My May and June Reading Log

Posted on December 11, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:

Torches: Acquaintance Old and New (Clorinda Cathcart’s Circle Book 8) by L. A. Hall went down like a series of bonbons; as usual, the “Circle” installments are intended for those who’ve already read the main Comfortable Courtesan series.

Unjust Cause (Alex Connor Series Book 2) by Tate Hallaway, while raising some intriguing moral questions about having an intelligent creature as a familiar, was easily digestible as well, and suited to my present somewhat scattered state of mind. The mystery seemed secondary to character exploration and some additional worldbuilding, which was fine with me.

Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel (The Murderbot Diaries Book 5) by Martha Wells was delightful and delicious, and I plan to read it again. So, so good.

Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a fantasy novella featuring all sorts of homunculi in one of the coolest bits of worldbuilding I’ve seen in a while. I really got a feel for how this world reached out farther than the plot, and enjoyed the characterizations, too. I had been expecting, from the opening sequence with a ragged orphan thief, a much simpler and less interesting story, so bonus for this being way better than the usual run of fantasy world class struggles!

I re-read The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolff. Set in the early 1990s in Portland, Oregon, it’s about a twelve year old girl, Allegra Shapiro, who’s a finalist in a contest for young violinists, and how the things she does and learns that summer feed into her performance. Both her parents are string players, and her brother is a cartoonist. She learns from her teacher, obviously, and from playing the designated Mozart concerto, but also from her mother’s talented singer friend, and from learning about her great-grandmother, who died in the Holocaust. There’s a subplot with a semi-homeless man who dances at outdoor concerts and is searching for a song he can no longer remember, a quest with which Allegra attempts to help. I was also intrigued to note cultural changes from the early 1990s to now; the characters have no cell phones, for example, and no at-home internet. The book is very in the moment and slice of life, and it was what I needed, I think. I have never been to Portland, but the book made me feel a bit like I had been, and it made me long to see live concerts again. Though not outdoor summer concerts where people are eating picnics and drinking wine and wandering off when they feel like it, I am too much of a nerd for that.

I also reread Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh, and have moved onto the second book. I can no longer remember how far I got into this series as it was coming out, but probably not more than four or five volumes? I think maybe the last one I read was checked out of the library in hardcover. Anyway, the series is now on volume twenty-one. Cherryh turns out to be great for pandemic reading. You’re deeply immersed in the third person point of view of a single human dealing with a planet full of non-humans, in their language, using their social mores. Events have thrown him out of his routine and separated him from his own people, and he doesn’t know what’s happening, or who to trust. Unless you remember from a previous reading, as I vaguely did, you don’t find out the reason for all the Things Happening until after three hundred pages.

I continued my C.J. Cherryh Foreigner series re-read with Invader, and am now almost done with Inheritor. That’s the last of the paperbacks I own. Invader deals with all the human and atevi political maneuverings that ensue when the human starship returns to the planet, two hundred years after its departure. Multiple factions among the atevi and the humans are jockeying for advantage, and Bren Cameron has to decide where his loyalties lie, and his feelings, and of course he is conflicted about all of it to some degree, but really his sympathies lie with the atevi among whom he lives, the sole human. So much of this book was resonating with me, particularly the “human heritage” party’s tactics. Inheritor picks up about six months after two humans have arrived from the ship, one assigned to Bren and the atevi, and one to the human community on the island of Mospheira. Bren is finding it harder to understand Jason Graham, who spent his entire life up to this point on a starship, than it is to understand the atevi, and their relationship remains uneasy, a whole new kind of First Contact. And Bren makes a new connection with Jago, one of his ateva security guards. Overall, my favorite character is Tabini-aiji’s grandmother Ilisidi, who is crafty and cranky and flirty, rides like a centaur, and surrounds herself with “her young men” (security guards) who obey her every command.

Nonfiction:

Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak felt like a very long magazine profile to me, not that that’s a bad thing. It was informative about the progress of Maddow’s career, but I felt it lacked depth, perhaps the consequence of being about a young, still living subject. I read it in small bits on my phone, which may have affected my opinion of it. I was most interested in the parts about the early stages of MSNBC and how it developed.

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Return of the Reading Log: March and April, 2020

Posted on December 4, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
The Rat-Catcher’s Daughter by K.J. Charles is a short romance between an ace trans music hall singer and an ace man who works as a fence for the notorious Lilywhite Boys. Both are in danger from an upstart criminal, but it ends happily, before you have time to get really worried. I also didn’t have enough time to get really invested in the characters, but I think they are side characters in a series, so presumably there is more of them there.

Don’t Read The Comments by copperbadge is original fiction from one of my favorite fanfiction writers, exploring what might happen if a young liberal lesbian suddenly gained the ability to delete other people’s comments on the internet; later, she finds out she’s not the only one with an internet-related power. The story explores a lot of knotty ethical issues, including how this power might be used by a person who wanted to hurt others, leading to a couple of scary confrontations. It ends well, but be warned if you’re avoiding fiction that includes white supremacists.

Vendetta in Death by J.D. Robb is the 49th (!) book in her futuristic mystery series, and I am still reading. This installment was one of the better ones, featuring a serial murderer who targeted men who had perpetrated injustice against women. It is weirdly comforting to spend time with familiar characters, even when they are investigating hideous torture-murders, because one is assured that Justice will be served; Justice in the context of the book’s world, that is.

Above Rubies: Eliza Ferraby’s Story: 2 (Clorinda Cathcart’s Circle Book 7) by L.A. Hall was perfect for a week when I was finding it difficult to concentrate and needed a familiar place of escape.

The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Boston is a book I managed to miss growing up. It’s first in a series about a little English boy, Tolly, who goes to live in an ancient house with his great-grandmother. Sometimes she speaks to the children who appear in a portrait on the wall, and lonely Tolly wants to meet the three children, as well. This had a lovely magical realism feel, with lots of animals and imaginative games as well as ghosts. The only thing that briefly threw me out was a story about a horse thief, a Romany, who in disguising himself to case the stables “even washed his face.” It was barely an aside, but ouch. Otherwise, I enjoyed it, though I don’t think I’ll re-read, or go on with the series. If I’d read this as a child, I likely would have loved it a lot more.

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi was a Tor freebie I had not read. It’s a meta take on classic Trek and the tendency of red-shirted security officers to be killed in many episodes, along with various other tropes of science fiction television. Not everyone gets a happy ending, as you might expect from a book about redshirts, but it does end happily, and is moderately thought-provoking. Scalzi’s brisk, readable style helped me to finish the book during the anxiety of Social Distancing.

A Song in the Dark (Vampire Files, No. 11) and Dark Road Rising: Vampire Files, Book 12 by P.N. Elrod had been in my TBR for quite a while; I had read most of the series from the library. These two conclude a series about a vampire named Jack Fleming in 1930s Chicago; he’s a former journalist turned detective and later nightclub owner, with a singer girlfriend, Bobbi, and friends in the Mob, so very very noir but also not, because the morality play is far less important than the characters. The series feels very 1980s to me overall, even at this far end: straightforward prose, good characterization of characters meant to be liked, excellent worldbuilding. In the third from last book, Jack was horribly tortured by a sadistic New York mob guy whom he subsequently killed, and I remember the story as being intense. As you might expect, A Song in the Dark deals with Jack’s PTSD about those events, and Dark Road Rising with his and Bobbi’s path forward. However, a new character in both books, a possibly-sociopathic mob character with amnesia, seemed to me to be pointing to a potential series spinoff that didn’t spin off, and I found he distracted from what I had actually wanted to read about. So the books did what they needed to, just not in the way I wanted, which is hardly the author’s fault.

Precinct 13 by Tate Hallaway/Lyda Morehouse is a book I somehow missed when it first came around; I bought it because there’s a sequel, and I got them both together. Protagonist Alex has fled Chicago after a fiasco involving her boyfriend and her possibly-evil stepmother plus a lot of psychiatry aimed at convincing her that she does not see magical things. As you might guess, she does in fact see magical things, and in her new job as county coroner in Pierre, SD, magic turns out to be frequent enough that there is even a special department to deal with it. Those with gaslighting trauma might find parts of this triggery, but for the most part Alex finds a great deal of validation and a host of intriguing characters including my favorite, a golem police officer. Though I’d call its main genre urban fantasy, the characters and their interconnectedness give it the feel of a cozy mystery.

This is not a book to read unless you have already read the three previous installments, not because there’s not enough information to understand volume four, but because you would be really really missing out on the intricate reveals if you didn’t read them in strict order. Crimes and Survivors (The Reisden and Perdita Mysteries Book 4) by Sarah Smith seems like it’s the last book in the series, though I hope it is not. It’s set in 1912, and the sinking of the Titanic looms over everything like, well, a titan, both physically and thematically. Reflecting the first book in the series, The Vanished Child, the mysteries all have to do with family secrets, this time mostly Perdita’s, but also fallout from Alexander Reisden’s. I have been waiting for this book for literally years, nagging Sarah every time I see her at Arisia or Readercon for “my book.” (Not in a mean way!) And my waiting has been repaid. It’s brilliant and complex and even if you figure out some of the mysteries, as I did, there are more beneath those, and still more beneath those, all the way to the end. Alexander and Perdita have to figure out what to do with all these revelations, and their desperate desires to do the right thing were painful and beautiful and utterly satisfying.

Nonfiction:
The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 by Wilson Jeremiah Moses is an old book (1978) but a very good one. I think I got this copy through BookMooch and it kicked around for several years before it finally became Insomnia Reading in recent weeks. Not only do you get an excellent grounding in the title period and its major figures, you can see how certain ideas changed over time and in response to contemporary events, such as increased colonialism in Africa and World War One. It offers clear comparison points between, for instance, Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois. There’s one chapter focusing on women and their political activities, mostly through clubs, and even a small amount about Ida B. Wells, whose biography is coming up soon in my TBR pile. There’s a whole chapter on science fiction writer Sutton Griggs! Definitely a keeper, even though my copy is yellowed and has a little writing in it.

I got I’m Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat = Cooking by Alton Brown at a used bookstore during the winter and finally finished it over the weekend; it’s a large, clunky hardcover, so it became bedtime reading. It’s more of a science of cooking book than a book of recipes. It was fascinating to read about why certain things I’d learned to do while cooking actually work, for instance searing your meat before you put it into stew, and salting meat ahead of time, and heating your pan before you use it. I was especially entertained by his enthusiastic tales of constructing small earthenware ovens out of flowerpots and the like. I am not invested enough to try that, but it was fun to read about. He agrees with me on the fabulosity of the iron skillet, so I would definitely read another of his books.

Fanfiction:
Natalie Jones and the Stone Knight by ironychan is a Mostly-Scottish MCU Alternate Universe that stands on its own, with nifty worldbuilding and lots of plot. While Natasha Romanov is still an ex-spy, she’s given it up and now works as an archaeologist in a world with no Avengers. This reads like contemporary fantasy.

Fine and Fierce by kristophine is an Avengers AU in which Tony Stark is a famous scientist and Bruce Banner is an angry professor in San Diego. They get to know each other on Twitter and there is slow, hesitant romance. Yes it all works out in the end!

All Hail the Underdogs by xiaq is a long Check Please! romance about secondary characters Nursey and Dex; I suspect it doesn’t matter if you’ve read the comic because so far as I can tell the protagonists of this story might as well be original characters. Nursey is black, with rich white adoptive parents; Dex is a poor white boy from Maine whose parents have failed him. Together, they find a happy ending. CW for Domestic Tropes when a baby shows up later in the story and becomes a factor in the plot. I liked the way the baby plot element was handled.

Skybird by windsweptfic is an unusual crossover; a young orphan Neal Caffrey, from White Collar, is adopted by Arthur and Eames from Inception. Adventures ensue, one of them scary but they get through it. It has a happy ending.

my spirit swims right to the hook by napricot is M’Baku/Bucky Barnes slash, and it really works. As part of bringing the Jabari into the rest of Wakanda, M’Baku is trying out kimoyo beads. Shuri has added a dating app as a joke, but it works out very well for all concerned. Also, there is bonus “trapped in a well-supplied cave by an avalanche.” Recommended!

I re-read Out Of Bounds by Icarus, an epic Stargate: Atlantis figure skating slash AU in which John Sheppard has the jumps but not the artistry; former champion and coach Rodney McKay flopped at the Olympics. It’s still great, and a lovely reminder of that period in skating right when Figures were on the way out and bigger jumps were on the way in.

wayfaring strangers by cosmicocean explores the missing scenes of Tony Stark and Nebula on a deserted planet after The Snap, scavenging to build a spaceship that will get them to Earth.

how to win friends and influence people by Bundibird is an amusing exploration of what would happen if Peter Parker met Harley Keener from Iron Man 3.

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Black Beans with Sweet Potato

Posted on November 16, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

I like to roast sweet potatoes in the oven, sometimes whole, sometimes cut into pieces and tossed in a mix of olive oil and salt.

Roasted sweet potato turned out to be fabulous with spicy black beans.

For the beans, I sauteed minced garlic in oil, then added some water and a big can of black beans. I seasoned from there with salt and cayenne and simmered for maybe twenty minutes.

I ended up eating the beans over the chunks of roasted sweet potato, which I would one hundred percent do again. It was so simple and so delicious.

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Honey Cake

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Honey Cake

Preheat oven to 300 degrees Farenheit. Grease and flour an 8 inch pan.

1 cup honey – I used Tupelo honey
1/2 cup melted butter
1 egg, well beaten
1/2 cup sugar – I used light brown
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 2 tablespoons warm water

Mix melted butter into honey. A silicone spatula was very helpful in getting the honey out of the measuring cup. Add egg and beat. Sift together dry ingredients except baking soda; add to batter slowly, beating them gently into the batter until fully combined. Add baking soda/water mixture and mix in thoroughly.

Pour batter into pan and bake for an hour or more. I took the cake out after about 55 minutes when a knife came out clean.

The recipe calls for a lot of beating; I used a whisk for that, just enough to fully combine ingredients, and it worked fine. I did not sift.

This cake was unbelievably fragrant. I just wanted to sit there and smell the kitchen, even an hour after it came out of the oven. The top and edges, slightly caramelized, were the best part; the crumb is soft and chewy.

I would also like to try using buckwheat honey (dark, strongly flavored) to see how that would turn out.

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Fried Barley

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

My brilliant idea to make fried rice only using leftover barley is apparently A Thing with recipes on the internetz. So I looked at a couple and adapted/experimented. Result: tasty and very filling. Next time, I will season more heavily; it had a good flavor, it just wasn’t hot spicy.

Cooked barley (was one cup raw, not sure how much cooked)
One block extra-firm tofu
Four eggs, separated
Sesame oil
Four large cloves garlic
[Onions do not like me, but if you like onions, chopped onion would go here]
Roughly two cups of vegetables, depending on what you have in hand: I used shaved baby carrots and a diced bell pepper
Salt
Butter
Szechuan pepper
Soy sauce

I drained the tofu while I thoroughly mixed the egg yolks into the cooked barley in a mixing bowl, following that with a small quantity of sesame oil. Then I salted and peppered the tofu. Marinating the tofu ahead of time would not have gone amiss.

I diced the garlic and bell pepper, and shaved the carrots on a mandoline.

I cooked the egg whites in butter, then scooped them into a bowl. I gently fried the tofu and put it on a plate.

I added more butter to the pan and cooked the garlic and vegetables with the pepper and some salt until the pepper bits no longer tasted raw and the garlic was toasted. I dumped in the barley/egg yolk/sesame oil mixture, stirred everything together, and covered it for a couple of minutes. I did that several times until some of the barley was lightly browned. I stirred in the cooked egg whites and tofu, heated it through, and stirred in the soy sauce.

I used a deep nonstick skillet. I think with my iron skillet I could maybe get the barley slightly crispy, so it would be more like fried rice.

I do not think separating the eggs is necessary, but I saw the yolk/rice trick in a YouTube video and wanted to try it! It worked great.

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Gingerbread with Candied Ginger

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Gingerbread with Candied Ginger

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter cupcake tin.

1/2 cup softened unsalted butter (1 stick)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup “robust” dark molasses
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mace or nutmeg
1 cup candied ginger, cut into small pieces
2 eggs, beaten with a fork
1/2 cup whole milk
3/4 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 cups flour (can use half whole wheat, half white)

Cream butter. Add sugar, molasses, spices, and ginger; mix. Add beaten eggs and mix. Mix milk and baking soda thoroughly together, add to batter, and mix. Toss candied ginger in the flour. Add flour slowly and thoroughly mix batter. Use a spoon to put batter into muffin cups; I filled about 3/4 full and got a bit of a crown around the top. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. Cool before removing from pan.

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Spinach and Chevre Quiche

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Spinach and Chevre Quiche

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

1/2 – 1 cup cup spinach, thawed and drained if frozen, rinsed and dried if fresh
3 large eggs
1 cup cream
1/2 cup (4 ounces) chevre (goat cheese)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne
pie crust (I bought a frozen crust at Aldi to try out)

Beat eggs lightly with cream and spices.

Press pie crust into pie plate. Squeeze as much water as possible out of the thawed spinach and spread spinach across the bottom of the crust. Spoon the cheese on top of the spinach in small chunks. Pour the egg mixture on top.

Bake 30-35 minutes, or until knife comes out clean. Cool before cutting.

Notes:
–I used heavy whipping cream, because I had it on hand, but any cream or even milk will work.
–Leaving the chevre in the fridge until use means you can more easily slice it and distribute it across the spinach. When soft, I used a teaspoon and my fingers.
–This recipe could accommodate up to one and a half cups chopped vegetables; I used approximately a half to two-thirds cups this time, but the spinach appeared evenly distributed, so that was enough. Other veggies to try, alone or in combination: diced bell pepper, asparagus, possibly fresh or frozen green beans.
–To add more protein, spread thinly-sliced sausage, bacon, or chopped ham in the bottom of the crust before adding the spinach.

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My February Reading Log

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
The Jade Temptress by Jeannie Lin is the second of her historical romance mysteries set in Tang Dynasty China. The heroine Mingyu, a highly trained courtesan, discovers one of her highest-ranking clients spectacularly dead and must work with big, rough-hewn Constable Kaifeng to solve the mystery and maintain her reputation. She always has to walk a very narrow path socially, and in addition was accused of murder by him in the previous novel, so their relationship is somewhat fraught (he briefly questioned her using painful methods we in the modern day would call torture). Meanwhile, Kaifeng has a political enemy who wants him out of his job. The mystery is not the primary focus, and though I enjoyed the romance as these two guarded people open up to each other, just the historical detail alone makes these books worth reading; Lin is terrific about telling you a lot about the period in an unobtrusive, integral way.

Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly is the fourteenth Benjamin January mystery, which starts off with a minstrel show. Unable to find orchestral work in New Orleans, Ben and Hannibal are touring with a circus, but soon have to hurry to Vicksburg, Mississippi, with Ben posing as Hannibal’s enslaved valet. This installment is mostly about the Underground Railroad and the complexities of how it might have operated, but of course there is also a murder, and negotiating the conservative society of Vicksburg, and avoiding a familiar face from the past, and of course serious peril for both Ben and Hannibal. Also, I am now stuck on the song referenced in the title.

Nonfiction:
Sharp End: The Fighting Man in World War II by John Ellis is a 1980 book; I have the 1990 edition, which features some additional information at the end. If you are researching the life of an infantryman in the WWII Allied Armies (the English-speaking ones), this is a terrific resource. The author uses both statistics and frequent quotes from soldiers and occasionally journalists to illuminate the range of dangers and quotidian suffering of being on the front lines, including chapters about morale and the difficulties of obtaining rest or relaxation. I haven’t read a huge amount about WWII yet, but what I have read has been mostly on this level; I find individual stories and in-depth examinations more fascinating and enlightening than discussions of big-picture strategy. Now I want to read more about WWII, but I have a substantial WWI TBR as well, and WWI remains my primary interest for now.

English Sexualities, 1700-1800 by Tim Hitchcock concisely summarizes a whole range of research into the sex lives of people during this period as well as theories about how changes occurred. The book discusses major primary sources and their value, and provides a most excellent bibliography.

Poetry:
the bones of this land by Kat Heatherington is a poetry chapbook. I found the poems very accessible to me with their themes of loss and grief and nostalgia. This was the first time I’d read poetry on my phone, but I plan to do it again, so I can have mindful moments while I’m out in the world.

Fanfiction:
Slow and Splendored by alby_mangroves and eyres is a melancholy but sweet post-Avengers: Endgame Captain America story with themes of aging and love and doing what you can do. Also Buster the cat. I didn’t think I needed this story, but apparently I did. It has a happy ending, if you’re worried, a happier one than I had expected. Recommended.

an irrevocable condition by layersofsilence is about Bucky Barnes caretaking himself a family in his Romanian apartment building. Soothing and sweet.

Save Me by Brumeier, a Gothic AU of Stargate: Atlantis in which novelist Rodney McKay, who’s had writer’s block for ten years, inherits a mansion stuffed to the gills with Stuff. John Sheppard is the ex-Air Force, mysterious caretaker. It was a lot of fun.

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My January Reading Log

Posted on February 7, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Somewhere in France by Jennifer Robson is a lowkey romance that takes place just before and during World War One. The hero is a surgeon of working-class Scottish origins, the heroine is an aristocratic-class woman who becomes an ambulance driver against her parents’ wishes. Spoiler: her brother is not killed, he is the hero of a sequel. This author knows her stuff up down and sideways, and if you want to see how to write about World War One, read it, OMG. There are details of a surgeon’s duties at a Casualty Clearing Station, and details of how to perform ambulance maintenance. I drooled (not literally) over the nerdtastic bits like that. Also, the romance was realistic and satisfying.

The Escape by Mary Balogh is fourth in the “Survivor’s Club” series about (mostly) army officers who were damaged by the Napoleonic Wars. This one pairs the widow of a self-centered, adulterous officer with a former career officer whose legs were so badly injured he walks with two crutches. He’s desperately in search of something to keep himself busy, and she’s desperate to escape from her dead husband’s oppressive family. They help each other, they find what they need even though it is nothing they ever expected, and they were fun to read about together.

Fanfiction:
Reparations by Saras_Girl is first in an AU/sequel series in which Harry Potter becomes a Healer and Draco Malfoy specializes in magical addictions treatment. The first story takes place at St. Mungo’s and features several original characters plus Ron, Hermione, and Ginny; there’s a mystery plot which I figured out but was still interesting, and a Harry/Draco romance. What I liked best about this was that I could see Harry taking this path; I have never understood why so many stories have him working as an Auror after the end of the canon series, when I feel it’s more interesting if he has realized there are other paths to defeat the Dark than constantly fighting criminals.

Excultus by Mottlemoth is truly amazing, and I will attempt to recommend it without major spoilers. Set in a futuristic Mystrade slash AU of Sherlock, it features Mycroft Holmes and Greg Lestrade as Scotland Yard detectives trying to track down a murderous vampire cult. The cool part of the worldbuilding is that the vampires, and a host of other “supernatural” creatures, are genetically engineered humans, an idea which I adore and am finding thematically resonant. A violent murder near the beginning turns out to be a vampire kill, but there’s more danger to come, involving the return of a secretive, supremacist cult. The romance plot, entangled in the mystery, is emotionally intense and gets a bit schmoopy, especially when personal secrets are involved; though it’s well written I was far more interested in the mystery plot twists and the lives of the many original characters. Highly recommended.

family means no one gets left behind or forgotten by cosmicocean is a lovely Captain America adopts a bunch of LGBTQIA kids and they live happily ever after story if you need it, and I did.

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My December Reading Log

Posted on January 17, 2020 by Victoria Janssen

Fiction:
Favours Exchanged (Clorinda Cathcart’s Circle Book 5) by L.A. Hall continues to add to the original series, but in a way that is more for continuing readers than for new ones. I loved getting more about Maurice, and more Clorinda.

An Unacceptable Offer by Mary Balogh is an early Regency by one of my favorite romance authors. What I found interesting was the initial scene, which involved two men discussing the Season and the Marriage Mart in a way that was clearly an infodump for readers who knew nothing of either; this is something that became far less necessary as Regencies became a Thing and vast swathes of the genre were set in that time period. So far as the romance between the characters went, the heroine was convinced her feelings were unrequited, and the hero had to realize that he actually did have feelings for her. They probably should have talked honestly with each other a bit earlier on. The secondary romance was brief but delightful.

Hid from Our Eyes: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery by Julia Spencer-Fleming is ninth in a series of which I had previously read only the first book. A lot has happened, continuity-wise, since that first book, but I was able to follow very easily. The mystery involved three murders, or possible-murders, spaced out by decades, and involving some of the same police officers. The structure thus had numerous flashbacks, and I was impressed by how smoothly the author integrated them into the story, and how well it flowed among the different time periods. Recommended for that alone.

Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly is number twelve in a series I’ve been following since its inception. I’ve been hoarding books in this series for quite a while and finally decided now was the time! So I’m be catching up a bit and it is glorious. This one takes place in the Washington, D.C. during Andrew Jackson’s administration, before the Capitol Building had its dome and when many of its streets went nowhere. Ostensibly a story of a missing person, there is of course a murder as well, one that I found upsetting, but also weirdly inevitable. Hambly builds a strong picture of the black community and the dangers they faced in this place and time, while also dropping in a few historical personage cameos (or slightly more than cameos). All historical mystery series, in my opinion, have to match up to this one.

The Countess Conspiracy (The Brothers Sinister Book 3) by Courtney Milan is my favorite of the series so far. I won’t reveal why, because I think it’s best unspoiled. Just know that the romance is absolutely beautiful and yes, they talk to each other about what stands in their way and how they can resolve it, and yes, they belong together.

Crimson Angel by Barbara Hambly is thirteenth in the Benjamin January series and, like several previous books, takes some of the characters out of New Orleans, this time to Cuba and Haiti. That doesn’t count as a spoiler, because the sections of the book are named for places. I did figure out the Big Secret ahead of the characters, but there was enough other stuff going on that my insight in no way spoiled the story. I especially enjoyed seeing how the differences between Rose’s and Ben’s upbringing affected their adult selves, and seeing more of Ben’s thoughts about his Catholic faith.

The Prisoner of Limnos by Lois McMaster Bujold is the sixth Penric and Desdemona novella, which mainly deals with how a potential romantic partner deals with the idea of Penric and Desdemona being a package deal.

A Death at the Dionysus Club by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold is the second and last Mathey and Lynes supernatural mystery, and I wish there were more; I haven’t heard that there will be. Mathey and Lynes deal with mundane new relationship issues while trying to solve two separate mysteries, which turn out to be linked.

The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl by Theodora Goss finishes off the trilogy, which is a good thing, I think, because it felt cluttered now that there are so many characters to keep track of. That said, I still love the conceit of female “monsters” joining together, and I love the meta-commentary of the characters sprinkled throughout the book. And I love all the female mentors.

Posted in mystery, romance novels, sf/f | Tagged | Comments Off on My December Reading Log