recent reading

[castiron]

Graydon Saunders first three Commonweal books, The March North, A Succession of Bad Days, and Safely You Deliver. Egalitarian fantasy in a post-multiple-apocolyptic world. These books take a lot of work to read because of how much incluing you have to pick up, but they reward rereading. At some point I may get further books in the series, but at the moment I don't think I have the brainspace for them.

Andrea Hörst's Touchstone trilogy (Stray, Touchstone, and Caszandra) + gratuitous epilogue. Australian young adult walks through a portal into another world, struggles to survive, and ultimately finds out she has special abilities. Probably fourth or fifth reread. I find the worldbuilding and the main character interesting, though I'm meh on the romance.

JRRT, The Hobbit. A short guy has an adventure with a bunch of other short guys. Nth reread; it's been a while.

L. A. Hall, Revenants. The latest Cathcart Circle installment. Daughter disapproving of mother's new lover; sundry young people figuring out how to be together despite parental resistance; man suddenly decides he wants custody of the son whose life he hasn't been involved in; people get ready to travel; everything gets settled happily in the end. Comfort reading.

Currently stalled on the new Phryne Fisher novel, Death in Daylesford. I was really excited about this one, but now that it's in my hands, meh. I feel like Greenwood's writing style has changed, though I can't articulate how; more tell-y than showing? More obligatory "here's what this person in the regular cast of characters is up to lately"? At any rate, I'm not enjoying it like the previous books in the series, and while I'll probably finish it eventually, I'm not feeling any urge to press on. Maybe I'll like it better once I've gotten through it once, but honestly, the end of Murder and Mendelssohn felt like it could be a good close for the series.

Comments

Re: spoilery

[castiron]

It's the kind of thing that I would've found terribly romantic when I was fifteen; at over 3x that, not so much.

Re: spoilery

[tolcath]

It felt a little like her infatuation almost forced him, honestly, no matter what else he said. They seemed to work things out and if he hadn't said that, I wouldn't have jolted at the rest.

I'm good at the suspension of disbelief trick.

There were a lot of worldbuilding details I liked, too. And how they were fed in. When I stop to think about it, I'm always amazed that people build whole books out of their imaginations.

I looked up Revenants and it's part of a series - is the rest of the series any good/part of the comfort reading?

Re: spoilery

[castiron]

Yes, but start with the original Comfortable Courtesan series; some of the Cathcart Circle stories work better if you already know and like the characters from the original. You can read them on the author's DW, the_comfortable_courtesan and see if you like them enough to get them in a more portable format; the beginning is here, and a general site for the books is here.

Re: spoilery

[tolcath]

Thanks!

Re: spoilery

[tolcath]

I went and read for hours and hours. It reminded me a little of early soap operas. The language took me a bit to sink into, and I don't think it'll be a favorite for me as it is for you, but it was quite entertaining. I have a few bookmarks and I find that if I stop and read I tend to keep on to see what happens. Thanks again for the info.