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115. Faux Ho Ho by ‘Nathan Burgoine. 3.5. Cute little gay romance featuring the fake boyfriend/horrible family tropes. Knocking off a half point because despite being aggressively marketed as holiday themed…it’s really not? Like, changing three lines could have made this happen any time of year. Especially after making a big deal of the character liking to ski, going to a ski chalet, and then never actually getting to ski.
116. Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells. 4. Not nearly as Sleeping Beauty pastiche-y as I feared. Coming-of-age when your parents got you cursed, so you have to rescue the sleeping princess. Bonus points for bi character who gets to actually make a real decision in her love triangle.
117. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. 3. I read this when it first came out, and recently stumbled on it and realized I couldn’t remember a darn thing about it. Re-read. Apparently I liked it 4 stars before, and the prose really is lovely, and the story about twins being haunted by their dead aunt is intriguing. But I think I must have blacked it out after the infuriating ending.
118. Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik. 3.5. Fun SF romance romp featuring a runaway princess and a renegade whose eyes glow in the dark. Everything you’re thinking, but reasonably well done.
119. Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton. 3.5. Dude gets dumped by his fiancee, decides to hit every national park in one year. The book is a little uneven - for some parks, he clearly has very little to say, which is kind of a shame. A couple of the early chapters have so little in the way of details for the individual parks covered that it feels like his trip there was a waste of time, but that improves in later chapters.
120. Across the Green Grass Field by Seanan MacGuire. 3.5. Another standalone story from the Wayward Children universe. In this one, a girl gets transported to Horse World and doesn’t agree with what they want from a hero. Honestly, the pacing feels off on this one–there’s an awful lot of hanging out with centaurs for the middle half of the book and then an entire quest compressed into the last quarter, which also doesn’t feel like it particularly addresses the themes raised in the first quarter except in the loosest sense.
121. Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke. 5. A guy at an NYC PR/marketing firm accidentally gets his consciousness uploaded into Slack. The entire book is literally Slack messages. It’s completely absurd (one of their big emergencies is that their dog food client has accidentally poisoned several dozen Pomeranians and they have to somehow do damage control and also the CEO would really like to know who broke his standing desk), and it’s also EXACTLY what workplace Slack threads are like. If, you know, one of your coworkers had been uploaded into Slack.
122. All Systems Red by Martha Wells. 4.5. Murderbot hasn’t gotten around to killing all its squishy human coworkers yet because it’s busy watching entertainment videos. If only its squishy human coworkers didn’t need to be rescued.
123. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison. 4.5. A follow-up set in the world of The Goblin Emperor (although you don’t really have to have read that one) following the adventures of a cleric who casts Speak with Dead a lot. Similar to Goblin Emperor, more episodic than linear, but engaging and thoughtful.
124. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. 5. Devastating mindtrip of a historical novel. Two women, a pilot and a spy, crash in Gestapo-controlled France and one is promptly captured. How much of the truth will she reveal?
125. Come Tumbling Down by Seanan MacGuire. 4. When we last left Jack, she was carrying the dead body of her twin Jill back to her world to revive her with mad science (after stabbing her, ‘cause really, her sister’s awful.) Jack’s back…but not as she was. The expected combination of fun and horror.
116. Briar Girls by Rebecca Kim Wells. 4. Not nearly as Sleeping Beauty pastiche-y as I feared. Coming-of-age when your parents got you cursed, so you have to rescue the sleeping princess. Bonus points for bi character who gets to actually make a real decision in her love triangle.
117. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. 3. I read this when it first came out, and recently stumbled on it and realized I couldn’t remember a darn thing about it. Re-read. Apparently I liked it 4 stars before, and the prose really is lovely, and the story about twins being haunted by their dead aunt is intriguing. But I think I must have blacked it out after the infuriating ending.
118. Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik. 3.5. Fun SF romance romp featuring a runaway princess and a renegade whose eyes glow in the dark. Everything you’re thinking, but reasonably well done.
119. Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton. 3.5. Dude gets dumped by his fiancee, decides to hit every national park in one year. The book is a little uneven - for some parks, he clearly has very little to say, which is kind of a shame. A couple of the early chapters have so little in the way of details for the individual parks covered that it feels like his trip there was a waste of time, but that improves in later chapters.
120. Across the Green Grass Field by Seanan MacGuire. 3.5. Another standalone story from the Wayward Children universe. In this one, a girl gets transported to Horse World and doesn’t agree with what they want from a hero. Honestly, the pacing feels off on this one–there’s an awful lot of hanging out with centaurs for the middle half of the book and then an entire quest compressed into the last quarter, which also doesn’t feel like it particularly addresses the themes raised in the first quarter except in the loosest sense.
121. Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke. 5. A guy at an NYC PR/marketing firm accidentally gets his consciousness uploaded into Slack. The entire book is literally Slack messages. It’s completely absurd (one of their big emergencies is that their dog food client has accidentally poisoned several dozen Pomeranians and they have to somehow do damage control and also the CEO would really like to know who broke his standing desk), and it’s also EXACTLY what workplace Slack threads are like. If, you know, one of your coworkers had been uploaded into Slack.
122. All Systems Red by Martha Wells. 4.5. Murderbot hasn’t gotten around to killing all its squishy human coworkers yet because it’s busy watching entertainment videos. If only its squishy human coworkers didn’t need to be rescued.
123. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison. 4.5. A follow-up set in the world of The Goblin Emperor (although you don’t really have to have read that one) following the adventures of a cleric who casts Speak with Dead a lot. Similar to Goblin Emperor, more episodic than linear, but engaging and thoughtful.
124. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. 5. Devastating mindtrip of a historical novel. Two women, a pilot and a spy, crash in Gestapo-controlled France and one is promptly captured. How much of the truth will she reveal?
125. Come Tumbling Down by Seanan MacGuire. 4. When we last left Jack, she was carrying the dead body of her twin Jill back to her world to revive her with mad science (after stabbing her, ‘cause really, her sister’s awful.) Jack’s back…but not as she was. The expected combination of fun and horror.
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Date: 2022-01-02 04:51 am (UTC)From: