is the one with dinosaurs! It's excellent, and if you've been enjoying the series so far you'll love this too. Antsy is trying to make it so no other kids get tricked out of their childhoods by unknowingly paying for too many doors, but this time she has some help from Kade, Sumi, and the others.

For a school where “No Quests” adorns the door, the students at the school for Wayward Children sure do get up to a lot of quests. A core group with a slowly shifting cast has been established as traveling to try and fix things on a semi-regular basis. In MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN, some of the kids figure out that Antsy’s gift for finding lost things might let her find their doors... whereupon trouble ensues. Kade, Sumi, Cora, Emily, and Christopher travel with Antsy to try and set things right which were left broken when she fled the Store at the end of LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND. The worldbuilding has been getting more complicated as they learn more about what's happening. Eleanor's assumptions about the students have started having more to do with her desire for Nonsense than their actual experiences, and it's getting to a point where it's affecting the room assignments. This continues several storylines which were begun earlier, creating what feels like an entirely new storyline through recombination of older threads, even though as each piece was something introduced earlier. This far into the series, that’s an excellent feeling, making the adventure feel both fresh and familiar even on a first read-through. A particular problem in the Store is both introduced and resolved, and several more tangles either arise or are addressed. As a story about nexuses and connections, it’s especially nice to reach a point where everything feels so connected to everything else that it’s a complicated tangle to explain the setup, which for me is one of the joys of a long-running series. 

MISLAID IN PARTS HALF-KNOWN could partly make sense to someone who starts here, but if such a person wanted to jump in midway without starting at the beginning of the series, LOST IN THE MOMENT AND FOUND (the previous book) would be a much better entry point. That reader would find themselves knowing as much as Antsy does about what’s happening, which is a comprehensible perspective even if it misses earlier portions of the ongoing story. I particularly enjoyed some moments with Kade and Sumi (both separately and together). This felt like an ensemble cast in a way that earlier books didn't, and it's wonderful to be at the point in the series where the focus can smoothly shift between characters as needed. 

This entry is great, don't miss it! This series is consistently excellent and I'm eager to read what happens next.