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Apr. 23rd, 2026 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luckydicekirbyI wrote up all that nonsense complaining about the royal assassin, congratulated myself on finally blogging a book, and then keep finishing books and being like, why would I post anything about that?? but that's COWARD TALK and also, crucially, I am AVOIDING TASKS. here is what I have been READING. please ignore that it's mostly nonsense with some Tana French mixed in.
Marag, Rachel Neumeier
Okay, for what the hell this series is I refer back to last year's book roundup. This one is about how Ryo's parents got together. It was pretty cute, I liked them both as characters, it was nice to see them from a very different perspective than from the point of view of their son, and it's always fun to look at two people and really be able to say, like, yeah lol I can see why their kid is Like That. I'm always interested in what's going on with women in this setting too. Probably the best of the three of these I gulped down in March!
Tano, Rachel Neumeier
As often happens to me with these I skimmed huge chunks of it but still found myself having fun. Tano is the abused kid who Ryo rescued and taught how to be A Good Person and I am fond of him and enjoy the simple pleasures of him learning to live around people who don't suck.
Hedesa, Rachel Neumeier
I don't even know what to say about Rachel's hyperspecific kink for nominally nonsexual corporal punishment so I'm not even going to get into that, OR into Ryo's little brother having a crush on Tano that is doomed to fail because of Tano's abuse trauma. It's all very early 2000s and it seems gauche for me to complain about getting what I paid for, and also, those are the parts of the book I DIDN'T skim because the rest was worldbuilding lore dump stuff that bored me sooo much. Will read whatever the next book about Tano is though!
The Hunter, Tana French
Book two of Tana's Cal Hooper series, decided to finally read it in time for The Keeper to come out. It might have been nice to have read this closer to reading The Searcher but oh well. It's Tana, I really enjoyed it! Cal will never be Dublin Murders to me but I respect her desire to "do something else" I guess. I was hesitant about this one having multiple POVs because to me one of Tana's biggest strengths is really getting into one specific person's head and digging into their problems, but this actually worked great! For a lesser author a big chunk of the tension coming from us being able to see conflicts coming from people lying to each other or having different amounts of information would not work, but she nailed it. I also love that we're not really concerned with who did the murder but who'll be blamed for it.
The Keeper, Tana French
Felt similarly about this to The Hunter! Multiple POVs continued to work really well, I care Trey, once again this specific town in Ireland will ruin your life.
A Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
Read two great Tana French novels and had to immediately eat some trash. Sometimes that's how it is. The fact that this horny Viking wolf soulbonding book predates the existence of omegaverse is kind of astounding to me. they were trying to create it from first principles. I wish I wasn't so compelled by Sarah Monette's back catalogue of varyingly problematic yaoi but I actually wish she would go back to exclusively writing that. Sorry to her much more successful post-Goblin Emperor career!! Anyway Doctrine of Labyrinths is more specifically up my alley in the problematic yaoi mines but I did enjoy reading this book about what if you were assigned omega at wolf soulbonding and did immediately get the next one for further wolf soulbond yaoi drama. I don't really care about Viking worldbuilding stuff but they seem to be having fun with it.
2/3 of A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin
Read two of the Dunk and Egg novellas post watching Dunky Egg, will read the third one when I get around to it. I read all of the existing ASOIAF novels when I was in high school and there has yet to be a new one since then and I am pretty much out of the game (tried to watch HOTD, got bored and gave up despite the promise of toxic yuri, a betrayal of my principles, etc) but we watched the AKOTSK show and it was pretty fun and charming so here I am. I think forcing GRRM into the novella box and not letting the story sprawl too much is probably actually really good for him. Fun characters, I really liked Dunk's failed romance in the second novella, it comes with weirdly good illustrations, and crucially this is helping me figure out what the hell is going on with the Targ politics in all the Dunk/Baelor fic I've been reading. Bloodraven who??
also, sidebar, but I can't stop thinking about the wiki of ice and fire's method of guessing Lyonel Baratheon's age based on inferences like "well surely he was at least 15 at the Tourney at Ashford" and "surely he wasn't older than 65 when he fought Dunk in single combat during a rebellion that happened for really funny reasons". they have a whole page of age inferences like this. I love every wiki of ice and fire contributor.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou
I listened to this and really enjoyed it as a chores audiobook because it's just like, a really long series of people working at Theranos and having a terrible time in increasingly crazy ways. and also the reveal that Elizabeth Holmes's rich older boyfriend had a fancy car with the license plate DAZKPTL took me the fuck out.
Marag, Rachel Neumeier
Okay, for what the hell this series is I refer back to last year's book roundup. This one is about how Ryo's parents got together. It was pretty cute, I liked them both as characters, it was nice to see them from a very different perspective than from the point of view of their son, and it's always fun to look at two people and really be able to say, like, yeah lol I can see why their kid is Like That. I'm always interested in what's going on with women in this setting too. Probably the best of the three of these I gulped down in March!
Tano, Rachel Neumeier
As often happens to me with these I skimmed huge chunks of it but still found myself having fun. Tano is the abused kid who Ryo rescued and taught how to be A Good Person and I am fond of him and enjoy the simple pleasures of him learning to live around people who don't suck.
Hedesa, Rachel Neumeier
I don't even know what to say about Rachel's hyperspecific kink for nominally nonsexual corporal punishment so I'm not even going to get into that, OR into Ryo's little brother having a crush on Tano that is doomed to fail because of Tano's abuse trauma. It's all very early 2000s and it seems gauche for me to complain about getting what I paid for, and also, those are the parts of the book I DIDN'T skim because the rest was worldbuilding lore dump stuff that bored me sooo much. Will read whatever the next book about Tano is though!
The Hunter, Tana French
Book two of Tana's Cal Hooper series, decided to finally read it in time for The Keeper to come out. It might have been nice to have read this closer to reading The Searcher but oh well. It's Tana, I really enjoyed it! Cal will never be Dublin Murders to me but I respect her desire to "do something else" I guess. I was hesitant about this one having multiple POVs because to me one of Tana's biggest strengths is really getting into one specific person's head and digging into their problems, but this actually worked great! For a lesser author a big chunk of the tension coming from us being able to see conflicts coming from people lying to each other or having different amounts of information would not work, but she nailed it. I also love that we're not really concerned with who did the murder but who'll be blamed for it.
The Keeper, Tana French
Felt similarly about this to The Hunter! Multiple POVs continued to work really well, I care Trey, once again this specific town in Ireland will ruin your life.
A Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
Read two great Tana French novels and had to immediately eat some trash. Sometimes that's how it is. The fact that this horny Viking wolf soulbonding book predates the existence of omegaverse is kind of astounding to me. they were trying to create it from first principles. I wish I wasn't so compelled by Sarah Monette's back catalogue of varyingly problematic yaoi but I actually wish she would go back to exclusively writing that. Sorry to her much more successful post-Goblin Emperor career!! Anyway Doctrine of Labyrinths is more specifically up my alley in the problematic yaoi mines but I did enjoy reading this book about what if you were assigned omega at wolf soulbonding and did immediately get the next one for further wolf soulbond yaoi drama. I don't really care about Viking worldbuilding stuff but they seem to be having fun with it.
2/3 of A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin
Read two of the Dunk and Egg novellas post watching Dunky Egg, will read the third one when I get around to it. I read all of the existing ASOIAF novels when I was in high school and there has yet to be a new one since then and I am pretty much out of the game (tried to watch HOTD, got bored and gave up despite the promise of toxic yuri, a betrayal of my principles, etc) but we watched the AKOTSK show and it was pretty fun and charming so here I am. I think forcing GRRM into the novella box and not letting the story sprawl too much is probably actually really good for him. Fun characters, I really liked Dunk's failed romance in the second novella, it comes with weirdly good illustrations, and crucially this is helping me figure out what the hell is going on with the Targ politics in all the Dunk/Baelor fic I've been reading. Bloodraven who??
also, sidebar, but I can't stop thinking about the wiki of ice and fire's method of guessing Lyonel Baratheon's age based on inferences like "well surely he was at least 15 at the Tourney at Ashford" and "surely he wasn't older than 65 when he fought Dunk in single combat during a rebellion that happened for really funny reasons". they have a whole page of age inferences like this. I love every wiki of ice and fire contributor.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou
I listened to this and really enjoyed it as a chores audiobook because it's just like, a really long series of people working at Theranos and having a terrible time in increasingly crazy ways. and also the reveal that Elizabeth Holmes's rich older boyfriend had a fancy car with the license plate DAZKPTL took me the fuck out.
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Date: 2026-04-24 09:38 pm (UTC)also i didn't realize Sarah Monette = Katherine Addison? TIL, and also, gosh come to think of it there's just a lot of horny animal soulbonding in ye older sff isn't there (pern, valdemar... ok i guess lackey's version is rather more chaste but it's VERY iddy... etc). do they still write stuff like that anymore. was it like Lost or C++ or serialist music where you just had to Be There to get it.
also i should really catch up on my tana french backlog huh
ty for the book writeups they are Intriguing as always~
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Date: 2026-04-24 10:17 pm (UTC)YEAH I think they had her rebrand for sales reasons and the two pen names certainly feel like they have. Distinct Styles lol. I feel like I missed out on a ton of the horny animal stuff at the time tbh (no lackey or pern or dragon books in general in my youth, was never a horse girl...) I wonder if it's all in romantasy now? Doesn't fourth wing have horny dragon bonding stuff?
on the one hand, never a bad idea to save a tana french or two for a rainy day!! this was partially why I put off reading the hunter for so long lol. I did have a very funny conversation with my mom (has read a few dublin murders at my behest and the whole Cal Hooper trilogy) where she was like, well I enjoy the Cal books better because it's all the same guy and I'm attached to the characters! and I was like, well I like Dublin Murders better because those guys are able to get truly emotionally terrorized in a way that's only possible if you're never going to make them the protagonist of a book ever again...two types of people I guess.
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Date: 2026-04-25 03:11 am (UTC)(also i feel like tana french is such a perfect intersection of like, tastes w/ mom tastes—my mom and i have VERY little overlap in what we read but when i was like "i think you would like mackey's no good terrible very bad day & the hit follow-up, Scorcher Inexplicably Becoming Someone You Care About," it was Instant Hit For The Whole Family lmao. maybe i should try and sell her on cal hooper and compare notes on that too LOL)
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Date: 2026-04-25 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-04-25 07:56 pm (UTC)