January round up

I have been a very busy bookseller this last month. There's been some redecorating, events, section shuffles, and the post-Christmas tidy up. But I've still found time to cram some books down my gullet...

I'm trying to do better at keeping track of what, too. So here we go!

All five volumes of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples:

Pretty good fun. Filthy, bloody, true to its characters and building a story quickly on an intergalactic scale. On board for more.

Planetfall by Emma Newman:

Oh, wow. Yeah. Sci-fi with a soul. At times beautiful, heartbreaking, and brutal. Definitely worth the read. Really drags you into the main character and forces you to experience every agony and every fear with her. Plus, great use of 3D printing! What more could you want, right?

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan:

Nails the style (for me, anyway). Steampunky Victorian-esque travel memoir. With dragons. I do love the real madcap tales of explorers seeking out the source of the Nile or hunting for Shangri-La (while maintaining proper standards, as one must, you know) and this hits all the right notes for that. Cleverly done and very entertaining.

All the Loki: Agent of Asgard run by Al Ewing and mostly Lee Garbett:

I needed to revisit these and oops, I work in a bookshop and how did those trade paperbacks fall into my lap oh dear. This run struggled a little in the middle, where it got tied up in other concurrent stories in other Marvel comics, but when it can be its own thing and take a straight run at its own plot, it's a twisty turny glory of a yarn. I love the start, I love the end, and all the wisecracking Loki in the middle makes it worthwhile.

Starborn by Lucy Hounsom:

I think I liked this by the end. Mostly it was okay, very Eddings/Canavan/Paolini. Touches of Queen of the Tearling, Tamora Pierce... Fiesty young heroine, looming dark powers, secrets and magic and being whisked away from her little village for the fate of the world depends upon her. That kind of thing. Does that perfectly fine. Does a few things nicely differently. Falls down quite hard on the portrayal/response to sexual assault on its female characters, although these incidents are relatively minor.

The Wicked + The Divine volume 1 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie:

Oooh, now this was fun. Such crisp art. Such a great concept. I liked this a lot. It ticks quite a few boxes for me. (Mythology? Check. Androgyny? Check. Magic? Check! Mystery? Check.) Getting hold of volume 2 sharpish.

Disclaimer by Renee Knight:

Yeah. Well. I tried to like this, I really did. But I am so very done with thrillers that hinge on punishing a woman for having a sex drive. That's basically all you need to know about this one. Sex, assault, death, misplaced anger, misogyny, contrived mystery. Yawn. Can we have a new trope for this year's thrillers please?

The City by Stella Gemmell:

Very very Gemmell. Details, details, details. Covers a really big time scale. Has a large cast of named and point-of-view characters. Does pretty darn well at making said large cast relatively even in terms of gender, and varied in terms of age. The different ideologies and attitudes that brings in are also handled quite well. I enjoyed it, once I'd got my head switched into dense, deep, gritty fantasy mode rather than the light and fast I've been favouring more recently.

The Infinite Loop by Pierrick Colinet and Elsa Charretier:

Gah, gorgeous. Love the art style, and the story is a rousing defence of freedom and equality, punctuated with time travel, paradoxes, dinosaurs, and more LGBT+ inclusion than you can shake a stick at. So obviously I loved it.

The Heir of Night by Helen Lowe:

*paroxysms of glee and delight* Argh. Yes. How do I even? This book is for me, all for me. Heroic fantasy with casual splashes of sci-fi. Classic tropes that feel fresh and necessary, not just in there for the sake of it. Speed, menace, urgency, a plot that doesn't need to kick its heels and dawdle to fill the pages. I love the characters. I love the magics. I love the world already. It's rich and varied and always a little bit deeper than you think. And the exposition is handled really well. Tales that everyone knows are just dropped in casually. Tales we need to know more of may well have been held back from our main characters for decent enough reasons, so now we get to hear them in full too.

Gyah, I loved this so hard.

I also failed dismally at joining the Rosemary and Rue readalong this month, but I am in the process of reading and loving the book, so there's that at least.

And now I must away and make robes for the Harry Potter event at the shop on Thursday...