these are the books that altered my brain chemistry. i reread them often and i recommend them without reservation.
environmental horror, strangers and strangeness - this series calls to the mad naturalist in me. it fills me with awe, both the joyful kind and the fearful kind, and it was the first book i added to my modest home library.
LeGuin at her finest, in my opinion. the second book, The Tombs of Atuan, changed my life in ways i can't describe, and is where the title of this site comes from.
imagine picking up a shlock, mass-market dragon fantasy book only to find out that it's actually one of the most unique and emotional fantasy series you've ever read. my husband's teenage sleeper hit.
oh, what a series. alas, i shall have to read everything VE Schwab has ever written.
okay, we've got a swashbuckling thief of a female lead; a magical dimension-hopping sadboi (said lovingly) as our male lead; and a storyline spread across three parallel Londons with vastly different atmospheres.
the first book is something of a heist but also a living nightmare. the second is pirates but also political intrigue. the third is a bunch of hot people who kind of hate each other on a boat (she really cooked with that) but also a complete suckerpunch to the emotions that reduced me to angrily eating chips about it.
and oh the characters. oh the juicy juicy interpersonal drama. the romantic subplots are great, but the familial relationships are where the real power and heartache are. family - blood, found, or lack thereof - underpins the whole series and it's written with such clarity and care.
this was truly just so good. highly recommend.
oh my sweet blorbo Holland, i'm still not okay.
things i appreciate: bisexual representation, Ned Tuttle, the Ferase Stras
things i appreciated less: the cognitive dissonance of a river named 'the Isle', actually calling a fantasy character fuckin ALUCARD and making me love him anyway
a oceany dreamworld that you have to experience blind. it's only 200-odd pages so i knocked it back in one awed and mesmerized sitting. it felt like reading Harrow the Ninth for the first time again. vibey, imagery you can almost chew on, a grim and slow reveal - read it. read it read it read it.
actually dreamed about it the night after finishing it - not the story, but the actual physical book. the cover design game is that strong.
a bit of YA lit i picked up at the library mostly because the cover is gorgeous. i've seen it described online as indigenous futurism, but i would also consider it a cooler, more grounded sibling to the typical urban fantasy. i enjoyed reading it - the characters were great, i loved the folktale-like aspects and the overall themes of home and belonging, but i still feel like i missed something. i'll own that as a skill issue though.
as always, LeGuin's writing is masterful on a scale so cosmic it feels like i've read it before. in an interesting coincidence this book shares a few themes with Oryx and Crake, and i have a feeling i'm going to be turning them over in my mind together for a little while.
anything by LeGuin is worthy of deep study, in my opinion. i will definitely be reading this again.
the brutality of maximum efficiency; post-capitalist Genesis as seen through a fever dream. i'm not sure i fully understand it, but i think i appreciate it, though of course it's an Atwood novel so it made me deeply uncomfortable along the way.
this was a recommendation from another coworker to finish out April.
Shadow and Bone was okay - the biblically proportioned book hangover from the Locked Tomb didn't help, but i found the writing a little flat and the tropes a little stale (though that's not necessarily a fair critique for a book that came out in 2012). mostly i just resented how much cool stuff seemed to happen off-page while plot proceeded around and sometimes despite the main character. however, i liked the worldbuilding well enough and a trope inversion in the back half hooked me enough to want to continue.
Siege and Storm was much better. the first half felt a little dry as it set up some larger politics, but shit kicked off halfway through. you notice the subtle cracks in the main character's morality before she does, and you watch her grapple with her own power and growing ruthlessness. we get a larger cast in this book and the side characters really shine - Bardugo writes good dialogue. the story never breaks pace through the last few hundred pages, and the ending had enough momentum that i picked up the next book immediately after and finished it in one sitting.
Ruin and Rising is where it all comes together. Bardugo's writing is so much stronger at this point and she delivers some really solid lines. the book begins with the characters trapped, and i thought we might linger in that enviroment for a while before picking up speed, but no - it's breakneck from the start and stays that way. the tone is darker. atrocities are committed; characters are deeply changed. over a thousand pages of character development throughout the series, and it culminates here to such a massive payoff, well outside my expectations and assumptions, and i loved it.
a few things i really liked:
my husband's recommendation. magical realism through a cracked lens of psychological horror - a story of humanity, godhood, and the cruelty of knowledge. it doesn't surpass The Fisherman by John Langan as my favorite contemporary horror novel, but it's solid, richly written, and definitely worth a read.
recommendation from a work friend - Connor, you bastard, i appreciate you deeply.
Gideon is a snarky, balls-to-the-wall murder mystery - Clue, but dripping with goth flair. Harrow is firmly a psychological thriller, with enough entangled plot threads to drop my jaw multiple times. and Nona, sweet Nona, is a slice of life ode to found family in tough places, while insane plot machinations are obfuscated by the POV character's childlike perspective.
i love them all. the plotcrafting is a masterclass and will have me taking many notes on my next reread. the prose is surgically precise, laced with a wonderfully strange mix of vocabulary deep cuts and sneaky internet references. the characters will live in your brain for ages. it's funny, heartrending, endlessly satisfying in its unraveling. read it, then talk to me about it while we all wait for the forthcoming Alecto the Ninth (and the rest of Tamsyn Muir's literary career).
as soon as i finished each book, i passed them along to my husband and got to watch him puzzle it out - he caught a lot of details way earlier than i did, and the discussions after he finished were lovely.
Camilla and Palamedes, my beloved pair - perhaps the true main characters of the series. their relationship with each other and Camilla's relationship to Nona are my favorites of the series so far. sweet Isaac and Jeannemary, the awful teens; Ortus Nigenad and his obsession with enneameter; the duality of Ianthe and Coronabeth; i love them all. except Jod - fuck Jod! though i could several write essays about how much i love and loathe that glorified millenial bastard. don't tempt me.
Nona has my entire heart, of course. is it the height of conceit to say that i identify with her? one must be nice to the tinies and care about the local dogs, no?
"Noodle, how DARE you!" is now a common phrase in our household, and my husband has claimed Pyrrha's "I look like two elbows."
i listened to all of these on audiobook over the first three months of the year. there are two more books that i need to come back to (The Bands of Mourning and The Lost Metal).