Fiction: The Frame-Up by Gwenda Bond is a paranormal heist novel set in contemporary Kentucky. Danielle Poissant is the daughter of a renowned art thief whom she helped send to prison, which led to her being shut out of the world of criminals with magic in which she’d grown up. Wracked by guilt at betraying her family (it’s complicated), ever since then she’s been working as a sort of one-person-and one-dog “Leverage” team, retrieving funds from scummy people and splitting them with the original victim – while not using her magical gift for forging paintings. But then, of course, she’s dragged ..read more

Fiction: Roux for Two by Aurora Rey was a cute, lowkey contemporary romance between a fat queer femme and a trans man. Chef Chelsea Boudreaux has just gotten her own show, which will be filmed in the small south Louisiana town she left behind; her career is about to take off and take her places. College academic advisor Bryce Cormier has lived in the same town with his loving family for his whole life and never plans to move anywhere else; he longs for a partner and, eventually, children. Their unspoken high school crushes are revived when Chelsea comes back to town, and friendship turns to at ..read more

Fiction: Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree is a prequel to Legends and Lattes, set early in orc narrator Viv’s career as a mercenary. When she’s sidelined in a small town by a leg wound, boredom leads her to make new friends and try new experiences in a way that will influence her later in life, after she retires and opens a coffee shop. So, basically, it’s very similar to Legends and Lattes, and if you liked that one, you will very likely enjoy this one as well. I actually liked it a bit better because of the deft commentary on genre books and reading and what those things do for us as ..read more

Fiction: The Lady And The Tiger by copperbadge is original fiction in the Shivadh universe, also published under author name Sam Starbuck; it features a romance between Lady Alanna Daskaz and the Duke of Shivadlakia, Gerald ben Eitan, known as Jerry. When the duke of nearby Galia dies, Alanna and Jerry, close friends since childhood, travel there as an official delegation. Alanna investigates the succession, looking for an unknown heir, while Jerry reveals unexpected competence in her support, including fending off suitors. Their romance is subtle at first, but soon feels like an inevitability ..read more

Fiction: Demon Fighter Sucks by Katherine Crighton is short fiction at Apex Magazine. It’s speculative fiction about YouTube and grief. After the Gold: A Twin Cities Ice Book by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese is a contemporary romance whose protagonists are a pairs figure skating team. They’ve known each other since they were children, but their brief romantic fling ten years ago was followed by a messy loss in a big competition, so they skate with other partners for a time. When the book opens, they’ve reunited and are about to compete in the Olympics. It’s not a spoiler that they win, give ..read more

Fiction: A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker was my TBR Challenge book for October. System Collapse by Martha Wells is the new Murderbot book. I won’t spoil anything here! I definitely recommend reviewing the previous volume (Network Effect) if you don't remember details, as this book follows on directly with very little time interval; I feel the action is subordinate to Murderbot dealing with the personal fallout of those events. It was gripping! Also, Tarik rocks. Fanfiction: Mutiny on the Reliant by WerewolvesAreReal is a Temeraire AU in which Laurence and newly-hatched Temeraire are set ..read more

September involved some travel and other transitions for me, so I spent almost all of it reading a single series. Fanfiction: The Desert Storm by Blue_Sunshine and its sequel series are well over a million words of Star Wars time travel AU: when Luke and Leia are small, Ben Kenobi is caught in a sandstorm on Tatooine and ends up in his own past, when Anakin Skywalker is only three or four. Ben takes Anakin and his mother Shmi to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, not revealing his identity because his younger self is around, and starts trying to make changes to save the Jedi Order and the galaxy fr ..read more

Fiction: The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer is first in a long series of British girls’ school stories set in the Tyrol in Austria; the Chalet School is explicitly British, in that the Austrian students strive to follow the traditions of English school stories such as playing pranks, celebrating the headmistress’ birthday, and playing cricket. Originally published in 1925, there’s not really any mention of World War One, but a fair amount of colonialism in India plays into the story indirectly. The story begins with the twins Dick and Madge, in their early twenties, trying to fig ..read more

Fiction: These Prisoning Hills by Christopher Rowe is an atmospheric novella set in a post-apocalyptic Kentucky. The United States, or at least some of the Southern states, have been devastated by a war with an AI, who created the Voluntary State of Tennessee and destroyed swathes of the environment with weird composite creatures and colossal weapons with human cores. The humans fought back with their own cyborgian soldiers. Meanwhile, the Appalachians were stripped of their natural resources and barely retain sovereignty and self-sufficiency due to loss of population. Artificial beings, whom ..read more

Fiction: Witch King by Martha Wells only just came out, so I will avoid major spoilers, but it’s great. The worldbuilding is similar to the Raksura books in that there are different sentient species who interact, but except for the demons while in their home Underearth (possibly another dimension or magical realm?), they are all human in appearance. The different types of people use magic in different ways, some of which harm others, some of which involve working with magical elemental beings. When the story opens, a stable situation has been upended. Alternating chapters, skillfully tied toge ..read more