hrj | Dec. 31st, 2025

Dec. 31st, 2025

I read a shit-load of books in September, in part due to the New Zealand trip. On most overseas trips, I keep myself so busy I don't do much reading, but this time we planned for a laid-back schedule and most days spent a lot of time just hanging out doing parallel play. This also meant that more than half the books were text rather than audio.

Copper Script by K.J. Charles -- (text) Usual lovely K.J. Charles book. M/M historic romance with excellent character work. The middle feels a bit rushed or foreshortened, though the climax works. I like the conceit of handwriting analysis on an almost psychic level, even knowing it's fantastical. Great pun in the title.

The Rosetti Diaries by Kathleen Williams Renk -- (text) F/f cross-time story (historic story unfolds via a modern person doing research). Alas, this was a DNF (did not finish) for me. The historical premise is intriguing, but the writing style - ugh - perfectly literate but it reads like a textbook. I found it especially problematic, given that it's formatted as a diary, that the protagonist is always explaining things. To whom? This isn't the sort of stuff you'd put in a diary. And some of the technical details are implausible, like reading archival documents in a vault using a candle. It all just added up and threw me out.

That Self-Same Metal by Brittany H. Williams -- (text) YA historic fantasy involving malevolent elves and West African-based magic in the England of King James I. There were a few logical inconsistencies, but quite enjoyable. Queer-normative, racially-aware, lots of room for further adventures, and a "why choose" bi romantic polygon.

The Illhenny Murders by Winnie Frolik -- (text) Another DNF, alas. I'm in one of my periodic phases of allowing myself to drop books if they're just not working for me. In this case, it's was just that the prose was so very pedestrian. In theory there was a f/f romance in there somewhere but I never got to it.

Problems and Other Solutions by Allie Brosch -- (text) Ok, so I started reading this several years ago. This is a collection of semi-comedic personal sketches by the author of Hyperbole and a Half. Although the individual pieces are interesting, they work best taken in separate bites, hence the long time to finish.

Illuminations by T Kingfisher -- (audio) Solidly YA in tone. Secondary world fantasy with an eccentric family of magical artists and a kid who looses and then needs to fix a Problem. Complex, with a focus on life lessons of cooperation, honesty, grit. It was interesting listening to this in alternation with the Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci books, because there's a very similar feel: a kid in a magic-working family feels marginalized but needs to solve a big problem. Family then pitches in.

The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) And speaking of which... Part of my semi-random DWJ reading program. An interesting story but I want to slap the protagonist silly. I probably needed to have read this book when I was a bratty kid. Oh wait, I never was.

Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) Loosely inspired by Snow White, but only in terms of the MacGuffins. A standard Kingfisher heroine (complete with standard Kingfisher romance arc), but the plot is fun. There are lots of twists and turns trying to figure out the rules of the magic. In the end, the worldbuilding logic all comes together and makes sense.

The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones -- (audio) A gripping and well-written magical family saga. (This is the one that felt most parallel to Illuminations.) The only down side was the annoying use of Italian ethnic stereotypes.

Back to mostly audiobooks (except when that format isn't available).

Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) While I'm delighted that we're getting more sapphic historical romances from major publishers, too often I'm disappointed about the execution. This Regency-era romance pairing two competing authors of gothic novels spent too much time on repetitive build-up (frustration, coincidences, longing), and not enough time on plot There were so many cycles of desire > sex > betrayal > grovel > forgiveness > repeat that I have little confidence in the stability of the relationship. On the other hand, the historic grounding was solid.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, Network Effect by Martha Wells -- (audio) Continuing my binge of the Murderbot series. I don't have specific reading notes on most of these other than finding them enjoyable. Network Effect was a re-listen as that was the one I read first from the series and bounced off at the time. On re-listen, I think my impression was skewed by listening to it out of order, because a lot of the interpersonal stuff makes more sense now that I have the background. But it's still definitely fairly heavy on the blow-by-blow fight scenes. I reiterate that I can see why the people who love these love them, but I'm just not quite the ideal audience.

Ochre, Quartz, or Ivy by Jeannelle M. Ferreira -- (text) (Read to blurb, not yet published.) Sometimes a story unfolds like a vision emerging from a heavy mist. Glimpses of shifting details appear then are obscured again, but gradually the mist thins and you find yourself in an unexpected landscape. Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s Ochre, Quartz, or Ivy is just such a story, embedded in a mythic early British setting, but not fully temporally bound. It takes a bit of reading for the characters, their relationships, and their fates to solidify within the poetry of the narrative, but when the plot has fully unfolded, as it dips in and out of the time-stream, the pieces fall solidly into place. I have consistently maintained that Ferreira’s prose is best read with a poetic protocol: allowing the imagery to build in its own fashion and this work is a solid example of that principle.

Angel Maker by Elizabeth Bear -- (text, audio) I started reading this in text but the heavy use of dialect meant that I ended up subvocalizing as I read, so I decided to simply switch to audio which worked much better.
The continuing adventures of Karen Memory. A fun romp through alternate history with all the steampunk bells and whistles but addressing real historic social issues as well.

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) Horror fantasy about dealing with legacies of the past. Great for the sense of growing menace without feeling too scary. The awfulness of people, artfully depicted.

November was a relatively skimpy month, though only in comparison to the surrounding months.

Raised for the Sword by Aimée -- (text) Aimée’s Raised for the Sword immerses the reader in the religious wars of 16th century France, when people at all levels of society were split between the majority Catholics and the protestant Huguenots. The story follows three central characters between the courts of France, Navarre, and England as their lives are buffeted by politics and violence. This is something of a slice-of-life tale, where the plot is supplied by the tide of history. The historical details are meticulously accurate, as are the varied depictions of how same-sex romances could find a place in the era and the logistics of long-term gender disguise. The several plot-threads are braided together tightly and resolve in as happy an ending as the times allow. The title, perhaps, implies more swashbuckling than the book delivers. The martial action is more gritty and realistic than picturesquely heroic, as is the depiction of gender politics. This book will appeal to those who want an emphasis on the “historical” side of historical fiction. (Disclaimer: The author of Raised for the Sword was the French translator for one of my novels. I was provided with an advance review copy at no obligation.)

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott -- (audio) I like when a book plunges me into the world without too much explanation, but I did have to scramble a bit at the beginning to figure out the basics. Once it got going I was thoroughly sucked in. Secondary-world fantasy where the world has been devastated by a lingering magic, but most people are fixated on everyday social politics. Then a figure out of the magical past shows up and makes things very complicated for the protagonist. Ends at a point that is both a resolution and a cliff-hanger.

A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo (audio) Definitly on the horror side, similar to the previous book in the series. The plot concerns what famine does to social rules. Part of the Singing Hills Cycle.

System Collapse by Martha Wells -- (audio) This brings me up to date with the Murderbot series. We're back to "lots of action language, not so much character interactions and plot."

Since I have another hour before heading off to a New Year's Eve party, I might as well bring the reading notes up to the current date. I read a lot of books in December, but only a couple were thoroughly enjoyable.

The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler -- (audio) Sapphic historical mystery. Well-researched, but with a bad case of researcher's disease. There's too much showing off on details that a narrator wouldn't normally be expected to provide. The psychology of the characters is also rather anachronistic, or perhaps overly clinical. Also, the narrator regularly tells us about the protagonist's desire for women, but doesn't really demonstrate it in a believable way. Also, there's a possible scenario that is set up but then the character never acknowledges or explores it (i.e., that the Evil Suitor has kidnapped the victim and is lying about it). All in all, I spent too much time yelling at the book while listening to it.

A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory -- (audio) I picked this up in a series-sale on Chirp. Historical mystery focusing on a physician in medieval Cambridge. There was a time when historical mysteries were just beginning to be a thing when I'd read everything I could get my hands on. And then a time when there were enough of them that I felt like I was allowed to begin disliking some of them. Yeah, this falls in that category. Ugh. The writing is ok but OMG it drags, especially during the endless details of the plague. And it has a bad case of "this medieval doctor magically knows what treatments will eventually be proven effective by modern medicine." There's endless repetition of the clues and details of the mystery, though maybe that's a deliberate technique. I have three more volumes in this series, but I'm not likely to continue listening.

Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. William -- (audio) Sequel to That Self-Same Metal, which I read a couple months ago. (YA historic fantasy set in the early 17th century.) Very enjoyable for the representation and worldbuilding. But it felt very repetitive, as if all the emotional beats needed to be hammered away at to make them stick. Maybe this is a YA thing? I enjoyed it, but I'm not necessarily eager to pick up the third and final book.

The next few books were read specifically to do an updated version of my "sapphic spin-offs of Jane Austen books" podcast, so I was reading some things that I was dubious about going in.

Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie -- (text) I regularly mention that I’m very much not a fan of the approach of taking an existing public domain text and making only minimal changes or additions to create a new story. Which is exactly what this book does. As far as I could tell, we don’t run into any alterations to the original text until chapter 5, and I’d say that maybe 99% of the text is simply identical to Austen’s original. The premise is that Emma and Jane Fairfax were childhood sweethearts, sabotaged by Mr. Woodhouse confiscating their letters to each other while they were separated. The eventual resolution is for Jane to enter a lavender marriage with Knightley who much prefers male partners. If you like this sort of pastiche, this may be the sort of thing you’ll like, but I don’t, I’m afraid. (After checking past reading notes, I noticed that I had exactly this same reaction to this same approach for a previous Christie book.)

The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks -- (text) On the surface, Jane Bennet doesn't seem an obvious candidate for a sapphic take given how central her attachment to Bingley is to the original story, but Mara Brooks has followed that thread in The Scandal at Pemberley. I have a mixed reaction to this novella—maybe short enough to be a novelette? The prose is elegant and full of rich sensory imagery, but the plot is a bare skeleton on which to hang a series of erotic scenes. There are also a few logical holes in the plot where the characters have some unfortunately modern attitudes about public displays of affection between women in the Regency era. Really gals, it’s not actually a problem for you to be in each other’s bedrooms and even to share a bed! (See my trope podcast about the “only one bed” thing.)

The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub -- (audio) This is far more ambitious than the other books I read in this Austen-spin-off binge. I confess this book utterly blew me away after an uncertain start. The cover copy misleadingly suggested that it might be a slapstick mashup of Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein in the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it was much more thoughtful and nuanced than I expected. It takes quite some way into the book before the sapphic thread is made overt, and the characters have a lot of obstacles to get past for their happy ending. (One of which is an additional fantasy twist that seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m willing to go with it.) While the plot and trappings stray outside the realistic nature of Austen’s work, the social and psychological aspects of the plot rang true to the times for me, including the meandering path Mary and Georgiana take to recognize what they’re feeling as romantic love and to decide it’s worth fighting for.

The Lady's Wager by Olivia Hampton -- (text) Evidently a number of authors share my interest in seeing Mary Bennet get some love, because this is yet one more book that addresses that angle. This one gives Mary a secret life as an author and pairs her with an original character: a former governess struggling to make a living in London. While the set-up of the plot is clever and plausible, the execution stumbled on numerous points. The characters have anxieties about their budding friendship that are out of place in the early 19th century—a time when it was utterly normal for women to express appreciation for other women’s beauty and to engage in physical affection in public. It would also have been utterly normal for two spinsters to set up household together for economic reasons, so I found their subterfuge unnecessary. These are elements that really spoil a sapphic historical for me, when the characters have 20th century attitudes, anxieties, and reactions.

We move out of the Austen books for the last two.

Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) I thought I'd give this a try, despite being so-so about Vasti's f/f Regency in the same continuum. (One of the characters from Ladies in Hating is a secondary character in this one.) Alas, this ended up being a DNF, though for idiosyncratic reasons that might be a strong plus for other readers. The story has some interesting ideas and characterization but around midway slides into about 80% sex by volume and I just got bored. Some authors can write such excellent characters and plot that my indifference to sex scenes is overcome, but the balance was too badly off for me in this book.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite -- (audio) This was a nice finish to the year's reading. Murder mystery on a colony ship where bodies are renewed from memory backups. So what happens if your backup gets erased and then your current body gets killed? Interesting chewy ideas. The protagonist is sapphic, but sexual orientation isn't a marked feature in this continuity so it's just background. (I've previously enjoyed Waite's sapphic historical romances.)

There. I'm totally caught up with my reading notes. My "in process" spreadsheet (which is where all these notes have been living) has a couple dozen titles in it that either need to be officially marked DNF or that I had put on the list as a to-do and then never read. I think I'll clean that up so I can start fresh.