I love a urban fantasy book that has more to do with ghosts and mythology than it has to do with the land of faerie, so this was delightful and I love how it loosely ties in with the novels about the Price family. Rose is lovable but flawed enough to be relatable.

You definitely want to read Sparrow Hill Road before this one. It’s absolutely a continuation and is predicted on some world understanding. It had been well over year since I read the first book but this book contains plenty of reminders to keep me going - but it’s definitely a good thing I had read it.

One issue I feel like Seanan’s work often falls into is serial questing. Instead of a clear beginning, major conflict, and end, it’s more beginning, major conflict, a reprieve, major conflict, reprieve, major conflict, now it’s over. If I didn’t enjoy her writing so much it could feel like a slog to get through. I think it works here, but I get the impression she is more comfortable writing in shorter, serial styles. There’s “5 books” here and it’s long all together.

My only other issue (which quickly remedied it’s self with time) was the woman who read this audiobook. Instead of constant “up speak” she actually had “down speak” which made her sound like a machine or Siri. Eventually I adjusted and actually came to enjoy her voice but the first chapter or so were difficult for me.

I read plenty books classified as “young adult (YA).” Most of the time this just means there’s an element of adventure to them and I would never really distinguish them from most adult fantasy fiction. This however, was allllll teen. Like trying really hard teen. Kaye’s mom and life were so awful and she’s so... what every 15 year old thinks they are... and yeah. Still lots of drugs, violence, and shitty behavior, but clearly written for the 15-19 crowd. This wasn’t awful, but this was... very, very, for teens.

My first grader and I read this together for our September parent child book club meeting at the library. He was pretty excited because it seemed like it was going to be silly and had a dog in it - and technically it was both of those things. It was overly simple and I don’t think it made the moral point of the book quite clear enough, while at the same time alluding to relatively complex football lineups and plays that didn’t particularly make sense to either my son or I. Anyhow, we read it together in about 25 minutes or less and are ready for book club tomorrow.

This was 3.5, close to 4, but I couldn’t quite round up. I wanted to like this it more than I did. That is, I loved the last quarter of the book and felt just “meh” about the first 3/4. Not bad, but perhaps a bit bored. Bottom line it’s a book full of beautiful scenery and emotionally streaking scenes spun together by an overall bleak and somewhat boring story line. The characters are relatable in their failures and in their charms, but then both become exaggerated just a pinch too far and somehow make them not relatable. All that said, this beautiful sail through France was the last thing I read each night for a week and it provided lovely dream scenery and interesting thoughts. I’ll miss that. I also love the book “prescriptions” in the back.

This novella uses different “ghost rules” than her previous books but often uses similar imagery. There was a lot to love here and I’d like to return to Delia and Avo in NYC!

September has been a good month - hell it’s been a spectacular month - but I also feel like I have been at a dead sprint for five weeks, and I hit the road again on Sunday. Tonight I needed an unsure but endlessly virtuous and brave young female super hero. The Wilson Miyazawa and Leon Alphona reimagined #MsMarvel fit the bill perfectly. (Cover art is cliff chiang) #comics #nowreading #muslimcharacters #diversityincomics

We picked this up for little dude at the library solely because it was about a guinea pig and zombies - and it was a solid risk! He reports that it was creepy but also super fun 😊

This is unique, thoughtful science fiction at its finest with the added bonus of diverse representation. Binti is a mathematical harmonizer, making her a skilled if not unwilling diplomat. This is a story of war, pain, self realization, and ultimately hope. I know this is a series and I look forward to the next installment. Absolutely worth the hype.