Fascinating to have a new voice reading Bujold (not that Grover Gardner hasn't grown on me....)
I remembered this book as the "not as good as the others" book, although the more I spend time with it, the more I wonder how much that's because Ingrey—unlike Caz, Penric, and Ista—is not very much like Miles or Cordelia. He is, if anyone, Aral coming out of that disastrous first marriage, and that's not entirely a brain to want to be in. (Yes, yes, I know, Bujold's characters are distinct individuals and she draws them very well, but she also does rather have a type. And so do I—I keep coming back to them don't I?)
The Weald, the blood, the fierceness of the story makes for interesting bedfellows when it was just the two Chalion books, but with a decology of Pen and Des by it's side, Ingrey begins to make a lot more sense and the larger concerns that haunt Bujold's work come more to the fore.
- What does it mean to serve your god? What is service and what is asked of us by our gods?
- What does it mean to be a parent or king, to be responsible to others unto death and beyond?
- What do we owe, what can be demanded of us, how much can we give?
All the Five Gods books are circling around this question of what the characters can give to their gods and what they can become if they choose to do so?
They are all also DEEPLY in conversation with חסד של אמת, the true kindness, meaning the kindness we show the dead when kindness can no longer be repaid. All of these books are, in their own way, about what we owe those who are gone.
I have at least one essay in me on the Torah of the Five Gods, we'll see if I ever write it.
I'm really glad I came back to this book. 

In what can only be termed my constant refrain, welcome to another series that I remembered reading the previous books and remembered NOTHING WHATSOEVER of what happened in them. (Well, okay, I think I maybe remembered that the Romans were evil, but, like, it's more complicated than that.)
Context? We don't need no stinkin' context.
I'm glad I finished the series, I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read the books all back to back rather than piecemeal as I did. This was definitely a story that I read more for the world-building than the people...except that every time Helene Aquilla showed up, I cheered. She was extremely cool.

This book made me want to cry and then go camping.
And also think a lot about both gift and obligation and the relationship between my faith and the kind of interdependence that Kimmerer argues for. (And what it means to read the best of one culture and think about the worst of your own.)
What does it mean to translate לעבדה ולשמרה as our commandment towards the land as to "to serve and to guard" instead of to work. Avodah is work, but is also the word for the work/service of God. What if we thought of working the land as the same work that we do to serve God. The difference between working something and, while working it, also working for it. It's all the difference.
Once again (ir)rationally angry at the destruction of old growth forests. (It has replaced The Library of Alexandria in the thing that upsets me the most that humans destroyed without thought.)

As usual, I remember absolutely nothing from the previous books, but I trust the author does and that the things she tells me happened definitely happened. And it didn't really matter because I got to know everyone again and it was awesome and also such a good story about the road and travels and what it means to do what you set out to do.
And also about the raw horrors of 19th (and on) century colonialism and what is lost when we stop seeing and being people.
"Sidekicking" indeed.

Okay, what I don't understand is how Ursula managed to mash up her horror books and the Paladin books and get this gorgeous little story. It's like The Seven Bride, but with more therapy. (Why is there so much wire in your books T. Kingfisher? I just want to know!)
Obviously I loved it. It was creepy in the best way and had all my favorite Kingfisherisms - noble and goodhearted men; stubborn women determined not to let the world slide one foot further into evil, not as long as she can push it back; terrifying old ladies; deeply well-meaning old ladies who are, um, also terrifying, and VERY GOOD DOGS. (Said, naturally, in Pterry's DEATH's voice.)
I stayed up so late to finish it, my eldest (who sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and comes to find us) yelled at me for not being in bed yet because, and I quote "pm has already turned to am!"
She was right. And it was worth it.

I have...so many feelings about this book.  It's hard to talk about responding to this while still coming to terns with my own disabled identity. This book was a bonfire and it shone and it stung. Not as much as it hurt to live it, but to know and to vicariously feel this pain was a lot.
A lot is not bad. But that makes it no less a lot.
And that is, after all, the point.
There's this odd experience where Sjunneson is in the middle of an SFF community that I lurk (deliberately?) on the outskirts of and so the way she writes and speaks and delivers her comments (and her footnotes) feels oddly familiar from someone I've never met. The obvious endpoint of parasocial relationships.
The thing, however, that stood out to me as most crucial (and this was not her point alone and so it's not that you must read this, but that it's important to hear any disability activist on this topic) is how deftly she threads the needle on advocating for getting rid of disease while advocating against the eugenicist desire to erase disability, which means eradicating disabled people. (I happened to go from this to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and it seems like the common these is "when people tell you not to take away the thing that makes up their identity, you don't get to ignore them because you've deemed it unworthy". But I digress.) This is the review, not the argument itself, so I'll leave it there because we need the language that lets us talk and think about these things.
(Also I feel like one should be forbidden from marking this book as "inspiring")

I will read anything Cooney writes and I would listen to her read the telephone book.
This book is...imagine if Cat Valente wrote Gideon the Ninth. 
Cooney is extravagant as a writer; every page feels like an avalanche of imagery and the words themselves flow and dance and gambol across the sentences. If you like sparseness and cleanness, she's probably not the author for you. But if you've ever looked at the most decadent cupcake in the store and thought "yes, that one, because I *can*" then Cooney is perfect for you.
Also, you know, there's the death and the necromancy and the found family and the absurdly baroque magic and, just, entirely my thing.

This book made me understand why I never cared about Jewish representation in books—I didn't need to see my Jewish identity reflected in books, I need/ed to see my autistic identity. 
I definitely did. May's narrative of needing to discover herself again, of discovering what autistic identity means, of what it feels like to be on the edge of coping and thinking you're fine until your not, of the experience of parenting while autistic was all gorgeously reflective.
And yes, our lives are different and we struggled with different things and yet the experience itself was the "oh, strangers like me are out there".
It's also just a really lovely book about finding yourself after having a kid and taking permission to be yourself and to ask others to shoulder some of the load when you need to be (by) yourself.
In terms of the actual language of the book, it's extremely clear between when she wrote it and when the 2021 paperback edition came out how much autism awareness & acceptance has changed. The language she uses reflects that and the foreword at the beginning is where she talks about both what she didn't yet know then and knows now. I'm glad the foreword exists and also grateful for the narrative of change and growth that it shows.

This is extremely Shaenon K. Garrity and I wish I had a better way to explain that to someone who does not read her comics.
It's precisely the sort of silliness I love—self aware gothic narratives combined with Doctor Who levels of handwavium and the fun of both leaning into stereotype and then rebelling against. It was really fun.

Apparently I read this in chronological order rather than publication order. Which meant that I had my "oh hey it's that guy!" moments backwards and also, you know, that worked pretty well.
I just love Guy Gavriel Kay and Simon Vance does such a good job reading the books. I'm not sure I can explain why it is that his storytelling works so well for me, something about the way he thinks about human motivations and is extremely thoughtful about the role of the narrator just really works for me. Some of us still secretly want our favorite devices from the 19th century novel back and if you are one of those people, Kay delivers.