The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix Harrow

I first heard of Alix Harrow when her short story “A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” was nominated for a Hugo Award. I read it, and I loved it. When her first novel came out, The Ten Thousand Door of January, I read it right away, and was a little disappointed. The book felt disjointed, and I didn’t care for the protagonist or her struggles very much. I felt like the author didn’t successfully make the leap from short story to novel.  I read Ms. Harrow’s two fractured fairytale novellas when they were nominated for the Hugos and I enjoyed them, although they felt a bit glib.I think I’m part because I’m getting a little tired of the hard-drinking, Devil-May-care protagonist trope. 

Starling House, however, was a massive leveling up - one of the absolute best books I read the year it came out. I loved it so much!!!

So of course I was excited when the publisher and NetGalley granted me an eARC of a new work by Ms. Harrow in exchange for an honest review. The Knight and the Butcherbird was a wonderful post apocalyptic short story about the lies we tell ourselves and the choices we make to survive. It was wonderfully engrossing and my only complaint was its brevity. I sure hope that the author revisits this world in another work soon.

Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire

 

An excellent follow up to the last volume!

I love Seanan McGuire’s body of work.  (Note: I review a bunch of her books so I am copying part of some of my other reviews here to save time.). She has quickly become my favorite living writer and I feel very lucky that she is so prolific. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. When Incryptid was nominated for the Best Series Hugo in 2018, I dove into that and I loved it! It is probably my second favorite series by McGuire (Velveteen Vs. holds a special place in my heart). 

This is the first Incryptid book since the series switched publishers from DAW to Tor, and I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be granted and advanced reader copy, I was overjoyed when Tor and NetGalley awarded me an eARC of the latest Incryptid book, in exchange for an honest review. 

The book starts with what seemed like a recap for new readers, but it was incredibly well done and did not ostracized me, a long time reader of this series.

The book picks up with Mary’s story, not too long after the conclusion of the last volume. We get to visit with several other family members before the story kicks in into high gear.

One of the most wonderful things for me in this book was to get more with some characters that have not had a lot of narrative time until now. We get to spend more time with Elsie and with Arthur. After Artie was shattered and put back together again, we have not spent a lot of time with him, and I am so glad that we did, even if the more we learned about him the sad I get about his fate.

The actual plot of this book is a lot of fun, and it advance sis the overall fight-with-the-Covenant storyline in a satisfying way. 

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Breath of the Dragon by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee

 Breath of the Dragon by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee 

I was really looking forward to this book, and I was so disappointed because this was not the book that I wanted it to be.  I have read a number of by Fonda Lee, and I have enjoyed each and every book of hers. I have been waiting for a long vacation to read the Green Bone Saga, but I absolutely loved Untethered Sky. So, when I saw that she had a new book available on NetGalley, I requested it. I didn’t know who the Shannon Lee was that she coed with, but I figured I would give it a go. I really enjoyed the prologue - it set up a pair of twins, one of whom was thoughtless and doomed his family to a separation. Then chapter one began with the thoughtless child being a whiner, and a complainer, who only cared about martial arts while his father wanted him to get a nice respectable government job. I was really hoping that the book was going to alternate chapters so we could see the point of view of his twin brother and mother. As I read, it slowly dawned on me that we were not going to switch and see what was going on with the more interesting brother, but we were going to be stuck with the stupid, thoughtless, selfish brother throughout the book. About a third of the way through, I realized that Shannon Lee is the child of Bruce Lee, and that this book was going to be a boring slog of a martial arts competition. I’m sure there are people out there for whom this is a great book, but I am not one of them.