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Summer 2024 Reads

So Far So Good: Final Poems: 2014-2018 by Ursula K LeGuin. A fascinating mix; aging and acceptance are powerful themes, but not the only ones.

By a Silver Thread: DFZ Changeling Book 1 by Rachael Aaron. A very enjoyable fantasy world overlaid on a mid-future. This one has a thick layer of grime – there’s addictive blood magic, mind games, and a lot of jockeying for position. The fae are alien here, in a pleasing way.

Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers, #1) by Rachel Aaron. The same world as By a Silver Thread (I suspect that it’s decades earlier), with a very different feel due to the main character’s attitude and relationships. Julius doesn’t have an easy path, but it makes victories the right way sweeter when they do come.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan. Delightfully weird; it’s a bay area of almost today, with a slight skew and subtle almost magic that threads through a few parallel storylines.

California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout. This is a weird urban fantasy – California seceded from the US on the strength of bone magic. It’s mostly about a heist crew, their relations, navigating a strange and usual world. Disney and Mullholland wind up running rival powerbases in the weird LA. It’s a weird elite, with “power corrupts” running strongly through – along with some crisis of ecology that slides in and becomes a surprisingly strong background theme.