Hi friends,
November flew by for our family. I finally returned to work when the government shutdown ended. That was an adjustment. We celebrated Thanksgiving with my in-laws, and I got to read a few good books.
I’m also including a review and pictures of the Dragonsteel convention, which we went to at the beginning of December, but I want to let you know what I thought of it while it’s fresh in my mind.
Let me know if you’ve read these books and what you think about them if you have.
Merry Christmas,
Tonya
Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: Kingfisher’s books are hit or miss for me, but this one hit really well. This is a loose retelling of the Snow White story in that it features poisoned apples and weird mirrors. Everything else is fresh and 100% Kingfisher’s signature creepy style. One of the things that I appreciate about Kingfisher is her unconventional protagonists. I always want to read more fantasy with a heroine that’s mid-30s, socially awkward, and neurodivergent. The story is told from Anja’s first person point-of-view. She’s a 36 year-old spinster who lives with her wealthy merchant father. Since her older cousin died of an accidental poisoning in front of her when she was a child, she’s also been obsessed with learning all there is to know and conducting her own research on poisons. As far as obsessions go, it’s one that bears fruit…. Literally! Anja gets called on by the king to treat his teenage daughter who he suspects of being poisoned. With saying no to the absolute monarch not an option, Anja follows the king to a country retreat where she discovers not only the sick teenager but a hidden and ultra-creep world behind mirrors. Have you ever wondered what happens to your reflection after you stop looking at the mirror? I didn’t before, but now I do, and I sincerely hope that Kingfisher’s mirror reflection monsters stay behind the glass. Kingfisher throws in a rooster and a satisfying romance that rounds out the story as Anja solves the mystery of what’s wrong with Snow. I would highly recommend for fans of Nettle and Bone. Definitely a good read.
All That We See or Seem (Julia Z. #1) by Ken Liu
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I loved Liu’s epic fantasy series Dandelion Dynasty, and he’s now one of my auto-read authors—an author that I automatically read any of their new releases. Liu brings his expertise in character development and plot to this scifi thriller, but that’s about where the similarities end. This book is set in the near future where AI is embedded in our lives and each person has their own AI assistant that is trained on their data and integrated into almost every aspect of their lives. Julia is a former hacker, who’s now on the straight and narrow and spends her time not charging school districts to solve their catastrophic hacks when her world is disrupted by the husband of an artist who has mysteriously disappeared. Julia doesn’t want to get involved, but she’s soon forced to take the case, and man, does it lead some unexpected places from questioning postmortem AI avatars to descending into the depths of all that’s skeezy about capitalism and technology. Liu has a lot to say about AI, and the world that he describes seems more realistic than others that I’ve read about. Naturally, this book made me think a lot about my own relationship with my data, AI, and the social internet, and yeah…. There’s a lot of stuff we still need to figure out! I highly recommend for fans of scifi thrillers and Liu.
The Let Them Theory: A Life Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: This book was a recommendation from my mom and a few other people. The whole premise of the theory is that you can’t control other people, so when they do things you don’t want them to do, you tell yourself to “Let them,” as a form of acceptance and release. Then you tell yourself, “Let me,” and focus on what you can do. That’s it. Robbins somehow took 300+pages to explain that. OK, the rest of the book isn’t a complete loss. Robbins is a good writer, and she does provide a lot of helpful examples and explanation. One other thing that stuck out to me was that while we cannot control what other people do, we can set an example and model the behavior that we want to see. I find myself using this advice a lot as I also try to teach my kids to focus on their own accountability and agency. I don’t think “Let them,” is a silver bullet theory that will solve all your problems, but it is good advice worth reading and implementing.
Unsouled (Cradle #1) by Will Wight
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: There was an Amazon sale a few years ago where for 24 hours only you could download all of Wight’s books for free, so I’ve had the whole Cradle series for a while. I finally decided to read the first one because I got a chance to go to Dragonsteel this year, and Wight was one of the authors attending. I unfortunately didn’t get the chance to meet Wight when we were there, but I did finally start this series. This felt very much like a set up book for the rest of the series and the world. I was actually pretty confused at the beginning of the book about how the magic system and world worked. It’s an interesting mix of sci-fi and fantasy, but it just felt kind of clunky, like a bunch of different scenes all put together but lacking transitions. Lindon, the main protagonist, was also single-minded to the point of being unbelievable. After reading a few other fantasy books following this, I’m thinking that the main qualification to being a fantasy hero is the ability to withstand and fight through absurd amounts of pain and injury. Like it’s nearly unbelievable and kind of pulled me out of the story. I’m definitely interested in continuing this series and have heard that the writing gets better as the series progresses. There were definitely lots of loose ends to wrap up in the next book.
The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I read this book slowly over the course of almost a year, and I think that was a good way to digest it. This book won a Pulitzer for a reason, and it holds up despite being published 50 years ago. It is part biography and part history of New York for the middle of the 20th century. Robert Moses never held elected office, but he accumulated more power than anyone in the state of New York through an ingenious combination of confirmed positions. He was known as the best bill drafter in Albany and purposely crafted legislation that created positions that would be almost impossible to remove him from. He was a master at getting federal funding for massive infrastructure projects, and his singular vision is reflected in New York to this day. He was responsible for the displacement of thousands of, mainly poor, people in the midst of a housing crisis that he was responsible for creating. His massive bridges, tunnels, and toll roads are the reason that New Yorkers spend countless miserable hours sitting in traffic to this day. Each project promised to relieve the congestion only to worsen it as all mass transit projects were sidelined for lack of the funding that his public authorities captured through tolls and then put back into motor vehicle infrastructure. He became the sole decision maker to direct billions of dollars in government contractors to his personal friends and people who could help him get the one thing he desired more of: power. This book was a recommendation from another book I read earlier this year called Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress and How to Bring it Back by Marc Dunkelman, which talks about how we now have the opposite problem. In response to people like Moses accumulating too much power and running roughshod over the interests of marginalized communities, we pushed power down and disbursed it to many different stakeholders. Dunkelman observes in his book that if Moses had lived today he wouldn’t have been able to get anything done. I don’t know what the solution is, but we seem to have missed the happy medium where the interests of all affected communities in a public works project are heard and addressed but where those in charge of executing it still have the power required to make difficult choices and get the job done. I highly recommend for anyone wondering why it’s so hard to build anything nowadays, or anyone who’s interested in a superbly crafted and told history.
The Fall (The Bound and the Broken .5) by Ryan Cahill
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: I made a goal for myself to meet as many authors as possible at Dragonsteel, and Cahill was there this year, and I got selected for a signing! This series was probably my favorite of the ones that I started before Dragonsteel. This is actually a prequel novella to the main series and shows a critical event in the lore of that world. It plunges the reader straight into the dragon and magic packed action as the ancient dragon-riding order that’s held power for centuries falls to a series of betrayals. It doesn’t provide a lot of context or exposition, but I was OK with that since I figured that would all come in the first book of the main series. It did show me that Cahill knows how to write action and deliver punchy emotional moments with very little time to set up the characters. It made me excited to read the rest of the series.
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Recommendation: maybe
Review: I got to meet Adeyemi at Dragonsteel this year, and she was very kind and delightful to all the fans waiting in her line. However, this was probably my least favorite of all my new reads leading up to Dragonsteel. It’s an awesome premise, magic system, and the world building is on point. The things that annoyed me were probably attributable to it being a young adult novel. This book moves fast. I think the whole thing takes place over a few weeks, and it felt like Adeyemi was trying to cram too much character and relationship development into too short a time. The romance particularly bothered me in that regard. The enemies to lovers trope played out way too fast. Like they literally go from trying to kill each other to smooching in a day. Those teenagers and their hormones… Also, there was a ton of trauma in this book for all of the characters, and I wasn’t convinced that it was all necessary or served to enhance the themes. It was just a lot, really fast! I’m not sure if I’ll continue this series, but I did enjoy reading a Nigerian-inspired fantasy world. I need more of that in my reading life.
Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken #1) by Ryan Cahill
Rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommendation: yes
Review: This book is classic epic fantasy ala Tolkien and Robert Jordan but with a modern feel. Cahill presents us with several classic fantasy tropes including the village farm boy, or in this case blacksmith’s son, whose life is uprooted by big magic and big trauma to go on an epic quest to save the world. Cahill puts his own spin on things, and it felt familiar but also new in many ways. I liked that it had a slower start and that I got to know our main cast of characters before the adventure really set in. I also really enjoyed the character development of Calen, Dann, and Rist, all of whom felt like distinct characters with elements of tropes. Calen being the hero, Dann being the funny drunkard, and Rist being the smart and snarky one. It has all your class fantasy races: elves, dwarves, scary urak bad guys, and of course, dragons! I need more dragons. I’m confident that the next books will have more dragons. |
| Dan and I with Kaladin and Syl. |
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| Me with Ryan Cahill, author of The Bound and the Broken |
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| We enjoyed being together sans kids for the longest time all year when we're not working |
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| Me and Matt Dinniman, author of Dungeon Crawler Carl |
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| Me and Tomi Adeyemi, author of Children of Blood and Bone |
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| Dan and I with Dan Wells, author of I Am Not a Serial Killer. Sanderson himself is photo bombing us. |
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| Me and Lynn Buchannan, author of The Dollmakers, which I've reviewed before on this blog. |
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| Me and Isaac Stewart, the head of art at Dragonsteel and author of the adorable board book Monsters Don't Wear Underpants |
