librarymouse's reviews
430 reviews

Midnight at the Houdini by Delilah S. Dawson

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adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Midnight at the Houdini. It is definitely a book that tells a lot about its characters, rather than showing, and at points, the genre-defining subtext is written into text, but partially because of that, I found the book charming. While the reader is told that Anna is type-A and a control freak, when she is dropped into the world of the Houdini, she is flexible and open to learning how the world works with a few breaks for panicking when she can't figure out the logic system behind the magic. I had read a few critiques about how the book read more as middle grade with the antagonists being one-dimensional and greedy. While that was true to an extent, I think Phoebe was well characterized as a scorned person, harmed by the people she should have been able to trust, and then warped by a decade and a half of living in a magical world under her control, she oscillates pretty hard between dictator lite and victim at the end of the book. I took Tony and Sebastian's seeming insanity and descent into villainy, when paired with Daniel's spike in concern for his daughter to be the intoxication of hotel (plus sleep deprivation) playing up the most prominent characteristic of each man. While he's described as someone who only cares about business by Anna, she's 16 and has already been proven to be an unreliable narrator. The ending did, however, feel very middle grade, but that's not a bad thing. I find middle grade novels to require a level of creativity when forced to build stories that don't contain the level of romance allowed and/or expected in young adult novels. I thought the ending as it related to Anna and Max's relationship was satisfying. The redemption of Anna's father and the rekindling of their relationship beyond the perfunctory one she'd perceived and allowed was heartwarming.
My main critique of the ending is Anna's near complete lack of panic for the possibility that she killed three men with her wish. Sure, they were nasty, but most of the book was about showing the dynamic and round nature of humanity in forcing Anna, her father, Max, and Phoebe out of their comfortable roles. In the context of her perfectionism, it feels odd that she would be okay with three men, two of whom she knew her whole life, dying because of her.
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Limetown by Cote Smith

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adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I know why so many people hate this book as a canonical addition to the world of the Limetown podcast. However, I went into Limetown fresh off the tails of Archive 81, fully expecting horrifyingly magical fuckery, and that's exactly the route the second season took in it's hard left turn out of the NPR format. I'm still mad that we don't really know what happened to Lia at the end of the podcast, after this story. I'm somewhat confused whether or not Emile can read Lia's thoughts. It seemed at first that was why he took a shine to Sylvia - as her replacement, but the final scene of the novel confuses that. Still, this was an enjoyable read, removed from the fact it retcons most of the podcast's first season. I genuinely enjoyed exploring more of this world as long as I was able to suspend my disbelief.
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The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan

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adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The Suitcase Clone is a very trippy addition to the Penumbra verse. I wasn't expecting the narrator. I enjoyed the leaning into the magical element of magical realism, though I'm not sure I fully understand the basement scene. I did enjoy seeing how deep the roots of the culture reach, connecting together the people readers meet in Sourdough beyond what was on the page. I would like to go on an adventure like that which is explored in this novella.
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Night of the Living Trekkies by Sam Stall, Kevin David Anderson

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adventurous dark funny fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Night of the Living Trekkies is a fantastically funny read, peppered with bits of Star Trek trivia. The premise of a gaggle of Star-Trek themed optimists trying to survive a zombie outbreak was a really neat way to explore genre conventions in science fiction. It was very meta in that vein, especially with the final page.
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Mossy by Jan Brett

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funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The illustrations in this book are beautiful! It's a gift of Jan Brett's across the board, but the end papers of this book in particular are wonderful. I love the lichen and mosses! The plot is okay. I am definitely not the intended audience age, but I enjoy the message of conservation of nature.
Sourdough by Robin Sloan

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adventurous funny informative mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really loved Sourdough. Robin Sloan's books offer me some semblance of home in this weird and shifting world of technology. I'm not sure I liked Lois's ethos of getting rich at the end of the novel, as it seems antithetical to the lesson she seemingly learned about greed from the starter, but it was overall a good read. I think the characters who work in the Marrow Fair are very interesting in their diversity and creativity. I really enjoyed how this novel plays with reputation, ambition, happiness, and where/how people seek to streamline their lives. The slurry and lembas subplot was funny, endearing, and a bit terror inducing at the same time. I look forward to reading more of these Penumbraverse and Penumbraverse-adjacent books!
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Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Orbital follows 24 hours in the lives of six astronauts abord the International Space Station. Like so many books, much of the story this novel tells is about grief.

Early on, the audience learns that Chie, an astronaut from Japan, has lost her mother while aboard the ISS. I sat on my floor and cried reading the early sections of the book featuring Chie. I just lost my 17 year old dog, and I had to watch her be put down over zoom. Orbital follows Chie's grief and anguish in such an tangible and empathetic way. She's so sad and is stuck so far away, unable to do anything but grieve and yearn to be home again, as it was. Sometimes, she ponders not wanting to leave the ISS because if she doesn't go back to Earth, than she will have never experienced a world without her mom in it. When the book switches to Chie's mother's point of view, as she lays dying on the steps to their house, she looks up into the sky, trying to find the spat that is her daughter on the ISS. She chooses to let go because she can only think how sad it would be fore Chie to come home only to watch her die. As Chie grieves, she brings the reader through the traditions to be followed, to lay her mother's body to rest. They will pick out the bones from her ashes, and while Chie doesn't want her family to wait for her to be back, her longing for there to be a piece of the long bone of her mother's arm, like a piece of her mother's strength is so sad.

The crew members aren't perfect paragons of humanity. They're flawed, jealous, and proud, and they have to deal with the rules enforced because of national competition between Russia and the US. They grapple with religion, lack of religion, and the fallibility of their human bodies against the void and beauty of space.
 
Orbital ends on a neutral note, not really coming to an end because it's just the end of the synthetically adhered to day on an the international space station that experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets over those 24 hours.
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The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals by Aaron Mahnke

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dark informative slow-paced

3.0

I'm not sure that I like this style of writing in long form. Often, by the time we get to the end of a section, I've lost the thread introduced in the beginning, that was supposed to tie them together. Still a good podcast
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The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke

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dark informative slow-paced

3.75

If you've listened to the first few dozen episodes of the podcast, you've read this book.
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The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

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adventurous emotional funny reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Cat Who Saved Books is a very interesting divergence from my normal reading, as of late. I generally enjoy magical realism, but this was unique even within the genre. The author's writing style has a far different tone and pace than most Western authors. The characters are refreshingly direct and sincere, and the plot handles grief and the differing reactions one can have to grief with grace and humor. I greatly enjoyed following Ringtaro's journey through the labyrinths and seeing him grow to understand that people care about him and figure out that he cares for them in return. I also enjoyed learning more about the concept of hikikomori, and I appreciate the efforts through which the translator went in order to retain the author's message and the nuances of the Japanese language as they differ from English.
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