Well, I wanted a good old but new space opera and that’s what I got. Old in the grand tradition of my genre favorites, new in the sense that it isn’t built entirely on weird 1950s gender roles. This book delivered. I am pleased.

(I got this book for free through a goodreads giveaway so, you know, full disclosure.)
This series definitely gets better. Some of it is that this book isn’t constantly trying to explain the world to you the way that the last one was; it gets on with telling the story. Some of it is that the characters are older and more mature and that’s makes the reading of it a pleasure. And some of it is that this book spent more time with my favorite characters and less with my least favorite and that’s always nice.
And despite this being fantasy (or perhaps because), Chakraborty has a real gift for showing the complexities of political motivations and conflict. We know who we’re rooting for, but we also recognize how those on the other sides come to think and do what they do. It feels true to real life (especially in MENA these days, but also to a long history of conflict in ways that European based stories don’t always honor.)

I somehow feel, still, like I am not quite smart enough to read Delany. That I owe him and his works more brain space and attention than I have to spare on, well, anything these days (with the possible exception of the Gemara).
So much of what he's doing with SF is light years ahead of its time (yes, I know, light years is a measurement of distance, don't @ me) and the way he thinks about his story ends up always escaping any critical framework I would use to think about it. It invites analysis, but also refuses to limit itself to it. It's in conversation with everything and is constantly asking whether it needs to be all genres all at once - speculative fiction, war novel, family drama, mythic quest - and yet it's precisely its "too-much-ness" that makes it so good.
But, as my aforementioned focus is gone, I listened to the book. I think my dizziness and dislocation is due, in part, to the medium that highlights linguistic style and sentence level acrobatics over getting through the words fast enough to construct a picture of the universe Delany is depicting. But given how good a writer he is, it's TOTALLY worth it.

Oh, look, it’s regency-esque magic and romance. How perfectly in my wheelhouse.
I loved the little touches, like Boudicca beating back the romance and setting a precedent for women as the sensible political sex, and the story overall—for all that it didn’t try to be very surprising—was really sweet.
It may be getting a stars boost from the narrator; I picked this book up because Emma Newman narrates it and I love when she reads her own work so having her read this was part of what made it so good. But I also think it stands on its own.

I'm...nearly positive that I read this book before because I definitely remember the "starts out in Jane Austen, lands squarely in Charlotte Bronte" feel.
Which it totally does.
And it's no less abrupt when I know that it's coming. Although I suspect I stopped reading this book in the middle the first time because I remember the first half quite clearly and the second half not at ALL.
I think whether it works or not, in some ways, depends on the reader's familiarity with the larger 19th century oeuvre. That is, if you are mapping everyone and everything onto Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, it feels like a confusing pastiche. But I think Beckett's actually being much cleverer than that.
First of all, it's OBVIOUSLY not Pride and Prejudice; it's Sense and Sensibility. Three sisters - the eldest is the responsible one, the middle feels deeply, the third is immature, and they survive based on what their mother owns. Come on! You get one annoying cousin who owns the house and its like people forget Austen wrote any other books.
Beckett's basically mining the entire 19th century for his cast, which pushes it past derivative into intentional homage. The first half is Sense and Sensibility (with a little P&P) meets the first half of the Picture of Dorian Gray. (Rafferdy is DARCY? Please. Lord Henry Wotton. Eldyn is Dorian and also kind of Jean Valjean.) Then, in an incredibly abrupt switch, we're wandering around the intersection of Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw. Which is also a really clever comment on just how perilous the Dashwoods' situation is. With Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca thrown in (which, yes, is 20th century but it is itself a Jane Eyre homage so we go with it). The only thing Beckett doesn't quite get is the house, but he's close. And then leave Bronte-land and end up somewhere new, with all the same characters and with a practically Dickensian plot to tie it all up.
It works. It really works. It might be a problem that it clearly doesn't work as well if you are less familiar with Beckett's source material, but I had such fun with it.
Also, I REALLY want to know how the variable length days work.

Roanhorse is killing it with this series. Also, she has an amazing sense of pace and you end up just flying through the book without noticing just how much character work is going on in the process until you get to the end and, yep, it all checks out.
As with Trail of Lightning, much of the commentary is buried pretty deep in the world building, but it’s there and searing when you see it. (Most notably the effect of the foster system on indigenous children). I stayed up late last night to finish it and since that was after a long and amazing day at a friend’s wedding, that’s saying something.

UGH.
But like in the best way possible. Stefan Rudnicki's narration of Delany is just amazing! There's something about listening to the characters and the conversations that works for me even better than reading does, at least for Delany. Somehow, it's easier to go with the flow as he builds the ideas of the world and crafts that mishmash of space opera and post-structuralism that's basically his m.o.
Also, this book is in conversation with (and antedates) both Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and China Mieville's Embassytown (and other things, I imagine, but those two in particular came to mind) and I want to...idk, think more about science fiction that takes on the "soft" sciences.
But I stand by my UGH. This whole "rediscover the past greats of sf" thing is pretty fun.

What I said about the last one is basically true here too. It’s just a fun story that sits perfectly in my wheelhouse of awesome ladies in historical settings doing magic.
Two observations: this book, and the last one, turn almost entirely on female friendships and the fact that women are nearly never catty to one another for no reason. I was kind of annoyed at the one vile and catty woman in this one, although she was the exception rather than the rule, but overall, the relationships between women shine, both platonic and romantic, and stand at the heart of this story.
Second, this is NOT a story about women’s ordination in the orthodox Jewish community. But reading it, I saw so many parallels between what Cassandra goes through as the “first” and the struggle to gain legitimacy and the question of what you do when you fail. And what everyone, men and women, stand to lose when you upend the status quo. It felt VERY real indeed.
And it was also a sweet fantasy book about women changing the world so, you know, depths and all that.

Okay, so I've never actually read anything by H. P. Lovecraft and you would think, given the amount of pastiche, homage, and general critical reworking of the man that I go through, that I would either get around to it finally or be really confused by it. You'd be wrong.
Responses to Lovecraft are INFINITELY more delightful than the man himself and this book is no exception. It's a Sherlock story with a gloriously epic woman in the role of the detective, a sidekick who plays the straight man to her perfectly (despite not, of course, being in the least bit straight and I really really hope that the hints dropped about his husband are what I think they are), more madcap adventure than should really be allowed in one book, and lots of eldritch horror.
Also, Boulton did an excellent job as narrator and UTTERLY captured Wyndham (aka Watson)'s tone of voice and slight incredulity and appalled ness...but also interest and amusement at everything going on.
I had so much fun.
Why isn't there more?

The Hero and the Crown is McKinley's second book in the Damar series (however long that will be), though it is the prequel to The Blue Sword. I like this one just a bit better. Aerin is first sol (which roughly translates to Princess) of Damar and, unlike the rest of her family, seems entirely devoid of a magical gift. So she is searching for some way to prove herself and, due to a well aimed taunt and some interesting recipes, becomes a dragon slayer. Of course, that means the dragons start showing up in full force, the kingdom of Damar is under threat from the Northern Demons and Aerin is the only one who can do anything about it. After nearly getting herself killed, twice, Aerin fulfilled her role and finds out that her life is far more complicated and magical than she could have known.

As I've said before, McKinley's strength lies in her characters. Damar is one of the few places where she sets her stories that has its own history and existence and such; usually they're just in a kingdom somewhere. But Aerin is a marvelous heroine, with whom it is impossible not to identify. She is a twist on the usual princess, not just because she is an outcast, but because she is proactive. Women were never proactive in fantasy novels until McKinley and Tamora Pierce started writing. Aerin, in particular, is so lovable because her problems are real. I could actually sympathize with her position as first sol, which is a change from my usual scoff of "I wish I had your problems".

McKinley also does her readers the great service of making the romantic aspect of the story surprising. Having a painfully obvious romantic trajectory is acceptable for Jane Austen, but it is nice to see a bit of creativity in the more modern folk and McKinley provides just that. I thought I knew how the romance was going to turn out, but I was pleasantly surprised (especially as this was not the first time I had read this book. The first time in about seven years, though.) And the bittersweetness of Aerin's life is pretty much encapsulated in that.

I am, I'll admit, biased when reviewing my favorite authors. I've always been a littls suspicious of McKinley's heroines as the same sort keep popping up in vastly different stories. Still, they are excellent heroines and we could use more like them.

This is definitely my favorite of the two Damar books and it comes highly recommended, especially for any girl (such as myself) who spent her childhood searching for female leads who were not pathetic. As you might note, that search means that said female leads take up a disproportionate number of books on this shelf.
EDIT: Funny how one's mind changes. This reading, I preferred Blue Sword, though THATC was still great.