A biologist, a psychologist, a surveyor, and an anthropologist are on the twelfth expedition into a region known as Area X. They discover what the biologist terms an inverted tower, straight down into the ground, which appears on none of their maps. But the members of the expedition have been subject to at least some level of mental conditioning (none of them remember how they got into Area X), and what the real purpose of their mission might be is unclear even to them.

Although Annihilation was on the shortlist for best SF book on the 2015 RUSA Reading List, the tone is more horror, a creeping dread of threats internal and external. There are comparable SF works (the movie Sunshine came to mind at times), but it's also quite Lovecraftian. Not only am I not sure what happened at times, I'm not sure how sure I'm supposed to be of what happened, but I was engrossed even as I was confused and the other two books in the series are already out, so if time allows I intend to continue reading and see what answers may come.

Overall: B+

Raiders of the Nile is another in the prequel timeline of the Roma Sub Rosa series following the young Gordianus on his travels, picking up in Alexandria shortly after The Seven Wonders. It begins with Gordianus celebrating his birthday by taking his slave Bethesda shopping and watching a mime show. There he discovers an actress who looks very much like Bethesda. After soldiers break up the show, Gordianus and Bethesda sit and drink with the actors and Bethesda and her double go back to the market. Gordianus eventually falls asleep in the shade, and when he wakes, the actors are gone. Several days later, neither of the women have reappeared, but the word in the market place is that one was abducted and one was led away by a servant.

This book is something of a departure for the Roma Sub Rosa books, in that it makes no pretense to being a mystery. The question of whether Bethesda or the actress she resembles was kidnapped is settled very quickly (the fact that it was Bethesda is even revealed in the cover blurb), as is who was behind the kidnapping. The story instead is Gordianus's quest to locate the abductors and find a way to rescue her. Gordianus does a very small bit of detecting to unravel a conspiracy near the end of the book. The author's note claims Greek novels as a major inspiration for the story, and that is an appropriate comparison. It is an adventure tale, not quite as fantastic as the ancients might have made it, but certainly a bit larger than life at times.

I'll admit that I would like to get back to old Gordianus. The Roma Sub Rosa series began with a case that helped launch Cicero to prominence, so I've always thought that it needed to continue at least through Cicero's death. However, this was a rollicking good tale that made me happy that Saylor decided to spend a bit more time in Alexandria.

Overall: A

It's been a long wait since the second blood magic book, through no fault of the author. Heart's Blood came out in 2009. But the publisher dropped the series, and it took until last summer for Gail Dayton to get the rights to the last book back and self publish. Fortunately, it was not at all difficult to pick up where it left of without rereading. Where we left off, mysterious machines that cancel out magic have been appearing in magical dead zones, and Elinor Tavis, a wizard apprenticed to alchemist Harry Tomlinson, is about to challenge the magister of the wizard's guild.

It's not an especially intricate plot, but it's a fun adventure. Elinor and Harry both sometimes acted a little stupider than was strictly necessary during the Mandatory Black Moment, in my humble opinion, but when they aren't being stupid their relationship is enough fun to forgive them.

All in all this is just good solid entertainment, no more, no less.

Overall: B+

This review is based on a free copy received from the publisher through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Since Neil Gaiman's work is wide ranging, any examination of his work must be, also, even if it only tackles fifteen years. This collection of essays covers Anansi Boys and American Gods, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Calendar Tales, three children's books, one Doctor Who episode, and Sandman: Overture. As is probably inevitable in a collection with so many authors, the quality of the actual writing is uneven at times, but the material is consistently thought provoking.

Overall: B

Full disclosure: I did receive an ARC of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer's program. This review, however, is based on a finished copy of the book which I received from the publisher for free because at one point somebody suggested it for the Notable Books Council.

Callandish is a Gracekeeper, who performs burial rites. North performs in a floating circus with a bear. Both women have connections to mysterious sea creatures. That's about it.

I think this book was going for quiet, atmospheric fantasy in the vein of The Night Circus. Unfortunately, it was less successful. A large part of the success of The Night Circus was that it made the reader feel the excitement and the enthusiasm of those attending the circus. Everything in The Gracekeepers has a shabby, starving feel that makes one not want to visit, and the characters and the story are insufficiently interesting to pull one in on their own. Additionally I felt that the two halves of the story were not connected as well as they should be. This could easily have been two separate novellas that just happen to be presented alongside each other here. The hints of selkies also come to very little.

Very prettily written, but there's not much there there.

Overall: C-

Ancillary Mercy is the third book in the Imperial Radch trilogy. It picks up very shortly after Ancillary Sword but is more focused on the main plot thread going back to Ancillary Justice, Breq's quest for revenge against the Lord of the Radch.

There was a lot of humor in this installment, most of courtesy of Translator Zeiat, although there were also some moments involving Seivarden's anachronistic habits that were quite funny. This is absolutely not the place you want to start the series, but for the most part it is a highly satisfying conclusion. Not everything is neatly tied up, but we are left at a place in the lives of the major characters where the current story is over. I'll be sorry to see them go, but I'll be looking forward to what Ann Lecke does next. If it's another story in this universe I'll be very happy, but I'll probably be happy no matter what it is.

Overall: A

As I said, the reason why I didn't post for a long time was that I've been reading for the Notable Books Council. Now that the list has been published, I figure I get to show it off.

The 2016 Notable Books List

I am all about The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, which also won the Carnegie Award for fiction. I read it very early on in the process and, as I mentioned in the year in review post, it remained one of my favorite reads of 2015. In a way it reminds me of M Butterfly, no doubt in part because of the spy aspects but also because of the issues of identity that it raises and the intensity of the ending.

Deceptions is the third book in a series, so here be spoilers for the first two.

At long last, I'm getting to read things that aren't for the Notable Books Council, and this was the first one of the books I went back to on my stack. In it, we get back to the main thread of Omens, which I felt was somewhat dropped in Visions, Olivia/Eden's quest to determine the truth of whether or not her birth parents were serial killers. In the first volume, they were cleared of killing one couple, but that still leaves three others. Olivia (we'll stick with that for the rest of the review because it's the name she prefers) also struggles to balance her relationship with her MBA student/biker boyfriend, Ricky, and her complicated friendship with Gabriel, her lawyer, her employer, and your basic broody Gothic hero as she learns more about her otherworldly heritage.

There's something compelling here, both in the murder investigation plot and in the characters, particularly Gabriel, as annoying as he is. Which is incredibly annoying, and yet for some reason I am still completely on Team Gabriel(TM) in spite of the fact that there is a part of my brain that is so, so sick of damaged broody men who can't let themselves get too close to people or really even acknowledge that they want to when it's incredibly obvious that they do. It's probably a Rochester thing, a friends-to-lovers thing, or a combination of the two. I love the archetype and yet I also really hate how much of the archetype he is.

But, like I think I've seen these characters before, I feel like I've read this book before, too. We learn some more information about the murders, but I don't feel like this book ends in that much of a different place than where it begins. Part of this is that the big new things than our main characters learn about the fae world are things that I thought were a given based on visions that Olivia had in the previous book. Over and over again in this series, I find myself realizing things a good half of a book ahead of Olivia and wondering if the reader is meant to be ahead of her or if they were intended to be surprises, but weren't really as subtle as they were meant to be.

I would have finished reading this book even if I were at home and didn't have a limited number of books at hand. For that matter, I still plan to read the next one in the series. I do want to know to what extent this series goes the way I think it will be going.

Overall: B-

Ok, it's been a long time since I posted here. I'm on the Notable Books Council for the Reference and User Services Association division of the American Library Association, so virtually everything I've read since I last posted has been for the Notable Books List, and what wasn't was for the selection committee for our local Big Read or for our Pub-Lit book club. I think about those books differently than I would if I was just reading something to read it, so I don't really feel like I can review them in the same way. The Notable Books Committee will pick the list for the best books of 2014 next week in Boston, so I'm almost done with that and should have a month of reading mostly for pleasure before the first books of next year come in, so I hope to post here more often at least for a while. Here's last year in review:

How many books read in 2015?

149

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?

Fiction: 102
Nonfiction: 44
Poetry: 3

Male/Female authors?

Male: 78
Female: 71
Multi-author, at least one of each: 0

Favorite books read?

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen was my favorite that I read for Notable Books related reasons and Vicious by V.E. Schwab was my favorite that I read for other reasons. The Sympathizer is a spy thriller that also happens to be a brilliant book about identity and ideology and loyalty. Vicious features two opposing individuals, formerly best friends, who gave themselves super powers and who have that Sherlock/Moriarty just-screw-already thing going on so hard that the author offered to send a signed book plate to anybody who writes slash about them. Sadly I could only find one person on the internet who did so. (I mean, Victor literally observed at one point that he wasn't sure if he was more jealous of Eli for getting the girl he had his eye on or the girl in question for taking Eli's attention away from him. The slash goggles do not have to be that strong a prescription to see it.)

Least favorite?

Because I was having to read a lot of things I didn't choose to read this year, there were a lot more things that I finished but that bored me than there usually are, but I think the one I actually disliked the most was The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant. This young woman lives through a time period where a bunch of stuff happens like world wars and women's suffrage but doesn't actually participate in any of it herself or make any particularly interesting observations about what's going on around her.

Oldest book read?

Giovanni's Room, I think, since virtually everything I read last year came out since November of 2014.

Newest?

Virtually everything I read this year had just come out.

How many re-reads?

5

Most books read by one author this year?

David Liss, I think. I reread all of his non-series books back in January when I had time for rereads and then The Day of Atonementcame out in paperback.

Any in translation?

Probably more than I am aware of, just looking at the list. Bred to Kill by Franck Thilliez, for sure. 

How many of this year's books were from the library?

38

Book that most changed my perspective:

I don't know that any book really qualifies for this.

Favorite character:
Well, I read a Dresden Files book, so, there's that. But of the new people, Victor in Vicious. 

Favorite scene:
Probably the ending of A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong by Cecilia Grant

Most inspirational in terms of your own writing?
Romantic Outlaws, by Charlotte Gordon, a duel biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.

How many you'd actually read again?
About thirty, I think.

Favorite quote:
This is going to be a slight paraphrase because I don't have the book at hand, but in the second paragraph of Animals by Unsworth is something to this effect. "I figure there's two reasons why girls get tied to beds: sex, or exorcisms. Which was it with you last night?"