You could see Lesto was being set up in the previous book and, I mean, no complaints. A truly STUNNING amount of coincidences and casual punching of people, but that's only to be expected.

I think this might be where I realized that Derr has exactly one romance and it is "two people who each think they are not good enough for the other one" and, like, it works. It definitely satisfies the
"This drink ship, I like it. Another!"
impulse. 

And, also, like, the law of diminishing returns.

You know when there's a book and it's obviously up your alley and it just takes a while before you sit down and start it because, who even knows, reasons?
Anyway, this was adorable. Arranged marriage and denial will never not be a winning combination for me and it's also just super cute to have the "no, you'll actually be fine when you get it together" as a vibe.

Also appreciated the moment most of the way through when they're teasing one of the other characters and it's like "aha! sequel hook!"

I feel like I should have been less surprised by the plot than I was, knowing Polk as a writer and what they’ve done in their previous books. 
And yet it still threw me. 
Anyway, this is absolutely my kind of noir and I really enjoyed it. It has very distinct historical Buffy vibes, but with Polk’s care for their characters. Which is what makes it so good.

In news that surprised absolutely no one, I ADORED this book 
I’ve had it for a long time and I’ve known that I would love and it still I saved it like the last piece of peppermint bark at the end of December. 
It’s such an autistic book - in the way that books are Jewish or New Yorker - in how it sees the world and invites focus and clarity and caring about the kinds of things that matter when you allow the world to, intentionally, get smaller. 
I love both the idea of wintering and the memoir she offers so much.

I appreciated what this book did in terms of worldbuilding and filling in the universe beyond what our characters knew. 
And also I could have used so much less teenaged angst. It’s not that I don’t get or even am guilty of it a time or two myself, I just find reading it frustrating. 
On the bright side, there does seem to be

possibilities of an actual love triangle with polyamory rather than the boring kind…but I wish she’d signaled that more clearly at the beginning. I would have whined about it less.

It was fine. But it was less of what I loved than the first one. (Also I could have used some more nomenclature reminders because I still don’t remember how the legendborn work .)

So this is one of those books that DEFINED fantasy for so many people and it's so strange to read it after having read those authors and thinking "oh, he's also doing this" to "oh, he's the *this* that all the alsos are copying".

This books sings. And not like Tolkien, but so much of the speech and narration has the rhyme and rhythm of narrative poetry. It's somehow a story about loss where all the things you expect to be lost are not and yet also...it's sad without giving you the thing to be sad about.
It's...ugh. Not meant to be describes. I wish I'd read it as a teenager and I'm so glad I've read it now.
Which means it's time to watch the movie, right?

Start the year off strong.
This was almost the final book of 2022, but I can't write and listen at the same time, so instead it's a jumpstart on 2023 and this book is a heck of a way to begin.
Ahmed is SO good. Specifically as a stylist, she has the gift for linguistic play that marks late 20th century theorist, but she commits to being comprehensible every time. The play of meaning comes through, but it always reveals rather than obfusticates.
I picked up this book because of the line "when you expose a problem, you pose a problem" which goes hard and then she keeps going.
The other line that sticks with me is 
“And then your frustration [at not being heard] can be taken as evidence of your frustration, that you speak this way, about this or that, because you are frustrated. It is frustrating to be heard as frustrated; it can make you angry that you are heard as angry.” 
The way she maps out institutions of power and the role that those trying to change them get cast into is...perfect in how deeply frustrating it is.
And it leaves me with so much to think about and the role of the killjoy in religious spaces and what it is to be(come) the problem.

…apparently this book took me over a year to read. 
Mostly because I had to highlight and think about and process it. And then keep going. 
I’m still thinking about it, what it means to do rather than (just) think and acknowledge the ways that we are all always already entangled. And impure. 
The bit about speculative disability futures got me. But then again, so did the frogs. 
It’s a book for thinking about and with, even if it’s written in what I think of as “high theory”. 
I finished it, but it’s not done with 

If this is a three, it's a generous three and predominantly because Hibbert is doing something I don't like, not something wrong per se.

And, like getting it out of the way early, the autistic rep is overall pretty good. Hibbert is both aware of the stereotypes and willing to portray them with depth and reality rather than shallowly.

In some ways, if the individuals were less well handled, I'd be less disappointed by the other parts.
I am not, at the best of times, a fan of the drama as created by communication failures. I am, and this has been a frustrating feature of all three of these books, particularly not a fan of it when the story is about three (or six, if you count the heroes) perennially misunderstood people

four of whom the text eventually calls autistic and rightly so because I was low-key screaming about that in my reviews of Dani in particular. This series is an absolute goldmine of female autistic representation and then...ugh

who find the people who *get* them and then...for plot related reasons, these people who are really good at relating to each other just...can't. Like, I would have loved some more external conflict tearing them apart. External conflict is great. Helping them learn to reach out to each other is great. It's so absolutely frustrating to me that the book plays up their compatibility and then has them screw it up for a romance novel trope that I don't even like.

Again, I fully recognize that this is a "me" problem and this may be some people's thing. But, like, if your heroine is neurodivergent, can't you make your plot diverge a bit too?

 Rating this feels weird, somehow.
R. Lau's books remain awesome (also, h/t to Ilana Kurshan for an excellent translation) as an introduction to the people of these books.
This is the first book where my sense of Lau as a literary writer reading character into the events of the narrative truly comes clear. His approach is fascinating and useful and now I want to go back through the book and note down all the sources I want to follow up on to learn more. Most particularly, I want to know what we actually know from a historical perspective and where we are speculating.