This is basically Sunshine meets Spindle's End. Those are both books that I really liked so I have no problems whatsoever with the occasional feeling of having read this before.
Also, OMG PUPPIES!

Technically, it's a 3.75 (finer gradations will follow as I spent more time on this site...) because I found elements of the denoument to be, frankly, silly. But given that that was two pages out of an otherwise lovely book, I figured I would give it the four it deserves. I do like to see fairy tales retold well.

This book was excellent. One of those stories that lived up to the hype and beyond. (And it made fun of French theory, but that's admittedly a side-note). It makes me think of the book that Ian McDonald's "The Dervish House" dreamed of being. There are similar themes in both books, but Willow's book is far better in terms of plot and execution. And her writing has that sly, humorous bite to it that always endears me to a writer.

The problem with reading series is that I read the first one and my to-read list begins to shrink and then the next book immediately takes its place. And then, to add insult ti injury, you finish the second book and realize that the third book doesn't exist yet.
In a sense, this book suffered a bit from being the second book in an ongoing story so, while the book felt like a complete story arc, I am still frustrated simply because I want to know what happens next. Second books tend to be about evolution and escalation, aiming towards the climactic moment of book three where everything is resolved.
Which is something of a shame, because this book was really good and built on the fantastic world that Taylor only gave us a glimpse of in her first book.
And she references Monty Python!
Really, I'm just bitter that it takes time to write books and they don't just appear when impatient readers demand them.

And barely a 3, actually. Settle down for another round of "Liz attempts to articulate why she was bothered by a book".
The story in this book, though a bit overcrowded with details and events and things, was definitely good. I enjoyed it as much as I could when the main character wasn't getting in the way.
Eona bothered me on two levels. Firstly, I hate the tempted-by-power, held-back-by-inner-goodness character arc even when its done. Secondly, it wasn't done well. I felt as though Eona continually recapitulated the same moral struggles, solved them and then did the exact same thing again. It was like watching a Disney sequel - she seemed to have no capacity to learn from her mistakes and so, by the fourth or so time it happened, I had no sympathy left for what was supposed to be a difficult moral struggle. At the same time, I didn't get the impression that Eona lacked self-awareness. In fact, she actually had too much self-awareness. Her ability to assess her own motivations far exceeded the ability of someone too short-sighted to change. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I didn't buy her as a person rather than as a somewhat flat stereotype of a Strong Female Character with a Moral Quandary (TM).
I also remained bothered by the same things that frustrated me in the first book - Goodman doesn't always manage to walk the fine line between homage and cultural appropriation and her treatment of disability. It's not...bad exactly. It's just...eh. Certain issues become convenient platforms for showcasing Eona's changing rather than allowing characters to exist as people (Chart, e.g.) and it was more noticeable in this book than the previous one.
I'm glad I finished it, certainly, and enjoyed finding out what happened. But it read to me like a first novel (or first series), one where the author has an overabundance of ideas and lacks the polished skills to pull them all off. Surprisingly (to me), it isn't.

I don't know if "philosophical space opera" is an official genre, but it's the best term I can think of to describe what it is I like in sci-fi. I'm interested in the science part in a theoretical sense, but I'm far more intrigued by stories that explore the implications of scientific possibilities rather than those that focus on the hard science details. Books that engage with questions of battle and conquest, colonization and power, are far more interesting (and, honestly, better written) than those that are too focused on the future science to look at the people wielding it.
Leckie has done a fantastic job of writing...well, the kind of book I want to read. The stakes are high, the characters are believable, the story is part traditional space opera and part speculative fiction a la Le Guin. This is what I want science fiction to be.
Also, Orbit Books is leading the pack for publishers who publish authors I really enjoy.

This one felt a bit less like a fairy tale than its predecessors and suffered a bit, especially in terms of coherence. George used this as a way to more or less wrap up any loose ends from the first book and it was odd to read this right after Princess of Glass because this felt so much like a sequel to midnight ball. Once again, the best part of these books are the princesses themselves and I enjoyed all of these books for their sake.

I am a sucker for fairy tale retellings, especially the slightly less famous ones. George delivers with a nicely adapted plot and well-realized world. Everyone has the genre they can't help but enjoy. This is mine.

George's continuation of her Princess series is not quite as good as the first although her twist on Cinderella is incredibly clever and her main female characters, at least, are delightful. Still a fun series and I enjoyed it a lot.