This series reads like fanfiction in the best possible way. There's action and adventure with fun fantasy tropes and then there's little slice of life segments with found family and accidental child acquisition. My philosophy on fanfiction is that when people seek it out cuz the original content is missing something or could have been better. This series scratches all of the itches in my brain.

I don't normally go in for romance novels, but I really loved the way the authors wrote the romance subplot into this book. They're people trying to navigate problems that are realistic in the context of the universe the story is setting. Them having a miscommunication issue about timing and being mega defensive on both sides is in character for them. Solving their issues by fighting until they gave into loving each other is also in character for the respective roles they play in society. I'm also really glad that the romance and reconciliation wasn't the entire content of the book. Curran being pulled from the edge of going wild by Kate is really sweet. I'm looking forward to seeing how their relationship progresses and how raising Julie together goes. I really enjoy that Julie is an angsty teenage goth now. When I first started the series I thought that Roland was going to be a unique sort of deity figure. Starting this book, finding out he has more family besides Kate, and getting to know his sister was really interesting, as was the story Kate told the golem. Curran furnishing Kate with her own lab and resources, surpassing what had been offered to her by Simon was a great Chekhov's gun. Kate wasn't willing to leave the order until it was proven to her that her boss being in charge was causing more harm than good, and he was actively forbidding her from being able to help. I'm sad that Andrea and Raphael had a falling out. It 100% makes sense considering Andrea ignored a call for help from the pack on the orders of her shitty boss who doesn't consider shape shifters human. I don't know if they're going to get back together. They were good for each other, but the schism that incident form might be too big to get over.

The author's gruff mannerisms initially had me a little bit lost. He's funny, and it felt at first like he was making light of the issues in North Korea but the further I got into the book, the more I could see just how much he cared about the people whose lives are run by the regime. This was one of the most informative books I've read about the dprk and their global impact. I had no idea that communist resistance fighters from other countries had gone to North Korea to learn to fight and make bombs. I came of age in a time where Kim Jong-Un' was a meme. The depth and breadth of North Korean global influence and history explored in this book was very interesting and well written. I'm curious about the authors other books on other dictatorships.

Magic Mourns is a good way of getting to know the supporting characters in Kate daniels' life. Andrea and Raphael deserve all the joy in the world. Learning more about Andrea's childhood was heartbreaking. It was also really nice to get further insight about Aunt Bea. There aren't really "background" characters in these books. Just characters who aren't the focal point of the story. I loved getting to know them better.

Are You Listening is beautifully illustrated and lovingly written. It was not at all what I expected when I picked it up. Sometimes not reading the summary on the back of the book leads to the best surprises. The characters feel real because they're experiencing real emotions and traumatic experiences and they're reacting like real people would. Bea is lashing out to keep people away because she believes what happened to her is her fault. Lou is overworking and overwhelming herself to avoid sitting with her grief. Diamond is the glue that binds them together in the way only pets can. This was a great read.

I enjoyed this final instalment of the Time Quintet. I feel like I should have read the other books in the Polly O'Keeffe series first to not feel like I was being dropped in to a middle of an unfamiliar story and a familiar setting, but they weren't technically necessary to understand what happened in this book. The characters are different than I remember them being. Lucille Calubra and Mr. and Mrs. Murray are far more pessimistic then they were in the past books. Meg, Charles Wallace, Sandy, and Dennis didn't really share their adventures with their parents. They didn't try to explain them and the parents rarely went on fantastical adventures with them, but there was still a sense of suspended disbelief and an understanding that weird things could happen, especially with Mr Murray tessering in the first book. I think it's meant to be an aspect of the time gate trying to keep people not involved in the pattern out of the pattern, but it felt like they were out of character for who they've been when the main characters of the first four books were young. I enjoyed Polly and Bishop Calubra's characters. They're kind and the bishop is my favorite type of religious figure. His pursuit of compassion and understanding over converting those he meets to his religious perspective is really neat. Zachary is a deeply unlikable character, and I'm glad about how his story ends up at the end of the book. Overall, an enjoyable story, but quite different from the books that preceded it.

I don't really know what I just read. The foreword says it was written in and meant to be read in English, but it reads like a translated work. I feel like I'm missing some context or social implication in an idiom that didn't translate right. Burt, Shrubs, Jessica, and the other children do so much dangerous and violent stuff, but the only actions that are truly punished are Jessica and Burt's sexual actions that are as consentual as they can be considering the ages of the kids. Rudyard is an interesting character. Burt is right in his assessment of Dr. Nevele. He doesn't quite understand children and that upsets him. Rudyard did far better getting through to Burt. It's interesting how Burt's perspective of the adults around him changes as he assimilates into living in the Children's Trust Residence Center, especially Mrs. Cochrane's shift from antagonist to maternal figure. Burt is definitely a troubled child, but I don't think he's anywhere near intentionally malicious, nor is he a psychopath. This book is super weird, but overall not a bad read. I'm just still not sure how I feel about it. I understand how it could become a cult classic.

No Kum Sok's ability to survive the Korean war and escape North Korea is incredibly impressive. The efforts to which he was willing to go in order to survive, compromising his own beliefs and placing himself in extreme danger are astounding. It's heartbreaking to know that he had to be willing to allow his best friend to die in order for himself to escape. For him to be willing to do that shows the horror of the daily reality their lives were. Personality quotes like that of Joseph Stalin and Kim Il Sung in the past, and Kim Jong-Un's modern iteration are very interesting and Siri and horrifying and practice. I've taken just about 5 years of American history courses in my life and learned next to nothiy about the Korean perspective in the Korean war. Every history book I read brings to light something that was not readily available in my formal education.

This is an interesting look into the lives of the last imperial family of Russia. The last time I learned something specifically about them was in 11th grade history class, so I'm glad that I found this book. The way that they are described using excerpts from diaries and letters makes them oscillate really hard between being people that you can empathize with, and them being just horrible, out of touch royalty at a time when their people were starving and dying by the hundreds and thousands. To know how infantilized the future czar and the grand duchesses were, and how isolated their upbringing was is really interesting. They were children and when left without their titles especially near the last few months of their lives they befriended other children/their guards, played and cleaned. The family is disgustingly antisemitic, the description of such beliefs being what first left a bad taste in my mouth on the topic of the family. The issues leading up to them blaming Jews for a revolt that did not involve very many Jewish people to begin with could be explained as some thing Czar Nicholas couldn't be blamed for because father didn't train him for the role he then took on. The object hatred of a cultural religious  group really grinds my gears. I know historically it was even more acceptable to be so hateful than it is today, but the knowledge of just how antisemitic the imperial family was was shocking. The family being killed at the whim of their jailer and against the initial orders of Lenin was an intentional act done to harm the those in support of the Czar and the white army. We were people being used as pawns after they've been knocked from their pedestal. They'd already been humbled and their deaths weren't necessary. If Nicholas had never become Czar, and was instead allowed to live out his life as a member of the nobility with minimal responsibility, Russia may have continued to be run as an oligarchy with an imperial family to this day. It's easy to look back and see all of the little things that could have been changed that would have had a resounding impact across history.

This isn't really interesting look at coal mining, energy production, and energy consumption. I'm from an area close to the Lehigh River, and it hadn't even occurred to me to look into my local history in that way. Barbara Freese goes into fantastic detail about the history of coal production, it's current iteration, and the different types of coal and their impacts on the environment in terms of both their extraction and their burning. It's a fascinating subject and the book is really well written. I hadn't thought that industrial history would be something that interested me, but I was curious about how the book would address my local area and had remembered a friend whose grandfather worked in coal mining when I stumbled across this book. I'm really glad that I read it and I think I may look for more books in this genre in the future.

This was an interesting perspective on the Chernobyl disaster. I greatly appreciate that Andrew Leatherbarrow gave the forward he did, to note that the book focuses on both the disaster itself and his experience researching and obsessing over it. It was interesting to read a contemporary perspective on Chernobyl interspersed among the events in 1986. Geography isn't my strong suit, but I hadn't realized how close Chernobyl is to Belarus, or how wide the contamination zone has spread. Having the contemporary perspective on the issue and being able to reflect on how the survivors of the disaster are impacted by their exposure to radiation and how many of their livelihoods have been destroyed or altered by it was unique. I enjoyed that the forward addressed the help the author received through strangers and peers on the internet. He essentially crowd sourced his book for edits, content corrections, and translation and that gave it an interesting narration style. It didn't feel like the storytelling was happening from the perspective of an outsider exclusively, but almost like it was being told by a friend of somebody who the incident had happened to.