Author: librarykat

book collage for September 2021

It’s end-of-month book collage time! 14 novels (1 reread), two graphic novels, two novellas, an audio short story, and a book of short stories. Thanks to vacation, I managed to read six books in the first six days of September. It’s been a good reading month.

book collage, September 2021

The Song Rising, by Samantha Shannon
Ring Shout, by P. Djeli Clark
The Girl in the Tower, by Katherine Arden
On Fragile Waves, by E Lily Yu
The Just City, by Jo Walton
American War, by Omar El Akkad
Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway
The Three Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse
Chicken with Plums, by Marjane Satrapi
Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher
The Winter of the Witch, by Katherine Arden
The Mask Falling, by Samantha Shannon
The City Born Great, by N.K. Jemisin
The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton
The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner
Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom, by Ted Naifeh
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, by Nghi Vo

It’s One Thousand and One Nights, except Scheherazade is Chih the nonbinary story-gathering cleric, King Shahryar is a trio of hungry tigers, and as long as Chih keeps telling a sufficiently interesting story, the tigers will not eat them or their mammoth-riding companion. The story that Chih tells is a historical one where a scholar and a tiger fall in love, except that the story as Chih knows it is not the one that the tigers tell to one another; the tension between the narratives that the different cultures tell each other, alongside the very different tension of whether or not Chih’s version will annoy the tiger enough that the tigers will finally just eat them, moved the story along really well.

Courtney Crumrin in the Twilight Kingdom, by Ted Naifeh

Hey, we finally got the third Courtney Crumrin book from the library! In this one Courtney gets to hang with her supposed peers, except they’re just as snobbish and status-conscious as her normal crowd, which means she fits in just as well (or poorly). Of course when trouble happens, she handles things in her own attitude-filled way. I liked the interaction between the kids, and how the adults misconstrued things given the information that they had.

The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner

If one suspends all disbelief, particularly involving the process of getting into grad school, or the possibility of stumbling on an untouched hundreds-year-old dwelling in urban London, not to mention a main character whose entire past was defined by vague obliviousness but who can suddenly develop piercing insight within just a few pages… then this book will be a lovely story of a woman finally finding her strength and pursuing her own dreams! (All that aside, my very least favorite part was the narrator’s blithe assertion that getting married and getting a boring desk job meant that she had to put away all her books, because that lifestyle meant that she couldn’t read any more. Hello? What?!)

The Philosopher Kings, by Jo Walton

When the book started out by killing off my favorite character from the previous book, I almost gave up… but I’m glad I kept going. I really like Apollo’s viewpoint, how he tries to sit back and analyze the emotions of being human while still in the grips of those emotions, and the character of Maia also finally grew the spine that I’d been longing to see from the first book. I also liked the literal deus ex machina ending, nice solid conclusion.

The City Born Great, by N.K. Jemisin

I listened to the audiobook of the short story that grew into the novel The City We Became. The reading is amazing; Landon Woodson did a great job with the audio. I enjoyed the book but I really love the compact focus and punch of the short story.

The Mask Falling, by Samantha Shannon

The embattled heroine leaves London, and with it all the cool psychic gang members with their amazingly ornate Victorian titles… but fear not, she is now in Paris where the psychic underworld figures have amazingly ornate French titles. I liked that she and the love interest are finally on equal footing instead of uncomfortably trapped within the various power imbalances that have defined their relationship in the previous books, but annoyingly, they’re still playing will-they-or-won’t-they with the trust dynamic. Some pretty interesting developments in the interdimensional vampire front as well. Shannon badly needs an editor but, four books in, the series finally seems to be moving in a coherent direction.

The Winter of the Witch, by Katherine Arden

End of the Winternight Trilogy, completing Vasya’s evolution from country village girl to a major figure in Russian folktale. What grounds her as a character is that she never loses track of the things that matter to her – her family, her people, her country – even as her powers and her view of the world evolves. As with the other two books in the series, absolutely beautiful writing.

Chicken with Plums, by Marjane Satrapi

Graphic novel about the last few days of the life of Nasser Ali Khan in 1958 Tehran. It begins when he decides to give up on life, and through memories, dreams, and hallucinations, the reader slowly finds out why. The art is simple but the story unspools in a heartbreaking way.