It's not that I have too many feelings about Lewis's work, it's that I have two and they basically just flip back and forth between "How dare you?" (impressed) and "How dare you?" (derogatory)

I have to sit with them again, especially because his stuff works on a wide range of registers:
1) He thinks this is about being a Christian, but it's actually about being a human
2) He thinks this is about being a Christian, but it's actually about having a relationship with religion and God
3) He thinks this is about being a human, but it's actually about being a 20th century don.
4) He thinks this is about being a Christian and he is absolutely correct and it's uninteresting to me.

"Learning in Wartime" is, for obvious reasons, running in circles in my head and there are bits of it that I hate (his cavalier attitude towards death in the face of eternal redemption because, well, Christianity) and then there are bits about the fundamentally precedent-ed nature of our times. We have always studied despite the world around us.
Also the idea that things may be “A duty worth dying, yes, but not a duty worth living for.”
Also “Whether or not we ought to put aside everything else—either before religion or the way—we don’t. And if we refuse good things, they will be replaced with bad things.”

Distinguishing between the person who hides and the person who knows they are where they are supposed to be.

And then there's Transposition and the idea that ineffable experiences are translated like a symphony to a piano piece because we are pianos. I can't figure out what the there THERE is. I wonder if it's another version of the story of "On Fairy Stories".

I'm not going to talk about the bit on the importance of inequality but I also do not intend to forget it. Damnit, Lewis.

There's an article somewhere about reading Tolkien, L'Engel, and Lewis at a formative age and how that shapes one's sense of good and evil. I just may have to write it first.

I suspect this book fell into the "the headspace was wrong, but the library had it right now so that's when i read it".
It was fascinating and doing really cool things and also I didn't get into it the way I expected to, which is always irritating when you like a book but your brain isn't willing to go there.
And it kept being interesting, though, especially as it tried to hold the messiness of change in all its glory and what a bonkers "indistinguishable from magic" story would actually be like.

I forgot how much this duology is a conversation about gender as performance and wow is it fascinating. I also think it manages to walk the extremely fine line that good historical fantasy does well (and historical fantasy does rarely) of portraying ambitious, determined, ruthless characters in a way that makes them deeply relatable without making their moral greyness the interesting part of their personality. None of these characters are interesting because they are morally grey, they are interesting because they are ruthless and fighting and constantly trying to figure out what to do about what they are losing. They are also, almost to a fault, nuanced evocations of the inside of someone's head when they are ravaged by loss.
I'm still not sure whether I think the end was perfect or deeply aggravating. Maybe both?

What if we wrote a history of the conflict between indigenous peoples and between indigenous peoples and colonizers in this continent the way we write European histories?
Meaning we look at it as a contest between powers and discuss where and how the conflict happened and the ways in which culture plays a role and we take seriously the idea that these are nations who are fighting each other rather than flattening any portrayal. Which is not to say that Hämäläinen is both-sides-ing the story. It’s precisely the objectivity and historical analysis that gives weight to his observations about specific acts of cruelty and treachery on the part of the Europeans (and eventually Americans) and his conclusions about the enduring indigenous character of the continent. 
Also, this was basically like listening to a textbook and I definitely would have gotten more out of it if I’d read it in short chunks, but also I wasn’t reading for research but for my own learning. 

This was one of those stories that embodies truth in advertising. I was sold on it as Lesbian space Count of Monte Cristo and it absolutely lives up to that claim and if that sounds good, you should also read it. And I particularly appreciated de Bodard’s discourse on the two forms of legal corruption - perverting justice by hiding the guilty from it and by using justice to be unjust. 
It’s very well done. 

So, in my defense, it's not that easy to tell that this is the first book in a series and ALSO in my defense, a book should end at the end, not just stop. This wasn't even a cliffhanger, this was just where Kaplan seemed to run out of paper.
I will forgive a lot for really interesting worldbuilding - which this has - but not at least wrapping up some basic plot points in a book that's over 500 pages? Come on. 
I will also concede that I have high expectations for Jewish books that clear the bar of "not being about either the golem or the holocaust" which you would think should be easy.
Although I am appreciating the current trend of sheydim + historical tragedy (pogroms, the inquisition, etc) and see what emerges. Granted, Jewish history is relatively low on "and then things were GREAT" so, like, some of this is inevitable.
The contents of this book are so interesting and the throughline of the narrative just feels so incoherent compared to it.

I remember finishing the previous book and very correctly calling this pairing and I am also very glad I reread the first book before starting on this one because there were a number of characters and events that it was very useful to have actually remembered.
Marske ends the story really well and in the only way it could go and I always like a good "remember this jackass who has been slowly improving? Yeah, it's his book now".

This book has a bit of Disney sequelitis - hey, remember that thing that the character was supposed to learn in the first book and you thought they did? Surprise! Here they are doing the thing again. Zinnia's snark was less endearing this time around even as the story itself was fascinating and the premise remained very cool. 

Thank you to the Incomparable book recommendations for this series - I had vaguely noticed it going by and then it came up in the Hugos reading and I thought "oh, I should read this as a break from the 18 hour audiobook I was enjoying but not entirely in the brainspace for".

And I was right. It's very clever and does a lot with the novella length and I am very glad it did not try to be a full length novel. It's an excellent fairy tale and an excellent story for those of us who really appreciate fairy tales.

So they absolutely Neal Stephensoned the ending, which I only realized because I looked down when I expected to see two hours left and discovered about twelve minutes remaining. I'm not too mad, though, as they did kind of earn a sudden

people called Romanes, they go the house

.
What remains interesting about this series is the sense that the world feels incredibly inhabited, as thought Monette and Bear could come back to another part of the world or story and have a whole nother narrative waiting. They are interested in different things than Guy Gavriel Kay, but the sense of historical/fantastical place has the same depth to it.
I made the mistake of reading other reviews (yes, yes, I know) and one of the most interesting takes that I see expressed but not interrogated is the sexual politics of the world which, yes, apparently began as a pastiche - 
PSA to audiobook creators - PLEASE INCLUDE THE AUTHORS NOTES!
- but very swiftly became "what if we played this out and to the hilt". What I think gets ignored in the conversation about the dubiousness of the consent is 1) the way in which modern assumptions about what sex ought to be like are brought to a text that is trying to situate itself outside of modern mores and 2) the way that Isolfr in particular but brothers bonded to female wolves in general experience, well, marriage. Their bodies are bartered in order to create community and they range from being excited by it to dreading it. And, yes, it is more complex than this facile analogy, but marriage is also relatively more complex than it gets credit for being. And what strikes me as so interesting is that, especially by this book (but even in the first one with the smiths and mothers of the svartalfar), the authors are already thinking about the way that identity dictates destiny in a culture and what it looks like to break it.
So, like, yes, obviously, this book should not be taken as a blueprint for a healthy relationship and, also, what it is doing with animal companions and the way it thinks about the individual's place in community is so much more interesting.