Bookpost: Queen's Thief and several others

[roadrunnertwice]

Time for a bookpost again! Well, past time, really.

I'm catching up with the 2021 reviews pretty quickly, because I plain didn't read very much this year. (Looks like around 33 books so far, here at the tail of December.) Didn't have the brain for it; I did have the brain for some other think-y pursuits, but fiction was just too difficult to process for a lot of the year.

Martha Wells — Murderbot Diaries: Fugitive Telemetry

April 28

The sixth Murderbot book! (Fifth chronologically, though.) Murderbot is still great, and I loved this book. I don't have anything really smart to say about it.

all the graydon saunders commonweal books over again

May 9

Apparently I was feeling stressed and just wanted a comfort re-read.

Robert Nystrom — Game Programming Patterns

May 17

Available online! (Reminder that I made a thing that's very nice for reading technical books on the web.)

This was really interesting and useful! Isaac recommended it.

I've been learning some stuff about game development recently, and doing some experiments with the hope of building some little games for myself and others sometime soon. And while tutorials and stuff are nice, I also really like getting a more systematic view of a problem space — it's not really a good way to truly internalize knowledge (that just takes practice, alas), but IMO it IS a good way to build up your instincts about where to look for something once you need it.

Megan Whalen Turner — The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings (re-reads)

May 17 through July? Somethingth?

These books still rule! This was only my second reading of these, and they're perhaps even better on re-read than on initial read.

There's this thing Eugenides says only rarely, when he's well and truly lost his temper and is 100% not playing anymore — "I can do anything I want." Just in absolute terms, it's an excellent line for a tantrum, but there's also a very specific subtext to it that I didn't really gather until this re-read. He's not saying that he's immune from consequences; gods know he doesn't think that. He's saying: if I ever decide I care more about winning this than I care about the consequences, there's no one alive who can intervene in time to stop me.

Megan Whalen Turner — Thick as Thieves

July 16

Right, here we go.

Ruth had a very ambivalent reaction to this one when it came out, which made me decide to put it off until the final book was out. (Luckily that was only like a two year gap, unlike the customary seven years or so between the others!) I actually liked it a great deal, but I can absolutely see why she was a little turned off by it.

The thing is, this book is an extended detour about as far away from the main action of the series as you could practically get. It somewhat serves as setup for a couple of subplots in the final book, but for the most part what it seems to be is, Megan Whalen Turner wanted to write a big old digression of a road trip novel, and she therefore did so. May as well sit back and enjoy the ride!

Now that I think about it, I think it has more in common with The Thief than it does with the other four books in the series. And both this book and The Thief were great! But it's definitely the lull before the storm, and doesn't move the story forward more than a couple yards.

Megan Whalen Turner — The Return of the Thief

July 20

And then this one was the full-force gale.

This book, against all possible odds, flawlessly sticks the landing for the entire Queen's Thief series. It's one of the better fantasy novels I've ever read; certainly in the top 20, probably in the top 10, possibly nibbling at the heels of the top 5.

It's SO FUCKING GOOD. It resolves a huge number of threads and questions, in tremendously satisfying ways, and if you've been waiting because you didn't want to get sucked into another unfinished series, definitely stop waiting.

Kimmy Walters — The Faraway

Sept. 24

This poetry collection has no copyright date printed in it, and I can’t remember if it’s post-pandemic or just prophetic, which is an extremely Kimmy Walters mood. Anyway, it’s excellent. I just ordered a replacement copy, because I let Ruth give my original copy to a friend for Christmas.