On an Ojibwe reservation, a young boy named Joe finds himself lost and scared after his mother suffers a brutal assault. When the vagaries of prosecuting laws on and around tribal land get in the way, Joe vows to take justice into his own hands and bands together with his friends to ensure his mother can feel safe again.

I found THE ROUND HOUSE absolutely riveting. Seeing the story through Joe's eyes meant being there as his worldview collapsed - discovering the dark parts of reservation life and feeling his frustration at being unable to immediately enact a punishment. And yet, a young person's joy was still woven through the story. Riding bikes with your friends, sneaking a beer, hearing stories from your grandfather.

The writing is also just beautiful. And that ending. Whew. I cannot wait to read more of Erdrich's work.

S.T. is a domesticated crow who loves his life in Seattle with his owner Big Jim. But one day, Big Jim gets sick with a mysterious disease that S.T. can't fix, not even with Cheetos. S.T. decides to strike out on his own with Dennis, Big Jim's bloodhound, and he finds that not only did seemingly every other human succumb to this disease, but the animal kingdom is in the midst of a war to determine which species will be the new top predator in town.

I knew I was probably in for a ride when I picked up a book from the point of view of a talking crow named Shit Turd who thinks the species name for humans is MoFo, but even then I still underestimated this book! It's alternately hilarious and dark, filled with both the strange insights of creatures with a tenuous grasp on human culture, but also thought-provoking ideas about both the good and bad parts of humanity and the bedrock importance of friendship.

If you're looking for a different angle on your standard post-apocalypse novel, I think you can't get any more unique and imaginative than HOLLOW KINGDOM.

Grad student Zachary Ezra Rawlins is poking around in the library when he comes across a mysterious book. On closer inspection, the book contains a scene from his own childhood, when he came across a lone door and did not open it. Zachary follows the only identifying marks on the book - bee, key, sword - to a masquerade party to a secret club to an ancient library under the earth and the people trying to protect and destroy it.

THE STARLESS SEA is a beautiful, glorious tangle of stories, threads weaving and overlapping and doubling back, layering upon each other to build a fantastic ruin. I didn't always understand what was happening and often had to flip back to previous stories, but I was completely entranced.

As with THE NIGHT CIRCUS, I see precisely why Morgenstern's writing isn't for everyone - the pacing is glacial, often moving backward to fill in details from another perspective rather than advancing the plot. Something about her style forces the reader to slow down and contemplate each sentence. @does.it.have.a.dragon called it "filigreed" and I think that's quite accurate.

I'll also echo @simoneandherbooks' suggestion to go back and read Dorian's initial story about Fate and Time after you finish the book - it's well worth your time to reread the tale with more context.

JUST MERCY is the true story of lawyer Bryan Stevenson's founding of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law firm that focuses on exonerating or lightening the sentences of death row inmates, with the overall aim of eliminating the death penalty in America. Highlighted is the case of Walter McMillian, who sat on death row for years after being charged with a crime he clearly could not have committed.

This book should be required reading for anyone interested in racial and economic justice in America. Stevenson lays out all the tangled ways our legal system sets people up to fail - particularly young black and brown folks. It's packed with stories of blatant miscarriages of justice and of people who are condemned for life because of a mistake that would have earned them a short sentence if not for their particular location, mandatory minimums, or other circumstances.

I did find the telling of some of the secondary cases to be a bit jumbled. That may simply be reflective of how many complex cases Stevenson's firm handled, but as someone who doesn't read a whole lot of nonfiction the jumping around in time felt a little disjointed to me. Still, the barrage of cases shows just how many issues come into play when talking about capital punishment and how inhumane and fallible the practice is.

When Ana is 15 years old, her family marries her off to Juan, who is twice her age and takes her with him from the Dominican Republic to New York City. Ana is left to manage a new country, new language, and new life more or less on her own while dealing with her unhappy husband. Juan's brother Cesar, on the other hand, shows her a happier side of New York life, and Ana must choose between her heart and her duty to her family.

DOMINICANA is author Angie Cruz's reimagining of her mother's immigration story. The book is full of details of working class immigrant life that we don't often see in history books or novels. Ana felt so real, and my heart broke for her a million times.

The downside of this book for me was that much of life outside Ana's apartment felt hazy, which I think is just inherent with us getting the story from her teenage, overwhelmed point of view. I did like that every character, even when they acted terribly, was shown to have a reason for why they did so, whether it was for personal advancement or family status. Virtually everyone lived in a gray area because they were simply trying to get by.