I feel like I rate audiobooks I like higher and I’m not sure if that’s because the performance means I gauge the speed of the narrative differently?
Anyway, Thomas does the mystery thing here where the detective knows what’s up and doesn’t tell the reader and it ALMOST doesn’t work except that it does and I’m impressed at the misdirection.
But honestly I’m just in it for the characters and Charlotte Holmes, who is becoming a fast favorite of mine.

I've always adored this series (why are there only two!?) and there are too many reasons to count. The world is fun, the characters are great, the magic is well thought out and, of course, the author understands how to set a fantasy novel in the past and do it well.
It's just one of those brilliant YA fictions that you (okay, I) read over and over again.

This book took a while to get started and also developed a lot of the ideas in an unexpected fashion.
Which was both good and bad. And for all that parts of it still felt like they dragged, I loved the story of empire and power that Suri built.

I’ve been going through this series way too fast and also the way she writes contemporary mysteries in late Victorian eras is very fun.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over “ridiculous historical novels, but make it gay!” And also deconstruct it.

And now I finished the published books in this series. Now what?
Such a fun mystery series and I love a good heist.

So if Carry On was fundamentally a critique of Harry, Hogwarts, and Dumbledote, the Wayward Son takes on the entire institution of the wizarding world and the very conceit it glorifies. It’s all about what secrecy means and why and what magic would ACTUALLY look like in America and how little and narrow Rowling’s wizards are in their view of the world.
And it’s a road trip. Obviously.

I have got to stop reading books when I’m exhausted and burnt out because I can see how good the book WOULD be if I was only there.
This was absolutely one of those books.
Also, what is it with 2019 and sly Shakespearean retellings?

I really enjoyed this book although, I'll concede, I really needed to enjoy a book right about now because work is beginning to rear its terrible head and that means stress cannot be far behind. So I turned to this because it was recommended to...well Twitter at large by Kate Elliott and I liked Elliott's alternate Britain with magic.

This was different, although in a good way. I enjoyed the adventure and it was the kind of steampunk that I like - there's magic and there's technology and people wear goggles and that's it. It's also epic fantasy with world saving and battles and espionage and it's a trilogy and I've given myself permission not to do any work for the rest of the weekend, so stay tuned for the next book in the series...

Today's plan: devour this trilogy to avoid doing any work.
So far, so good.

This series remains incredibly fun and almost compulsively readable. Wells does the kind of steampunk that I like - brass fittings and airships, but not a whole lot of mucking around with (and thus mucking up) Victorian culture. I like epic fantasy on this scale of world wars. It reminds me of Kate Elliott's Spiritwalker Trilogy and Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorn, although it antedates both. It's that kind of story with added snark as a bonus.

ETA: Rereading this book (nearly six years later), I'm realizing just how much I appreciate Tremaine as an "unlikeable female character who I like very much" and how her view of her father is such a welcome breath of air on that kind of character.