Getting a good start on the book bingo.
Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. This was recommended by
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vulgarweed about a hundred years ago and my copy just came in at the library this month. A great book about a necromancer and a cavalier in a fantasy world full of skeletons and magic and secrets. Sets of necromancers and cavaliers are draw to a place from nine Houses and then a kind of surreal
And then there were none ensues. But Gideon is the best part. Lots of snark, lots of badassery. I like her so much I did some fanart of her. I am listening to the audiobook version now. Moira Quirk is a bit more adenoidal than I'd like my Gideon but she pronounces all the names, which is more than I could do.
( My Gideon fanart )Author You've Not Read Before: Alice isn't Dead by Joseph Fink. I listened to part 1 of the podcast
Alice isn't Dead on recommendation of
garonne and enjoyed it very much. It is from the
Welcome to Night Vale folks. So I tried the book. I didn't like it that much. I think a lot is lost by taking it from 1st person (as in the podcast) to 3rd person (the book). That said, I did like that a lesbian couple is at the center of the story but being lesbians isn't the plot. That was very refreshing. Also the thing I liked a lot about the podcast is that it is quintessentially American but not in a way (as is usually the case) that makes me want to puke. The main character is a truck driver and so a lot is about driving in the US and most Americans drive a lot and I have driven and traveled a lot in the US for work when I worked so those parts of it were very, very familiar. The whole highway culture. On the podcast, the main character's voice is American but not in a way that makes me cringe. Also, there's a whole theme of living with anxiety, which I really liked.
Here's a quote I liked:
"This constant road trip has done something to me. It's changed time. Used to be an hour-and-a-half drive felt like a while, the kind of drive you'd need to gear up for, the kind that would make you dull and listless with the length of it. Now four or five hours move by with a real pep to them. I've learned that all it takes is sitting and existing. Do that long enough, and anything will be over." Female identifying Author: The Port of London Murders by Josephine Bell (1938). This is the Shedunnit Book Club book of the month. I liked it because you get a sense of working class lives and life on the Thames. Smuggling. Boats. It reads sort of like Law & Order: River Police. I could almost here the clunk-clunk noise between scene changes.
I did have some Did-Not-Finishes:
Murder is Bad Manners by Robin Stevens and
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton.
