Reading roundup and year-end book meme
Clearing the decks, the last reading roundup of 2019 and the years' book meme:
40. Ben Aaronovitch, The October Man -- This was cute and fun but also drove home the point that, much as I love this world and the magic, I'm mostly here for the characters around Peter. Because I had this book sitting on my Kindle for weeks before I opened it, and ( Read more... )
40. Ben Aaronovitch, The October Man -- This was cute and fun but also drove home the point that, much as I love this world and the magic, I'm mostly here for the characters around Peter. Because I had this book sitting on my Kindle for weeks before I opened it, and ( Read more... )
If you've never read anything else by Holly Black, I recommend literally anything else she's written solo (I haven't read her co-authored work, so can't comment) as a better representation of her as an author -- I would've said she was my favorite YA genre author before I read the Cruel Prince books. Now... :P well, I still like her other stuff a lot!
Tithe and sequels are set in the same universe, but have protagonists who are not total idiots. They are a little dated at this point, but I like them a lot (and if you enjoyed the Roiben (Court of Termites king) cameos in the Cruel Prince books, he is one of the leads in Tithe and Ironside, book 3). There is also a recent standalone in the same universe, The Darkest Part of the Forest, which I thought was lovely.
She also has a standalone novel with a very neat take on vampires in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. I usually dislike vampire novels, but I liked this one a lot, especially the protagonist and her relationships with people in her life who were not the vampire love interest but never stop being important to her.
I think the best of her work, though, is the Cursebreaker series, which is basically magical mafia in a cool noirish world. You've got a conman sort of hero, a great secondary cast, some complicated shades-of-gray family relationships, a really fun magical system and worldbuilding around it (basically a riff on the idea that if magic is outlawed, only outlaws will have magic). Great aesthetic, great characters, engaging plot -- these are some of my favorite YA urban fantasy books.
She also writes really good genre short fiction, if you come across her Poison Eaters short story collection.
(in which there's a scene I swear to fuck I read somewhere else years ago).
Oh, that's curious! -- which scene?
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The scene is the one where Jude is in his quarters, and his brother comes in and beats him and the Alice in wonderland bit, if I'm remembering the specifics right. But the timing of the release doesn't jive with how long ago it would have been that I read that scene.
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