Self inflicted homework.
I have a love/hate relationship with Lewis and this collection just brought that into extremely sharp focus.
On the other hand, when Lewis talks about writing for children and writing not for a purpose but for a picture...*chef's kiss*
I particularly like when he's annoyed at "someone is wrong in the newspapers".
Also the bit where he complains about how much the moon would become boring if we ever were to actually get there slayed me.

Apparently I read horror now.
But like, for a very specific definition of horror.
Creepy houses with self aware protagonists and the creeping awfulness that just doesn't stop? Yeah, sure!
(Sometimes it seems like the difference between fantasy and horror is just who is left holding the blade.)
The really interesting thing to me is that, while I don't read a lot of horror, we are all very familiar with the tropes of horror so watching things unfold with the meta-fiction-ing that the characters are doing works...assuming you don't mind monsters coming through the fourth wall as well.

If you told me Natasha Pulley was writing the phonebook, I would read it. And be impressed, but not entirely surprised, that she managed to write an achingly tender queer romance into it. And an octopus.

Granted, the usual rule of traumatized genius in need of someone to look after them + golden retriever in human form has been tweaked so that the retriever is more of a borzoi and also traumatized. 
This mostly isn't a love story. It's a story about what we do when the world is terrible—the good, the bad, the inevitable, and the necessary. One of the things that has always fascinated me about Pulley is that she's not interested in passing moral judgement on her characters, for all that her characters are interested in moral questions. Valery and Shenkov (and Mori and Kite) are all caught up in whether they are good, but Pulley isn't interested in having the text answer what it means to be good or bad when living in bad times. She's mostly interested in what it means to be human. Which is why I love these books so much.
It's a fantasy novel in the sense that this isn't (meant to be?) a story about Soviet Russia, it's a story about people in impossible circumstances. It's just that, in its own way, our collective history is so fantastical that, I mean, not to get overly Delany, but realistic fiction is just a scifi AU with very few changes made. In many ways, that's what Pulley has done here.
Also, on the representation point, Pulley is thoughtful about how she telegraphs that Valery is autistic. I'm not sure how noticeable it is to neurotypicals, but particularly the eye contact, the way that speaking in code is an explicit thing he needs to learn, and hearing the electricity - she does a good job with it. (Also the trauma of not knowing how to make friends and then assuming everyone will eventually leave you except for that one friend who is entirely ride or die because they get it's just how you are.)

I really enjoyed Hild back when I read it and then fully intended to read more of Griffith's work and just...didn't. Which I am only more determined to do after this book, which was everything I love about Arthurian legends and historical-esque narratives (I tend to think of Guy Gavriel Kay as the Once and Future King of these) and none of the things I hate about it.
It was lovely and I particularly love any time the author begins the authors note with "So this was going to be a short story".
Gets me every time. 

I got VERY distracted by the choices the author made (why are we inventing new names for countries and religions? If we have new words for Ireland and England, why is scotch still called scotch? Why are Jewish words and concepts exactly the same so then what's the point of calling a rabbit a smeerp?)

Anyway, it both distracted and detracted from the bones of a really good story. Either lean into the world building and tell me more or let it be just our world with alchemy. But not committing to either very much got in the way of a deftly handled story of class and trauma.

Okay, so obviously this book was stunning. Like stay on the couch after Shabbat ends because I desperately need to finish it levels of stunning. 
Lemberg is very clearly and deliberately writing within the fantastic tradition of Le Guin—they write with Le Guin's passion for thinking about what it means for magic to be in community and how it's used and who can use it and how we bear the scars of our lives and still reach to do good anyway and Lemberg, like Le Guin, understands failure and its place in the story and the need to love the fallen as well as the victorious.
Which is all another way of saying that this fantasy novel is SO JEWISH. Not just the etrog and shofar and growing out of twelve, but things like possibly ineffable names and fixing/healing/repairing and families and forgiveness. And also stories about exiles and leaving home and where we locate our identity and the ways in which we are beholden to those who have come before us and their trauma and...I could go on, but just read the book.
Also, Erígra Lílun may have taken top spot in my list of autistic characters to whom I relate so hard that it almost hurts. "Perhaps I could be the one to do this, but I can't actually do this, not the way you are asking me to, not now, not like this." OOF. Good, but OOF.
Anyway, it was perfect and I can't believe it's done.

On three "awwww".
And also I love how this book was not interested in being surprising, but also still went in some unexpected places.
My love language is food. My love language is using the legal profession to do good! (Kallion would love to work for the Temple of the White Rat.)
Also, this was a repentance story, not a redemption story and I loved that for it.
But mostly just delightful romance. 

Okay, so, first of all, Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi! Or, well, the Kay expy of her.
It's really nice to feel like there's a strong Kindath presence here again.
And also I keep losing track of everybody with the "wait, I know that guy from that other interconnected web of humans" which is sort of what Kay is going for. It's about the richness of life's tapestry and all the stories.
And, I mean, the man isn't subtle about it. He's not a narrator prone to stepping back, but is constantly making observations about people and their fate and futures. This book is mostly about picking up your pieces after...well, after all the afters. And about the butterflies flapping their wings that bring on hurricanes.
Granting that Simon Vance narrating Kay is just *chef's kiss* and I have no idea how this sounds with someone else's voice, these books are just such a delight.
Also, just, Kay writes religious characters SO well; their thoughts and devotions and what it means to live in a world where everyone worships SOMETHING.

Okay, this book was NOT my jam and a slog and I just...apparently haven't outgrown my need to finish books because they might perk up or I might miss something and I definitely don't regret it. It was, as the rating said, okay.
Mostly I struggled with Dani as a character who I found DEEPLY frustrating because either she was neurotypical and just completely failing every insight check she rolls for no apparent reason or, and I felt compelled to read her this way, she is autistic and then the story trends towards making her normal and the parts of her that get fixed are the "bad autistic parts" like being horrible at recognizing or talking about feelings or rather than the "I can hyperfixate my way to a career in academia".
(We will, in the interest of me, note the possibility that I am running up against the narcissism of small differences and that could be part of the problem.)
I wanted a different story than this story was telling and I don't know what to do about that other than shrug. And I deeply dislike the late third act breakup in every book.
Which is frustrating because Hibbert handled physical disability REALLY well in the previous book and this could have been a book about a queer neurodivergent woman finding love as she is and it misses and in the falling short leaves me deeply frustrated.
I was, however, entertained by the brief authorial disquisition (in the mouth of one of the characters) on the role of romance novels in modeling redemption and repentance. It was very Northanger Abbey.
Also, another entry into the "male leads struggling with mental illness" category, which is both lovely in the way it explores masculinity and healthy male coping mechanisms and also...it's telling that men never have anything that inevitably make them less conventionally attractive.

This feels weirdly like the book that Waggoner wanted to write and just needed Unnatural Magic out of the way to set the stage for this one.
That might also be debut versus sophomore book so idk.
Anyway, this was a lot of fun and the tight focus on Delly and her sense of her own worth and class and self made for a really interesting story.
Waggoner is like...ALMOST (in both her books) interrogating the system itself rather than just how it can be manipulated by bad actors, but not quite. Not that it needs to, it's just interesting to see what she is and is not willing to ask about when it comes to class.