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"Oh, poor you. Here you are on a magical isle and all you can think of is what you don't have."

Two sisters on the run from their controlling father and an opportunistic guy-with-a-boat are stuck at Caraval, some sort of wish-fulfilling carnival that's not well explained but everyone wants to be at. Scarlett is chasing her sister Tella in the company of guy-with-a-boat Julian, who was kissing Tella in the beginning of the book but I guess decided to throw his lot in with Scarlett instead. The crux of this book is Scarlett's search for Tella amidst this weird scavenger hunt game that apparently more than just them are participating in, but we really only see the two of them doing anything.

For the good, the author managed to nail that dreamy, frenetic atmosphere a book like this aims for. Some of the descriptions of the locations, the people, the situations were written well. But on the other side of this coin, the prose is very purple. The author/Scarlett describes a lot of things using color/vibes, and it's sometimes hard to follow along. The ending (such as it is) and last, say, 20 pages or so, was especially hard to understand with all the prose and the twists upon twists happening all at the same time.

I also kind of hated that there's nonexistent world building here. There's some mention of the island nation Scarlett and Tella are from being, idk, isolated or blockaded or prevented in some way from participating in the rest of the world, but that's never really explored. Did the larger world even have a name? Other nations? No idea. Caraval, too, isn't really explained much, aside from that it's held every year. Every coincidence, every twist (and there are plenty of those), every little issue that might come up, is chalked up to magic and nothing more is said or explained. I get the sense that the magic is whatever the author needs it to be at any given point.

Finally, the characters were all kind of unlikeable. Scarlett mentions her upcoming marriage to a guy she's never even met approximately 80 million times, and basically decides her sister's future for her under the guise of knowing what's best for Tella. Tella seems to make a game out of throwing her sister under a convenient bus whenever she wants. And Julian exists in the book as a love interest, but I never quite understood what his appeal was beyond being Scarlett's ride along.

So, stars for some great writing and nailing the atmosphere, and stars removed for a poor ending, confusing descriptions, no grasp of the larger world and why we should care about Caraval, and unlikeable characters.

"Queens do not accept impossibilities"

Quinn is a con woman in Victorian England, the title of Queen of Fives, and a duty to keep her group afloat through generating income. The income in question here being the fortune of a duke she has five days to dupe into marrying her. So she makes her debut into high society, posing as a woman of means with the hope of catching the duke's eye (or forcing it, if not organically), with a suspicious sister and mother in law watching her every move. There's secrets aplenty in this family though, and this fortune may not be the easy mark Quinn thinks it is.

I guess I was expecting something more heist-forward than this book ended up being. There's lots of eligible-Victorian-lady-doing-eligible-Victorian-lady things here, at balls and shows and outings with the duke. It's all very historical fiction for large chunks of the book, which kind of bored me. I also thought the twists here weren't very unexpected, they're telegraphed fairly early on, and unless you skipped ahead past those parts, you know what's coming. I was rather disappointed about that, too.

Finally, I really wasn't sure what the Queen of Fives was supposed to be as a title. There's only like, five real characters in this book, so I don't know if she was the leader of like two of them, a whole group of them, or what. It's not really established what sort of reach/pull/power she has, if anything, and that also bothered me.

Idk, kind of bland, flat, boring, not what I was expecting.

"I think she's going to kill me."

This is only a very tenuous 4 stars, and I'm willing to be argued lower. I was riveted through a lot of the book, but as I got closer to the end, I started to realize that not a lot I was super interested in was actually going to matter by the end of the book. There also feels like a bit of a tone shift between the beginning and ending that somewhat disappointed me. But the journey for 3/4ths of the book nearly almost made up for a lackluster finish.

We have two aging sisters locked in a garden they've lived in all their lives. At some point when they were young, the civilized world ended, and the two sisters and their household locked themselves away as best they could to survive. Now grown and outlived their parents, these sisters only know what's within the boundaries of their walls, and a book their mother left them outlining how to care for everything. But strict Evelyn starts falling apart as less and less of what their mother left them starts mattering, and despite easygoing Lily's attempts to talk her down from her strict adherence to schedule and routine, the two normally close sisters start fighting. Amid this is the arrival of a boy from the outside world, something that shouldn't exist in Evelyn's eyes. The boy forces Evelyn to confront memories of her and her sister's past, and presents her with an alternate view that maybe everything she'd been brought up believing wasn't true at all.

So there's a lot to like here. I loved getting to know the sisters and their garden, and piecing together bits and pieces of their past to try and figure out where things went wrong and why. But as we went along in the book and we get more and more of these short memories from Evelyn's viewpoint, I start realizing that not a lot of it matters. There's nothing in the way of world building outside of the garden, so we never really find out what happened (though pretty easy guesses can be made). I did like the unreliable narrator feel of both Evelyn and her mom, it kept me guessing for a lot of the book to try and figure out where things were going to end up.

What disappointed me is that I felt like the author set up some really great, really dark ideas and then didn't follow through with them. Ending spoilers here: one of my big problems was the setup for the bodies in the ice house. The author makes it clear that both Evelyn and her sister have been eating the people that were killed when Evelyn was young, but then quickly dances away from that and doesn't really address it again. The boy is understandably worried he's next on the menu, but aside from a bit of "I'm scared of you" dialogue, it's wrapped up and ignored fairly quickly. I also feel like some of the memories we get from Evelyn about her mom and dad were leading towards the mom killing the dad, but I couldn't tell if that actually happened or not. Again, nothing's really spelled out or connected to what's going on currently. I guess I just wish, in a book with a setup and setting as unsettling as we get here, the author had gone all the way and leaned into some of these ideas more to lend a bit more impact to the story.

I also had a hard time figuring out what genre this book is in. I ultimately landed on literary fiction, because while the overall setting leans dystopian sci fi, none of that really bleeds into the garden at all.

Just a really interesting book that I wish had gone all the way into some of the ideas presented.

DNF @ 9%

At under 10% of the book, we flew through so many events that I thought needed way more explanation, or at least a reaction, out of Sophie. From reading the reviews, the pacing doesn't seem to get better, nor are explanations probably forthcoming, so I'm just gonna pass on this in favor of something else.

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean."

Read this book as a physical/ebook copy, if you can. I listened to it as an audiobook, and without the text, didn't have the big clue needed to understand what was going on until the very end. I still greatly enjoyed the mystery and the reveal, but would have gotten there sooner with an actual book in my hands. This is admittedly way more fiction drama than it is sci-fi, but it's hard to discount the core sci-fi element propping the whole structure up. If you're looking for something more clearly sci-fi, you may be disappointed.

This book is really two(ish) stories wrapped in one. We have the friendship of Rafi Young and Todd Keane, two very different kids brought together through a love of strategy. Chess brought them together, but Go was where their true friendship lay and what laid the groundwork for their futures. Todd went on to become a tech billionaire developing AI projects, while Rafi went on to live on a tiny island in the Pacific, Makatea. They both withdrew from each other's lives, for various reasons.

We also have the story of Makatea, told mostly through the eyes of its inhabitants, an island poised to become the latest tech venture, the manufacturing point for offshore seasteading. The inhabitants are divided on whether this is a good thing or not, and are being offered the chance to vote on whether or not the company gets to proceed.

I'm gonna let you know right up front that there's an awful lot of family (in the loose friend group sense) drama in this book. I was drawn into the unlikely friendship between Todd and Rafi, which had its predictable ups and downs. Todd's chapters, clearly a bit into the future looking backward at a friendship gone to time were especially sad, knowing he was fighting a neurological condition. But even as I was following along with this family drama, I couldn't figure out how any of this linked to Maktaea. I also spent a lot of the book wondering where the AI was in this book that mentions AI in the description. It comes up within the first third of the book, but from the description, I expected it to be a bit more prominent.

And then the last 20 pages happened.

Major ending/story spoilers ahead. I kept having this nagging feeling throughout especially the second half of the book after Rafi and Todd have their falling out that facts dropped between the two stories (and Evie's as well) weren't lining up. I thought maybe I was just missing something, listening to the whole story as an audiobook, but then larger pieces started not lining up, and I started wondering. The big reveal about large parts of the story being made up by Todd's AI using Todd's memories as a "playground" of sorts for his dementia-ridden mind to finally have a "happy" ending drew an audible "ohhhhhhhhh" out of me while getting ready for work. Eveything that's not written in italics in the book is AI-generated for Todd's benefit, while everything in italics is the "real life" story. Rafi dies early, Evie dies after her book was written evidently, and Ina is on the island, sans kids. The last 20 pages or so really hit hard, when I realized what had been going on the entire time.

I really was into everything this book was telling me. I was drawn into the friend group drama, stayed for the fate of Makatea, and had an audible reaction to the ending of the book. Just everything in such a great package.

Certainly different than what I was expecting from the title/description. Not in a bad way, I don't think, but anyone picking this up and expecting a djinn in the story may be disappointed at how historical fiction-y it is.

A great mansion sits on the coast of South Africa. Sana and her father are tenants in this mansion, currently subdivided awkwardly into different apartments and occupied by a colorful cast of characters. We get to know these neighbors well, as Sana gets used to her new surroundings and starts exploring the unused parts of the mansion. The East Wing is where she finds discarded furniture, a locked door, and a mystery to unravel about the history of the house surrounding Meena. Meena was a lover and second wife of the previous owner of the house, and we're introduced to her tragic story, and the story of the house, through Sana's investigations.

Right off the bat, there is a djinn in this book, but the djinn is just a...idk...unseen being witnessing what's going on with Sana and Meena. We don't get the djinn as a viewpoint exactly, and neither Sana nor Meena ever know it's there, but we get its impressions, and those of the house, occasionally. It's unique, the djinn is clearly upset by what has happened and what is happening, but can't do anything about it. The book itself is more of a family drama or historical fiction than it is a fantasy/magical realism book.

I thought Sana's viewpoint in present day South Africa wasn't quite as compelling as Meena's, but we needed Sana's sleuthing to understand Meena's story and its ramifications. Sana's neighbors are all a bit crazy in their own way, and we get to know them too alongside the story of the house. Meena's story is tragic (but kind of predictable), but anyone looking for justice in what happens to her may not enjoy the ending. But maybe that was sort of the point.

I did love the writing of this book, it was very lyrical, very compelling, very descriptive. I wanted to keep reading to figure out the story of the house and its inhabitants. Just, in short, an unexpectedly enjoyable historical fiction, despite the lack of a djinn.

Good but not great/5 stars. I'm a huge fan of the microhistory genre, and I felt like this particular take on the history of the American road trip was way too broad/meandering. I loved the bits about the actual road trip, the history of, what things sprung up alongside the roads as a result of what changes, those parts were really interesting. I also learned Betty Ford was a CB user, who used the handle 'First Mama". Kinda love that.

What didn't work for me as much were the other tangents, the ones only peripherally related to road trips. For instance, while I enjoy video games and arcades, the history of arcade cabinets in hotels was kind of out of place. There's several rabbit holes that, while interesting in their own right, don't seem to quite fit here. Another thing that you will either like or not is that the author uses his own experiences as a kid on road trips with his family as segues into the various topics. While the (sometimes lengthy) anecdotes are funny, it sort of lent this microhistory a bit of a memoir feel, when all I wanted was to get back to the history topics.

So, again, good but not great. Nice little audiobook, but I probably won't revisit it.

"We are cursed to be the sum of our deeds, black as they may be. They are like an arrow: once the shot is made, there is no escaping the consequences."

Girton and his master are back in town, ostensibly to find sanctuary from pursuers and a healer for his master, but they learn quite quickly that 5 years is a long time for a kingdom. Things aren't as they were, and the two of them are pulled into a fight for the crown between Girton's old tormentor Tomas, Girton's old friend Rufra, and Girton's old target Aydor. Compounding things is a murder in Rufra's camp that Girton gets pulled into investigating, and the ever-present suspicion that a spy lingers in camp. It's a twisty thing to unravel, and Girton's not altogether sure he can before the spy threatens his friend.

It's a darker story than the first one, for better or worse. Everyone's (supposedly) 5 years older, the stakes are a bit higher, and these are now adults having adult problems rather than older boys figuring out practice yard problems. I liked that. I also liked that the story uses essentially a medieval murder mystery as its central plot, allowing Girton the freedom to move around and introduce himself (and us) to central players on this new field. There's also quite a bit of character progression here in the characters from the first book......

.....EXCEPT GIRTON. Hearing him whinge so much about all his perceived slights against him from people he thought were his friends was painful. I couldn't tell any time at all had passed for how he acted, especially against his own master. It really took me out of the story.

But the story and actions scenes were great, and as soon as the story reached that tipping point of chasing down the culprit, I had a hard time putting the book down. That's something, at least.

"There should be a cost to power, and I paid it gladly."

I wasn't sure much could get darker tonally than the first book in this series, but this one managed to surprise me with how dark it got. Khraen still doesn't know the entirety of who he is, but he's started collecting the obsidian shards of his heart to find out. Now he has his old flame Henka in tow, but he still doesn't have any memories of her and is, basically, operating under blind faith that she means to him what she says she means to him. We're still never quite sure who's friend or foe yet, but Khraen still is on a journey to find out.

This book felt more like Khraen embracing all the worst parts of his power, while rationalizing it away every time. Each time he swears he'll do better next time, agonizes over it even, but still manages to make the wrong (right?) decision in the moment. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed a lot of his considerable inner turmoil in this book, it's very introspective and thoughtful, but I know it rubs some people the wrong way that he's not this badass demonologist doing badass demonologist things cover to cover.

There's even more visceral detail in this book than the last book, which, yay if you like that sort of thing, but I had to skim portions of the detailed necromancy bits, personally.

Bren is a great character here. A great foil against Khraen's descent into....idk, madness, instability, power, whatever he's got going on here. I look forward to reading book three shortly.

"The Force isn't the only thing that has a dark side, Han. And the tricky thing about the dark side is that it's so easy to use--and it gets you what you think you want."

I actually thought this book was actually pretty fun. A very injured Luke and C3PO get kidnapped aboard a(nother) dreadnaught, this one helmed by an AI (the Will) kidnapping aliens from various locales and brainwashing them into believing themselves part of the crew. There's some pretty funny scenes here with Luke and C3PO trying to navigate the issues aboard, while the ship itself heads towards its mission to blow up a colony. Meanwhile, on said colony, Leia, Han, Chewie, and R2D2 are investigating reports of an old colony of Jedi children, but are being thwarted by less than forthcoming residents.

I liked the writing of this book a lot. Too many of the old Star Wars books I've read so far feature flat, boring, non-descriptive writing. This one was a standout in terms of setting a scene, giving the reader some backstory (I particularly liked Leia's scene reminiscing about Alderaan), and bringing the reader along on the adventure. I thought Luke being stuck aboard a ship of brainwashed aliens was funny, and I especially liked that the author gave a reason for Luke not Jedi-ing his way to instant victory. Maybe that's why people didn't like this book -- Luke being hobbled from doing cool Jedi things. Hard to say.

I will say I didn't care for the ending much. The author did a great job of setting up stakes for the group on the dreadnaught, and then walking them back. That undid a lot of the emotional impact that the reader experienced, which I thought took away a bit from the story.

Just a fun book with recognizable characters and actual tension. I have a hard time rating that poorly.

"I'm just reminding you that you can’t base a character on a real-life person and then not get sued."

Final tally:

Instances of the word 'snarl': 15

Instances of the words 'grump' or 'grumpy': 27

Instances of the word 'growl': 26

Instances of the word 'scowl': 13

For a book this size, north of 500 pages, I fully expected way more to happen. And not even just in the romance sense, just in the overall "is there a story here somewhere in this book with story in the title" sense. I fully admit I don’t normally read romance, but even my basic story need didn't feel met by this one.

Hazel is a writer. Or, was a writer. Or maybe still is in her mind, but hasn't really put anything out since her divorce, so she isn't actually in the minds of everyone who counts. Her friend and agent Zoey delivers an ultimatum – produce a book or get dropped. She ditches big city life for small town life in the hopes of finally finding inspiration, and she does…..in the form of tall, grumpy contractor hired to renovate her decrepit house. A whole town's worth of over-the-top personalities and chaotic shenanigans happens, with the overall goal being to save their small town from being absorbed by the larger city nearby. And of course, quirky sunshine writer and grumpy scowly contractor hook up.

This book was messy and chaotic, and not in a good way. I freely admit I haven't read any of the author's other books, but from reading reviews here, the chaos is even a bit much for long time author fans. The pages drip humor, and while it was fun in the beginning, it got really old really fast when the author is cracking jokes mid-sex, both out loud and in narration. Speaking of the actual reason we’re all here reading this book, it took the two characters half the book (that's roughly 250 pages) for them to go on their first date, and that wasn’t even a date. For some more detailed information, (romance spoilers here) Cam agrees to a FWB situation with Hazel for research purposes, so for a large chunk of the book even past this point they still aren't really a couple. Lots of sex is had, of course, but there's zero relationship development or chemistry. Even the overall story propping up the romance feels lacking. I guess I expected more to happen in a book of this size.

Finally, with Hazel being a writer herself, there's multiple points of the book where it feels like the author is speaking directly to the reader, and all of it felt shoehorned in. Lots of statements about how Hazel feels like her writing is discounted because she writes romance and not literary fiction, some of what feels like insider baseball about how the publishing industry and writer events works, and even a whole chapter dedicated to Hazel giving another character pointers on how to get started writing. None of it felt like it helped the overall story along any.

Just not my thing, I guess.

I've never had the thought while reading a book that it was too well-researched, but I think that's why I didn't enjoy this one as much as other people did. It's clear the author did a ton of research for this book, but the amount of stuff shoehorned in made the flow feel clunky.

Yunxian (Lady Tan) studied illnesses, midwifery, and general female illnesses under her grandparents while growing up. There, she also met her lifelong friend Meiling, who was studying to be a midwife. They grow up together, learn together, and become inseparable, until Yunxian is sent away to a new household for her arranged marriage. Her new mother-in-law isn't exactly cruel, but she does forbid Yunxian from continuing to practice medicine on the women of the household, as well as from seeing Meiling. Yunxian struggles to find her place in this household, and has to figure out how to balance the wishes of her new family with her desire to practice medicine.

The author, through Yunxian, goes into minute detail about the various medical cases Yunxian experiences, making the overall story stall while the author explains some other obscure Chinese medical treatment. I also didn't really care for how unnatural the phrasing feels for some words, like 'child palace' for womb. It feels like maybe the Chinese was translated literally for some things and not others? It just felt off, to me.

The plot itself is a bit lacking as well. Most of the writing is spent on describing Chinese medicine, and the actual plot suffers periodically because of it. When the plot actually advances, it feels rushed, like the author wants to get right back into describing Chinese medicine but recognizes that a story has to exist somewhere. Many of the side characters within Lady Tan's circle felt weirdly flat as well, with the most egregious cases being her daughters. She talks a lot about how much she loves her daughters, but they barely exist in the pages.

So while the writing is actually pretty great (as Lisa See's books tend to be), I thought this one was kind of a miss for me.

"Vendi, Vidi, Solvi."

Clayton Stumper is a puzzle unto himself -- as a baby, he was left on the doorstep of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers in a hat box with no note. Growing up with the house full of various puzzlers across many different disciplines left an impression on him, but as a young adult now, he wants to learn more about where he came from. Pippa, the woman who found him, knows, but all she left him after her death was a puzzle to solve. Never much of a puzzler, he nevertheless sets off to learn more about his parents, and himself in the process.

Right off the bat, we needed more Clayton in this story about Clayton. Interspersed with the chapters about this mystery surrounding his parents, we also have the past POV of Pippa, founding the Fellowship and bringing together all the disparate personalities that made the group what it was. Not a lot happens after the founding of the Fellowship though, making it feel more like a distraction from the actual plot with Clayton that matters than anything else.

I also wish Clayton was developed a bit more than he was. He seems like a nice guy, but really unable to adult on his own without Pippa or the Fellowship there to guide him along. Towards the end, he seems more willing to talk to people than he was, but that's really all the character development we get out of him.

I will say, in my physical copy at least, the inclusion of puzzles to actually solve was a nice touch.

A cozy mystery set in spaaaaaaaaaaaace. Georgia is the ship's detective in retirement, her memories shelved in the ship's library with everyone else's memories, ready to be uploaded into a new body when called for. But when the ship brings her back, rather than putting her memories into a brand new body just for her, her memories are placed within someone else's body as an emergency protocol after her memory book is destroyed. A shelf of memory books destroyed, a body found drowned in a bathtub, and Georgia herself with the sneaking suspicion she's just been sleeved into the killer's body.

This is a novella, so while all of these ideas sound good in theory, the book just doesn't have enough runway to pull any of it off. Dorothy never really struggles to solve anything, and just bounces from plot conversation to plot conversation until she reaches a conclusion and the mystery is solved. The crime itself is (ending spoilers here) a bit too white collar/pedestrian for my taste, given the setting, making it overall kind of...boring?

Also, for something that's only 100 pages, we do spin our wheels in the knitting shop a bit overlong.

Man, I do love me a good character driven story that makes me feel things.

So Newton is an alien, sent to Earth to save his race. He arrives, immediately blends in, and starts laying the groundwork for an epic undertaking to send a ship to his planet and save the rest of them. Only, somewhere along the way, while pretending to be human, the lines blur. And while Newton tries to keep his alien eyes on his goal, even the best men, alien and human alike, can fall.

I really found the idea of a representative from a super advanced alien race falling victim to very human vices both compelling and sad. To be up front, not a lot happens in this book at all. There's criticisms here about all Newton doing is drinking and making money, and all of that is very true, but it's also the point of the story. The writing is sparse but compelling, and I really felt drawn into this story of Newton's rise and fall. The ending, especially, had me feeling things I wasn't expecting when going into a classic sci-fi book.

Just a really good read that will stick with me, I think. There's apparently a movie out there that I plan on watching when I get the chance.

"Broken are the roots of chaos."

In this novella (which, let's be honest, is about the size of a regular novel from anyone else), we're two years prior to the events of Priory of the Orange Tree, and focused almost squarely on Marosa, queen of Yscalin. Carscaro is a city built on fire, with lava flowing in canals and Mount Fruma behind them. Inside this mountain is where Fýredel has been sleeping for 500 years. Unfortunately, this is the year when Fýredel stirs, putting all of Carscaro in danger. Later in the book, we also follow Aubrecht, the high prince of Mentedon and betrothed to Marosa, as he struggles to discover the fate of his fiancee in the wake of Fýredel's awakening. Finally, rounding out the cast of POVs, we have Melaugo, a culler of sleepers (beasts turned into half wyrms and then put to sleep), who, together with her lover, have to find their way out of a nation under siege.

The author bills this as a companion book to Priory of the Orange Tree, and I agree with that. While this can be read on its own, I think if you want any sort of closure or continuance on events, you need to read Priory of the Orange Tree to get it. But I do think this highlights the fact that not only can the author write giant 1000+ page epics, she can also write shorter bites of her world's larger history for fans too.

I loved Marosa's viewpoint best of the ones presented here. She carries herself well in the face of everything crumbling around her, and the ending (such as it is, presented here) had me feeling all sorts of things for her. If you've already read Priory of the Orange Tree you already have an idea of what's to come here, but it still manages to catch me by surprise. Aubrecht's viewpoint, too, really hit me in the feels, as he struggles to figure out what to do personally and publicly after Fýredel awakens. The third viewpoint, Melaugo, was interesting, but felt a bit removed from the other two. The author uses her as a window into how events impact the common folk of Yscalin, but it never actually intersects at all with either Marosa or Aubrecht at this point so it just felt a little tacked on.

There is a romance here, because it is Samantha Shannon, but the romance is already established before the book starts, so there's no development or anything beyond some ex- drama that needs resolving.

I did absolutely enjoy this book though, and look forward to more "short" stories in this Roots of Chaos series she's squeezing in amongst her main books.

Three stories about three people who run into the magical Full Moon Coffee Shop right when they need it most in their lives. The shop is run by bipedal cats who serve them food and drinks intended to help them work through their problems, and also reading their star charts along the way.

Right off the bat, I'll say there's a TON of astrological talk, so much so that this book felt less about the (flat) characters and more about fitting in discussion about Mercury in retrograde or whatever. The three characters all have some tangential relationship to one another, but their stories by and large never overlap, making things feel a bit choppy and segmented. There's an epilogue of sorts at the end to show you how things end up with each character which was nice, but by and large I wasn't very invested in their stories along the way.

I did enjoy the vibe of the coffee shop itself, but the shallow characters and weak plot(s) made this a miss for me.

"The world is full of ways and means to waste time."

I didn't enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed A Wild Sheep Chase unfortunately. It felt like there was less of a plot in this one, and Murakami laid on the magical realism really thickly. I'm not even sure I really understood most of the themes by the end. As such, this one felt more like A Day in the Life of a Protagonist than anything else, where he drinks a lot, pines after a receptionist while also looking for his girlfriend(?), ogles a 14 year old girl for an uncomfortably long period of the book, and deals with a flaky former classmate with a surprising amount of tolerance. There's only the thinnest amount of plot threads snaking through this one, and Murakami's writing wasn't enough to keep me interested in what was going on all of the time.

As far as I'm concerned (and maybe I'm blaspheming here), you don't need to have read either of the first two books in this series to read either A Wild Sheep Chase or this one. Even AWSC could theoretically be skipped without missing too much of what's going on in this one, as beyond the repeated location of the Dolphin Hotel and one scene with the Sheep Man, there's not a lot of overlap. Maybe I would see more overlap if I were better at seeing complex themes and such, but whatever.

I'm glad to have read it, but it's very clearly one of Murakami's earliest books.

"This all has got to be, patently, the most unbelievable, the most ridiculous story I have ever heard."

Well, not my least favorite Murakami book to date (that'd be 1Q84). Started slow and puzzlingly, but managed to pull me in by the halfway point.

Our protagonist (from the first two Rat books) has a bit of a business problem. When designing a travel brochure, he unthinkingly uses the image his friend Rat sent him months previous of an idyllic hillside, mountain in the background, and sheep scattered on the grass. A mysterious man contacts him to demand he locate one of the sheep in the photo, a special sheep with a star on its back. What follows is a weird romp in rural Japan involving a sheep professor, a girl with unblocked, exquisite ears, and a guy in a skinsuit/sheep costume.

Yeah, typical Murakami, right?

I won't begin to summarize the themes of this book, because it's very literary and I'm pretty sure a large chunk went over my head. I enjoyed the fever dream of tracking down the sheep though, and thought this was a great follow on to the previous two books in this series. It really shows how far Murakami had come as a writer by the time he got to this book. It's very trippy, and really only for people who know what they're getting into with Murakami.

"I can be civil, ma'am, or I can be honest. You can't have both in their entirety."

This book had all the subtlety of a hammer to the face. While not a bad book exactly, there's the bones of some really good ideas here, I think the author fell into the trap of trying to tackle too many ideas in too few pages, and didn't do any of them any justice.

Sciona is the first female high mage in Tiran and has something to prove to her male counterparts. On her first day, through some juvenile bullying from her equals, she's saddled with a janitor, a Kwen named Tommy (or, more correctly, Thomil) as her assistant. Kwen are seen as being lesser than everyone else as they come from outside Tiran and are assumed to be lazy, dangerous, cannibalistic, stupid, and a whole host of other unpleasant things. Rather than sending him away, Sciona makes Thomil her assistant, and together they set about her project of expanding Tiran's magical net that sustains the city. But as they look more closely into the magic's inner workings, they both realize the horrible truth behind everything that has been covered up the entire time.

I thought the basic ideas of this book were actually pretty good, if handled clumsily. I liked the idea of the magic system, and liked the incorporation of some moral ideas around classism and racism in keeping a city like Tiran running. What I didn't like was that the author tried to do too much, cram too many social injustices in, making everything feel muddled by the end. Sciona has strong feelings about a women's lot in life, and while I agree with the feminist sentiments she has in large part, I don't like the author's tendency to make every guy in the book an idiot, a sociopath, a rapist, a drunk, or otherwise bring down the entire male gender to make Sciona look better than the rest.

The entire first 30% of the book or so is nothing but infodumping of this carefully crafted magic system the author created, which made it a bit of a drag to get through. It's almost too fleshed out for a book, and many of the intricacies don't really matter for the ending to land. I didn't like the author's use of Thomil to be the infodump character; Sciona spends long chapters explaining magic to this "uneducated" Kwen in her midst, leaving the actual plot to hang. And by the end of the book, many of the plot points are rehashed so often that all of their impact has drained away by the time you get to the part of the book where it's supposed to matter.

I also didn't like Sciona as a character in general. She's unpleasant, just as racist/classist as her male counterparts, and even late in the book (ending spoilers here) doesn't seem like she really absorbs what Thomil's telling her and what she's seeing around her. She's written like she's supposed to come around on her beliefs about Kwen, but it feels so abrupt and insincere that I'm not sure I'm sold on it, particularly after some of the things she says to Thomil in anger. "Your people died because they deserved it" doesn't seem like something you should be able to easily come back from.

Just....overly complicated, entirely lacking in nuance and discussion, and really ham fisted in its execution in my opinion.

I sort of thought the "secret healing powers" would play a more prominent role in a book about, well, healers, but I was surprised at how little it actually had an impact on things.

We have two points of view in this story; Louise in present day, navigating a lifelong friendship-maybe-more with Peter, when a car accident brings Louise's latent healing powers to life. Now she's wondering from her mom and her grandmother why nobody told her, and what this means for herself, her future, and Peter going forward. We also have Helene in WWII France, Louise's great-grandmother, also navigating the complexities of her healing powers as they conflict with the religious school she attends. When a battle brings her to the side of a wounded allied soldier, Helene has to decide where to draw the line when she learns that everything has a cost.

This is very much a women's fiction story with some magical realism elements. The healing aspect comes up frequently, but still manages to take a back seat to Louise's family drama and Helene's struggles within her religious school. Which, while fine, made this more of a fluffy read than I was expecting. I also thought that, despite the two POVs being from the same family, there was very little overlap, making this feel more like two separate stories than two halves of a whole.

There's some good discussions here about caregiving and end of life decisions, but because of the author's nursing background, it felt almost like the author was talking to the reader directly in parts, almost clinical. It was a little distracting to go from the flat writing about the characters to in-depth, clinical terms and concepts regarding healthcare and death.

The healing is also the worst-kept secret on the planet, because the insistence from the family to keep it a secret is at odds with the fact that it felt like everyone else around the main characters knew about it already. Ending spoilers here: I'm not sure why Louise lied to Peter so much during the story about her powers and what happened during the accident, when everyone in their small town basically knew about them anyway. What's one more person? It would have alleviated a lot of Louise's problems.

If you're looking for a general fiction book about family troubles, this may be your jam. If you read the synopsis and were intrigued by the healing powers, maybe give it a pass.

As I listened to this book, I kept hopping between 5 stars for the writing and 3 stars for the story. I ultimately decided that good writing doesn't save a disjointed story, but I wish I could have rated this one higher for the writing alone.

Alma Cruz is a writer of untold stories -- that is, despite being a writer of some renown, she still has bits of stories unfinished and unpublished that she feels compelled to put to rest. Rather than shove them in a shoebox and hide them in a closet, she constructs a literal graveyard for her finished stories on some inherited land in the Dominican Republic. She hires Filomena as her groundskeeper to maintain the land in her absences, and tells her to stop and listen to each story once a day. So, while keeping the grounds clear and maintaining the sculpted headstones, she starts pausing at one grave a day, and to her astonishment, she starts hearing these characters' stories. Not the incomplete snippets Alma wrote, but entire family stories involving intrigue, romance, infidelity, and death.

There's so many POVs in this book. Alma. Filomena. The characters from Alma's books (primarily Bienvenida and Manuel). Side characters sometimes get a chapter. We hop back and forth between characters in the present and in the past, making things feel very fragmented. There's a lot going on backstory-wise amongst everyone, but you really have to be good at keeping stories straight to stay oriented in this book. Despite all this, the prose is fantastic, and honestly was what kept me going throughout the book.

Great prose but too many POVs and too much to keep track of for me to rate much higher.

"We always sit at the plank."

This is like if my favorite author, Guy Gavriel Kay, wrote Game of Thrones without gratuitous sex scenes and almost all political intrigue. Which is to say, yes please, more of this for me.

Navola is run by its bankers. Davico, son of Devonaci, is coming of age as part of the di Regulai family, shrewd, powerful merchants who have pull everywhere. Devonaci is a master businessman, and Davico spends all his days growing up comparing himself to his father and coming up short. But time doesn't care if you're not ready, and Davico finds himself thrust more and more frequently into the types of political intrigue he hates. His adopted sister, Celia, however is steeped in intrigues, and finds herself more than capable of navigating the twisty Navola mind. When things come to a political boil, though, Davico's naiveness may be his and his family's downfall.

Right off the bat I'll say that this isn't a book for just anyone. It's like...literary fantasy? Not a whole lot happens immediately, or at all. Some action-adjacent things happen around the 50% mark, and then again for the last quarter of the book, but by and large this is a character-driven political fantasy seen through a vaguely Italian lens. That appealed to me, but probably won't to an average fantasy reader. Yes there is a dragon (or...a part of a dragon, I guess), but I wouldn't call it a central character. The last quarter of the book is brutal though, and made me experience a large enough mental WTF that I spent a chunk of my cruise holed up in my cabin finishing the book to find out what happens.

My only hangups really was the ending and how the author basically (major ending spoilers here) wrote Celia out of the book. Yes, she does put in an appearance, but I was rather put out at how quickly/easily Davico washed his hands of her betrayal. I feel like something of that magnitude needed longer to marinate. But even that wasn't a large enough of an issue for me to not enjoy things thoroughly.

Recommend this for fans of Guy Gavriel Kay, and political/character-heavy fantasy.

Hey, did you like Pachinko (more than me)? Are you keen on multigenerational Asian historical fiction? Like great writing? This one's for you, then.

Meilin is newly married in 1938, but with war headed their way her future is uncertain. With only her son Renshu, a beautiful hand painted scroll, and what little they can throw together, they're forced to flee an oncoming Japanese army. Renshu is raised on tales Meilin tells from the scroll, as together they make new lives for themselves over and over again as they're forced to flee again and again from places they try and start fresh in. As Meilin's story in Taiwan gives way to Renshu's story in America, and finally Renshu's daughter Lily trying to figure out who she is, we get to know this family's struggle, and how events of the past can shape a person in the future.

This one took me a bit to get into, but once I got into it (about when Meilin flees with Renshu the first time), it really sucked me in. The writing is exceptional, and really painted a picture of Meilin, her family, and what China looked like in her time. It's a multigenerational tale in the same way Pachinko is, but I thought this one was written a bit better and didn't overstay its welcome as much, so I enjoyed it more. I will say I think I was more invested in Meilin's story in the beginning, and Lily's story at the end, than I was with Renshu's story in the middle. Maybe his story would resonate with me more if I were more familiar with Chinese politics in America at the time, as it felt like I was missing context in the story for Renshu's paranoia. I really felt for Lily trying to figure out who she is, sandwiched between America and China and wanting to understand where she came from.

I really enjoyed this one though, despite my mild hangups with Renshu's point of view. Great writing and a sad story.

Yet another great premise, brought down by the author trying to do too much all at once.

Two points of view here: Tildy, librarian at a struggling archival library centered around historical figure Belva Curtis Lefarge in San Francisco, stumbles on a hidden room containing two intricate, beautiful dollhouses. In examining them, she discovers they both bear a monogram of their creator, and embarks on a quest to find out more about the mysterious 'CH'. We also have the past viewpoint of Cora Hale, newly arrived in Paris and on the run from what she left behind in America, she stays at a boarding house for artists and takes on clients in order to teach them how to paint and draw. The boarding house is owned by Belva Curtis Lefarge, who allows her to stay and also takes an interest in Cora's work. It's through Belva that Cora is introduced to her first set of miniatures, and from there she finds both her medium and her voice.

I thought the historical fiction story told through Cora's viewpoint was the more interesting of the two, but I thought it covered too much historical ground for me to really feel like I cared about what was going on. There's a mystery here about what the dollhouses are and why Tildy's mom is part of it, there's romance thrown in both Cora's and Tildy's viewpoints, there's historical fiction across two world wars and a meeting with Walt Disney, there's some tension thrown in about the fate of the archival library, there's just a lot going on here. Not helping things is that the characters -- literally all of them -- felt flat as cardboard. No real development happens, and by the end I just wanted to know what happened to the library more than I cared about Tildy throwing herself on her sword.

Idk, this book didn't do a whole lot for me. It's fine I guess, but I don't know if I'd recommend it strongly to anyone.