Reading_Fox's 2014 books.

My new reading thread, it seems sensible to make anew one each year. Somehow I don't feel I'm going to reach the numbers of last year though, and definetly not the 2014 implied in the title!. In the first frotnight I've only managed two books! But I will continue my habit of posting a short summary here and writing a full review that can be found on the works page or by accessing my full review list in my profile - Reviews feel free to leave a comment if you like or disagree with anything I've written. I try an avoid major spoilers that happen in the latter half of the book, but do give some form of plot synopsis, if only for my own ability to remmeber what happens over the course of a series. Apparently you can now use spoiled tags, but as they don't seem to work in IE I'm unlikely to bother.

A re-read of Hammerfall and Rivers of London which was my SantaThing from MrsLee. Both very enjoyable and very different. Rivers is an Urban fantasy akin to Harry Dresden set in London, but with a (currently at least) much more baseline human protagonist, who as part of the London Met's police force has to solve various crimes that have a supernatural element. Most of the world is unaware of this other side - but the author was quite poor at remembering this.

Hammerfall is a weird fantasy /sf crossover where the desert tribesmen are completely unaware of the aliens and technology that their ancestors fled from. They ahve to cope with a nanocell invasion and a major asteroid landing whislt maintaining their way of life. alot of trekking through the desert but still a very enjoyable read.

Good to see you again! I'll be following your reading with interest, while trying to dodge all the book bullets!

1: So what's the fantasy element of Hammerfall, reading_fox?

Following. Loved Hammerfall!

I'll be here Reading_Fox :)

LOL, even though you got Rivers of London from me as your SantaThing, I think it was one a staff member had to pick because the book I wanted to get for you wasn't available after all. I just realized that the Rivers book is already on my wishlist after I went to put it there when I read your post. :)

#3 - none of the tribespeople know anything of the technology, they're just primative tribes wandering the desert with swords and an occasional rare gun. There's several long JourneyQuests where things happen along the way in places that are only important because the hero is passing through. There are also wise old guardians in the Ila, and comic companions. It's only missing a Magic Trinket. The whole feel is totally fantasy. CJC herself doesn't recognise a distinction between fantasy and SF, as she expresses it somewhere on her blog, and is very clear from many of her writings. This one is more ambiguous than most.

Thanks everyone!

Your thread is starred.

Good luck with 2014.

Just de-lurking to let you know I'll be following along your reading year.

The mask game One of the weirder ER books that I've actually managed to finish. Think Mastroika dolls, the weirdest folk tales you can imagine and transplant into a post radioactive dystopia a few thousand years on where life has recovered. And add aliens, just because. I suspect few people will enjoy this, but in places it is quite clever.

Catching up - more or less back to normal service now I hope. Mostly moved and unpacked and I'm ready for some quiet time to resume reading!

Forge of heaven the conclusion to Hammerfall. Very very much more SF. set a few hundred years later it explains the background to HF and is hugely enjoyable. Mostly based in the orbiting space station above Marak's world. CJC really does imagine the differences life on a closed station will impart. Much more than any other author I know.

Maze another weird ER title. Even less good than the previous one. I've no idea why authors think they can suspend time and physics just because its the future. If you are going to do so you'd better have a very good reason why, and a better story. This lacks any of these.

Bad luck and trouble Jack reacher is back with his buddies beating up people who deserve it again. There isn't really any plot to these but they are such fun. Especially when you just want an escapist read.

Paladin a much under-appreaicated work from my favourite author. Straight pigboy fantasy, no magic, just a student and a master swordsman set in a world at war. Veneal politicians poor peasant and the like. Superbly told. With all of CJC's twists and thoughts.

And The Truth was my lunchtime reading finished today. Fun typical Pratchett on good form. SLightly worrying when the Diskworld's journalists behave better than their real life counterparts!

Yup, except that the pigboy is a girl, and if this is the Paladin by CJ Cherryh, she goes the second mile to actually play out how a woman warrior could hold her own. Yes, a sorrowfully under appreciated work!

- Although it's a minor twist very early in the plot, I did deliberately leave that one unmentioned. I appreciate that's what she was trying to do, but the technical intracies of swordplay passed me by. It's never quite clear how she manages to deal with bigger stronger opponents - other than not facing them very often!

Elantris - didn't really work so well for me as a re-read. Not sure why other than it all seems a bit facile somehow. I liek Brandon's magic but this seemed logically flawed and just happened to work in convenient manners. Still very much missing the sequel that explains the wider world background.

The Circle
ER and One LT One Book - although t arrived some months after the lT discussion which I'm off to read soon. Average - kind of fun, but never really thought through the unexpected consequences and paid at most lip service to the downsides. With a trully terrible wishy washy heroine and some unnecessarily graphic sex. The concept is an uber facebook that controls everything you do online and link it all into an open and accessible cloud - cameras everywhere, smart algorthyms everywhere looking for pattersn and helping prevent crime. But it's just presented as an idea rather than explored, from theviewpooint of someone working at the company rather than a user.

Evil Genius an ER book from a couple of years ago - for which I've just recieved the next in the series as this month's ER. I hope it's the next, publishers really need to label their series!

Fun romp about a high functioning family raised by an erratic mum. The fmaily are just about old enough to stand on their own and this follows the fortunes of the eldest daughter and how well she copes when the precocious youngest coems to visit at the same time that they learn of their grandfather's death and that a coniving lawyer has absconded with their bequethed millions. The current owner of 'their' house agrees to let them stay if Ana does some research for him into textbook publishers. This uncovers some surprising information. It's good fun, high paced, candy.

Undercover Genius

Fun - better than I expected, a good continuation from the previous book. They are kind of like a femal James Bond, maybe, or urban fantasy/paranormal romance without any of the fantastical elements, and the romance dialed back quite hard. Ana gets a kiss in this one.

The topical political storylines give it that little twist that sets them above others in the field. Media manipulation of politics and unethical/illegal news gatehring mehtods being the focus here - the link the previous story also works well at maintaining continuity.

Old Growth
ER read. Not bad at all. Dick Francis like without the horses. Set in and around Vancover a freelance writer gets involved in small town history, drugs and forrestry whilst trying to maintain a happy family life. It's a bit much for a short book but just bout works. There are a several major unsupported leaps in the plot though which detract from the otherwise interesting story.

Forty signs of rain
Reread.; Fun - climbing is particularlt well done as is the biochemistry and general lab science. The politics of funding science and the obvious envioronmental issues remain current even if the technology is already starting to seem dated - something that future novels always struggle with. It was near future in 2007. 7 years on it's still near future but the tech is now oldschool.

Fifty degrees and Sixty days

Continuation of the series which gets more and more divorced from reality but makes a kind of internal sense. Suffers badly from the near future issue - and massively overplays the weather aspects of climate change, plus possibly actually underestimating how easy it will be for us to reverse it. Many of the technological fixes that Robinson proposes aren't that close to developmet - suffering from physical constraints that aren't easily engineered around. His politics is equally naive.

But it all works together even if I never really like Frank. Too much of the books is spent with him and Caroline chasing down these fictional black operatives. But it doesn't have the action or drama of a thriller where this would work, instead it all bogs down in the politics and environment. The scenes hunting the feral animals are quite fun though, and as ever Robinson has a good eye for the physical sports.

Across a Jade sea
First of a trilogy by LT's own L Shelby who's a frequent poster in Hobnob with Authors. YA romance adventure comedy fantasy. Or something along those sort of lines. A young female engineer on a linear gets cast adrift with a stoic exotic foreigner. non-stop action follows as the pirates who attacked him remain at large. It's a bit too YA for my taste and slightly too romancy too - without being explicit, but there's alot of unbuttoning. It doesn't quite showcase the best of L Shelby's worldbuilding.

#17 by reading_fox> The Genius series sounds interesting, particularly if the romance is really dialed down. My beef about so much uf is that it is just romance books with a veneer of fantasy.

>20 majkia: - they are very tame in the romance department. I'm sure somewhere along the series if it ever gets beyond a few books it will become disappointingly dominent. The author is a romance author normally. But so far they're just good fun.

treachery's harbor bah having to mispell harbour for the touchstone. It doesn't bother me when I'm reading! Odd brain.
and Fealty's shore

The conclusion to Jade sea. Switches between the hero's POV in TH and back to the heroine for FS. Kind of works ish. I'm not quite sure the cultural references are really valid though. Seems a bit stereotyped. And a somewhat explicit giving birth scene in the final book made me wonder who the target audience really was. I don't think it would work for YA that well. Fun. Lots of royal politics.

Uglies

Baguely heard about this one on LT and was pleased to find it in the HumbleBundle of ebooks. Fun but superficial, it doesn't really explore the concepts in much depth. - An engineeres utopia where everyone undergoes an operation at 16 to shape them into statistically normalised beauty and behavior. Except those who rebel of course.

and Jumper
Much better - until the ending which all gets a bit silly. Davy escapes his domestic abuse by telporting. Shocked but safe he finds himself in NewYork with no money and little prospects. But he does have a unique skill. Very much a gritty growing up novel to begin with, plenty of focus on coping, family and relationships, it develoves into government conspiracy theories at the end. Not interested in the rest of the series, but the first half/two thirds weer quite good indeed. And a nice nod to Born to Exile in the acknowledgements, which is very good and seldom know about.

The legend of Sarah

ER dystopian SF, about how a beggar girl gets involved with the embassy of a high tech enclave on a secret mission to find nuclear fuel. Not really convincing but entertaining enough.

Zombies vs unicorns silly. Short story collection, the zombie stories were better but that's I think down to the authors rather than the intrinsic nature of writing about either. The best unicorn story I've ever read certainly beats all the zombie ones, so it's a shame it wasn't featured. The author's banter was at the start was just annoying.

24> I think all the stories were written specifically for the anthology. It's got a lot of the big name YA authors too, which is possibly why I didn't mind the banter at the beginnings. It constantly amazes me how so many authors know each other and are friends.

But... I actually liked the unicorn stories better.

>25 pwaites: - some were, but some had been preeviously published elsewhere I think - there was a copyright acknowledgements page somewhere although I didn't study it.

Raced through Mogworld which was silly but fun. Satire on PC gaming much along the lines of Redshirts or a previous ER title Vaporware but better. And it's got zombies in it for added laughs.

And a bunch of quick easter reads all from the same Humble Bundle

Arcanum 101 definetly the best of the bunch. A new take at mundane goes to magic school. Great fun

God engines Skalzi playing with religion in a novela

Bleeding violet weird sort of horror/fantasy with a mentally ill heroine. Bonus points for trying but minus severla thousand for the portayal. Actual execution wasn't that terrible

Tithe not totally convinced by this, author plays fast and loose with faery convensions, conveniently ignoring them when it suits and re-instating them at other times. and a changeling for 16 years without knowing it? really? that just doens't work. The other way round haveing being changed as a baby and spent 16 years in faeryland sure, but Kaye would know immidiately that she's a pixie. that's the point of the changelings to mess up the mortals.

magic for beginners a rare DNF, rubbihs short stories disjointed and poor.

A couple full reviews of those still to come when I find time.

27> I can see Kaye not knowing that she's a pixie. She was raised human and had no idea that anything was different about her. Yes, she saw fairies, but she'd convinced herself that she'd had an overactive imagination.

>28 pwaites: but that implies she was a baby pixie. And that isn't how fairies are. I've never seen them as maturing at all in any sense. They don't age. Although there are very few stories mentioning the birth/creation of new fairies. But you never hear of a pregnant one! SO it just didn't seem right to me.

A couple of ebook re-reads

Initiate's trial wonderfully immersive as ever. Want the next book now!

Fool's war very different SF. Didn't seem to leave any of hte women in space tropes unturned! Well written good fun, and with a pertinent view on society too.

Nice to see you enjoyed Fool's War - Zettel's work is excellent and far too obscure for no reason I can see.

(for the other, am writing the climactic sweep, so not too much longer)

>30 JannyWurts: Yay!

Two ER titles.
Lex Talionis and GM neither of which were particularly brilliant.

Lex was a fairly graphic SF detective /revenge story, but had a few significant faults in continuity that meant it didn't quite work properly. Katherine Kerr's Polar City Blues was much better. However I liked the authors writing style, she had good characters and an interesting world, just needed to tidy the all important details together a bit more closely.

GM was even worse. Some frankly appallingly bad basic biology was mangled to make Zombies in Africa, which was then ignored for a politics in a megaCorp corruption story that didn't make a lot of sense. The point the author was trying to make is actually a good one, but he failed to deliver any of the subtly that say Le Carre could do with constant gardener.

Wow - Polar City Blues - there's a great book that is still painfully obscure! Nice to see you enjoyed it. I often wondered if Kerr meant to write a sequel. If the numbers weren't there, that would have killed it....

>32 JannyWurts: She did write a sequel a few years later - Polar City Nightmare :) It's not (for my money) quite as good as Blues, but it's still a lot of fun and the characters are still great to spend time with. Worth looking up! I do love Katharine Kerr's scifi.

Imryl - wow, didn't know that. Have to see if it's out in e book.

I loved both the Polar City books, despite the present-tense narration. A book has to be pretty special for me to get over my intense dislike of that style!

>35 Sakerfalcon: I particularly enjoyed the way she handled psychic communication - the thought/elisions that cut through, rather than it just being the same as speech.

Vorkosigan companion which I stumbled upon in my ereader. Interesting enough for Miles/Bujold fans but only really for series completists. Has no new material, but some interviews and a lot of spoilers. Book synopsis reveals just how madcap the plots are.

A wanted man re-read. It's Jack saving friends and beating up enemies. A bit of a slow plot this one and far from his best, probably would have made a better novella.

More re-reads:

Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls
Both fun. First time through I enjoyed Curse more than Paladin, this time I think it was the other way around. Not sure why, just hoe of those reader mood issues. I think still slightly remembering Curse didn't help much, whereas Paladin worked better even though I still new the plot - it's more about characterisation vs Curses slightly more Plot driven story.

Lots more re-reads:

Daughter of the Empire and Servant and Mistress. A couple of thousand pages. Dense and beguiling. As much fun as Magician but quite different, the only sequels worth reading.

Little brother for the discussion thread.

A couple of humble Bundle ebooks , not very special Shambling towards hiroshima which was more tasteless than funny. Anthology of Sword and Sorcery that was OK, at best, some reasonable short stories but nothing special. A few famous names contributed excerpts form their novels. They work much better as novels.

Revelation Space nth re-read. Still amazing. Strong women, dark hard SF worlds, proper consideration for the effects of light limited travel. Clever technology and societal implications thereof, remains one of my alltime SF favourites.

>40 reading_fox: What women, reading_fox? I don't see them mentioned in the blurb, and I'm afraid to dig too much in the reviews (don't want to encounter spoilers).

This is the link to just My review no particular spoilers although it does have a plot summary of the first third/half.

There's three main POV, two are women, the ex-solider cum assassin Khouri, who is now mostly accustomed to living without her husband, and then there's Ana 2nd of three lieutenants in charge of the Nostalgia for Infinity spaceship. She has particular charge of the weapons systems, and is a strong voice in the control of the ship - although the internal politics are a bit complex. the POV cuts between the three characters frequently. But both women certainly have agency and control of their lives, as much as anyone can.

>42 reading_fox: Thanks!

A right bitch - ER short story trio. Meh. Dog sniffs out magic, written from the dog's POV which is novel but barely enough to sustain event his set of stories

Driving force - Dick Francis re-read although I don't remember it. Much as all his others, but one of the better ones, set in early 90s so the technology isn't too old but doesn't reveal his unfamiliarity with it. Am owner of a fleet of horseboxes discovers they've been used for smuggling, but rather than just tell the cops he investigates himself.

Wingman - dreck. Pseudo Mil-SF, but basically some ex-F16 pilot's fantasy. Blow up the russians have lots of sex. End.

and definitely best till last Spark: feyguard
Excellent. I love meta gaming novels anyway. This is not the start of the series but the start of the 2nd trilogy. I'll definitely hunt out the first! PC game connects to the world of the faerie. Heroine has to save the inept hacker who removed the blocks (presumably installed in the 1st trilogy). Lots of fun, good characters, clever world.

Massively Multiplayer

Fun. A quick ish read but at 318 pages, not that short. Another Meta-gaming SF story, about how 3D immersive gaming can do more than just provide fun. Little enough about the society outside of the game, but well cast and thought through. The in-game politics worked better than the office ones, but even so it was enjoyable.

Freehold

Meh. Mil-SF from humblebundle, better than the last offering but still distinctly average. A re-take of Mccaffery's Freedom's Landing series, but not as well done, and lacking in any form of characterisation. Space marines need a home.

pwned
Silly. But kind of fun. US high school girl tries to reconcile being an ultra-popular cheerleader with her closet nerd fan of gaming. Which all goes well until one of her gaming clan moves to her school, and is immediately the target of the cheerleaders spite. I'm so not the target audience for this, but if you're a young US gaming girl, then you may well find it great fun indeed.

Encounter with Tiber

Better than expected, but still with some dry physics thrown in now and again. Future history of contemporary mankinds discovery of aliens and the push to get into space. Probably not just ghost written for Buzz, it does work as a story, and as a description of working in space.

A few to update, a mixed bag of the good the bad and the ugly:

Song of Kali Bad.
Clockwork fairy kingdom - ER title, and generally good, steampunk fairy YA urban fantasy. worked quite well.
Spellsinger ugly. really not good at all. Probably intended as satire, but it just doens't work. the socialist dragon (when no other character is politicised at all) was a perfect example of over the top attempts at humour that failed miserably.
My life as a troll ER title, again not bad, but not good either. Another meta-gaming fantasy crossover, but utterly failed to give any reason for why or how the virtual world intersected with the real one, and along with the ridiculous co-incidences, failed to maintain the necessary dis-belief.
Gamers - this might appeal to the GD readers a bit. a mismash of Uglies and Mockingjay. Sort of.

Story Bundle - the succession the Humble Bundle have had a Gaming Story collection which is why I've been reading so many meta- games stories recently. Humble Bundle seem to have been particularly poor selection of titles recently. SB had Brandon Sanderson's latest - in a collection I missed, but they definetly seem to have better titles.

And then you get a set that is just excellent all around:

Alternity - dystopian future alternative reality confusing but well written fast paced SF. YOu spend a lot of the beginning working out what's going on and even more discovering where it's all going. But it's really well done and fun.

Time of the dark - I probably don't need to sing Hambly praises to anyone at GD, but it was my first encounter, and very good too. I'm not an alternative history fan, so I'll have to pik and choose her more SF/F offerings, but this was very good indeed. I hope the rest of the trilogy holds out.

Pendragon Protocol
Something for all of the GD to enjoy. Modern day Arthurean legends made real. Sir Gawain takes on the most recent incarnation of the Green Knight amidst the police, university Tourney society, and shopping centres, whilst discovering that the world is more complex than expected - maybe right and wrong are not so clear cut after all. This is really great fun, slightly cynical and just clever.

Dead Man's fingers possibly the most clunky ER (or any) book I've ever read. There ar ebooks you don't like but can appreciate the (attempts at) artistry in them, and then there are books that are just fundamentally badly written by someone who has little concept of characterisation, plotting, dialogue or anything else, even if they did manage to get the basics of grammar and spelling correct. A ghost haunts a town until the plucky girls let the sheriff deal with it.

Turn coat -re-read. Fun as ever, the start of the more serious stuff even if JB is taking away some favourite toys again. I wish he'd stop doing that.

My 1000th Review is for Ancillary Justice

Much recommended and mentioned across LT and elsewhere, nominated for vast numbers of awards. It's good, but not that good. The hivemind AI recution to a single body doesn't really work well enough (although strangely it's the hivemind bits that are excellent!). And the gender blindness just gets annoying after a while, particularly when the character has previously been given the correct gender to use, but then ignores it.

The full Review (my 1000th in case I didn't mention that) is Here and all the others are available from my profile link.

Surprised you haven't read Hambly before now - the rest of the trilogy does hold up well, and in general her fantasy is extremely good.

Her historicals, too.

You have some great reading ahead.

priestess of the white
last of the wilds
Voice of gods

Re-reads of Trudy's other fantasy world, more interesting challenging moral dimensions to some of the characters, strong women leads and generally enjoyable. What would you do when you god asks you personally, to do something abhorrent?

Never go back
Not the best Reacher, some very obvious plot holes, very contrived plot and too may coincidences.

Shadows Robin Mckinley's latest. Very much a teen YA one for girls who love dogs. I'm not that impressed with being licked in the face. Fun. But too short with too much left unexplained and coincidental. And as ever with an ending left hanging for a sequel that she won't write. Good fun though and gorgeously well crafted as ever.

54>"And as ever with an ending left hanging for a sequel that she won't write."

That's hilariously accurate.

Walls of air
Personal
Cold days
Skin game
Wasted

fun fun fun fun and average.

TBH the Jack Reacher isn't much more than average either - a reworking of Day of the Jackal (superb), without the contrasting viewpoints between the hunted and the hunter. (One of the few times when multi-viewpoint has worked very well.)

Harry Dresden remains true to himself and is starting to get a bit cleverer and work out in advance who the real foe might be, and even what surprises they might have in store. Instead Jim goes on his usual destructive rampage, removing various characters that we'd grown to like. I'm not yet sure about the replacements, although one shows promise.

Kinsey hasn't changed in 23 installments, which is I suppose indicative of some level of talent from Grafton's part, but they remain very much lieghtweight guilty pleasures. She manages not to totally mangle the science drug trials background to this one.

Deciever Bah touchstone. and Betrayer

I've missed the series. I really have.I'd completely forgotten just how much I enjoy CJC's tight writing, intricate plotting, believable motivations, real characters, complex politics, functioning worlds, and just general all round excellence. And I finally (years late) have the next two sequels to enjoy over the forthcoming week. Can't wait.

Deceiver

i before e except after c .....

Intruder peacemaker

The latest instalments. Much slower than some of the previous books, and civilised now that Bren is back in polite society. There is time for tea, and admiration of the porcelains, and a little bit of polite politicking in the background. Cajeri gets to halfway though his 9th birthday which has been mentioned for the last n books, and I can't believe it still hasn't occurred. Foreigner had over 200 years in it. Most of the following volumes had a few years in them. The last six books might have taken place in a month or two at most. There's a lot of plot interactions waiting to happen that have taken a very very long time to arrive.

war stories
ER short story compendium - SF/horror rather than the Mil-SF they are promoted as, mostly ok, but none were mind-blowing. All probably anti-war, with a few fine examples of gender politics in the battlefield.

hair of the wolf
Storybundle - not brilliant too rushed too confused too many characters, but the world backdrop was interesting with many leftover gods still around causing trouble. No baseline humans involved.

Some more STorybundle books. Mostly meh. Including working for bigfoot of which I'd had higher hopes being Dresden short stories. - getting the stories in a chronological order would've worked better to start with!

Whiskey and water which is an anti-short story! at 400pg ebook pages it's a long and complex book. Being the 2nd in a series (I hate publishers who don't make this clear! and Stroybundle do themselves no favours here either) makes it extra confusing. There's just enough explanation of the past events that I could more or less gather together the strands of what had happened, and hence some of why the current book's events occurred. Bear does write well. The contrast between this and some of the Meh is so vastly obvious, even though I'd be hard pushed to actually specify exactly what it is. But as a reader I know it when I read it. Even if it's not character engaging - far too many - and very complex like this is. I'll read the start of the series someday.

>60 reading_fox: Is Working for Bigfoot a collection of short stories only published through Storybundle books? I couldn't find it on Amazon. Sounds like I'll be OK not reading it though, huh?

I'm not sure TBH not looked elsewhere, just came across them. Only Three stories - although of course more might get written. Harry gets asked to look after a kid at school, at college and at uni. No great backstory, no real tie-in to the rest of the Harry universe (other than Bigfoot gets mentioned in skin game which is why I'd noticed them. Although there's quite a time-span across them, Harry seems very young in all of them unlike the more nuanced version we've come to enjoy in the later books. They don't well convey the world-building that I enjoy in the novels.

Ah, well, I shant trouble to find them. Thank you for doing the hard work for me!

America Inc failed ER titile. Not worth finishing. And it's a rare book indeed where that happens. Totally clunky characters in an unbelievable world.

Tricknomancy much better. Worth looking into the full novels maybe. Urban fantasy (still from the storybundle set). A collection of short stories around the hero - Trick. He's a talented bouncer at a strip club, which lets him associate with all sorts of necessary seedy people. But basically honourable, and uses his talent for life force to interesting ends. The magic set-up is probably the best bit of the world, but the writing works well.

Nightingale - YA urban fantasy. Foster child truns out to be special and has enemies and family. Who would have guessed. OK but a bit odd.

Wool Shift, howey Dust

Great, Good, Mediocre. Which is a shame because I thought the careful exploration of a potential dystopian future was going so well, but then somewhat let down by the ending which was predictable and rushed. Too many explanations which don't quite make sense (even worse in dust than Shift). Still a good story, but could have finished a lot better.

The spirit lens - slightly slow a lot of world building but two completing clever magical systems and a great set of characters.
The soul mirror - superb continuation, slight shift in characters to a wonderful heroine full of doubts but ability too - not over the top, but sure and intelligent. Complex plots and politics, great resolution and a wonderful ending. Really enjoyed this one.

Berg's work always has striking depth - and her endings deliver. Wish there were more writers with that ability in the field.

Daemon Prism didn't work quite so well for me - Dante didn't quite become believable, too focused.

Rivers of London - re-read: enjoyable! Urban fantasy with a focus more on the policing, and some odd spirits.

Underground adventure - A Gemmel. UK cavers in the 1940s exploring for the first time some of what are now the classics trips. Great sense of just how hard and fun it was in those days. Missing all the politics though!

Home Cooking and excellent SantaThing choice - chatty essays about and around food, from comfort eats to catering for 120 homeless women.

Mystery in White - Christie style classic crime set in a snowy christmas time train and country house.

Moon Over Soho - amusing if somewhat more graphic continuation of the rivers of London.

Whispers Under Ground a better continuation, exploring the Victorian railways system in london and finding some unexpected surprises!

And that's it. 112 books in the year - if I've tagged them all correctly!

Only three non-fiction which is much lower than sometimes, and two of those being caving books. This year - again - I should really branch out a bit more.
Likewise only three full 5* hits but 18 @ 4.5 which isn't that bad.

Three 1* books, two from ER and one from humble bundle which contributed to a lot of my reading this year, along with the similar StoryBundle. Thanks to whoever it was in the GD who first notified me the existence of such places.

The other milestone is in reaching my 1000th LT review. In 8 years, which is running fairly consistent in terms of books a year.

Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions I'll start a new Thread for the New Year and see you all over there!