tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2019-02-07 09:04 am
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2018/76: The Wych Elm -- Tana French

2018/76: The Wych Elm -- Tana French
... every time I thought of [what they found] my mind ran aground on the flat, stunning, unbudging reality of it; there didn’t seem to be any way to think beyond or around it. It reminded me, with a deep sickening lurch in my stomach, of my few memories from right after the attack: disconnected images stripped of any context or meaning, only and vastly and unthinkably themselves... [loc. 3021]


Toby Hennessy thinks he's a lucky man. He's grown up in a comfortable middle-class family: he's handsome, charming, et cetera: nothing bad has ever happened to him. a bit spoilery but not for specifics )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2019-01-23 09:56 am
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2018/85: The Marquess of Gorsewall Manor -- Adella J. Harris

2018/85: The Marquess of Gorsewall Manor -- Adella J. Harris
“Very pleased to meet you properly, Mr. Brook. His lordship found you out on the moors. He said he thinks you were waylaid by highwaymen.” She gave me a look that told me she thought no such thing, nor did his lordship, in her opinion, but she wouldn’t argue with him. [loc. 360]


A lightweight M/M Regency romance with Gothic overtones, and rather too many anachronisms ('sussed') and typos 'coal shoot').
mild spoilers )
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2019-01-22 08:46 am
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2018/84: A Skinful of Shadows -- Frances Hardinge

2018/84: A Skinful of Shadows -- Frances Hardinge
When a country is torn in two, it splits in surprising zigzags, and it is hard to guess who will find themselves on one side and who on the other. There were stories of families divided, friends taking up arms against each other, towns where neighbour warred against neighbour. [loc. 1246]

minor spoilers )
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2019-01-21 07:51 am
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2018/83: Transcription -- Kate Atkinson

2018/83: Transcription -- Kate Atkinson
Juliet could still remember when Hitler had seemed like a harmless clown. No one was amused now. (‘The clowns are the dangerous ones,’ Perry said.) [loc. 1234]


Transcription opens in 1981: Juliet Armstrong, sixty years old, has just been hit by a car on her way home from a Shostakovich concert at the Wigmore Hall. She remembers hearing the Leningrad symphony at the Proms in 1942: and that seems to open the floodgates, for almost at once we are back in 1950, when Juliet works for the BBC (a producer in Schools), and receives a warning: 'you will pay for what you did'. And thence back to 1940, when Juliet works for MI5 non-spoilery )
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2019-01-18 09:22 am
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2018/82: Midwinter -- Fiona Melrose

2018/82: Midwinter -- Fiona Melrose
I’d struck my boy and now we were all in this great sucking bog. Tom was in it with us. There was nowhere to go with all that. Nowhere at all. All the years of work to make things right, to save the farm, to get us back to where we were, before it all, come to nought. For so long I’d kept Kabwe apart from Vale and me. No need to have any of that coming back here with us and start to unsettle things and yet here it was sitting in the car with us, squatting in the road half dead and needing to be run down. [loc. 1427]

no spoilers )
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2019-01-17 09:34 am
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2018/81: Vesuvius by Night -- Lindsay Davis

2018/81: Vesuvius by Night -- Lindsay Davis
Save the rich and sod the poor. What changes? [loc. 838]


A novella covering the night of August 24th, AD 79, and the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius.minor spoilers )
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2019-01-16 08:10 am
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2018/80: Dogs of War -- Adrian Tchaikovsky

2018/80: Dogs of War -- Adrian Tchaikovsky
Master says we must kill all of them. Honey says this is because we are on a covert operation. Bees concurs. Dragon doesn't care now he has neutralised his target. I don't care because I am doing what Master wants and Master will be happy with me. I am Rex. I am a Good Dog.

no spoilers )
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2019-01-15 07:49 am
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2018/79: The Silent Companions - Laura Purcell

2018/79: The Silent Companions - Laura Purcell
All those toys, the memorabilia of childhood. Perhaps it was different if you grew up happy, with memories of your father dandling you on his knee and your mother kissing your tears away. But for Elsie there was nothing but fear. Fear for the baby. Fear of the baby. [p. 58]


Elsie, pregnant and recently widowed, makes her first visit to her late husband Rupert's ancestral home, The Bridge. She is accompanied by Rupert's cousin, the mousy-locked Sarah, who provides a shred of human contact in an inexplicably hostile household. minor spoilers )
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2019-01-14 08:25 am
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2018/78: Lies Sleeping -- Ben Aaronovitch

2018/78: Lies Sleeping -- Ben Aaronovitch
"You can do magic, Peter ... you can shoot fireballs out of your fingers and your girlfriend is a river. That kind of shit. Like possessed BMWs and just all of it. All of that shit."
"That's different," I said. "That shit is real." [loc. 1955]

minor spoilers )
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2019-01-05 03:20 pm

Read in 2018

book covers 2018

* 85 books, all fiction
* 67 by women, 19 by men, 1 by a non-binary writer. (Some collaborations, hence the numbers not quite adding up)
* 14 rereads
* 36 fantasy, 9 SF, 20 historical (1 11th century, 2 17th century, 5 18th century, 11 19th century, 1 20th century though I read quite a few other novels set in the 20th century and didn't tag those as historical. 4 of these are also alternate history ...)
* 15 romances, 8 of them M/M.

Best five, excluding rereads:
* Elegy / Swansong -- Vale Aida (I'm counting these as a single book)
* Band Sinister -- KJ Charles
* Behind the Scenes at the Museum -- Kate Atkinson
* Hag-Seed -- Margaret Atwood
* Exit Strategy -- Martha Wells
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2019-01-05 10:53 am
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2018/77: Black Opera -- Mary Gentle

2018/77: Black Opera -- Mary Gentle
"...I don't deny that, by the singing of Mass, the sick are healed, daily, and ghosts are laid to rest, and the walking dead appeased. I've seen this... I do deny that this has anything to do with a Deity! Nothing about it demands a god in explanation." [p. 41]


Black Opera might as well have been written for me: alternate history, bel canto opera, atheists amid miracles, strong female characters (some of them passing as men), complex emotional and sexual relationships, heretics, friendships between members of different social classes ... Yet it has taken me five years to finish reading this book. I read half of it on a rather unhappy holiday, then set it aside. Before I restarted it, I thought this was because I had simply been distracted, or had wanted to forget the context in which I'd read it. Now I've finally finished it, I think it's in part a problem with the space between my hopes and reality.
no more spoilery than the blurb )
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2019-01-02 07:38 pm
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2018/75: Freedom and Necessity -- Steven Brust and Emma Bull

2018/75: Freedom and Necessity -- Steven Brust and Emma Bull
Beside your letter, as empirical and sensible as any Rationalist might pen, mine seems full of "a host of furious fancies." Well, I am resolved to let our mystery spin itself out as a philosopher's experiment. [loc. 146]

Reread on the occasion of its becoming available in ebook format. Apparently I first read this in 1997: original review here.
slightly spoilery )
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2019-01-01 02:06 pm
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2018/73: Bone Rider -- J. Fally

2018/73: Bone Rider -- J. Fally
... 'They’ll never believe you’re not under my control. They’ll think I contaminated you. Maybe they’ll think I laid eggs in you. Or that I’ll burst out of your chest. Or other gross things. They’ll— '
“Shut up,” Riley ordered, chilled by the utter belief and gnawing horror in McClane’s voice. No surrender. [loc 4558]


The romantic, steamy and bloodthirsty story of a Russian hitman, a Texas slacker, and the smartass sentient alien armour that ... complicates their lives.
not spoilery )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2018-12-31 09:46 am
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2018/72: Fire and Hemlock -- Diana Wynne Jones

2018/72: Fire and Hemlock -- Diana Wynne Jones
"if I were to tell you what they were in That House, you’d laugh and not believe me. Nowadays they lay it on the men not to tell, you know.” [p. 306]


Reread: I hadn't read this for a long time, but remembered a surprising amount of detail, from Polly's doubled memories to her removal of the opal necklace that's supposed to protect her from malefic forces.
not very spoilery )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2018-11-11 02:08 pm
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2018/74: The Stranger Diaries -- Elly Griffiths

2018/74: The Stranger Diaries -- Elly Griffiths
‘Diaries don’t tell you what people think. Just what they think they think.' [loc. 2556]


I've been reading and enjoying Griffiths' Ruth Galloway books (most recently The Chalk Pit) for years, so was keen to read this standalone novel, set in West Sussex rather than North Norfolk: thanks to NetGalley for the review copy of The Stranger Diaries, in exchange for this honest review!
not spoilery )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2018-11-09 08:04 am
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2018/71: King Hereafter -- Dorothy Dunnett

2018/71: King Hereafter -- Dorothy Dunnett
"What else were you born for?"
"Why not happiness, like other men?" Thorfinn said.
"You have that," said his foster-father. "But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right."
"I resist because it is no use resisting," Thorfinn said. "Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me." [loc. 5055]


Dunnett's epic standalone novel, dealing with the life and death of the historical Macbeth, and theorising -- based on years of original research -- that Macbeth and Earl Thorfinn were the same person.
not spoilery )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2018-11-07 09:47 am
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2018/70: Band Sinister -- KJ Charles

2018/70: Band Sinister -- KJ Charles
"I know it's not Latin because obscenity was the sole aspect of my classical studies to which I paid attention. I believe the word there is irrumare," Philip added, somewhat smugly.
"Fellare," Guy corrected without thinking.
"I'm sure Catullus has irrumare."
"He does, but it doesn’t mean quite the same thing."
Philip's grin was an evil joy. "You really will have to explain the distinction." [loc. 2691]


A splendidly Heyeresque romp, in which nobody dies horribly (though Amanda's riding injury, unlike those in Heyer novels, is graphic and frightful) and all receive their just, and most beneficent, desserts.

Guy Frisby and his sister live quietly in the countryside, their lives blighted by a dreadful scandal (or two) and their finances controlled by disapproving Aunt Beatrice. Guy whiles away his time reading unexpurgated Latin poetry and trying not to think too hard about why he prefers it unexpurgated: Amanda, meanwhile, has been writing a Gothic novel, The Secret of Darkdown, whose characters are based on their disreputable neighbour, Sir Philip Rookwood, and his coterie of wickedness, a.k.a. the Murder. ('if you go around belonging to a hellfire club called ‘the Murder’ and having orgies, you can’t complain if people wonder about you'.)

Guy is horrified. Amanda is blithe, and has been paid ten pounds for her novel.
minor spoilers )
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2018-11-06 08:44 am
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2018/69: Excession -- Iain M. Banks

2018/69: Excession -- Iain M. Banks
call me highway call me conduit call me lightning rod scout catalyst observer call me what you will i was there when i was required through me passed the overarch bedeckants in their great sequential migration across the universes of [no translation] the marriage parties of the universe groupings of [no translation] and the emissaries of the lone bearing the laws of the new from the pulsing core the absolute center of our nested home [loc 7866]

not very spoilery )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2018-11-05 08:44 am
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2018/68: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender -- Leslye Walton

2018/68: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender -- Leslye Walton
I’ve been told things happen as they should: My grandmother fell in love three times before her nineteenth birthday. My mother found love with the neighbor boy when she was six. And I, I was born with wings, a misfit who didn’t dare to expect something as grandiose as love. [p. 56]


Ava Lavender is born with wingssomewhat spoilery )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
2018-11-02 08:35 am
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2018/67: Killing Gravity -- Corey White

2018/67: Killing Gravity -- Corey White
"MEPHISTO,” I say. “Stands for Military Experimental Post-Human Specialist Training Organization, and I only found that out after years of sniffing around.”
“And they’re the ones that ... made you?” [loc. 540]


Space-opera novella that reminded me strongly of Andre Norton, right down to the presence of a feline companion. no spoilers )