Reading Witness
book
Wants to read Sex Criminals Volume 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction
Rated She'd Waited Millennia 8/10
I love the succinct way Hutton creates images. I see the wiry muscles, the flowering yards, and swirling nights out. We feel the speaker’s yearning throughout, her desire to bring just a bit more (yet <i>so much more</i>) life into the world. This boy, <i>her</i> boy. Her descriptions of motherhood and marriage, while they do not necessarily resemble my own, feel very real.<br><br>(My full review appears at <a href="http://persephonemagazine.com/2012/09/19/book-review-shed-waited-millennia-by-lizzie-hutton/">Persephone Magazine</a>.)
Rated Survivors: Series Four Box Set 8/10
Rated The Everlasting 10/10
This one was great. Starts out on the small-ish side and in an academic setting in a modern world with fantasy elements, then the plot takes off and expands and covers a lot of different times, but has the same main two characters at the center. Well done, the tone of the writing really suits the story.
Rated Lightning Runes 8/10
Still enjoying this series, it's comforting to read something in Turtledove's distinctive voice. We get a bit more of the characters' back story and there's a few new characters, fun alternate history with magic, but the main plot seemed a bit meandering and wrapped up pretty neatly. Fun to read and I'll read the next one too.
Rated The Trees 10/10
Just about every page of this book had me go back and re-read a sentence or paragraph to savour it. The story as a whole starts out like it's going to be an ordinary novel but then it gets more and more bonkers. I don't really know what to compare it to, it's definitely saying something about race relations but it's almost like magical realism meets horror? Very well written even when I didn't really know what's going on.
Rated There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel: A Novel of Giant Crabs 10/10
These books are so crazy, there is enough weird stuff in any given chapter to equal three or four books by other authors. Fun page turner and lots of twisty plot.
Rated John of John 10/10
This might be my favourite [a:Douglas Stuart|19629033|Douglas Stuart|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1570471773p2/19629033.jpg] novel so far. I like the viewpoints of the father and son and it's fun to see their lives and how each sees the other. Maybe a bit less trauma in this one than in his other two books.
Rated Off the Reservation 10/10
Quite good and follows up on [b:The Only Good Indians|52180399|The Only Good Indians (The Only Good Indians, #1)|Stephen Graham Jones|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1601545259l/52180399._SY75_.jpg|71431671] but doesn't quite seem like a *direct* sequel, I'd recommend reading that one first but you'll figure it out if you don't. Had a bit of a jarring change part way through it and lots of bad things happen to the characters, satisfying resolution.
Wants to read Serafina and the Black Cloak
Rated The Dissidents: Autocrats! Vigilantes! Communists! And Cartoonists! 10/10
The book looks great and is up to the usual high standards set by [a:Derf Backderf|276252|Derf Backderf|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1531333251p2/276252.jpg]'s other work. Tons of research obviously went into it and it's lightly fictionalized (to give us a viewpoint character whose life is similar to [a:Derf Backderf|276252|Derf Backderf|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1531333251p2/276252.jpg]'s own ancestors (and whose career has parallels to his own)). I learned a lot of history from this.
Rated November Road 10/10
Very well written, maybe the ending is a little too pat. Draws the main characters clearly and they all sound different. I did like the short epilogue though. I'll look for more by this author.
Rated Blacktail 10/10
I loved [b:The Library at Mount Char|26892110|The Library at Mount Char|Scott Hawkins|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1453225113l/26892110._SY75_.jpg|42797715] and this is hardly like that book at all, except for being very engaging and well-written. Most of the characters are animals and it almost reads like an epic legend, but from very personal viewpoints. (Also it's not very long so it's a quick read.)
Rated More Than Human 8/10
Old school writing style but it flows and has some twists and mystery to it, plus a neat concept that was new when this came out.
Rated The Dentist 8/10
A bit gimmicky book about an English police detective who is autistic. Good mystery though (and there's a bonus chapter that was apparently written after the rest of the book?). I'll check out the next one, always good to have more popcorn books.
Wants to read The Ghost of Hightower Pond: A novella