APOPHENY

Aristotle and Dante duology – Benjamin Alire Saenz
(Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World)
A sweet coming of age literary M/M story. The first novel ended so perfectly, narratively speaking, that I felt unwilling to read the sequel, but when Amazon promptly offered it for 99p, I of course bought and read it, and I’m glad I did. The author has a lovely, poetic turn of phrase and is very good at stirring up emotion in me without me feeling manipulated.

The Lychford Witches series – Paul Cornell
(Witches of Lychford, Lost child of Lychford, Long Day in Lychford, Lights go Out in Lychford, Last Stand in Lychford, Lychford Gnomes)
Thoroughly enjoyable, very British, quite light. The three witches were somewhat reminiscent of Pratchett’s, but it was only a superficial and incomplete resemblance. They’re set in the real world with local magical weirdness. These books would make a great TV series, and considering the author, I can’t help but wonder if that’s something he hopes for. I’d watch!

White Space series – Elizabeth Bear
(Ancestral Night, Machine)
I struggled a bit with the first book – too much first-person exposition and meandering – but the writing either improved as we went, or I simply got used to the style. The SF worldbuilding was great, very compelling and, if not stunningly original, certainly not cliche. It kept me interested throughout. I also liked several of the characters a great deal, especially those we meet from a fascinating mantis-like species. Each book tells a separate story but set in the same ‘world’. I have the third book ready in my TBR pile.

Honey and Pepper – AJ Demas
The first book in the When in Pheme series, part of Demas’ ongoing library of alt ancient Mediterranean tales. The adventure was good and the characters lovely. There seemed to be more explicit sex than I’m used to with these books, but maybe I’m just forgetful as I always speed read through it. Either way, looking forward to more in the series.

The Greenhollow Duology – Emily Tesh
I’ve kept these books shamefully long in my TBR pile. Not only that, they were in the ‘keen to read’ section of the pile. Well, I’m glad to have finally read them. I wasn’t expecting an M/M tale, but I was happy to get one. I rather fell in love with one of the MCs, the taciturn ex-bandit, now green man. I was less fond of the fallible Silver, but that didn’t matter. The romance was nice, but not the primary focus, which was the Woods and its spirits and history. Very enjoyable.

The Red Company Reformed series – Victoria Goddard
(The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul)
I can’t get enough of the Nine Worlds. These books fill in some of the gaps from the major series, and in the case of the latter, help us understand a rather marmite-y character a lot better.

Tales of the Red Company – Victoria Goddard
(Derring Do for Beginners)
The very beginning of the Red Company. I really liked the two main characters (one of whom we know, as a much older woman, from the Greenwing & Dart stories), and I’m tempted to add a star to this rating, but I’m waiting for now to read whatever the next book in this series will be.

Principalities series – Seeley Lynde
(Palace of Disorder, Palace of Wrath, Palace of Reveries)
These books constantly walked the edge of being too tropey for me, but only in respect of the romance. It was the detail and (relative) originality of the setting that kept me reading to the end and have kept me thinking about the books on and off ever since. The impressive details of the labyrinthine tunnels of the water and drainage systems of a large city fascinated me! I also loved all the god politics as they developed, and several of the many characters were compelling. Really, it would only require the removal of the unconvincing romance for me to have 4-starred these books.

Luminous – Sylvia Park
A touching story about some tragic, abused robots and their lasting and personal influence on several human lives.

Teixcalaan series – Arkady Martine
(A Memory Called Empire, A Desolation Called Peace)
The first book won a Hugo. I had more trouble getting through the second than the first, but in the end I enjoyed both with their depictions of a far future culture that in many ways could have slotted neatly into Earth’s past.

Copper Script – KJ Charles
The usual KJ Charles good read with a strong plot and touching M/M romance. This is a detective novel with the slightest hint of magic, set post WW1 and dealing with police corruption.

All of Us Murderers – KJ Charles
This was very close to four stars. While it had her usual tightly plotted and well-characterised romance-adventure format, it was also a gothic novel. As usual with her books, I read it in a single sitting, which is a credit to her easy readability and skill at creating page-turners, but it’s also possibly why her books don’t score higher here, despite me liking her writing enough to always preorder new books. I don’t have a chance to really fall in love with characters or worlds. It would be lovely if one day she decided to pen an epic.

The Square of Sevens – Laura Shepherd-Robinson
I read this in two halves as it was long and occasionally frustrating. It often threatened to descend into the Dickensian, but thankfully always swerved aside at the last moment. I was recommended the book by my sister as the plot and the plot structure were based on an old method of cartomancy, and that definitely drew me in, but I kept reading for the personable and, in the end, very unreliable narrator!

Witch King – Martha Wells
First of her latest fantasy series and with the usual excellent world-building. While I found it a little uninvolving to start with, that had definitely changed by the end, and I suspect that once we’re deeper into the series, I’ll be upgrading this to four stars.

The Novels of the Jaren – Kate Elliot
(Jaren, An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword, The Law of Becoming)
It was very interesting to read these novels, written three decades earlier, directly after the first two Chronicles of the Sun books. Both series are SF and focus on and around a charismatic, empire-building conqueror, but they are quite different in overall feel. 

These books focus mostly on a woman (a girl when we first meet her) who is the heir of a galactic dukedom. After getting stranded on an interdicted world, where the humans and aliens from more advanced worlds are not meant to interfere, she joins a nomadic tribe and becomes the wife of a Genghis Khan type figure as he unites the disparate tribes and sets out to conquer much of his continent.

Reading these I kept getting reminded of old Anne McCaffrey novels – a strong (to a point) female protagonist in a male-dominant world, old school romance tropes, a fiercely possessive brooding hero presented as desirable. Written in the nineties, these books are far less inherently ‘patriarchy is right unless you’re a special snowflake girl’ than the McCaffrey sixties classics, and they have a great cast of characters as well as interesting politics, both local and galactic.

By the end of the four books, I admit to a growing sense of frustration as the same mistake is made again and again by supposedly intelligent characters. Yes, believe it or not, different cultures think differently to yours. They have different values and customs. Presumption is the root of idiocy.

The narrative ends just as it’s starting to go fully galactic, which is also frustrating. I have to assume that more books were planned but interest had waned. On the whole, however, these books were well worth the read if not as compelling as the story of Sun.

Bryony and Roses – T Kingfisher
An enjoyable Beauty and the Beast retelling. Not startlingly different, but I liked the emphasis on horticulture and the ending.