Harry Dresden has been hiding out on the island Demonreach for the past year when Mab shows up with orders for him: he must help Nicodemos Archleone with a plan to rob Hades's vault, in order to repay a favor Mab owes him. But, the fae being the fae, it's strongly suggested that as soon as the mission is completed, meaning as soon as the vault has been robbed, the debt will have been repaid and therefore anything goes.

Either this is the best Dresden files book yet or it has been far too long since I read one. (Both is also a possibility.) About 80% of the way through, there was a revelation that made me want to go back and reread the whole thing. I resisted the urge, but I did flip back and find a scene where it was relevant and was impressed by how the signs were all there and yet I never saw it coming. I know I'll enjoy it even more when I do reread. But even more important than the twists and turns as Harry deals with the situation Mab has put him in, I love how Harry and everybody around him repeatedly puts themselves on the line for their friends. Uriel sums it up best near the end, in reference to a scene that is simultaneously one of the most moving and geekiest things I've ever read. I can't wait for the next one.


Overall: A+

The Alchemy of Stone is the story of Mattie, an emancipated automation, attempting to establish a life for herself as an alchemist separate from her machinist creator's while a revolt threatens the city.

This is exactly the sort of steampunk I've been looking for for months. Most obviously, there's the sexual politics. Mattie is a machine, but she's a female machine, with all of the structural undergarments that a live woman would have to wear for the purposes of 19th century fashion built permanently into her body. She was made to serve, but she has the abilities to think and to feel pain and pleasure. To an extent, through asking to learn alchemy, she has managed to create a life for herself, but it's unclear if she even is in any legal sense emancipated or if her creator, Loharri, merely allows her to live alone and tend to her own affairs most of the time. But he keeps her bound to him in various ways, including keeping the key she needs to be wound. Their relationship was complex, often coercive at best and abusive at worst, but fascinating. Loharri is cruel but it comes from a place that is more pathetic than anything else. He's afraid of losing her, so he builds things into her that force her to visit him, thereby giving her more reasons to escape. It's the system that is broken and everybody in it is damaged. After Mattie develops a plan to get her key from him, the thought crosses her mind that she could give it to the (human) man she loves, but she rejects it quickly, resolving that once the (female) allies who are getting her key give it to her, she will always wind herself in advance so nobody else will ever touch it again. The problem isn't who has the power, it's anybody else having the power.

Then there are the racial angles. Some of them are explicit. After an attack on the city, the Easterners living there are suspected and hounded by the authorities. But in addition to the literal racial conflicts among the humans, there's also an extent to which Mattie is a stand-in for women in racial minorities, a minority in a minority who suffers additional acts of oppression often ignored by her friends Iolande and Niobe on the grounds that there are more important things they need to do, and who sometimes feels excluded from the world of women made of flesh.

There are the class issues surrounding industrialization. The alchemists and the machinists have been in competition since people began building machines, but the real rebellion comes from the proletariat workers who have lost good jobs to machines, and who work in the mines where automated brains make decisions about how they will work.

There was a plot thread involving gargoyles that I never fully understood. When it came up I felt like I had unknowingly started in the middle of a series and was supposed to start with background information that I didn't know. But I love how all encompassing the book's study of the world within it was. It can hold its own against any social science fiction.

Overall: A-

This review is based on a free copy received from the publisher that finally showed up four months after the publication date.

Sebastiao Raposa was rescued from Lisbon as a teenager, the only one of his New Christian family to escape the Inquisition. In England he was taken in by Benjamin Weaver and trained as his apprentice. Ten years later, he returns to Lisbon with the goal of killing the Inquisitor who killed his parents. But new revelations about how his parents were arrested and attempts to repay those who helped to save him make his mission more complicated than he first thought, and after so many years and with so much unknown, his friends and enemies may not be whom he thinks.

This may be my favorite of David Liss's books yet, although there are some I may need to reread in order to make that determination for sure. It is loosely connected to the Benjamin Weaver series (set some years after his most recent previous appearance, Weaver makes a couple of brief cameo appearances), and reads like a cross between it and The Count of Monte Cristo.

I'd still like to know more about Weaver's life in between the end of The Devil's Company and the beginning of this book, but until that happens, I'll be happy with spinoffs like this.

Overall: A

Jackdaw is a spinoff of K.J. Charles's Charm of Magpies series. When we met thief and windwalker Jonah in Flight of Magpies, he was being coerced into working for the much-badder-guys with threats against his lover, police constable Ben. As Jackdaw begins, Ben is tracking him down in London, determined to see him punished for causing him to be kicked off the police force and sentenced to prison. But when they meet, and when Ben learns the real reasons why Jonah abandoned him, his feelings aren't as simple as they were.

Reunion stories can be tricky. Often, either the baggage doesn't seem to be enough to keep the couple from immediately getting back together or it seems so severe that it's hard to want them to get back together. The balance was struck perfectly here. Jonah and Ben make the perfect pair of opposites, the former never thinking beyond the next step and never before really having had a reason to, the latter steady and dependable by inclination. And I didn't get any uncomfortable power imbalances from their relationship such as kept me from fully enjoying the other Charm of Magpies books, despite my love for the world and for Crane and Day separately. Speaking of which, it was also fun to check back in with the series regulars and to see them from a different perspective.

I feel like I should note that there's a potentially disturbing scene not far into the book. I can't exactly describe it as dubious consent, because consent is clearly given before anything actually happens. But somebody comes very close to doing some nonconsensual things.

Ben and Jonah's story appears to be done, and I'm looking forward to reading K.J. Charles's books in other series, but I hope she revisits this world through some other characters again in the future, too.

Overall: A

Sebastian was a house cat whose dearest friend was a dog named Sheba, until one day when a chemical developed by ants gives all the animals human intelligence as well as causing them to grow, begin to walk upright, and (for animals without hooves, at least) develop hands. Sebastian and Sheba are separated shortly before this transformation. Sebastian joins the war to fight the humans, taking the name Mort(e), the e in parenthesis to signify that he may become Death, or he may become just an ordinary person trying to live his life. Through it all, he continues to search for Sheba.

As the world changes and animals become the dominant civilization, the book examines both religion and the ideologies that can replace it. In the end, Mort(e) learns that love must be stronger than either religion or rationality.

There is much to like in this book, but also many ways in which it falls short. It covers a long time frame and sometimes moves so quickly that it's difficult to remain engaged in events. The characters are not especially deep, but that's often the case when it comes to SF of ideas. And I was bothered by the fact that when Mort(e) was finally reunited with Sheba by the ants, it turned out that she hadn't changed and was still a pet. Part of it may have been the chance to give him the choice about his own fate, a sort of opportunity to go back to Eden and innocence or stay in the new world and only then bring her with him, a decision that couldn't have been completely in his hands if she'd already changed. But she still hadn't finished the change at the point when the book actually ended, keeping her an abstract ideal/reward for him without ever showing what she turned out to be like as a full "person," so to speak. Still, it was an interesting book, and I am glad that I read it.


Overall: B+

This review is based on an advance readers copy received from the publisher.

The Siege Winter takes place against the background of the war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda over England in the mid-12th century. One of the protagonists is Maud, the lady of Kenniford Castle, which is caught between both sides. We also follow Gwilherm, a mercenary, and a young girl whom he rescued after he found her raped and nearly killed, who has taken the name Penda while traveling with him in disguise as a boy. But the monk who attacked Penda is still nearby, and Gwil believes he'll need to hunt him down before he and Penda become the targets instead.

The story is more thriller than historical epic, its focus very tightly on the fictional characters and plotlines (although Empress Matilda does appear).  The characters are rather lightly sketched types, and the serial rapist/killer nothing we haven't seen before. Still, it's well executed, and a highly enjoyable tale of war and mystery.

Overall: B