So I seem to be on an "every YA book I've heard recommended some time in the past three years" kick, because they are short and really easily accessible because the library tends to have them as downloads.
Of course, then I start wondering what took me so long to get to them. Clearly the genre of intricately plotted, high stakes spec fic with young adults speaks to me. Where's the sequel?

An enjoyable second half of the duology. Finding out what's actually going on and tying up the loose ends from the previous book was a lot of fun, even if the book did suffer a little from the raising of the stakes, which did complicate everything and not always for the better.
Glad I ran across Myers in Kaleidoscope and checked out this series.

Probably closer to a 3.5, but I'm in the mood to be picky.
It's a good book. It's surprisingly straightforward for a Mitchell novel (so weirdly roundabout by everyone else's standards) and, as others have observed before, this may be his most speculative work yet.
Still, I did find that the Mitchellness of the writing did get in the way of the story. There were all these wonderfully written vignettes about life and people and, in the background, this larger and stranger narrative building up; a narrative that gets about 100 pages in the spotlight before fading away. And I kept either wanting the larger narrative to pick up the pace and explain what it was doing or, alternatively, get out of the way and let the focus go back to the individual characters, who were awesome. The story as told through multiple people is a staple of Mitchell's work, but this story is not always well served by that narrative. He doesn't marry the large scale and the small scale as well as he did in Cloud Atlas and that unevenness does detract a bit from the book.
Also, mildly spoileriffic pet peeve, how is it that the man cannot imagine a future for our world in which society does not collapse? I just...it's every book! And it's not even the point of every book. It's just a thing that happens!
Anyway, still a really good read and the writing remains gorgeous. But the book itself feels a bit rough around the edges, as if it's not sure how to be literary and genre at the same time. And I'm not sure why, given that Mitchell has done a great job with this combination before. But it just fell a bit flat at times here.

Very much a "what the hell?!" book, although not in a bad way. Atmospheric, oppressive, weird as anything and without a sympathetic character in sight, VanderMeer's short and creepy novel works precisely because of how all those elements fit together. It's a book that requires you to enjoy a puzzle even if you're not sure about its solvability and a book that, rather like China Mieville when he's not being overly long, asks you to embrace the strangeness and see where it takes you.
I have the next two books on hold at the library, so I'll let you know when I find out.

One of the really impressive things about this book was how skillfully Valentine managed to marry the fairy tale aesthetic to a non-fantastic setting. It's not a fairy tale set in the real world, it's (rather like Oyeyemi's "Boy, Snow, Bird") a story that draws on a sense of fairy tale and folklore without removing the story from the realm of the real. It has the same characteristics of a good fairy tale, where anything can happen and the wisdom or foolishness of the choices, especially of parents, read as inevitable rather than absurd.
That dreamlike state is what makes the story work, but it also distanced me from the characters and made them feel almost insubstantial. It's a gorgeous story in its own way, but one that feels sealed away behind glass.
Fairy tale retellings are tricky and I think I recommend this one more than my rating suggests.

I definitely rate children's lit differently since so much of my rating is tied up in how happy I am that a book like this exists for kids (and there's less space for ratings dependent on glorious flights of linguistic fancy or the book's ability to handle shocking turns because, sooner or later, most books for children will end with the main character conquering their fears and being successful somehow) and how well the author controls the mix of plot/world/character that come together to make a really good kid's book.
This was a really good kid's book. Okorafor balances the whimsy of an almost Wonderland-esque world (which she references once or twice) with serious questions about fitting in and making dangerous choices. And it's hard not to love Zahrah.

This is a very high 3 star. The beginning and end were really good and the middle was interesting in its own right, but they felt like two different narratives—the immigrant story in the middle and the fantasy that bookends it. The excitement and energy of the fantasy has no real bearing on the middle of the story, while the resolution—excellent in its own right—needed much less in the middle. The two tones were both good, but they didn't always function as a harmony, more like two symphonies alternating that treat the same topic. Both are good, but the logic of putting them together sometimes escaped me.

So this was awesome! Not just because most of my context for Wollstonecraft before this book was as Mary Shelley's mother and the author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Women," but because Wollstonecraft was kind of amazing! Despite knowing what I know about the 18th and 19th centuries, I do sometimes forget how much a determined woman can do and the difference between things that are impossible and things that just aren't easy.
Gordon is a very sympathetic biographer and sees herself as engaged in the project of rehabilitating Wollstonecraft (even though my experience is that we've gotten over most of the pernicious slander around her) and does an admirable job. Her life reads like a kind of fictional adventure and Gordon uses her letters to give us the kind of accessibility to her heart and mind that feels almost fictional without breaking the (illusion of) history.
It was a great read and, holy cow, Wollstonecraft was AWESOME!

Exactly what it says on the tin. Historical romance, exotic locales, a smattering of imperialism even under the guise of opposing it.
Raybourn's romance is consistently enjoyable and what more could you ask? (Well, other than a story that manages to leave out the white savior complex. That would be nice.)