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This was a fun conclusion to this trilogy.

I think ultimately, this is a book driven by the principal point of view characters and their actions. Despite that many of them are leaders of empires, islands, or organizations, this fantasy series is less about political maneuvering and more about interpersonal conflicts and shifts. This made a lot of sense in book one, following three or four different characters in different places, none of whom were in real positions of power. However, I think I was a little surprised at how much this style continued through the whole series.

In some ways there's some superhero vibes, where the sides are determined by which heroes are opposing or supporting whom at any moment. I said this about book two, but I appreciated the ongoing shifting allegiances. Characters join up, and then split apart and join opposite sides. Some are forced to be on sides they don't want. Some help each other only reluctantly. I think it works really well and creates some good character growth moments.

In the end, I still feel a little like some of the magical world-building details got handwaved through more than I wanted. I'm still not sure I really understand the underlying reason why islands are sinking. I understand what actions make them sink, but not why. (Maybe I don't understand what makes them float in the first place?? ) I feel like the memory pools also felt a little too convenient, and I wish this were better foreshadowed or explained. There's some "I hope you don't find out what this magical artifact really does", but then that detail is never revealed. The book also itself asks (but does not answer) what the connection is between all the things that bone shard magic can be used on.

I'm not trying to nitpick details here and I certainly don't need some intricately built magic system in a book, but it just didn't all quite hang together for me in a way that I wanted.

I'm continuing my reread of this series before I get to the new final book in the trilogy. This book has Lin getting square into politics, avoiding assassination attempts, and trying to wrangle all of the islands and stepping into more mysteries that her father has left her. The climax of the book manages to believably get ~all of the major characters together into the same place for a final battle with some murky sides and shifting loyalties. I definitely appreciated the slow dribble of lore and backstory through journal translations; we learn a lot more about the Sukais, the empire, and the Alanga and I am here for all of it.

That said, I forgot just how uncomfortable this book was for me to read. I think it mostly revolves around the way Jovis is being pulled in multiple directions. I think it's one thing for the first book to have Jovis trying to leave the Ioph Carn smugglers (he just wants to leave, they feel betrayed) and being pursued by them while he tries to chase down Emahla. This is fine to me, maybe because he's clear about what he wants and up front about what he's about the whole time, and maybe it's because the book does a good job of writing the Ioph Carn as the creepy smuggling mafia that it's acceptable to spurn.

However, the first book ends with Jovis in a very new position and sworn loyalties, while simultaneously still being in contact with the Shardless Few and also dangerously getting reinvolved with the Ioph Carn. As always, it's not clear to him what the right thing is to do, and so he tries to play it every way. Maybe it's just my own personal discomfort with "lying to people you care about" and "not talking to people you (should?) trust" as narrative tension. Or, maybe it's just super effective on me grimacing emoji.

The third book in this trilogy came out last month so I took the time to comfort reread the first two books before I read the third one for the first time.

Overall, this book was super enjoyable even on a reread. It has four point of view characters, but each of them had their own unique intrigue and appeal. Unlike some other fantasy series, I never felt impatience to "get back to the good character". There's Lin the secretive emperor's amnesiac daughter, in competition with her foster brother to be heir, trying to learn bone shard magic. There's Sand who lives in a haze on a thinly inhabited island who suddenly regains her memories of other places. There's Phalue the daughter of a corrupt governer, who is trying to woo somebody who challenges her liberal "just world" beliefs. Finally, there's Jovis, a navigator turned smuggler, who tried to get out of the smuggling game to chase after his stolen childhood sweetheart, who meets a strange creature and gets increasingly suckered into helping people.

The world-building overall is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the bone shard magic idea a lot, where people inscribe (human) bones with commands on them and combine these shards (into dead animals) to form animated constructs. Big magical programming vibes. The flip side of this system is that these bones come from living humans to power these constructs, and requires all children to "tithe" parts of their skull. When the bones are in use, it drains the health of those people and causes them to waste away. It's a really neat way to think about "magical externalities" and especially who bears them.

When reading through recent Otherwise award winners, while I was looking for a copy of the novella Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon I asked my library to procure a copy of the anthology it came from. I found and read that novella earlier, but my library came through as they do and so I was excited to read through more from this anthology.

I quite enjoyed Marian Denise Moore's "A Mastery of German". This is a story about a project manager being handed a new project, which turns out to be monetizing human memory by transferring knowledge along genetic lines. It brings in how the narratives of past generations aren't recorded (especially in racially disparate ways) and how this project might rectify that, but also digs into some of the perilous ethics of such a thing. The last line of the story almost feels like the first line of some sequel story exploring a terrifyingly(?) changed world in which this technology is commonplace.

I thought Dilman Dila's "Red_Bati" story was a lot of fun; this is a story about Red_Bati, a robot "dog" with too much intelligence who refuses to be relegated to the scrap heap of a mining ship after its owner has died. There's some fun action, and I like the exploration of what the difference between spirits and code is, if humans imagine both into existence.

Finally, Dare Segun Falowo's "Convergence in Chorus Architecture" is a novelette that I would best describe as Yoruba mythology speculative fiction along with horror elements. It's a ride of a story about the village Osupa being invaded by a flying boneship of multidimensional thieves; most of the village is transported away into the sky against their will, and in the end are transformed unexpectedly into something else entirely. This summary elides quite a bit of detail, but reading this anthology was worth it for this gem.

It was interesting to read this book so soon after reading What Moves the Dead. I can see why Ursula Vernon wrote about it in her afterword as being a similar setup and recommended that everybody go read it immediately.

The book itself is immensely creepy and I found it very compelling. The plot setup is that socialite Noemí is asked by her powerful father to go investigate what's going on with her cousin Catalina's marriage in an isolated rural mansion. The creepy atmosphere is spectacularly well done: a decrepit remote mansion, very little electricity, locked windows, strange dreams, family secrets, suspicious local history, the overly strict housekeeper with too many rules (silence! no hot baths! no coffee!), also the household's obsession with eugenics and "superior races".

The book's pacing was excellent for me. There is a slow build of mystery and unexplainable occurrences. Backstory is slowly revealed, but there's more questions than answers and Noemí is not sure she can even trust her own experience. And then, suddenly, there's a gut punch reveal and the action shifts, leading into the climax of the book. The mystery reveal felt exceedingly well-crafted to me; rather than cheapening the spooky atmosphere, if anything everything got even creepier once the mask was off, and it fully justified all of the atmospheric details that led up to that point.

I read this short story here: www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/fiction/theres-magic-in-bread/

There's also an author interview linked on that page, which I also enjoyed: www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/non-fiction/author-spotlights/author-spotlight-effie-seiberg/

This short story has two parallel perspectives centered around baking bread, and about feelings of despair and helplessness; one half about struggling with that helplessness in this covid pandemic with home baking, and the other half running a bakery (and involving a bread golem!) in a more historic setting with antisemitic violence and policing.

I certainly have needed a lot of escapist literature in the past few years.  (Even as I write this my brain pops in to say...ok but what if we reread the entire Vorkosigan or Foreigner or Wayfarers series again????) But it's also deeply refreshing to read a piece that directly addresses the pandemic, as well as addressing my own feelings of helplessness when things are falling apart around me and I don't feel like I have any leverage to fix it.

I am not sure the message that even things that don't help still help sinks in for me; not in the sense that the story is ineffective but more I find myself coming up against a lot of internal friction and resistance. Some of this I think is continuing to come to terms with the fact that true solutions to big problems are slow communally-driven systemic changes, and that will rarely feel tangible on a personal level, even if I'm dealing with them as directly as is possible. Deep down, I too hunger for the empowerment of creating my own bread golem and making tangible change in the world.

I read the Beekeeper's Apprentice after seeing it on a list of Malka Older's comfort reads: www.tor.com/2023/03/22/malka-older-chooses-her-top-5-comfort-reads

It's a mystery book originally published way back in the ancient times of 1994. The plot could be roughly described as: what if Sherlock Holmes was a teenage girl and met up with aging half-retired actual Sherlock Holmes, who trains her until she grows over time to be an equal detective partner while they solve mysteries together.

Overall, this was a fun romp told in a style that felt reminiscent of a Sherlock mystery, and I enjoyed the mysteries large and small. I am a sucker for coming of age stories too. I think it's a more interesting pairing to have Sherlock with an equal in deduction to play off of. I also appreciated here that King deliberately posits in-universe this Holmes as being not the same as Doyle's fictionalized version, and so can portray her own (kinder) version.

Content warnings for mild violence, mild misogyny, suicide mentions, police violence, police portrayed sympathetically; there's also an extended romani disguise section with pejorative g-word and theft trope.

Also, this is a minor spoiler for the introduction of the book, but Mary Russell the protagonist and "author" signs it M.R.H. strongly implying that she marries Holmes at some point in later books which is...also a thing.  Look, I understand that they are the only two in their own world of deduction and so it's not implausible and I'm also certainly not here to police fictional age gaps. And yet. It is just a creepy vibe for me, personally speaking, and so I will stop after this first book so I can pretend they are just partners in detectivery forever and will find my own comfort reads somewhere else.

This is a direct sequel to Witness for the Dead (book two of a trilogy) and is another fantasy mystery set in the world of the Goblin Emperor.

Witness for the Dead feels more like a traditional mystery novel, in that the climax of the story is also the reveal of the mystery. On the other hand, this book's "stereo investigation" (in Disco Elysium terms) is roughly sorted out mid-book, and instead jumps into action and many repercussions from there. I think this works really well, but it gives it a different feel overall.

One thing I really liked about this book is how many story threads from the first book were picked up and were an integral part of this story. On its own, I felt like there were parts of the first book that went a bit far afield (even if they were interesting worldbuilding and character development!), but in the context of how they tie back into book two makes the two books together feel much more tightly crafted as a whole. It makes me excited to see where the third book goes.

Mostly, I continue to enjoy these books focused on Celehar as a main character; he has been through a lot and continues to go through a lot, and is carrying a lot of trauma and grief that he is coping with. It feels like he doesn't believe that he deserves nice things even while he constantly goes out of his way to serve others beyond the call of duty; it's just comforting to see so many characters caring for him in ways that he won't do for himself.