Fluffy romance. Oh Ursula.
This is not fluffy romance and also it absolutely is and they are delightful and fun and the story is just so good and the world is so much fun to visit!
Unrelated, I want Penric from Bujold’s Five Gods novellas and Zale to go get drinks.

I am so confused about my relationship with these books. On the one hand, the premise and world building and language delights me. On the other hand, I am always just...meandering though them and so rarely pulled along. I read a chapter and put it down and then come back and keep going. But also I keep reading them because I find the language in particular so compelling.
I wish I had a better sense of what it was that worked and didn't for me from them, but I'm so glad I read them.

This is one of those books that is about friendship and people and is impossibly sweet, but it's also about quinine smuggling and utterly messed-up colonialist attitudes and weird magical realism. I'm still not entirely sure what to think of it, although I am deeply fond of it and it made me want to reread Pulley's debut because she has a very distinctive style that I enjoy a lot.

The problem with writing pride and prejudice and dragons is that, at the end of the day, when you have written yourself out of pride and prejudice and into merely "and dragons," you're telling a very different KIND of story. Both in terms of narrative register and in terms of what sorts of revelations the reader expects.
I'm still not sure how I feel about the existence of the sequels. And while there were specific aspects of the characters that were really well done, the plot and larger storybuilding as a whole felt incomplete and like White had forgotten so many of the breadcrumbs she had dropped on the way.
So, on the one hand, too much plot. On the other hand, not enough STORY.
But it did have some very good bits (Aliza coping with loss was pitch perfect) and also...I kind of wish it was a new series with new characters even if set in this world.

Well, I seem to have exhausted the Read of Ile-Rien. I wish there were more books in this world. Still, the ones there are were definitely a fun read and, as I've been saying this whole time, hit all my fantasy buttons.

There are some authors who are great because they are very clearly doing new and innovative and interesting things and it's obvious from the cover. And then there are other authors who, in telling a familiar story and working within the tradition of epic fantasy, just do it better than so many other authors and, by doing it better, innovate in small ways and embrace the good tropes while eschewing the frustrating cliches. That's why Wells' books worked for me. I've been reminded of how much I enjoy epic fantasy that's been done well.

I really needed a good romance with a plot and a couple I could root for and this delivered perfectly.
Thank goodness for the books we read in stressful times.

I really needed this book right now. It's sweet, it's funny, it's not precisely a romance but it's very much about feelings and self and embracing who you are and I also just...it was just a really reassuring thing to read.

So I was far more pleased with this one than the previous one - in part because I have feelings about prequels and, moreso, because I just want to know more about this world and the daemons and Dust and everything that's going on.
And this book does exactly that.
And ALSO there's something hilarious about how Pullman writes a book that includes a screed against authors who cleverly...and not so cleverly write books that are meant as philosophical takedowns. Which is SO obviously a response to critiques of the Amber Spyglass and also a clear dislike of certain authors and I'm assuming Ayn Rand is one of them because I also have my own feelings.
And yet he also has written such a book in this book - this is a story about the dismissal of feelings, of emotions, of experiences, of assuming that his utter dismissal of religion is commensurate with a creeping scientism that dismisses anything that can't be quantified.
Granted, Pullman's anger is more directed - not against all philosophical novels, merely the ones with bad philosophy.
Luckily for us readers, Pullman is not that writer.

It's not that I didn't like this book (I did!) or that I don't remain blown away by the world that Bear created in this universe (I do!) but it was like...2/3s of the way through the book before I dredged up enough of the previous book to remember who the characters were and who I'm supposed to feel what about (absent the obvious jerk faces, of course).
Is there "books that are better for people who can remember for beans" recommendation?