I have said before that I would probably listen to Neil Gaiman read the phone book.
This is not the phone book. This is a really fun and fascinating retelling of Norse legends that stick predominantly to mythic language and the sense of movement you find in myths, but sprinkled throughout with Gaiman's little embellishments that make the characters feel grounded and come to life.
This book makes for excellent bedtime stories if you don't mind all the murder.

Okay, so I have to explain this review.
I LOVE what Adeyemi is doing with her world building and her use of fantasy to critique and talk about contemporary society. The whole "sf is progressive and looks forward, fantasy is conservative and looks back" has always been kinda b.s. and no more so than these days. Adeyemi's approach works extremely well and she, like Jemisin who is the queen of exquisite critique through glorious writing, knows the difference between writing allegory and writing a story that speaks to the times we live in.
Having said all of that, I could have done with 200% less boys in this book.
This is a genre problem. YA, as a genre, has certain constraints and styles of writing. YA, especially in first person, usually writes emotions baldly on the page, having characters clearly articulate how they feel in specific circumstances, and that style doesn't always work for me.* Sometimes I like it, sometimes it feels like a flattening of minds, and that's usually a side effect of having read too much in one genre, which is why I should switch it up more often, but this book came in from the library and what was I going to do, NOT read it immediately? There is a point where this becomes whining about mystery novels because there was a case to solve and that's not the book's fault.
More to the point, boys.

I SO did not need either romance in this book. I am entirely beyond done with the boy who attempts to kill the girl and then becomes a love interest and I say this as someone who will read the hell out of anything remotely related to beauty and the beast. But I am so tired of this trope.I understand why Inan needed to be sympathetic and why we need to be in his head, but UGH, really? Really? Also, I am entirely on Zélie's side for attacking Tzain after he called her a whore. Seriously, he deserved that and should have apologized. Boys are stupid and I just want more of Zélie and Amari taking over the world. That works for me.

Anyway, I'm very glad I read it.
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*I think there is a pedagogic element to this; part of what YA is so good at is creating relatable and navigable characters for young adults and the characters in the book function as lodestones for how to process feelings. Any book that does this intentionally or didactically is probably crap, but I think it has become a part of the writing YA in the first person to adopt this voice.

I find this series so bone-achingly delightful. The longing to fit in and belong is conveyed with such a delicate touch that you only realize its weight once you are done. We're reaching the point where every review for a subsequent book just rehashes what I liked about the previous one, so check those because McGuire's gift here is in telling the same sort of story over and over again--you never go home...until you do--while still making it raw and new and different in each iteration.

That was amazing and what in heaven's name did I read!?

This was fascinating and brilliant and thrilled my little gothic heart to the bone. It was weird and bizarre and not at all what I expected and yet delightful nonetheless.

NO ONE TOLD ME THIS WAS A JANE EYRE BOOK! And that made the story even better because then you see where things are going and Ng fools you nonetheless. So good!

I have got to stop reading books about insidiously bad things are that are 90% the problem and only 10% a movement towards solutions.
The hardest part about systemic, intractable problems is that they are systemic and intractable. Alexander does an amazing job laying out how mass incarceration functions as a form of racist control. It's a frustrating read, but no less vital, because it frames the way we think out the work we must do to make the world better.

This story was delightfully cute; it felt novella-esque in both size and scope, yet still managed to have a lot of deep insight into relationships. It's fun to be back with Karen, even if this book lacked the weight, in all senses of the term, of the novel.

More like this, please. SF adventures in space that involve outsmarting the AI and complex ideas, but also fun characters.
I read this in audiobook form (which, note to self, add as an edition) and it wasn’t perfectly easy to follow when the reader spaces out...not the book’s fault, but it did make one of Iridian’s mad dashes a bit confusing. I may try to get the next book in the series in written form rather than aural. But the narration was awesome, so I’m not sure.

Oof! This series hurts, but in such a good way. I'm annoyed its taken me until now to read it, although not half as annoyed as I am that I only have the third book on kindle and it's about to be a three day yom tov.

Raven Stratagem is such a hard book to talk about because Lee's appeal as an author is, I think, inversely proportionate to how much you need to visualize the weird tech. The point isn’t the tech, the point is the people. And Lee's gift is noticing the little things and bringing characters to life through minor details: Mikodez and sweets, Zehoun and their cats, and so on down the line. It’s through these small pieces that Lee builds up the lived experience of his world and makes it, for all its bizarreness, feel very real.
And I loved Zeller's reading of the book, her voice work is stellar!