Recs
Seems like a year-end tradition to give book/movie/tv/whatever recommendations, so here goes, with links to GoodReads. Books read in 2018, not necessarily published in 2018. All read free through my library's Overdrive system.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells: Series of novellas starting with All Systems Red. Here's the summary for that one:
"On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid - a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is."
The series is told from the POV of Murderbot, who is chock full of sarcasm and pop culture references. I'm still on the waiting list for the most recent title, but I've enjoyed the first three. There's a bit of a mystery about Murderbot's past -- an "incident" that resulted in several deaths, a memory wipe, a hacked governor module -- and it goes about investigating what exactly happened, despite preferring to watch untold hours of media.
Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire: Another novella series, this one in a fantasy vein.
"Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children."
Much like Alice in Wonderland, children have slipped into other worlds beyond our imagination. Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children is a boarding school for children who come home from portal fantasy worlds. The portals call them into a world that's perfect for them, but they return "home" to a place they didn't want to be in anyway (and now many of their families think they're crazy), with most dreaming of the day their door opens for them again. Really good with queer representation, including trans and ace characters.
Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples: a graphic novel series that I've caught up with, and a word of caution, it is graphic as in it is drawn images, but also graphic as in NSFW. Language, violence, nudity, you name it, including a "sex planet" where it's perfectly OK to sell children. IIRC they don't show anything on the page, but you know it's happening. From our heroes' (and some of the villains') POV, this is not okay, but it is part of the plotline.
All that said, it's a family story at heart. Think Romeo and Juliet, but they're star-crossed lovers from a planet and moon that have been in never-ending war. When Alana gets pregnant, she and Marko go on the run because their child is at best going to be experimented on, but neither side wants her existence to become public knowledge. A child born of both worlds might give people ideas about ending the war, which is no longer fought on the original planet and moon, but is moving through the galaxy leaving destruction in its wake. Also, the war profiteers wouldn't like it to end.
The books are sometimes "narrated" by their child, Hazel, at some point in the future. We don't know how things are going to end, but future!Hazel does, commenting on things as we read them. The story is glorious and disturbing, but not for the faint of heart.
Guardian Spirits (Spirits #3) by Jordan L. Hawk.
A m/m historical paranormal romance featuring a psychic medium and an inventor who was swindled (and swived) by a medium and seeks to find a scientific means of dealing with spirits. Series begins with Restless Spirits.
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score (Seducing the Sedgwicks #2) by Cat Sebastian.
A m/m historical, featuring a mixed race couple, with one formerly being a gentleman until salacious secrets were made public. The two make unlikely allies to recover a risque portrait of a female friend. One thing I like about Sebastian's work is she writes like the traditional romance I used to read, it just happens to be two guys. It's a little different from the usual m/m style, which while heavily influenced by the Romance genre, also had fandom influence the standards. That's not a bad thing, just different.
Balefire (Whyborne & Griffin #10) by Jordan L. Hawk.
I adore this series, and my understanding is there's one more book planned to wrap it up. Think Lovecraftian eldritch horrors, but if Lovecraft wasn't a racist homophobe, mixed with a bit of Indiana Jones. While it's m/m, there's also a f/f and a m/f couple as well.
Skin After Skin (PsyCop #8) and Agent Bayne (PsyCop #9) by Jordan Castillo Price.
This was kind of a mixed bag. Skin After Skin focuses on Curtis Ash (aka Crash), who has been an ongoing character in the series as Jacob's former boyfriend, Victor's sometimes counsel on paranormal matters, and generally good-natured PITA. It's basically a story starting before the first PsyCop book, following Crash's POV of events up through the current books. My only problem is when it focuses on Crash's life, there are hints of interesting stuff, but it's dragged down by a "meant to be" love interest that doesn't feel earned.
Victor Bayne is still an awkward dork, Jacob's a jock dork, but they're both in far different places than they were at the beginning of the series. We get more info about Victor's time at Camp Hell as a teen, and hints there's even more disturbing stuff that he still can't remember.
Enlightenment series by by Joanna Chambers. I've been hearing about this series for a while, and just now got around to it. finishing up the last story right now. I will say the main trilogy really needs to be read in one go. There's a gap of two years between events of the first and second book, and six months between the second and third. Not sure how close the books were released, but if I had read the first book without the next one available immediately, I might not have continued. The story was okay, but was not in the neighborhood of a happy ending.
The characters show a lot of growth in one sense, with one a aristocratic hedonist who's not interested in woman at all but still has plans to marry and have children in the future and have his real pleasures on the side. The other comes from a humble background and is also not interested in woman, but doesn't feel it would be fair to do this to a woman. Their different backgrounds and attitudes mean a lot of clashes where you'd rather beat their heads together instead of boink their brains out, especially at first. The only niggle is they frequently go back to those old fears and habits, and it's understandable, but kind of annoying at times.
There's a trilogy, plus a short story that tells an extra bit of story from the other POV, an another book that features a recurring character in the series. Working on that one now.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells: Series of novellas starting with All Systems Red. Here's the summary for that one:
"On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid - a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is."
The series is told from the POV of Murderbot, who is chock full of sarcasm and pop culture references. I'm still on the waiting list for the most recent title, but I've enjoyed the first three. There's a bit of a mystery about Murderbot's past -- an "incident" that resulted in several deaths, a memory wipe, a hacked governor module -- and it goes about investigating what exactly happened, despite preferring to watch untold hours of media.
Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire: Another novella series, this one in a fantasy vein.
"Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children."
Much like Alice in Wonderland, children have slipped into other worlds beyond our imagination. Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children is a boarding school for children who come home from portal fantasy worlds. The portals call them into a world that's perfect for them, but they return "home" to a place they didn't want to be in anyway (and now many of their families think they're crazy), with most dreaming of the day their door opens for them again. Really good with queer representation, including trans and ace characters.
Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples: a graphic novel series that I've caught up with, and a word of caution, it is graphic as in it is drawn images, but also graphic as in NSFW. Language, violence, nudity, you name it, including a "sex planet" where it's perfectly OK to sell children. IIRC they don't show anything on the page, but you know it's happening. From our heroes' (and some of the villains') POV, this is not okay, but it is part of the plotline.
All that said, it's a family story at heart. Think Romeo and Juliet, but they're star-crossed lovers from a planet and moon that have been in never-ending war. When Alana gets pregnant, she and Marko go on the run because their child is at best going to be experimented on, but neither side wants her existence to become public knowledge. A child born of both worlds might give people ideas about ending the war, which is no longer fought on the original planet and moon, but is moving through the galaxy leaving destruction in its wake. Also, the war profiteers wouldn't like it to end.
The books are sometimes "narrated" by their child, Hazel, at some point in the future. We don't know how things are going to end, but future!Hazel does, commenting on things as we read them. The story is glorious and disturbing, but not for the faint of heart.
Guardian Spirits (Spirits #3) by Jordan L. Hawk.
A m/m historical paranormal romance featuring a psychic medium and an inventor who was swindled (and swived) by a medium and seeks to find a scientific means of dealing with spirits. Series begins with Restless Spirits.
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score (Seducing the Sedgwicks #2) by Cat Sebastian.
A m/m historical, featuring a mixed race couple, with one formerly being a gentleman until salacious secrets were made public. The two make unlikely allies to recover a risque portrait of a female friend. One thing I like about Sebastian's work is she writes like the traditional romance I used to read, it just happens to be two guys. It's a little different from the usual m/m style, which while heavily influenced by the Romance genre, also had fandom influence the standards. That's not a bad thing, just different.
Balefire (Whyborne & Griffin #10) by Jordan L. Hawk.
I adore this series, and my understanding is there's one more book planned to wrap it up. Think Lovecraftian eldritch horrors, but if Lovecraft wasn't a racist homophobe, mixed with a bit of Indiana Jones. While it's m/m, there's also a f/f and a m/f couple as well.
Skin After Skin (PsyCop #8) and Agent Bayne (PsyCop #9) by Jordan Castillo Price.
This was kind of a mixed bag. Skin After Skin focuses on Curtis Ash (aka Crash), who has been an ongoing character in the series as Jacob's former boyfriend, Victor's sometimes counsel on paranormal matters, and generally good-natured PITA. It's basically a story starting before the first PsyCop book, following Crash's POV of events up through the current books. My only problem is when it focuses on Crash's life, there are hints of interesting stuff, but it's dragged down by a "meant to be" love interest that doesn't feel earned.
Victor Bayne is still an awkward dork, Jacob's a jock dork, but they're both in far different places than they were at the beginning of the series. We get more info about Victor's time at Camp Hell as a teen, and hints there's even more disturbing stuff that he still can't remember.
Enlightenment series by by Joanna Chambers. I've been hearing about this series for a while, and just now got around to it. finishing up the last story right now. I will say the main trilogy really needs to be read in one go. There's a gap of two years between events of the first and second book, and six months between the second and third. Not sure how close the books were released, but if I had read the first book without the next one available immediately, I might not have continued. The story was okay, but was not in the neighborhood of a happy ending.
The characters show a lot of growth in one sense, with one a aristocratic hedonist who's not interested in woman at all but still has plans to marry and have children in the future and have his real pleasures on the side. The other comes from a humble background and is also not interested in woman, but doesn't feel it would be fair to do this to a woman. Their different backgrounds and attitudes mean a lot of clashes where you'd rather beat their heads together instead of boink their brains out, especially at first. The only niggle is they frequently go back to those old fears and habits, and it's understandable, but kind of annoying at times.
There's a trilogy, plus a short story that tells an extra bit of story from the other POV, an another book that features a recurring character in the series. Working on that one now.