I really like Rachel Neumeier. She writes harsh but lovely fantasy so well and also knows how to tell an epic story at a reasonable scale and with the focus on an individual. 

Also this was just the most fascinating world building and I really want to know what happens next. 
Also the entire rest of the series seems to be available on kindle unlimited so let’s see how this goes. 

I knew I was going to like this and I was not wrong. Robert Jackson Bennet does very fun world building and gets the scale of epic fantasy right - meaning the focus is one the human and the things that matter to us.
I can see a lot of ways that it could go, depending on how big this story gets, but also I very much appreciated it for what it is - a delightful murder mystery with weird magic stuff.
And some enjoyable autistic representation as well. Gotta love a good "yes, obviously Holmes was neurodivergent, let's run with it in our recreations of him"

I cannot believe I have to now wait for the next book to come out; I would like more right now please.

This book was exactly what I wanted for a long travel day and so delightful on so many levels. I am very much looking forward to rereading it before the second one comes out.

It was helpful to remember that the first book reminded me strongly of A:TLA because the second book...did not give me any reason to reevaluate that assessment. I quite enjoyed it, although every time I read a book that is based on historical revolutions and that involve magic, I keep feeling slightly demoralized because sometimes it feels like the magic is integral to fixing the world and, at least as far as I can tell, there is no magic in our world.

This was another instance of a book that ended on a cliffhanger and so, when it picked up right where it had left off, I remembered nothing whatsoever about the first book and could really have used a reminder about, for one thing, who knew and loved whom. I caught up eventually, but it was disorienting. 
Still, one does appreciate a good femininominon and this book certainly has that. 

Well it's been a while since "what the hell did I just, but in a good way" was a category in my life so nice for this to fill that gap.
The scale of this book is still unfathomable to me and I have no idea what to do with it beyond just appreciate it for all that it is in all its weirdness and stories of cities and the relationship between immortal beings and the individual and the collective.
And libraries. Can't forget those.
I want someone else to read this book and tell me what happened.

Oh God this book nearly made me weep on public transit. Calling it horror feels unfair, but dark fairytale somehow undersells just how dark it gets. Mohamed here is a little like if T. Kingfisher's fairytales fought unfairly and I mean that as the highest compliment.
It was so good and so painful and wonderfully awful in what it has to say about sadness and innocence and pain and what we can and cannot give. I loved it even though it was heartbreaking.

I keep wanting to like this book because it is a bunch of things that are my jam but, as I remembered after picking this one up, I deeply disliked and disbelieved the relationship between the two main characters and it turns out that that has not changed in the slightest.

Reading this in counterpoint with David Zvi Kalman's "Belief in the Future" podcast was definitely an interesting experience.
I loved the connections she drew between the theology with which she grew up (and, broadly speaking, theology as such) and the trends in tech-sector thinking these days. It's an extremely thoughtful memoir that is also a critique of how philosophies of technology end up recapitulating and serving the same roles as theologies.
There was also this one moment where she talks about the *I* in her writing and how she can't take herself out of it. Even acknowledging the non-existent view from nowhere, she writes and writes about writing in such a way that is deeply personal and makes the rest seem realer for it.
Also there was this one fantastically wild moment where she pointed out that, right around the time when computers started solving problems better than humans is when our definition of what makes us human flipped from the intellectual to the sensory. Which is absolutely wild.

And to round out this weekend, I figured I should finish this book before everything it talks about becomes illegal in parts of America. (Am I a little doom and gloomy at the moment? Maybe. In my defense - *gestures wildly*)

Irshai is one of the clearest and most compelling voices I have encountered in the intersection of halakha and feminism and her understanding of both makes her critique of how the former takes the unstated biases of poskim into halakha as such is really good.
I keep wondering whether halakha needs a specifically feminist moment if only to counter the ways in which rabbis have failed to notice women's needs in the past or, like God and pronouns, the goal is to think not about balance, but at bringing all voices into the conversation and really really hearing them this time.

On the other hand, I read this in about three hours so maybe the problem with the book I reviewed right before this was that it was not, in fact, a comfort read.
Thank goodness for stories about hope and people figuring things out and queer love. 
Also I found it fascinating that, while neurodivergence did come up by name in the story, it was mostly only talked around when it came to one of the main MCs. Extremely obvious though, which I always appreciate.