Elizabeth

While it often seemed the author had a checklist of fantasy genre cliches and made sure she ticked them all off over the course of the story. Girl has mysterious powers she didn't know she had! Girl gets a wise older man with shady past for a mentor! Girl has unexpected first period! Her parents were killed by the bad guy! etc.

I didn't see the point in being reminded three times that Maerad was a girl and had to bleed every month. If it was a not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman thing, we got that with the first mention. If it was a passage of time thing, surely there are other ways to do it? I don't object to periods (well, I do, but that's because I'm a girl too), but it seemed more than a little weird.

But I am trying to like books despite their flaws, instead of dismissing them because of their flaws, and I will be reading the second in this series. I do appreciate a strong female character and this book has one, and overall the series has potential.

Collated specifically for new students of Medieval Christianity, this book puts together chapters from already published works that cover some of the wavy edges around the definition of Christianity in Medieval society and how it affected not only men and women, but people of other religions (Jews and pagans) as well. None of the works contain referencing, except to the original article/book, for the purpose of making students search out the authors if they want to learn more, which makes it interesting light bed-time reading rather than serious and weighty research reading.

I put this on my TBR purely because I enjoyed the whimsy of the title. A perfectly serviceable read that built slowly-but-steadily but I feel like the author made me promises she didn't deliver on, details of which I have handily listed in point form in the following spoiler tags.

What was the point of Grace? As a foil for Thaniel to question his loyalty? He never doubted Mori for very long, no matter who questioned him.Why did she have to infodump about how ether worked if it didn't relate to any other part of the story in any way?Why did Matsumoto hate Mori? It was nice of Pulley to give Grace a friend/love interest but since she served so little purpose, he served even less.

I can see why fans of the How To Do Life genre are losing their minds over this one, but it was basically 250 pages of reinforcing conclusions I'd already made about How To Do (My) Life. So, nothing new or revelatory, but also it's nice to see those thoughts articulated cogently and by someone who is not me. 

I bought this book not because I had any interest in reading it, but to support [a:Francis Pryor 57943 Francis Pryor https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1381263587p2/57943.jpg]'s crowdfunded publishing (and get my name printed in the book, of course). The book I got in return is an archaeologist who runs across some crime and decides to solve it himself. As the protags of crime fiction do.Alan Cadbury (our archaeologist) feels wooden - Bad Stuff happens to him (as does Good Stuff), and yet he doesn't seem to bat an eyelid. He doesn't break down or become overly excited or really show any emotion at all. The archaeology and related science-y bits are great if you're interested in that sort of thing, but dense if you are not. At times the writing feels pretty rigid as well - this is Prior's first foray into fiction (if you don't count History in that category, but that's an argument for a different day), but parts of Lifers' Club feel like a non-fiction work (a little like [b:The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 2429135 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) Stieg Larsson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327868566s/2429135.jpg 1708725] feels like it's written by a journalist).That said, it wasn't a bad read. The twist on the whodunit ending was a nice surprise - there is more to it than Cadbury solving the case and finding out who the ‘real killer' is, and the human repercussions of that, rather than the generic grateful wrongfully-arrested prisoner, is really nice to read. There is more of Alan Cadbury's story in the works and I'll probably read that too.

I bought this on Kindle nearly a year ago and have been afraid to re-read it, in case it lost something in the intervening decade since I last picked it up. Not the case at all. I always thought of it as sprawling and not really going anywhere and I always enjoyed that immensely, but now I can see that it's not the love story I thought it was. It's the love story of Tyrone and Oscar.

And yes, I still cried, but in different places this time.

I only read the fantasy half of this, the sci-fi not interesting me enough to give up precious reading time I need for uni right now. Although the stories were disappointing at first, they quickly picked up, and a few (Partly Petrified by Auston Habershaw and The Lesser Evil by Day Al-Mohamed) were brilliant. Hopefully sci-fi fans think the same, or better, of the Laser half of the anthology.

Muir sure invested in a thesaurus, didn't she?

Such hype around this book, which rarely bodes well. A decent, if overwhelmingly teen-angsty, beginning, but then the plot went walkabout without me until about half-way through (which is where our protagonist stops being a total ball of angst and instead becomes a tolerable teenager). Ultimately the story wound up into a tidy lead-in to the sequel, which I have no interest in reading. HOWEVER, how amazing is it to see a same-gender attracted character and her sexual orientation have exactly zero bearing on the story?

I listened to the audio version, which had superb narration by Moira Quirk, and I would recommend it highly if you're ok with being super confused as to who every one is for a good long while.

Welp I did have criticisms of this book, but then I read Eco's justification for them and I agree with him.

But still.

The infodumps were tedious, although I recognise it's probably necessary for context if medieval history isn't your thing. They were my main problem with the story.

The indiscriminate Latin? Lovely. I am glad I waited to have a basic grasp of Latin before tackling this book; although it wouldn't have made any difference to my understanding of the story, it was nice to know what was going on without having to stop and look it up.

And the (spoiler-free) ending that makes the whole story slot neatly into could-have-happened historical fiction territory? Nicely done.

This is deliciously what I want Naomi Novik's folklore tales to be, and I suspect the superiority of this one is the novella length. Not trying to stretch it out into a novel-length work made it a folklore-y (with the old-school, mean, fae, not the Disney kind) and romance-y and teasingly just-right-but-almost-not-enough story. Not without flaws: Mum was extremely deus ex machina, but satisfying all the same.

I am...underwhelmed. I liked the world; I loved the linguistics. I feel like 462 pages later I still don't know who any of these people are or why I should spend time with them.

I'm not a fan of fish-out-of-water stories, which I can't hold against the book (it's me, not you), but I am a fan of mystery and this one was only half solved (it's you, not me).

It ticks another book club/hugo read off the list, but I won't read the rest of this series.

This was a comfortingly cozy read. A mystery to solve, a betrayal to suffer, a romance to swoon into, all wrapped in a delightful cover of magic. Hints of [b:The Watchmaker of Filigree Street 22929563 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1) Natasha Pulley https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1418113344l/22929563.SY75.jpg 42499104], so if you liked that you'll probably like this one, but I enjoyed this one so much more.I started out listening to this one, but the narration was terrible. Read it, if you can.

This was the Sword and Laser book club pick for August. I feel like this book tried to do too many things and ended up not doing any of them particularly well.

The f-yeah-friends-forever plot line is one that is being heavily praised, and I can see why, but I kept waiting for the shoe to drop on Kasia as well: having been taken and subsequently rescued from the Wood, but with almost zero lasting effects? Ehh. I couldn't trust the friendship at all because I was waiting for Kasia to betray everything.

It was a quick readable tale, but not one I feel the need to reread to get into the minutiae.

This was a pick for Sword & Laser last year and I didn't read it, because I don't like SF all that much. And then it got picked up as a movie. And then someone else loved it. And then here we are.

I really enjoyed this book, and I don't know if I would have liked it more if I understood and/or cared about the science involved. Watney was fun and funny, and it was great to be on his journey to try and not only survive, but escape Mars. RC Bray's narration on the Audible version was fantastic for Watney, but the secondary men (and they were mostly men) felt all a bit generic - the Indian and the Mexican stood out as difficult to distinguish when they were talking in the same scene.

The only part I found entirely unbelievable (yes, I don't care about the science so we're ignoring any flaws there), is that the news media would run a feature on Watney every day for eighteen months. I can believe they would initially be excited, and then if something happened they would get on board again, but certainly not every damn day. I also think maybe the PR manager should maybe know a little more about the science of their organisation, but again, it served the purpose of dumbing-down the explanations for readers.

Overall I heartily recommend this book, and look forward to seeing the movie.