April/May/June '16 Book List
April
Short Fiction: Marie Brennan's "From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review", Glenn Hirshberg's "Freedom is Space for the Spirit", Tara Isabella Burton's "the Destroyer" & Genevieve Valentine's "La Beaute Sans Vertu".
New Reads:
Brandon Sanderson's Calamity and the Bands of Mourning. The first finishes up his supers' trilogy and the latter is part of his steampunk-era "Mistborn" series.
Steven James' Blur. An ok YA paranormal mystery.
Daniel Jose Older's Midnight TaxiTango. 2nd novel of his "Bone Street Rumbo" series.
Tim Dorsey's Florida Roadkill. First foray into Dorsey's modern crime/pulp stuff. A bit too wide a spread of characters and plots for me.
Adrian Tchaivosky's Guns of the Dawn. A black powder-fantasy book where one of the two warring nations begins conscripting female soldiers to shore up its manpower shortages. Feels a little like of an Austen character was the lead in a Bernard Cornwell Napoleonic book.
Elizabeth Bear/Sarah Monette's a Companion to Wolves. Monette is the writer of the Goblin Emperor under a pseudonym and Elizabeth Bear is Elizabeth Bear. So this is very well written. It also has a LOT of really graphic gay sex, much that borders on the edge of non-consensual.
Daniel Abraham's the Spider's War. The final to "the Dagger & the Coin" epic fantasy series which features the heroism of the banking system and using it to fight mad, religious tyrants.
Seanan McGuire's Indexing: Reflections.
Charlie Higson's the Enemy
Sherwood Smith's Remnala's Children. Some follow-up stories to the Crown/Court Duel books.
Michael Shea's the Extra. Future dystopia where filmmakers can literally kill off their extras in movies.
Emmie Mears' the Masked Songbird. First of Mears' "Shrike" supers series.
Rereads:
Eric Flint/George Huff/Paula Goodlett's 1636: the Kremlin Games, 1636: the Barbie Consortium & 1636: the Viennese Waltz
Iver Cooper's 1636: Seas of Fortune
Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatril's Alliance & Gentelman Jole & the Red Queen
Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks: I'm moving rpgs and other non-fiction here since I don't really go thru enough of it for its own category.
Faith Erin Hicks's the Nameless City. Alt history in a pseduo-China/Mongolia border setting.
Ultimate Intrigue (Pathfinder). I liked this sourcebook quite a bit. The roommate fell in love with the evil version of the Leadership feat and other new rules for his wizard/rogue crime boss.
Total books: 22
May
Short Fiction: Theodora Goss' "Red as Blood and White as Bone", Emmie Mears' "Uncaged", Brit Mandelo's "the Pigeon Summer", P. Djeli Clark's "a Dead Djinn in Cairo", K.B. Spangler's "Who Tells Your Story", Dennis Danvers' "Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main" and Seanan McGuire's "Waking in Las Vegas".
New Reads:
Sharon Lee/Steve Miller's Alliance of Equals. Their most recent "Liaden" novel. Actually an eARC for the most recent.
Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory. Steampunk/Western with a bisexual female prostitute as the lead.
Emmie Mears' Rampant. 2nd "Shrike" novel which are set in Edinburgh.
Kameron Hurley's Mirror Empire. Super-grim and violent fantasy series about parallel worlds and invasions between them.
Marko Kloos' Chain of Command
R.J. Ross' Cape High Christmas
Kate Elliot's Jaran, An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword & the Law of Becoming. Both a pseudo-Mongolion horde "fantasy" and a Conquered Humanity sci fi series.
Alex Shvartsman (ed) Funny Fantasy. What it says on the box. A collection of previously published comedy fantasy stories.
Nick Mamatas/Masumi Washington (ed) Hanzai Japan. Japan-set scifi, much with a noir or horror slant to it.
Amy Poehler's Yes Please. Poehler's autobio.
Rereads:
Andre Norton's Gryphon in Glory. While this was a reread, I honestly couldn't remember anything at all going in.
Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small
Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:
XCrawl (d20). Picked up on the cheap with a stack of other rpgs from Bookmans. Competitive reality show dungeon crawling works better in concept than the actual execution.
Mike Maihack's Cleopatra in Space vol. 3: Secret of the Time Tablets. Caps off the trilogy with a reveal of the origin of the big bad and some idea of why Cleopatra of all historical figures.
Scott Snyder/Jock's Wytches. This was honestly one of the more disturbing horror comics I've read in awhile.
John Layman/Rob Guillory's Chew vol.11: the Last Suppers & Chew vol. 10: Blood Puddin'. I actually ordered and read vol. 11 and then realized I'd skipped the 10th volume.
Krazy Krow/Rocio Zuchhi's Spinnarette: Crisis in a Bunch of Ohios. Latest print collection of the supers/humor webcomic.
Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! vol.13. We get to meet Yotsuba's grandmother.
Total: 24
June:
Short Fiction: Harry Turtledove's "Typecasting", A.J. Hartley's "Chains" and Monica Byrne's "Traumphysik".
New Reads:
Cat Valente's Speakeasy. Roaring 20s plus Faires with Valente lyrical-style.
Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver. Paranatural-YA with external temparture triggered werewolves.
Ian Thomas Healy's Tusks & the Lion & the Five Deadly Serpents. "Inception" style dream adventure and 70's era kung fu in Healy's "Just Cause" supers setting.
Naomi Novak's League of Dragons. The finale for the "Tremaire" series.
Jim Hines' Revisionary. And another finale, this time for the "Libriomancer" series.
Drew Hayes' Corpies. I like Hayes' supers books, but they all feel like they could use another editorial pass once they're collected together from his original free chapters online source.
Jennifer Henshaw/Allison Lin (ed) Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft. There are some really good scifi stories in this collection. No really.
Ryan North's Romeo and/or Juliet. I do like that several of the ending options involved the teens just talking to their parents and avoiding a whole lot of deaths.
Andre Norton Cat'seye. Human/animal psychic partnerships. Different from the "Beastmaster" ones.
Chuck Wendig's Atlanta Burns. Kind of white-trash "Veronica Mars". Or maybe Really Angry and VIolent "Nancy Drew".
Reread:
Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men, a Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Midnight & Shepard's Crown. Shut up, I'm not crying. You're crying.
Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:
the Dresden Files RPG: Your Story (FATE)
Evan Dahm's Vattu: the Sword & the Sacrament
C. Spike Trotman (ed) New World: An Anthology of Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Jim Zub/Steve Cummings' Wayward vol. 3
Tony Cliff's Delilah Dirk & the King's Shilling. To England!
Total: 22
Short Fiction: Marie Brennan's "From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review", Glenn Hirshberg's "Freedom is Space for the Spirit", Tara Isabella Burton's "the Destroyer" & Genevieve Valentine's "La Beaute Sans Vertu".
New Reads:
Brandon Sanderson's Calamity and the Bands of Mourning. The first finishes up his supers' trilogy and the latter is part of his steampunk-era "Mistborn" series.
Steven James' Blur. An ok YA paranormal mystery.
Daniel Jose Older's Midnight TaxiTango. 2nd novel of his "Bone Street Rumbo" series.
Tim Dorsey's Florida Roadkill. First foray into Dorsey's modern crime/pulp stuff. A bit too wide a spread of characters and plots for me.
Adrian Tchaivosky's Guns of the Dawn. A black powder-fantasy book where one of the two warring nations begins conscripting female soldiers to shore up its manpower shortages. Feels a little like of an Austen character was the lead in a Bernard Cornwell Napoleonic book.
Elizabeth Bear/Sarah Monette's a Companion to Wolves. Monette is the writer of the Goblin Emperor under a pseudonym and Elizabeth Bear is Elizabeth Bear. So this is very well written. It also has a LOT of really graphic gay sex, much that borders on the edge of non-consensual.
Daniel Abraham's the Spider's War. The final to "the Dagger & the Coin" epic fantasy series which features the heroism of the banking system and using it to fight mad, religious tyrants.
Seanan McGuire's Indexing: Reflections.
Charlie Higson's the Enemy
Sherwood Smith's Remnala's Children. Some follow-up stories to the Crown/Court Duel books.
Michael Shea's the Extra. Future dystopia where filmmakers can literally kill off their extras in movies.
Emmie Mears' the Masked Songbird. First of Mears' "Shrike" supers series.
Rereads:
Eric Flint/George Huff/Paula Goodlett's 1636: the Kremlin Games, 1636: the Barbie Consortium & 1636: the Viennese Waltz
Iver Cooper's 1636: Seas of Fortune
Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatril's Alliance & Gentelman Jole & the Red Queen
Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks: I'm moving rpgs and other non-fiction here since I don't really go thru enough of it for its own category.
Faith Erin Hicks's the Nameless City. Alt history in a pseduo-China/Mongolia border setting.
Ultimate Intrigue (Pathfinder). I liked this sourcebook quite a bit. The roommate fell in love with the evil version of the Leadership feat and other new rules for his wizard/rogue crime boss.
Total books: 22
May
Short Fiction: Theodora Goss' "Red as Blood and White as Bone", Emmie Mears' "Uncaged", Brit Mandelo's "the Pigeon Summer", P. Djeli Clark's "a Dead Djinn in Cairo", K.B. Spangler's "Who Tells Your Story", Dennis Danvers' "Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main" and Seanan McGuire's "Waking in Las Vegas".
New Reads:
Sharon Lee/Steve Miller's Alliance of Equals. Their most recent "Liaden" novel. Actually an eARC for the most recent.
Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory. Steampunk/Western with a bisexual female prostitute as the lead.
Emmie Mears' Rampant. 2nd "Shrike" novel which are set in Edinburgh.
Kameron Hurley's Mirror Empire. Super-grim and violent fantasy series about parallel worlds and invasions between them.
Marko Kloos' Chain of Command
R.J. Ross' Cape High Christmas
Kate Elliot's Jaran, An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword & the Law of Becoming. Both a pseudo-Mongolion horde "fantasy" and a Conquered Humanity sci fi series.
Alex Shvartsman (ed) Funny Fantasy. What it says on the box. A collection of previously published comedy fantasy stories.
Nick Mamatas/Masumi Washington (ed) Hanzai Japan. Japan-set scifi, much with a noir or horror slant to it.
Amy Poehler's Yes Please. Poehler's autobio.
Rereads:
Andre Norton's Gryphon in Glory. While this was a reread, I honestly couldn't remember anything at all going in.
Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small
Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:
XCrawl (d20). Picked up on the cheap with a stack of other rpgs from Bookmans. Competitive reality show dungeon crawling works better in concept than the actual execution.
Mike Maihack's Cleopatra in Space vol. 3: Secret of the Time Tablets. Caps off the trilogy with a reveal of the origin of the big bad and some idea of why Cleopatra of all historical figures.
Scott Snyder/Jock's Wytches. This was honestly one of the more disturbing horror comics I've read in awhile.
John Layman/Rob Guillory's Chew vol.11: the Last Suppers & Chew vol. 10: Blood Puddin'. I actually ordered and read vol. 11 and then realized I'd skipped the 10th volume.
Krazy Krow/Rocio Zuchhi's Spinnarette: Crisis in a Bunch of Ohios. Latest print collection of the supers/humor webcomic.
Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&! vol.13. We get to meet Yotsuba's grandmother.
Total: 24
June:
Short Fiction: Harry Turtledove's "Typecasting", A.J. Hartley's "Chains" and Monica Byrne's "Traumphysik".
New Reads:
Cat Valente's Speakeasy. Roaring 20s plus Faires with Valente lyrical-style.
Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver. Paranatural-YA with external temparture triggered werewolves.
Ian Thomas Healy's Tusks & the Lion & the Five Deadly Serpents. "Inception" style dream adventure and 70's era kung fu in Healy's "Just Cause" supers setting.
Naomi Novak's League of Dragons. The finale for the "Tremaire" series.
Jim Hines' Revisionary. And another finale, this time for the "Libriomancer" series.
Drew Hayes' Corpies. I like Hayes' supers books, but they all feel like they could use another editorial pass once they're collected together from his original free chapters online source.
Jennifer Henshaw/Allison Lin (ed) Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft. There are some really good scifi stories in this collection. No really.
Ryan North's Romeo and/or Juliet. I do like that several of the ending options involved the teens just talking to their parents and avoiding a whole lot of deaths.
Andre Norton Cat'seye. Human/animal psychic partnerships. Different from the "Beastmaster" ones.
Chuck Wendig's Atlanta Burns. Kind of white-trash "Veronica Mars". Or maybe Really Angry and VIolent "Nancy Drew".
Reread:
Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men, a Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Midnight & Shepard's Crown. Shut up, I'm not crying. You're crying.
Graphic Novels/TPBs/Rulebooks:
the Dresden Files RPG: Your Story (FATE)
Evan Dahm's Vattu: the Sword & the Sacrament
C. Spike Trotman (ed) New World: An Anthology of Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Jim Zub/Steve Cummings' Wayward vol. 3
Tony Cliff's Delilah Dirk & the King's Shilling. To England!
Total: 22