What are you reading in Q4 of 2024?

[Kathi, There’s no such thing as too many books!]

Please let us know what you’ve been reading in the final quarter of 2024 (October, November, December). All genres welcome here!

[Kathi, There’s no such thing as too many books!]

In October I read:
The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 6.5/10. It probably didn’t help that I had some long pauses while reading this book, so it took me 2 weeks. My biggest complaint was the sheer number & variety of new kinden the author introduced. Yes, very creative & appropriate given that the story takes place largely underwater, so obviously, different sorts of people would have evolved to live & thrive there, but I sometimes felt like the author was just showing off how inventive he could be. I assume these kinden will continue to play a role as the overall story goes forward, but maybe not. I also felt like the last few chapters, as Stenwold Maker’s plots unfold, were rushed. Obviously he made good use of all his time undersea, when he wasn’t escaping from one threat or another, but we were not privy to his thoughts & planning, so bing, bing, bing, things just fall into place like magic! (Yes, I know, it wasn’t quite that smooth…) My relatively lower rating is mostly because I was overwhelmed with the number of new kinden & characters and the amount of world-building the author needed to do in order to add the undersea world to the overall world of the Apt & Inapt.
Tyrant's Throne by Sebastien de Castell, 9/10. My comments are in our group’s discussion of the Greatcoats series.
The Whitechapel Conspiracy by Anne Perry, one of her books featuring Charlotte & Thomas Pitt, 8.5/10. Perry manages to weave together a story involving old flames and budding love, class, ethnic, & religious prejudice, revolution, republicanism, and Jack the Ripper, along with a seemingly motive-less murder. Somehow she pulls it off, mixing familiar characters with memorable new ones.
Behind the Walls of Terra by Philip José Farmer, part of his World of Tiers series, 5/10. Well, yes, the plot does zip along like an action movie, with lots of fighting, shooting, & chasing (on motorcycles, in cars, on foot). The story mostly takes place in our world (Earth), which makes it slightly easier to follow. Still, I find I don’t much like or care about any of the characters, most of whom are interchangeable beyond the few main ones (Kickaha, Anana, Red Orc, & Urthona). And what should have been a huge shock of a plot twist in the story ((view spoiler)[finding out our Earth & its universe are a mere creation of the one the immortal, constantly-quarreling, amoral, mostly-mean-spirited & cruel Lords (hide spoiler)]) was instead almost a ho-hum moment. I guess classic sci-fi pulp fiction may not be my thing. I like more character in my characters. I feel like the world-building, while very creative, was done on the fly (ooh, let’s stick this creature in here…and what about trying a world with this weird feature? Etc.). This will sound contradictory, but for all the bells & whistles & gates & beasts & odd sky colors, for all the beamers shooting & good guys chasing bad guys who are chasing good guys, the story itself lacks complexity.

I listened to:
Scorpions by Rachel Howzell Hall, 3.75/10. Other than the epilogue, the story was rather predictable. Poor choices all around.
The Other Side of the Road by Andrea Bartz, 6/10. A little predictable but an OK story. (view spoiler)[I wonder how long the main character will be able to live with what she discovered. (hide spoiler)]
The Ghost Writer by Loreth Anne White, 6.5/10. Dark and twisty. There were clues to the big reveal at the end but it was still pretty well done.
Murder at the Royal Ruby by Nita Prose, 5/10. Not much to say—it was an OK read, but the characters were kind of one dimensional.
All My Darkest Impulses and Fog Descending by Lisa Unger, parts 1 & 2 of her House of Crows serial, 6.5 & 6.75 on a 10 point scale respectively. It captured my interest right away, kind of a dark story. The story follows four “summer” friends, alternating between their current lives & their experiences as teens. I was frustrated by the characters making obviously poor choices or failing to make obviously better choices. However, I recognize that the story turns on those decisions, so I get it. I do plan to finish the last 2 installments, more because I want to see how the author ties up all these threads than because I care about the fate of the characters themselves.

[Kathi, There’s no such thing as too many books!]

November reads (not sure how much I’ll get done before the end of the month, so I’ll drop these in here now):
Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 8.5/10. I’m reading this series (Shadows of the Apt) with another Goodreads group. My enjoyment of this book was somewhat tempered by the fact that I read it over several weeks, with long breaks, which make it seem more disjointed that it really was. I liked the focus on Che & Thalric and their adventures; less so the exploits of Tynisa, who has never been a favorite character of mine. This book provides a fuller picture of life in the Commonweal, the effects of the Twelve Year War and the problems already present in Dragonfly-kinden culture. There are many threads still dangling and I am impatient for the author to start weaving them together. Only 3 books left for him to accomplish that!
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, 9/10. While there are some hopeful bits, I think this is a very dark book. Not just Haber’s overweening ambition & his arrogant certainty, but the changes George inadvertently causes in the world—plague, war, etc. LeGuin wrote this in the early seventies, looking 20+ years into the future, which is now 30 years in our past. It makes for an odd perspective. I guess what I hope to carry forward with me is the importance of balance, both internal & external, & the importance of connections—being part of & acting within an interconnected whole, not standing outside trying to affect the whole. I did decide it was a reread for me, even though I remembered very few details of the story from the first time I read it, which must have been many years ago.
I’m listening to Lisa Unger’s House of Crows serial, an Amazon original, and I finished part 3, Circling the Drain, 6.5/10. Kept my interest but I really don’t care much for any of the characters.
I also read The Reborn King by Michael R. Miller, book 1 of The Dragon’s Blade trilogy, 9/10. My comments are in our group’s discussion folder for this book/series.
And I finished another Charlotte & Thomas Pitt historical mystery, Southampton Row by Anne Perry, 8.5/10. A solid mystery, a large dose of politics, & the usual backdrop of personal stories.

[Kathi, There’s no such thing as too many books!]

In December I read:
Love the Way You Lie by Lisa Unger, 7/10. This final chapter in the House of Crows serial wraps up the mystery, sort of, and lets us know what each of the characters ends up doing, sort of. (view spoiler)[But there are no answers to what exactly was going on with Matthew, other than pretty severe mental illness like schizophrenia, and what was affecting the others who saw & heard the Dark Man or Amelia. The quasi-supernatural aspect is left unresolved. (hide spoiler)] A good story to listen to while I walked, since it kept my attention. But the threads that are left dangling—that bothers me. Maybe it’s supposed to bother me.

The Lavalite World by Philip José Farmer, 5.5/10. A book of its time in terms of language & stereotypes, although it reads more like it was written in the late 1950s rather than the late 1970s. Lots of action, complicated plans, alliances & double-crosses. Thad characters are pretty much cartoon cutouts, although Kickaha & Anana are pretty clever.

Spoils of War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 8/10. This book is a collection of short stories that are companions to the Shadows of the Apt series. Each story gives us a bit of backstory to a few characters from the main series or an insight into some aspect of the Twelve Year War between the Commonweal and the Wasp Empire.

The Air War by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 7/10. A bit battle heavy for me, but then, it is called The Air War, so I guess I’m not surprised. I missed certain characters who were in other books but not this one, like Che and Thalric. I like Taki as a character but found I did not feel much connection with a lot of the other characters in Collegium. Jodry Drillen (Speaker of the Assembly) surprised me with his courage and willingness to act with Stenwold Maker in trying to defeat the Empire army. Stenwold, I think, is a man dealing with loss and having trouble adjusting to change—surprising given how much change he has lived through and even initiated, but maybe the tide of changes has somewhat overwhelmed him. But I appreciate the way he is (eventually) willing to continue to be honest with himself and about himself. The Laszlo & Liss spy storyline seemed promising but really sort of meandered without much impact. I keep thinking that the land-based kinden will need their sea-based counterparts as allies. No idea how that will work, but surely they have to play a larger role in the future. One thing I find myself coming back to over annd over throughout the series—other than the rather idealistic society in Collegium, the kinden don’t seem very interested in peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with each other. Look at their history—domination of the Apt by the Inapt for a long time (and conflict among the Inapt races), revolution by the Apt, followed by constant strife among the Apt races (and ongoing conflict between Apt and Inapt) until they were forced unwillingly into alliances against the Wasp Empire. Within each kinden we find characters and practices (like enslavement) to despise and other characters and practices to care about, but I see nothing to indicate there will ever be positive relations among the various kinden. It’s hard to imagine an outcome that is optimistic or positive.

The last book I finished in 2024 was Veiled Intentions by Michael R. Miller, 7/10, comments in our discussion folder about this series.