book list, February 2020
It's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in February 2020. Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about.
Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo
-----A classic heist adventure, with protagonists skewed young because this is YA, and set in a sort of... hmm... fantasy version of Industrial Revolution-era North Atlantic? Except Russia's bang on the coast, China is directly south of Russia (and also bang on the western coast), and whatever is going on over in the North America equivalent seems to be some mash-up of, well, the US, West Africa, and the First Nations if they didn't get devastated by Old World diseases. Also Britain and the Netherlands are the same place and very cutthroat capitalist, and possibly Ireland is Greenland? It's a little weird.
Anyway, six people from the criminal underworld of Ketterdam (capital of Kerch, the English/Dutch equivalent country) are hired to steal the secret of a dangerous new drug formula that does terrible things to Grisha, who are this world's version of magicians. Shenanigans duly ensue, and look, if you like heist fiction, you will like this.
Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo
-----Direct sequel to Six of Crows, wherein the fallout from the ending of book one continues to spiral and develop. There's a sort of terrible inevitability to events as Bardugo writes them, very click-clack-clockwork as each new piece snaps into place, but it doesn't feel like plot driving the characters around; it's just the natural, inevitable results of the decisions various people make because of who they are.
The Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher
-----In which a forger, an assassin, a disgraced former demon-hunting paladin, and a monk of an order dedicated to knowledge embark on a suicide quest to figure out the source of the clocktaurs, a new weapon turned against their city, and then hopefully figure out how to stop them.
The Wonder Engine, by T. Kingfisher
-----Direct sequel to The Clockwork Boys, wherein Our Heroes have arrived in their target city after great travail, and now have to work on, you know, actually solving the problem. I enjoyed this duology a lot, but I really do wish more than one of the main questing party had been female. (I am not counting the gnoles. Their gender system is weird and wonderful, but I wanted another human woman, you know?)
Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo
-----First of a trilogy set in the same world as Six of Crows. These books actually came first, and you can tell -- the structure is less... hmm, how to phrase this? Bardugo is still going for that terrible inevitability of intersecting choices effect, but it feels more contrived here, like she hasn't quite figured out how to hide the seams yet. Also, I just like heist adventures better than "chosen savior angsts about their fate" narratives, which is a personal taste thing rather than an objective measure of writing skill.
Anyway, Our Heroine is Alina Starkov, an orphan serving as an army cartographer, who discovers she has a rare and precious Grisha power: the ability to summon light. This makes her very useful to her country, Ravka, which is currently divided into a landlocked east and a coastal west by a region of unnatural, monster-haunted darkness called either the Shadow Fold or the Unsea. Alina is uneasy about this change in her circumstances, and quickly learns things are not as they seem both at the royal court and among the Grisha, whose Second Army is led by the Darkling, a man with the ability to summon darkness in counter to Alina's light.
Siege and Storm, by Leigh Bardugo
-----Second in the Grisha trilogy, in which Alina and Mal's escape is cut short, they think things are going well, and then disaster strikes because this is, after all, the middle book of a trilogy.
Ruin and Rising, by Leigh Bardugo
-----Third in the Grisha trilogy, in which that terrible inevitability thing kicks in, in a way I suspected since a particular point in book two. (I had a very pleased little "Ha, I was right!" moment when the reveal occurred. *grin*) Also the resolution is nicely poetic.
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And now I think I shall make some lunch.
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo
-----A classic heist adventure, with protagonists skewed young because this is YA, and set in a sort of... hmm... fantasy version of Industrial Revolution-era North Atlantic? Except Russia's bang on the coast, China is directly south of Russia (and also bang on the western coast), and whatever is going on over in the North America equivalent seems to be some mash-up of, well, the US, West Africa, and the First Nations if they didn't get devastated by Old World diseases. Also Britain and the Netherlands are the same place and very cutthroat capitalist, and possibly Ireland is Greenland? It's a little weird.
Anyway, six people from the criminal underworld of Ketterdam (capital of Kerch, the English/Dutch equivalent country) are hired to steal the secret of a dangerous new drug formula that does terrible things to Grisha, who are this world's version of magicians. Shenanigans duly ensue, and look, if you like heist fiction, you will like this.
Crooked Kingdom, by Leigh Bardugo
-----Direct sequel to Six of Crows, wherein the fallout from the ending of book one continues to spiral and develop. There's a sort of terrible inevitability to events as Bardugo writes them, very click-clack-clockwork as each new piece snaps into place, but it doesn't feel like plot driving the characters around; it's just the natural, inevitable results of the decisions various people make because of who they are.
The Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher
-----In which a forger, an assassin, a disgraced former demon-hunting paladin, and a monk of an order dedicated to knowledge embark on a suicide quest to figure out the source of the clocktaurs, a new weapon turned against their city, and then hopefully figure out how to stop them.
The Wonder Engine, by T. Kingfisher
-----Direct sequel to The Clockwork Boys, wherein Our Heroes have arrived in their target city after great travail, and now have to work on, you know, actually solving the problem. I enjoyed this duology a lot, but I really do wish more than one of the main questing party had been female. (I am not counting the gnoles. Their gender system is weird and wonderful, but I wanted another human woman, you know?)
Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo
-----First of a trilogy set in the same world as Six of Crows. These books actually came first, and you can tell -- the structure is less... hmm, how to phrase this? Bardugo is still going for that terrible inevitability of intersecting choices effect, but it feels more contrived here, like she hasn't quite figured out how to hide the seams yet. Also, I just like heist adventures better than "chosen savior angsts about their fate" narratives, which is a personal taste thing rather than an objective measure of writing skill.
Anyway, Our Heroine is Alina Starkov, an orphan serving as an army cartographer, who discovers she has a rare and precious Grisha power: the ability to summon light. This makes her very useful to her country, Ravka, which is currently divided into a landlocked east and a coastal west by a region of unnatural, monster-haunted darkness called either the Shadow Fold or the Unsea. Alina is uneasy about this change in her circumstances, and quickly learns things are not as they seem both at the royal court and among the Grisha, whose Second Army is led by the Darkling, a man with the ability to summon darkness in counter to Alina's light.
Siege and Storm, by Leigh Bardugo
-----Second in the Grisha trilogy, in which Alina and Mal's escape is cut short, they think things are going well, and then disaster strikes because this is, after all, the middle book of a trilogy.
Ruin and Rising, by Leigh Bardugo
-----Third in the Grisha trilogy, in which that terrible inevitability thing kicks in, in a way I suspected since a particular point in book two. (I had a very pleased little "Ha, I was right!" moment when the reveal occurred. *grin*) Also the resolution is nicely poetic.
---------------
And now I think I shall make some lunch.
If you want to comment on this post, you can do so over here on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)