And now we’re wrapping up… just in time to add in some random new bigger badder big bad that we’d never heard of before?

Onward!

To be fair, it’s the right time for it. Jane has managed to take control of vampire world and solidify her power in and around New Orleans. We need something to shake up that new status quo, if the series isn’t just going to end now. And really, there was foreshadowing that something like this might happen all the way back to the early books.

Still feels weird.

On the plus side, seeing the new evolution of an old character was great fun, I hope we get more of that! The battles were exciting and bloody, more of that! And seeing Jane well supported and loved is something that’s she had a long time coming and well deserved.

On the flipside… I miss the smaller stakes (heh) of the older books. I don’t really understand why Jane became the Dark Queen (either from a personal perspective or a metaphysical one), beyond perhaps that there’s no one else. I’m still not a huge fan of the transition.

Still worth the read I think. And at this point, you absolutely can bet I’m going to finish the series. Only one book left. Onward!

I quite enjoyed The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, but I’ll admit, I was a bit surprised to see that there actually was a sequel. I quite often find myself, after reading a book, wondering–but what happened next?!

Well, here we go!

For the most part, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (I do love the titles of these), is more of the same. Susan has been trying to go on and lead a normal life… nope. Back into the magic! Merlin and Vivien are off doing magical things… and stumble into trouble, needing Susan to help them out.

I do love reading about the three of them. I think Susan, growing and changing and coming to terms with her powers is really the heart of these stories and I’m hoping for even more.

The worldbuilding remains fantastical in a way that Garth Nix is so good at. We have a wonderful blend of real world and an underlying magic, with ancient powers, magical artifcats, and statues coming to life.

Overall, I’m surprised but pleasantly so that the Left-Handed Booksellers had a sequel. If there’s ever a third in the future, I’ll most certainly give it a chance.

But for now, onward!

I have read or listened to these books so many times with my children, but somehow never actually gotten around to writing up reviews.

Not that I expect there are many out there that have never heard of these books until reading this and are now going to go out and read them right now. But as these are reminders of what I liked in a book (and what even happened in a specific book), on we go anyways! 😄

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

These are the quasi-non-fictional stories of Laura Ingles Wilder, who grew up in the American frontier of the late 1800s. In this book, they start out in the titular Big Woods of Wisconsin, living a relatively simple life of farming and hunting.

It’s a slice of life story as much as anything, detailing the lives of Laura and her family rather than following any overarching plot. That’s just not how lives work. And having read a number of other (purely fictional) books in the genre, I appreciate it. Sometimes, it’s just nice to live another life for a while, even if that life isn’t alway pleasant in turn.

It’s fascinating to see the little aspects of life. What’s important to Laura and her family. The sugar snow and maple syrup are always big huts, but the delight in finding a honey tree, the brand new innovation of a threshing machine, and even all the little mentions of what they eat, it’s all a window into ‘days gone by’.

Overall, I quite enjoy this book. It’s weird knowing that it was life for Laura and her family–as it was for many people of that time. But in my opinion, worth a read.

Side note: I’ve most often and most recently listened to the narration by Cherry Jones. She is the voice of these books and I do quite enjoy her narration. Worth a listen.

I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.

It’s one part jumping into parallel reality sci-fi, one part murder mystery, and one part YA adventure story (complete with love tangle).

For me at least, it works surprisingly well. I’m normally not a huge fan of love tangles taking up a large part of a story. Here, I think it works pretty well. We have the additional tension of investigating murder. Plus having the feel of previously established relationships and growth throughout the story. It works.

Parallel reality / sci-fi wise, it’s… light. There’s not really much in the way of exactly how parallel realities work and what the rules are for moving from one to another. On the other hand, as a vehicle to jump from our world (ish) to a vaguely futuristic London. To one where Russian is still in it’s full Czarist grandeur. To another where climate change has already flooded the world.

It’s also interesting how on one hand you have the parallel reality ’everything is possible’, contrasted throughout the entire book by:

“There are patterns within the dimensions,” Paul insisted, never looking up again. “Mathematical parallels. It’s plausible to hypothesize that these patterns will be reflected in events and people in each dimension. That people who have met in one quantum reality will be likely to meet in another. Certain things that happen will happen over and over, in different ways, but more often than you could explain by chance alone.”

“In other words,” I said, “you’re trying to prove the existence of fate.”

I was joking, but Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something intelligent. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

I feel like you can’t really have it both ways… and the story doesn’t really either. It’s really just the latter.

Overall, I really enjoyed listening to this story. I’m really curious where it goes from here. There’s certainly room for the sequels, let’s see what they do!

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Books help us anchor our souls, or re-anchor them; particularly for us, the left-handed, given the things we have to do.

Abhorsen is one of my favorite series, full stop. The Keys to the Kingdom were … weird? But I remembered liking them well enough. And I haven’t been back to The Seventh Tower in years (since I started writing reviews). But somehow in there I managed to miss seeing the Left-Handed Booksellers of London.

It’s a fun older, lighter style of urban fantasy, set in 1980s London. You have magical booksellers, a missing parent (who of course is going to be magical), and all manner of mysteries, beasties, and mysterious beasties. On top of that, some delightful side characters (Merlin St. Jacques is my favorite) and some magically described scenes.

I think Merlin has explained to you that the mythic landscape is layered, and usually quite local. Entities and environments are generally confined to a particular geographic area and often also to particular times of day or night, phases of the moon, that sort of thing. Even weather, as with the things that come out after rain, or only when it snows. And they are bound by custom and lore to behave in certain ways, to do certain things, and of course these days are mostly dormant anyway.

I enjoyed this book. It’s not up to the level of Sabriel and it’s sequels, but it was a fun read and I’m glad to have found it. And I am curious where the apparent sequel might go, which is always a good sign.

Fantasy writers, they’re the bane of our existence!

Onward!

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

I don’t really need to review the Hobbit. It’s a delightful book and you’ve probably already read it. If you haven’t, you should.

What I can do though is highly HIGHLY recommend listening to the audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis (the voice of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies). Oh, he’s good. And not just as Gollum, but as everyone.

I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.'

I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!

In The Quantum Magician, Bel pulled off the ultimate heist and changed everything. In The Quantum Garden, we got a sort of sequel-prequel, that sort of kind of answered how that all came to be (time travel is weird). Finally now, in The Quantum Evolution, we’re starting to get some of the effects.

It turns out that by showing off his Quantum MAGIC!(tm), Bel has brought quite a lot more attention than he ever intended to Homo Quantus. And now everone wants a piece of him and his.

The characters still drive teh book. Bel and Cass remain Bel and Cas. Stills remains delightfully crass. I was delighted to see Marie again.

And then… the Puppets. That’s quite the weird, uncomfortable part of these books and it’s even more to the fore in this one. It’s … probably worth something to have read it?

If this is the last book, it’s a weird one. There’s a big epic conclusion, but it doesn’t feel completely earned. The stakes are higher than ever, but it doesn’t feel particularly ’new’ this time.

Overall, the first book is the best. The next two are worth reading. And I would probably read a fourth. But for now… onward!

Dark Queen did quite a lot to shake up the world, so it’s about time to step back a bit and take a breath. After all, there’s no better time than Jane’s managing to really screw things up with her magic (finally) and is dying.

So now we have Shattered Bonds. The vampire world reeling, Jane dying and back in the mountains, and a new bigger badder big bad on the prowl.

At this points, things are all at once wrapping up (only 2 books left after this one!) and escalating to something bigger. I’m not a huge fan of Jane’s new place in the supernatural world, but even then I think it’s being dealt with in interesting ways.

My favorite part of this book? The continued melding of Jane and Beast.

Well, isn’t that just ducky.

Is not ducks, Beast thought. Is vampires.

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The Quantum Magician was a wonderful bit of scifi worldbuilding and technology wrapped around a heist novel. Future tech harnessing time travel and the forces driving the inflation of the universe and you have to sneak it right through a wormhole and maybe steal it all on the way.

I had no idea how to top that… but was curious to see.

Turns out… time travel.

It’s a risky choice. Time travel at a small scale can be a lot of fun. It helps you pull off heists after all. And yet… when you try to make it significantly larger, you really have to deal with the question: how does time travel work in this universe?

Well… it’s never entirely answered. Things get all sorts of quantum and fuzzy. Effects proceed causes (and sometimes you get neat little loops with no original cause at all). Other than that, I’ll let you see how they deal with it all.

I do still love the side characters the most. We get more Scarecrow, which is fascinating. And of course Stills and anti-piss (you’ll just have to see it).

Overall, the first book is stronger. But this one has some fascinating ideas and I’m happy to get the chance to live in this world for just a few hours longer. Onward to see if it can be done–one more time. 😄

Yeah, this definitely fits this year’s ‘Judge A Book By Its Cover’ on the [[2024 Book Bingo]]. I mean… look at it! I love the title and have a soft spot for the illustrated manuscript style.

And then on top of that, it’s actually quite a delightful book as well. Win win!

I mention this because that’s how the world changes. It’s either so quick that we never know what hit us, or so gradual that we don’t notice.

In a nutshell, it’s the story of an alternate history Earth. Take a roughly medieval european tech level empire and an army corps of engineers (they build bridges) out on their own. Add a force somehow conquering everything, leaving said engineers really the only remaining hope. And then stick them in a city, the only hope to hold off against a siege.

But what really shines (for me–and your milage really may vary on this one) is the tone. The main character is competant (perhaps too much so at times) and wonderfully snarky.

I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it.

Things that have always been done? About to be undone–in the name of defending the city.

My belief is, either you understand things or you understand people. Nobody can do both. Frankly, I’m happier with things. I understand stuff like tensile strength, shearing force, ductility, work hardening, stress, fatigue. I know the same sort of things happen with people, but the rules are subtly different. And nobody’s ever paid for my time to get to know about people.

Yeah… he knows people better than he claims.

The people turn out to be—well, people; a collective noun for all those individual men and women, none of them perfect, some of them downright vicious, most of them monumentally stupid. As stupid as the emperor, the great hereditary lords, the priestly hierarchs, the General Staff and the Lords of the Admiralty, the merchant princes and the organised crime barons.

Anyways. You’ll know right away if you like this book or not. I loved it. Give it a try.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. I can’t remember offhand where that quote comes from; it was something to do with some bunch of wild-eyed idealists overthrowing the tyrant so they could become tyrants themselves. No good will have come of it, you can be sure. The people; God help us.