Well, that series was quite an adventure. There's nothing like sitting outside a hotel room trying not to scream at the book because, if you do, you'll awaken your sleeping child and have to stop reading.
I really appreciated how Schwab tied up the loose ends of the story without solving every mystery (I'm looking at you, Kell Maresh) and gave the story the ending that felt right and earned. Also,

that the Rhy Maresh devastation conga line finally came to an end because he and Alucard deserve to be happy, damn it!

. Seriously good, highly recommended to fans of epic fantasy.

Still want Kell's coat.

I'm really enjoying the current superhero renaissance that interrogates the genre even while buying into it. Daniels writes in that tradition: she's not afraid of thinking about the ways in which the genre pretends that there are stark distinctions between good and evil, recognizing instead that if heroes work with and for governments, they are complicit in the choices made by the government. On the other hand, she turns away from the Nolan Batman nihilism, working instead in this middle area where heroism, goodness, courage, and self are all terms that need to be interrogated.
It's also a heck of a good superhero origin story.
It's also a really important moment of Trans representation in literature. The story both is and is not about Danny's experience of coming out and transitioning; it folds perfectly into the superhero origin story and I love it.

Apparently cyberpunk is not dead yet. It's been revivified, given some more bioware (the concept, not the company) and back with a vengeance for a decade that's looking disturbingly more like the eighties than anyone would really wish.
Anyway, Escapology is the love child of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Steven Hall's Raw Shark Texts. It has the hacker aesthetic, gray morality and skateboarding—sorry, blading aesthetic of the former coupled with the mind screwing, AI take-overing, quest aesthetic of the latter. Oh, and the fish.
Two strange tastes that taste great together.

The problem with this book is that I spent so much time critically intrigued by what Williams was doing with language and the use of real world imperialism to map fantasy that I forgot to get swept up in the story until most of the way through. I kept trying to compose papers about it rather than let it sweep me away.

The content in this book is utterly fascinating, although I would have preferred a bit more fidelity to the chronology. And trying to read this all in one sitting can feel a bit repetitive. It's a book that benefits from reading a chapter at a time and digesting it.
Looking forward to the sequel, it does end on quite a cliffhanger.

This was not quite what I was expecting—I'm so used to thinking of Atwood as a dystopian writer—but it was delightful and sweet and just a little sad. And very clever indeed.

Fantastic! I am continually impressed at how talented Bujold is at creating brilliant, memorable and, above all, real characters. She's a joy to read.

Funny, how one can grow to like a book so much better the second time around. I reread Bujold's "Curse of Chalion" and loved it so much more than I remembered. This was the first of her works I'd ever read, and I listened to it on audio about a month before my wedding and it somehow failed to make an impression on me.
Then I discovered the Vorkosigan Saga and devoured everything Bujold had written, then went on to inflict her on my friends and family. Which is the proper thing to do with a good book.
I've finally begun to reread them and I've worked my way back around to Chalion, with far more of an appreciation for her storytelling, her character development and her worldbuilding than before.
She (like a few other authors, NK Jemisin notably) has an understanding of how divinity works to best advantage in fantastic worlds. She knows how to create gods with power, but but who need worship. Gods that, while they don't make sense on a human level, have religions that make sense. She understands worship and it shows. Her religion is better thought out than most real ones (which should come as no surprise).
Anyway, I'm so glad I came back and gave Chalion, and Cazaril, another chance.

Hugos reading!
It's funny, I'm really enjoying Bujold's turn from fast-paced plot to slower, character driven narrative in the Vorkosigan Saga and I loved the first two Chalion novels, but the third one and, to a degree, this story didn't grab me to the same degree.
Probably because of my investment in her characters, actually. I really do just want to hang out with them and it's frustrating to get to a new book in the universe without old friends.
Huh. Usually I have better objections to the stories (that don't make me sound exactly like my spouse).
Anyway, there it is. A good story, but not quite the story I wanted.