Author: Meg

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

- Meg

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the next several Fridays, I will be featuring titles I’ve added to my TBR cart! This week’s feature is Amal El-Mohtar’s and Max Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War published by Saga Press in 2019.

When Red wins, she stands alone.

Blood slicks her hair. She breathes out steam in the last night of this dying world.

That was fun, she thinks, but the thought sours in the framing. It was clean, at least. Climb up time’s threads into the past and make sure no one survives this battle to muddle the futures her Agency’s arranged — the futures in which her Agency rules, in which Red herself is possible. She’s come to knot this strand of history and sear it until it melts.

She holds a corpse that was once a man, her hands gloved in its guts, her fingers clutching its alloy spine. She lets go, and the exoskeleton clatters against rock. Crude technology. Ancient. Bronze to depleted uranium. He never had a chance. That is the point of Red.

I love time travel and I always have, and I’m really excited to see how this novella unfolds. I’ve heard such great things about it!

MONTHLY REWIND: October & November 2019

- Meg 1 Comment

Even though it’s not quite the end of November yet, I’m doing a wrap-up/check-in post because I feel like I’ve failed at everything in November due to some sort of good life things. I’ve also realized that I am not good at monthly challenges while on a ridiculous work schedule, so my fifth attempt at Nanowrimo will probably be my last. Until I get into better habits, I can’t sustain magically and seemingly overnight writing outputs of 1,700 words a day. I did finally get a job, and I’m back working at a bookstore, which is good for me because I feel useful but also a little bad because I have no control sometimes when it comes to buying new books. I also have access to physical arcs again, and I grabbed a few off the shelf that I’m excited to read! I also got some kind of illness last weekend that threw off all of my plans to read a lot and start updating my instagram more, but it’s life and sometimes I need to focus my energy elsewhere. I also purchased Pokemon Sword and Shield, and I’m excited to play through them both!

Here’s what I’m currently reading as of this posting:

  • The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon
  • The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings, by Edgar Allan Poe
  • Waiting for Tom Hanks, by Kerry Winfrey
  • This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (I have a First Lines Friday post for this book this week!)

In October, I read ten books, but so far in November, I’ve only finished three.

October’s reads:

  • The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe, by D.G. Compton
  • Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
  • The Ascent to Godhood, by JY Yang
  • The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Hannu Rajaniemi
  • Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, by Christopher de Hamel
  • The Duchess Deal, by Tessa Dare
  • The English Wife, by Lauren Willig
  • Something Strange and Deadly, by Susan Dennard
  • Recursion, by Blake Crouch
  • A Darkness Strange and Lovely, by Susan Dennard

November’s reads:

  • Strange and Ever After, by Susan Dennard
  • The Guinevere Deception, by Kiersten White
  • The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman

Now, onto books received, grabbed, and purchased! All arcs are courtesy of the publishers, including the ones sent to my store, and I’ve received no compensation for reading them or for their future reviews/features. I’ve been visiting Goodwill lately when I drop off things to donate, and I picked up some books there as revisits and research for pacing for writing geared for younger readers.

ARCS (release date)

  • Vagabonds, by Hao Jingfang (April 14, 2020)
  • Fate of the Fallen, by Kel Kade (November 2019)
  • The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescott (September 2019)
  • A Queen in Hiding, by Sarah Kozloff (January 2020)
  • The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, by Ken Liu (February 25, 2020)
  • Things in Jars, by Jess Kidd (February 2, 2020)

Purchases, new

  • Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, by Temi Oh
  • Velocity Weapon, by Megan E. O’Keefe
  • Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, by Rebecca Roanhorse
  • The Cloud Roads, by Martha Wells
  • The Merciful Crow, by Margaret Owen
  • Fortuna, by Kristyn Merbeth
  • The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern
  • The Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo

Purchases, used

  • The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo
  • Redwall, by Brian Jacques
  • The Babysitter’s Club #1: Kristy’s Great Idea, by Ann M. Martin
  • The Babysitter’s Club #2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, by Ann M. Martin

It’s a LOT. I also accidentally forgot to update my address on my Bardugo preorder so it’s at my old place and I just need to contact my former roommates and see if they can mail out anything else that’s been sent to the house, because I think some other books have been sent there even though I’ve updated my address everywhere I can think of!

What are you reading currently? Have you started planning out 2020’s reading goals? I’m working on figuring out new images for the blog for the new year/decade, and hopefully getting back on track with my reading and online life.

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: Call Upon the Water, by Stella Tillyard

- Meg

Yay, it’s Friday! First Lines Friday is a new feature on my blog that features the first few lines of any book that interests me, new or old! This week I’m featuring Stella Tillyard’s Call Upon the Water. I received this complimentary review copy from Atria (thank you!) and a good historical fiction novel is right up my alley at the moment. Sometimes I want to get lost in the past and see the world through someone else’s lenses, especially ones about the “New World” and the struggles people faced when leaving their home countries and going elsewhere. Without any further adieu, here are the first lines from the book!

Nieuw Amsterdam, Manatus Elyandt.

The 1st day of April, 1664.

I am afloat in the Oost Rivier, rocking on the waves, when I hear a song. Silence covers the city and wraps me in darkness. In front of me it is still night, but behind me, to the east, all the day stands ready to arrive. In a moment the sun will burst above the horizon on Lange Eylandt and the city of Nieuw Amsterdam will wake and stir. By noon we will feel the thin warmth of April; half winter, and half the promise of spring. I am happy to be alive on the water and to smell the salt.

On the sandy shore I find the dry carcass of a horseshoe crab, hollowed out and turned to the sky. A thousand lives will follow this death. In a month the horseshoe crabs will come back. The water will be black with them. Each year they surf the waves, washing back and forth until they can scramble up the beach with their blue-and-orange claws. They do not pause after this struggle, but climb to safety, lay their eggs, in the sand and crawl back to the water. Clouds of seabirds wait for this moment, migrants from the south. They clatter down and gorge themselves on the eggs, fattening for their journey. All nature is on the move, restless and lively.

This is formatted like a journal, and the first few pages remind me of the Dear America/Royal Diaries series that gave you a glimpse into someone’s life in such a personal way. I can’t wait to read the rest of this!

BOOK REVIEW: The English Wife, by Lauren Willig

- Meg

BOOK REVIEW: The English Wife, by Lauren WilligTitle: The English Wife by Lauren Willig
Published by St. Martin's Press
Published: January 9th 2018
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Pages: 376
Format: Hardcover, ARC
Source: Purchased, Netgalley
Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Willig, comes this scandalous New York Gilded Age novel full of family secrets, affairs, and even murder.

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life: he’s the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor manor in England, they had a whirlwind romance in London, they have three year old twins on whom they dote, and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and renamed it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

 I was looking through my Netgalley queue deciding on my next read, and Lauren Willig’s The English Wife caught my eye. It was one of those I started reading a long time ago, set it aside for whatever reason, and ended up purchasing a copy of the book for myself because look at that cover? It’s gorgeous. So with it being October and with me being in the mood for some historical fiction, I decided to pick this up again. This took a little bit of time to get into, but by the time I got through the first quarter of the book, I was hooked and I needed to know how the story got to its end. There’s nothing entirely new about the plot or the types of characters and once I was clued into a certain character’s behaviors, I did begin to put together the pieces of the narrative and very nearly guess whodunit, and that’s completely fine. It felt both familiar and new, I was entertained, and I loved the insights to and development of each of the four main characters.

One of the things I loved the most about The English Wife was the Gilded Age setting. I’m such a sucker for it, especially when it’s done well, and this novel felt incredibly atmospheric in just the right ways. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Willig before, but this certainly makes me want to go back and see what I’ve missed! After being in a reading slump for a while, Willig’s novel was exactly what I needed. Something a little familiar, something a little new, something that reminded me how fun reading could be. I absolutely devoured this within a twenty-four hour period, and it felt like it had been a while since a book was able to captivate me like that from the get-go.

This was a perfect mid-October read, and I’m glad I finally picked it up. If you like historical fiction with a heavier lean on romance, do look into this!

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the digital galley! All opinions are my own.

BOOK REVIEW: The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Wiseman

- Meg

BOOK REVIEW: The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob WisemanTitle: The New Voices of Science Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi, Jacob Weisman, Kelly Robson, Alice Sola Kim, Rich Larson, Sam J. Miller, Suzanne Palmer, Sarah Pinkser, E. Lily Yu, Rebecca Roanhorse, Alexander Weinstein, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, S. Qiouyi Lu, Nino Cipri, Jamie Wahls, Darcie Little Badger, Samantha Mills, David Erik Nelson, Jason Sanford, Amman Sabet, Lettie Prell, Amal El-Mohtar
Published by Tachyon Publications
Published: November 5th 2019
Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 432
Format: ARC
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

What would you do if your collective of tiny bots suddenly decide to mutiny? Would you find bioprinted steak delicious, even after it was signed by the artist? Is an 11 second attention-span long enough to bond with a cryogenically-revived tourist? Would you sell your native language to send your daughter to college?

The avant garde of science fiction has appeared, arriving via time machines and portals that may (or may not) work properly. In this space-age sequel to award-winning anthology, The New Voices of Fantasy, The New Voices of Science Fiction has launched the rising stars of the last five years of science fiction, including Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Alice Sola Kim, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Rich Larson, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker, Darcie Little Badger, S. Qiouyi Lu, Kelly Robson, Suzanne Palmer, Nino Cipri, and more. Their wide-ranging tales were hand-selected by cutting-edge author Hannu Rajaniemi (The Quantum Thief) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (Invaders).

So go ahead, join the starship revolution. The new kids hotwired the AI.

 The New Voices of Science Fiction is an excellent companion to The New Voices of Fantasy published by Tachyon in 2017. So often genre is lumped together, especially science fiction and fantasy, but, just like me, if you enjoyed The New Voices of Fantasy, you will almost certainly enjoy The New Voices of Science Fiction. All of the stories included in this anthology were originally published or written within the last five or so years? Some of the names are unfamiliar to me, but a lot of these names have come to critical acclaim within those last five years, so it’s an excellent introduction if you’re also wondering where to begin with the genre. Yes, the entire SF genre. A lot of the older “classic” science fiction feels dated in tone, terminology, and technology and can at times feel intimidating for someone who may be unfamiliar with the genre, and this anthology elevates the newer voices we should be paying attention to. And yes, there are foundational genre works that act as cornerstones, but sometimes we have to smash the past and build something new.

My favorite stories in this anthology were Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience,” Amal El-Mohtar’s “Madeleine,” and Suzanne Palmer’s “Madeleine,” but all of them have something to consider and were all enjoyable to read. One of the things I loved most about this was that the writers included in this collection are so diverse, elevating a lot of different cultures, ideas, ways of looking at the world, and storytelling styles, and that is exactly what I hope for when I read any anthology, and this one ticked all of the boxes for me. This collection also made me want to go read the longer works by the authors included, and I realized I’ve had several books on my shelves already!

Thank you to Tachyon Publications and Netgalley for a complimentary review copy! All opinions are my own.