In some ways, this book deals with all the issues that sequels to space operas with mysteries deal with - now that we know what is going on, where is the suspense?
Fortunately, "will our intrepid heroes survive to wisecrack some more?" has never let anyone down as a plot and it keeps this series moving here as well. Pratt has a good sense of the balance between mystery and reveal and the snarky, scrappy spacefarers are just fun.
Four stars instead of three for not doing the thing where it turns out that some people are irredeemably evil and you should never trust because you'll always get screwed over. Seriously. Less GOT, more Sam Gamgee.

I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. The first one was really good and the second one didn't quite deliver on what I wanted.
In part, I'm just tired of YA novels about how the heroine needs to do things alone and carry all the burdens until she finally learns not to. Yes, it's a good message, but would it utterly destroy the genre to have a heroine start out with "look, friends, I need your help."
Also, the most interesting part by far was the aliens and the weird tech and what the heck is going on anyway and we did not get enough answers at all. I love long dead civilizations and the world is weirder than we knew and there was way too much pining and nowhere near enough research.
(Another review that can be summed up with "this YA novel conformed too much to the genre". Meh.)

And we've hit the brain candy portion of the summer reading, when the heat turns my brain to mush and I stop being able to follow things like plot and just read romance until said brain reconstitutes.
This is not a dig at romance; I could also be rereading favorites where I already know the plot. But it's the reliability of the story that makes romance so appealing.
And after I really enjoyed Hall's bonkers Holmes/Lovecraft homage, but with 1000% more queer people, I figured I would see what else he wrote.
Reader, he redid 50 Shades of Grey, but gay, and here I am.
(I've definitely talked about gay romance novels specifically as a place where gender, sex, sex as a verb, and power get tangled and disentangled. Also true here, although Hall engages somewhat more with the...toxicity of masculinity rather than the non-equivalence of masculinity and power. Which also makes sense in the context. Hall also doesn't engage with it insofar as the book isn't about such things. But they exist in the background and as part of the world building for any book that is set in our world. Romance novels are simultaneously the most radical and reactionary speculative fictions about relationships, but the deliberate focus on creating good feelings tends to both obscure that element and also play it down.)
Anyway, A+ brain candy, excellent lovable but ridiculous college student, beautiful rendition of the "I just want a Duke to sweep me off my feet, but it's the 21st century so let's just go with the disgustingly rich instead and also it's more complicated than that" story. I know that the next book is going to make me sad and so I might just hold off on it until the third one is out in September and just meander through the rest of Hall's oeuvre.

Hall is a delight and I will never get tired of his take on Lovecraftian Horror. (Now with 1000% more queer people!)
I'm so pleased with my decision to never read the originals and only read the contemporary riffs.

Kelly Robson is apparently just one of those authors who writes very well and I don't care for it. It's like a very talented chef who insists on making everything with eggplant. The bit where I don't like eggplant gets in the way of whatever it is she's doing well.
Now if I could only figure out what the eggplant is...
Oh, well. At least now I've read all the novellas for the Hugos.

Sigh. Literature. Not that I’m opposed to such things, but it’s hard to read literature when your brain wants anything but.
I almost want to read this book over the course of 3 weeks with a professor to help unpack the nuances and analyze the choices and fit it into the different traditions it’s calling to and playing with.
I don’t think I’d go so far as saying it’s a good book for someone else, but it’s a book that asks you to work. And I am so very tired.
Today on “is the star system about how GOOD the book is or how much I ENJOYED it?”

This was definitely one of those "I'm sorry, what did I just read?"
It's possible that the audio version was more confusing...or its possible that the whole point of the book is to blur boundaries between character and story and inside and outside and the slow slipping of fairy tale into reality.
Was good. I remain bemused. So it goes.

A book of short stories about characters I wasn't ready to say goodbye to yet? Excellent, thanks!

I don’t think the purpose of this book was to make me want to reread Lirael and Abhorsen, but that’s what happened.
I’ve always said I preferred Sabriel to the other two, but now I’m wondering how much of that was my “but I wanted more of book 1” and book two gets complicated.
Anyway, I feel like I would have appreciated this one significantly more if I had actually reread the other two books and understood what this was actually the prequel to...
Having said that, I really liked Clariel. It wasn’t what I expected, but what it became - and who the character was allowed to become - really fascinated me.

Jaswal writes with the eye and ideals of a 19th century novelist and the style and language of a 21st and I cannot tell you how much that delights me.