Scifirenegade's Trash Can

We’re not—quite—to the end of December, but I think I can probably concede that I’m not going to finish another book by the end of the day tomorrow.

I did read a whopping nine books this month, which is so many more than usual for me!

I’ll have another post looking back at the whole year in terms of reading, but I’m fairly happy with how I finished it out.

My last “stretch goal” for reading this year was to finish the Tor Nightfire horror ebooks that I got in a humble bundle. I did not quite hit that goal, but I have started reading the final one, so I feel like I get partial credit, haha.

This month I read:

The Spite House by Johnny Compton
4.5/5
Horror (subgenres: paranormal, haunting, gothic) - ebook novel

Eric and his daughters, Dess and Stacy, are on the run. After an inexplicable event chased them away from their life in Maryland, they’re heading to Eric’s family home in Odessa, TX, with at best vague plans for some sort of security this may offer them. Eric has been forced to take under-the-table jobs to support them on their way. Then he finds a job listing that sounds too good to be true: an eccentric woman asking someone to spend time living in a particular “spite house,” and record their experience, searching for evidence of the paranormal. The payment is beyond generous if they complete their time, regardless of any paranormal findings, in addition to providing the room and board for the time spent in the house itself. This truly does seem extremely perfect for the situation they’re in, and when he is offered the job, he accepts. It does not take long for strange things to start happening within the spite house. The house itself has more history than they’re aware of, and some of it could be far more dangerous than strange noises and unexplained cold spots.

My thoughts, only vague spoilers:

I really enjoyed this book! As usual, that means that I struggle to find what to say about it, ha.

A spite house is a fantastic setting. (A spite house is, as it says on the tin, a structure that’s built primarily out of spite, intended to annoy neighbors or landowners or someone else more than it is intended to be a functional home. Often these structures end up being extremely impractical in terms of construction.) In the case of the one in the story, it was built on top of a hill to loom over the other buildings on the property. The building is extremely, bizarrely long and narrow, and one of the upstairs floors has a strange long hallway added as an addition that skirts the exterior wall. The architecture of the space definitely adds to the weirdness and creepiness of the setting even before the supernatural elements come in. (Though I did have to keep revising my mental image, because my brain kept trying to make it “look” more “normal” in my head, haha.)

I enjoyed how everyone was an unreliable narrator in this. Eric and Dess have something very specific that they’re trying to hide. Eunice, the woman who owns the house, is deliberately concealing information from Eric, wanting to make sure that he remains willing to stay in the house. Eunice’s employees are often torn between loyalty to her, and the desire to protect the family, particularly the children, which mostly leads to them only offering partial truths.

I mostly enjoyed the different points of view that the story alternated between, but it felt maybe a little excessive. It was nice to get the different perspectives and piece together the whole story of the spite house’s past and present based on what the different characters know about it, as well as seeing what they share versus what they conceal. However, I think it might have worked a little better with slightly fewer perspectives, because some of them were similar enough to each other that they felt a little redundant or didn’t add anything unique to the mix, and I would rather have stuck with one of the primary characters.

There’s a strong theme of cycles of abuse/tragedy/hatred/revenge/spite… As well as how to break those cycles, and whether or not they can be, and to what lengths you may have to go to do so. I also like the elements of privilege and marginalization… Eric, Dess, and Stacy are Black. Eunice is white, and while she prides herself on being extremely progressive (and in some ways she is), she is also very willing to take advantage of Eric and his daughters, while justifying it to herself repeatedly. She never wants bad things to happen to them, but she is willing to use them even if that means those bad things will happen. (To be fair, she was willing to take advantage of the white couple she’d previously hired, too. But she is always willing to leverage her social and financial power, while spinning it to herself as doing favors, and writing a bigger check to smooth over any ills.)

I hope that Alex picks this one to read together at some point, because I’d like to reread it. I’ve also added another book by this author to my wishlist.

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes
4/5
Sci-fi/Horror (subgenres: psychological, haunting) (background m/f) - ebook novel - read with Alex

Claire and her temporary crew are on their final mission to the outer reaches of occupied space, replacing parts of the communication net before the task is automated. There should be nothing else out there, yet they intercept a distress call. Investigating it leads them to a ghost ship, the remains of the first and only attempt at a luxury cruise in space. The Aurora vanished twenty years before, taking its hundreds of celebrity passengers and entire crew with it.
The ghost ship represents the chance to solve an enduring mystery, and maybe more importantly, the opportunity for salvage. If they can stake their claim, prove they're the ones who found it, this could be the financial chance for all of them to do whatever they want with their futures. As they investigate the ship, it becomes clear that this wasn't some mechanical or systems failure. Everywhere are signs of violence and paranoia; murders and suicides seemed to claim almost all the lives on board.
Months later, Claire is in an institution, medicated and monitored by the corporation that employed her. They want to know what happened aboard the Aurora. She can't remember her escape, or what happened to some of her crew. Her employer thinks she killed them. She's sure that there was something terrible aboard the ghost ship, and that whatever it was, it's still dangerous.

My thoughts, minor spoilers

I gave this one a 4.5 the first time I read it, but on a reread a tiny bit of the shine had worn off, and it was more of a regular 4. Which is still quite good, and I did really enjoy it, even on the second read through.

I’d still say that Alien is the clearest comp title, though with paranormal happenings rather than extraterrestrial. I’ll also still say that this is much more of a horror story in a sci-fi setting, rather than it being a sci-fi story with horror elements. I enjoy that, and I still enjoy that at least some of the paranormal stuff is paranormal, rather than all getting some tech explanation.

I still love the setting of the long-abandoned cruise ship in space, I love it being the site of unexplained, horrible violence and death, and the characters having to put together what happened via a sort of found-footage examination, while also realizing that they might be experiencing the same phenomenon, whatever it may be.

The things that I didn’t care for as much the first time did bother me just as much or more the second time. I do feel like, for a story set a century+ in the future, too much of the culture felt too current. It feels anachronistic, though I don’t know that the word technically applies to something set in the future. Sometimes it felt fine - I don’t mind that some of the prominent guests on the cruise ship were reality show starlets, because that feels like the sort of archetype that we could very well still have in the future. Other times it felt jarring - one of the jerks on the crew wearing crude novelty t-shirts that I’m pretty sure I’ve actually seen at a Spencers Gifts. Idioms and curses and things also felt a little too current-modern, in a way that feels unlikely for a century in the future. (Though to be fair, I’d rather that than attempts to create ridiculous-sounding new slang, which is so often super silly. I still think it would have been better to just phrase things in more neutral ways, so it didn’t feel like a future-anachronism.)

The other thing that fell flatter for me this time (though I didn’t love it the first time) was the romance between Claire and Kane. It just felt… meh, to me. It’s very much a B-plot, and doesn’t wildly detract from the rest of the story or anything. I just didn’t feel the chemistry from them for the majority of the book, and it felt forced. I’m glad enough for them to get together at the end, and wasn’t rooting against them or anything, but they were just sort of boring.

I am always a fan of the real villain being capitalism.

Queen Demon by Martha Wells
Book two of The Rising World
5/5
Fantasy - physical novel - read with Taylor

Kai and Zeide; along with Zeide’s rescued wife, Tahren; Tahren’s brother, Dahin; and their younger charges Sanja and Tenes; return to the Rising World. The conspiracy against them, to destabilize the coalition and raise one of the Prince-Heirs to the position of emperor, has been revealed. Kai is perfectly happy to leave everything to the political powers to sort out, now that the conspirators have been unmasked. Unfortunately, before he’s able to fully retreat home, Dahin requests his help. Dahin thinks that he might have discovered the location of the Heirarch’s Well, the massive reservoir of power that they used in their conquest of the world. When an archeological expedition to the same area finds evidence that there was a Hierarch there far more recently than should be possible, the theory becomes something far too dangerous to ignore.
In the past, Kai continues to travel with Bashasa, the Prince-Heir who has become the leader of an alliance against the Hierarchs’ conquest. Despite his desire to simply act as Bashasa’s bodyguard, Kai keeps being given more and more responsibility within the alliance, including creating a tentative agreement with a group of dust witches and taking charge of them to fight in a major battle against the Hierarchs… and potentially the other demons that they’ve enslaved.

My thoughts, only vague spoilers:

I just read this one, but was already excited to reread it! And yet again, I struggle to say enough about it.

I enjoyed the worldbuilding, and how complex the whole world feels. (It is sometimes a lot to keep track of, but in a way that very much works for me; it all feels very well-considered and consistent, so that complexity feels genuine rather than convoluted, in my opinion.)

The interplay between the characters is constantly excellent. Getting an interaction between Kai and Bashat was as fraught and slightly tragic as I’d hoped. Every scene between Kai and Bashasa in the past breaks my heart, even as I adore them and it makes me laugh each time Bashasa gets cockblocked. I said it last time, but I also appreciated that in the present there is a brief period where the whole character group gets a chance to just rest for a while. It’s not long, and it doesn’t kill the plot momentum, but it was nice to see the characters together and not in active crisis. It makes me believe and care about their “found family” dynamic, and understand what it is the characters themselves want out of their “normal lives.”
As a sidenote: this is “found family” in the way that I find truly enjoyable; it does not map onto a nuclear family (minus, I guess, that Ziede and Tahren are married, and that Tahren and Dahin are siblings), but they do all feel like family to each other. I typically do not like what I see get described as “found family,” where you have a “dad” character and a “mom” character and the rest are their “kids”, because that gives me the ick. There are kids that are being cared for as part of the group, but all the relationships are layered and complex where the trope often feels very shallow.

I appreciate and enjoy the alternating between chapters set in the present and the chapters set in the past. The two timelines do parallel each other really well, with similar or contrasting events and themes, but it never feels forced or repetitive. In some ways it’s also very funny to switch back and forth, because in the present day Kai is thought of as this near-mythical war hero, the unstoppable general of Bashasa’s rebellion… and in the past you can see how unfamiliar that role is and how reluctant (and at times slightly resentful) he is to take it on.

The end of this book is not a true cliffhanger, but it was still gut-wrenching, and I really need a third book.

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
Book three of the Shades of Magic trilogy
4.5/5
Fantasy (background m/f and m/m) - physical novel

When Holland, White London’s Antari, was cast into the dead world of Black London, it was meant to be the final moments of his life. Against all expectations, he survived, accepting the lingering spirit of Black London’s king, a piece of conscious magic, into himself. Returning to White London, the Black London king, Osaron, helps to reawaken White London’s long-dormant magic… but Osaron wants more. Holland offers Osaron access to Kell as a potential new host, and by extension, Kell’s home of Red London, a world much richer in magic.
Despite being denied a willing host, Osaron spreads his influence over Red London. He does not simply want to be a king; he wants to be a god. Exerting his will over the population, many give in to his influence, while most who resist are immediately killed, burned up by Osaron’s power. Only a few have the strength to fight off his hold, and they won’t be spared once Osaron takes control of the world.
The three Antari—Kell, Lila, and Holland—embark on a dangerous quest to find a piece of forbidden magic that they hope will allow them to fight Osaron. They know that if Osaron succeeds in becoming god of this new world, his rampant magic will destroy it, the same way it destroyed Black London.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

Back when I first read this book (years ago), I remember it being an easy 5/5, and what I considered the gold standard for a book three of a trilogy. I was a little disappointed that it didn’t hit quite as hard as I remember, but it was still very, very good.

The stakes have definitely returned to feeling real and important, and an escalation from the already high stakes of book one. (Book two falls very flat for me because the stakes are just not there.) The stakes here feel extreme, and they stay that way. It causes tragedy, as so many truly heroic attempts to fight… fail. There is a lot of tragedy in this book, specifically of the “storyline cut short” kind; characters that wind up never getting the closure they deserved.

I love Holland as a character. He is one who gets a #tragic backstory to sell him as why he is who he is, but it’s one that works for me, and having that context for his character makes me appreciate him. The end for him breaks my heart, but also in a good way.

One kind of small thing that I really appreciate: Lila gets called out for being a fucking hypocrite. One of the things that bothers me most about her as a character is that she is (rightfully!) hurt and enraged that one of the few people she cared for was murdered (by Holland!). However, she has zero problem killing other people, or putting them into situations where they are likely to die, sometimes for fairly petty reasons, or just to make things easier for herself. (She locked some rando up on a ship heading to a prison colony because she wanted to impersonate him to enter a competition!) She (and I felt like sometimes the narrative itself) treat this as her being “strong,” but I found it extremely frustrating, and I like that she gets called out on it. I don’t hate her as a character, but that particular aspect bothered me so much.

I like Alucard and Rhy. Alucard also gets a lot of #tragic past details to explain why he’s in the situation that he is, and it does make me terribly sad for him. At the same time, it honestly bothers me a little bit the lengths that Alucard has to go to in order to prove what happened… Trading for rare and highly-prized magic to prove that he was actually kidnapped and brutalized to force him away from Rhy, as opposed to just carelessly running off and breaking his heart? It was enough that he went through it, but to have to go to extreme lengths to prove his “innocence” felt extremely unfair. (Though I also understand the appeal of having some objective Thing that can prove the truth of an event.)

I do love the climactic final battle.

It is still an excellent book three to a trilogy; there are a lot of little details that were seeded earlier on that now have payoff (Lila’s map to nowhere! The setup for Black London!) It’s a great conclusion to the story.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Book one of Sworn Soldier
5/5
Horror (subgenres: gothic, body horror, possession, mycological) - ebook novella - read with Taylor

Alex Easton, a 'sworn soldier,' hasn't spoken to kan* friends, the Ushers, in years. When Alex receives a letter from Roderick, expressing his fears about his twin sister Madeline's failing health, Alex comes to visit them. The Usher family house is in a terrible state of decay, and so are the twins. As Alex spends more time on the estate, ka sees even more without explanation: strange lights in the tarn by the house, hares that behave and move in bizarre ways, Madeline's odd behavior and speech during bouts of sleepwalking... Alex fears there may be something more at play than any of them understand.

*Alex's native language has many sets of pronouns, including ka/kan, which is a set of pronouns used solely for soldiers, which supersede any gendered pronouns they might have used prior, and which some, like Alex, continue to use.

My thoughts, minor spoilers:

I just read this one a couple months ago, but liked it really well and thought Taylor might, too. (They did!) It was also a quick read for us.

Like I said last time, this is a retelling/reimagining of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” creating an explanation for the events of the original story. I think that it worked really well!

I love the setting, and how well it leans on the creepy descriptions and imagery of the house and the surrounding estate. The explanation chosen suits the story very well, I think.

I also mentioned it the first time, but I really like the whole pronoun explanation that Alex gives. It makes sense to explain kan pronouns, and serves as some nice worldbuilding flavor about the fictional history of Alex’s nationality and language… but then also comes back again later in the story when the child-exclusive va/van pronouns get used. It’s very creepy when it does come up, ha.
I really like and admire from a craft perspective when a detail serves an immediate purpose and does groundwork for something in the future.
(It happens again with a minor detail where Alex feeds kan horse an apple, mentioning the orchards ka passed through on the trip to the estate, and later it matters that there are apple orchards nearby. It makes it so the presence of the orchards doesn’t feel like an ass-pull for the resolution, but also never felt heavy-handed about drawing attention to their presence. It’s good writing that I appreciate.)

I do now have a physical copy of this book and the next two, gifted to me for Christmas, and I look forward to reading them, hopefully soon!

Mary by Nat Cassidy
4/5
Horror (subgenres: body horror, cult, serial killer, possession) - ebook novel

About to turn 50, Mary’s quiet, predictable life is suddenly upended. She loses her job, the rent on her apartment is set to drastically increase… and then she hears from her last remaining family member, her estranged, abrasive Aunt Nadine, who suddenly wants Mary to come out to Arizona and help care for her.
She decides she will go to take care of Nadine, and she packs up her “Loved Ones”—collectable china figures that are the closest things to real friends that she has—and heads to Arizona.
Mary is struggling with the onset of menopause, and while she’s assured that everything she’s experiencing is perfectly normal, she’s not certain that’s the case. She finds herself unable to look at other women around her same age, or even her own reflection, hallucinating horrific things when she does. She has frequent dreams about being within the walls of a mansion in the Arizona town she moves to. She starts to see what she comes to believe are the ghosts of murdered women.
Her dreams, the ghosts, and everything else start to seem like they may be tied to a famous serial killer from the town’s past, but the town itself seems to be harboring some dark secret that Mary doesn’t know how to unravel. Perhaps there’s a darkness that Mary herself is harboring, too.

My thoughts, some spoilers and content warnings:

I was genuinely surprised that this was written by a man, haha. It deals really heavily with themes of aging creating invisibility, especially for women, and being dismissed or ignored, particularly by authority figures and those we’re supposed to turn to for help. (The author himself mentions it in his afterword, asking if as a cis dude he ‘should’ have told this story. I fall on the side of ‘yes, because he did it well.’)

A handful of content warnings: There is a lot of body horror in this, and quite a lot of gore. Some of the violence is sexual in nature, but most of that is off-page or only threatened. A couple dogs are killed. There is a ton of misogyny, both external, from individual and societal sources, and internalized, and it is very much an aspect of the horror.

While I am not yet staring down 50, I am sliding toward 40, and I already find quite a bit of those themes of invisibility familiar. I thought that the themes were handled really well, and there were a couple different lines that really stuck out to me:

“Abuse is its own kind of reincarnation, isn’t it? We become the ones who made us.”
“Nothing feels safer than when someone else is the victim; especially when the next victim could always be you.”
“‘Darling. If there’s one thing the world teaches someone like me,’ I tell him, ‘it’s how to hurt myself.’”

(I should get some of the little sticky flags that I can use to highlight lines in physical books; being able to easily highlight lines I like in ebooks is one of the things I’ve found I enjoy as I try to get better at reading them.)

I enjoyed the fairly constant tension within Mary about being A Good Girl (and the fucking Loved Ones… which I assume are basically Precious Moments figures), vs the extremely violent impulses that she’s repressing. I like what the explanation ends up being… and then that it pivots again to something new. (The book does that in a few different ways, where an initial assumption is revealed to actually be a different thing… and then that different thing is also subverted or changed to something else.) I appreciated that those “third” reveals never felt like they were undoing the initial “twist,” just adding something new; I loathe when something has twists piled on that render previous surprises moot.

I always like creepy small-town cults.

The book had one particular maybe-easy-to-miss line that was a really good… idk, subversion of expectation/foreshadowing/wham line. It IS a minor spoiler, though, so… don’t read the next bit if you don’t want it, or think you want to read the book and get to that line blind.

The sections start with quotes: lines from The Awakening by Kate Chopin (which, incidentally, I read in AP classes in high school and barely remember, except that it was the ONLY book that I got especially good scores on my essays about), and lines from a fictional memoir of an FBI officer talking about a case he investigated in this town.
We’re set up to know from the beginning that there was a serial killer who committed his crimes in the town, and it seems obvious that this is what the FBI agent is referring to when talking about his investigation… until he says something about “how the town treated its (previously) most famous monster” in reference to that serial killer, and that was such a good, sudden OH SHIT moment for me when reading. I already expected that something big and terrible was going to happen in this horror novel, obviously, but that hung a blinking neon sign on the fact that the worst was yet to come, and I love that kind of thing. (That type of “oh shit, there is something bad coming” works for me way better than say, the “foreshadowing” in Duma Key, where the narrator kept telling us ahead of time who was going to die.)

I’d definitely read more by this author.

Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire
Book 19 of October Daye
Urban fantasy (m/f) - physical novel - read with Taylor
3.5/5

Now returned to the real world, after months spent in Titania's false version of faerie, October and her extensive adopted family are getting back to what passes for normal. For October, that includes being eight months pregnant, and her husband not wanting her to do anything that could put her or their unborn child's life at risk. Toby is ready to start climbing the walls, when Arden, the local Queen, comes to her with a request. During Titania's enchantment, a distressing number of magical items were stolen from the palace's treasury, and some of them are now being used to harm some of the kingdom's citizens. Arden needs a hero of the realm to find the culprit and retrieve these objects... and Toby is it. "Hero" doesn't come with maternity leave. Of course, the plot thickens, and it becomes clear that this is a trap that may have been set for Toby, specifically.

My thoughts, mild spoilers:

I gave this a 4/5 the first time I reviewed it, and later revised it to a 3.5/5. I’m honestly still a little torn between the two, having just reread it… I enjoyed the whole book, and it does a lot of fun things. Rereading it with Taylor it went really quickly.

However, there is one bit that felt like Toby was just being oblivious for no reason… I picked up immediately on a character being present, the narrative hangs a giant red flag on the fact that this character (who was supposed to be imprisoned) has escaped and therefore *could* in fact be present… and then she’s surprised when he shows up. Her thinking “I should have expected that!” just makes it more obvious that… yes. Yes, Toby, you should have. You’re supposed to be a detective, you’re supposed to be doing an investigation, what do you MEAN you did not pick up on this guy being there? That bit bothered me enough that it knocked down my rating, because I so deeply hate characters being oblivious for what feels solely like plot contrivance… but I can’t tell if I’m being unfair. (Taylor thought it was equally obvious, to be fair.)

I am glad that Toby got to push back against the ways in which her husband and her family were being overprotective.
I am glad that we’re done with the pregnancy. I hate-hate-hate pregnancy, so while I’m happy for Tybalt and Toby, because they would and do want kids, and Toby likes and wants to be a mother… I really hate pregnancy.
I loved some of the character interactions. The Luidaeg is always my fave. The bits with Marcia (in the main novel and between her and Simon in the novella) were UTTER DELIGHTS to me. For reasons.
Dammit, Janet!

Feeling the Heat: Part Two by Emily Antoinette
M/M/M/F Romance (subgenres: contemporary, omegaverse) - ebook novel
3.5/5

Having been outed as an omega and being fired from her job because of it, Camille blames River for revealing her status. Camille withdraws from both Ambrose and Jackson as well, wanting nothing to do with the pack any longer. Worse, the “alpha rights” movement has made her their poster child, using her as an example of omegas being deceptive in the workplace, and mocking her “old omega” status.
In reality, River had nothing to do with Camille’s status being revealed, and he believes her anger at him is because he bonded to her. Out of guilt, he also withdraws from his pack, going so far as moving out.
When Ambrose and Jackson discover that Camille is being targeted for harassment, they can’t stand the idea of her having to face it alone. They also can’t stand River being gone, particularly when the issues between him and Camille are a misunderstanding… It’s going to be a difficult journey to rebuild trust between them all, but they all believe it could be worth the struggle.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

Unfortunately, this book leaned even harder on the mdom/fsub stuff than the previous book did, and that still icks me out. There’s a lot of “Camille’s omega craving submission” stuff that is just a squick for me, alas. It’s not terrible (STILL LOOKING AT YOU, WINTER’S LIST), and I appreciate how into it all the characters genuinely seem, it’s just so completely not appealing to me. Like… good for her, and good for the dudes, but personally: bleh.

I actually found myself more interested in the not-sex plot threads, haha. Camille’s new job at an omega-run company, Camille’s lawsuit against her previous employer, and her being a victim of stalking by two different alpha’s rights types (deliberate analogues to MRAs.)
I’m a little disappointed that the stalking plot was as incidental as it was… there was some buildup of it at the end of book one, where it’s obvious that an ex-coworker and her brother-in-law are conspiring to do something to her. There are some bits of it that show up throughout the book, with one other random guy following her once, and her *thinking* she sees the ex-coworker and her BIL, but because she brushes it off every time, up until the climax of that subplot, it never really felt like a lot of tension. I know that IS the B-plot, and the A-plot is her relationship with the pack, but I wanted more of a thriller vibe, I guess, haha.

I was frustrated at the end of part one because the stuff between Camille and River hinged on a misunderstanding, and could have been solved with a conversation. This time… we solve it with a conversation, lol. (It’s a bit more than that, but basically, everyone talks their feelings out… a lot.) It’s not bad, but just kind of made the initial misunderstanding feel even sillier, because it was so easily fixed.

Overall, the whole thing is very… healthy. River’s time away from his pack is spent getting therapy. The rest of the time is him talking about how he’s going to therapy and trying to be better. That’s not a bad thing, but after a while it started to feel repetitive. I was also getting really sick of how much groveling he was having to do at the beginning of the book. Eventually he and Camille have a conversation where she says that he gets to apologize once more, and then she’ll apologize, and then they have to move on… which is great, but I JUST SPENT 40% OF THE BOOK WITH HIM GROVELING. Could you have had this conversation a hundred pages ago?

I did genuinely like how every branch of the relationship got to and had to figure out their own relationships individually as well as part of the group. That’s something this author does really well and that I really appreciate. I like Jackson figuring out his feelings for River and Ambrose. I like Camille getting different relationships with each of them. I appreciate that I like every pair within the group, not just the group as a whole. This is by far my preference for poly romance, and I like that this isn’t just focused on Camille, but on the other relationships between the pack members as well.

The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab
Book one of Threads of Power, a sequel to the Shades of Magic trilogy
Fantasy (background m/f and m/m/f) - physical novel
4.5/5

THIS SUMMARY CONTAINS SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR THE SHADES OF MAGIC TRILOGY.

Seven years after the battle for Red London against Osaron, the world has mostly returned to normal, though scars remain. Lila has become captain of her own ship, which she sails under the auspices of the crown. Kell travels with her, still unable to use his now-shattered magic without debilitating pain. Rhy has taken his place on the throne, with his lover, Alucard, and his new wife, Nadiya, by his side.
A quiet rebellion has started underground; an organization called The Hand. There is a rumor that magic is disappearing from the world, with fewer children being born with magical gifts. They blame Rhy, the magic-less king, for this, and believe that killing him will restore magic to the world.
When The Hand steals a magical object from the supposedly theft-proof Ferase Stras market, the market proprietor calls in a favor from Lila to find the thief and retrieve the item. Lila needs to succeed, and not only because of the favor she owes; the object could help The Hand in their attempt to assassinate Rhy.
Dragged into this brewing conflict is Tes, a young girl who has set herself up as a tinker, able to repair any broken thing. She has a unique magical gift: the ability not only to see the threads of power that make up all magical things, but the ability to manipulate those threads. Her power is rare… and potentially dangerous.
Meanwhile, a young girl named Kosika has become the new queen of White London, leading its people in a veneration of Holland as a saint, and tithes of blood to sustain their world.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

I am glad that I reread the Shades of Magic trilogy before reading this one, though I think it could stand reasonably well on its own.

I very much liked it!

The awesome things:
I love so many of the new characters. I love Tes. Her ability is so fascinating, and how she uses it is super cool. I really like Nadiya, the new queen, and her interest in magical invention. Kosika is really interesting and I do find her compelling.
Hell yeah, unexpected poly rep? Rhy and Alucard are together, but Rhy had to marry in order to have an heir. I genuinely like Nadiya, who really likes both of them, but seems to be asexual, and just also wanted a child and a chance to focus on her own interests.
There’s some good foreshadowing. I called one of the Hand members’ identities… but I’m kind of pissed about it, and reeeeeally want to see where that’s going.
I’m also fairly certain that I know who Nero is. He’s kind of a minor character, but his identity has been pretty heavily hinted at, while also being pretty subtle. I hope I’m right.
When [REDACTED] shows up!
The different plot threads (ha! like the title!) come together in ways that I found satisfying.
Lots of this feels like it’s building up to more, while also being satisfying in this book, rather than just seeming like groundwork.

The couple things that were less great, but pretty minor:
This started really slow for me. The beginning jumps between a LOT of perspectives as it introduces new characters, and felt a little disjointed. It coalesces better after that first chunk, and I can’t say that any of the perspectives didn’t deserve to be there… it was just a slightly rough start.
I feel like we got one medium-sized worldbuilding retcon. It’s stated now that the ruling family of Arnes is only allowed to have one heir. Not just named heir, but only one child at all, in order to make sure that the ruling family can’t amass too much power over the other families. This means Rhy was it, so his parents *couldn’t* have another heir who would potentially have had magic, and his daughter is the only heir they will have now. But his mother angsted in A Conjuring of Light about not having been willing to have another child; not because it wouldn’t have been allowed, but because she was so petrified of something bad happening to her child, and she couldn’t handle the fear and anxiety again. It would have been an easy out for her had only one heir been allowed, while instead it was something she seemed to feel slightly ashamed of.
There were a few repetitive descriptions. One of them I’m giving a pass to, because I think it turns out that drawing repeated attention to that detail was deliberate foreshadowing/hinting. But there were a couple other bits where the same turn of phrase or description was used multiple times within just a page or two, which I think should have been tweaked. (“[I] have to give him that” and description of something as “like drops of ink” are the two things I’m thinking of.)

Neutral things:
A thing that is a bit both good and bad: characters hating each other. This was a thing in the previous trilogy, where Kell and Alucard fucking hate each other (and still do.) Now there’s also Lila, who super duper hates Nadiya, and Kell who doesn’t like the new priest… At times it’s good, because yeah, different people get along with others differently, and it’s realistic to not have everyone just be all-in and best friends. On the other… sometimes it feels unearned? Like, I get why Tes didn’t like Lila or Nadiya, because she very specifically does not want to be used for her gift, and she knows that’s what they want from her. It sucks to have characters that I like and understand being at odds with each other, but there I understood! Lila hating Nadiya to the point of wanting to kill her… eh. I get Lila being pissed at her, but I would think she could recognize the fact that Nadiya’s driving motivation is very similar to Lila’s - single-minded focus on doing anything and everything to protect a loved one. I just don’t buy that depth of hatred and animosity, even from Lila (who tends to be too black-and-white in her attitude.)

Also mixed good and bad: it’s been a few years, and we still don’t know when book two will come out. The author recently said something to the effect of “are you ready for the next book? I’m not. And you are not ready for the next book.” I’m kind of dreading just… bad things happening to people that I don’t want bad things to happen to, haha. It’s good for the stakes to be real, it’s good that I’ve been made to care… but I have the feeling it’s going to be upsetting.

Currently I am reading two books:
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin, the final humble bundle horror book, my primary read
The Sun Dog by Stephen King, reading with Alex

Taylor and I will probably start another book the next time we get together.
I also need to pick another side-read ebook. Right now I’m leaning toward Trade Secrets by Beth Ryan, though I don’t know if it falls in the “brain candy” category. It’s just one that I’ve had an ebook of for years and years, and I remember having a couple nice conversations with the author before losing track of her.

I’m eying my TBR with serious trepidation, but I’m hoping next year will be a good one for reading.