• Mad Hatters and March Hares - (edited by) Ellen Datlow

I’ve read other short stories collections edited by Datlow (all horror based ones) and have enjoyed them. This anthology was fine. I liked Mercury - Priya Sharma, All the King’s Men - Jeffery Ford, Run, Rabbit - Angela Slatter, In Memory of a Summer’s Day - Matthew Kressel, and (most of all) Sentence Like a Saturday - Seanan McGuire. I was bored by a lot of the other stories though. And the final story made me way too sad and not in a good mood “this is so good” kind of way. Meh ratings.

• A House With Good Bones - T. Kingfisher

I enjoyed this one more than The Hollow Ones. I felt like the writing was more grounded and she really seemed to know what she was talking about with all the entomology stuff. I also didn’t roll my eyes at her character’s inner monologue. Probably helped that this one was a fat woman (which she is) and not a quippy gay man (which she isn’t). Hollow Places had more ultimately scary stuff (with the monsters “undoing” the humans in horrific ways) but this one was just written so much better. It still felt frivolous a bit and not necessarily something I would recommend to another reader, but I definitely enjoyed it and read it very quickly.

• I Was a Teenage Slasher - Stephen Graham Jones

Surprisingly, this has been my favorite Jones book so far. I almost stopped reading it at the beginning because it felt too similar to other slasher type books of his that I have read but then he switched everything up by making the change into a slasher because of an infection and suddenly I was very very interested. He still rambled too much and repeated himself way too much but ultimately the story was interesting and new and compelling in surprising ways.

• The Starving Saints - Caitlin Starling

Oh yes, this was a good one. I can already tell that I want to reread it some day. I read a lot of it right before going to sleep, so there are definitely plot points that my tired brain missed. But it was beautiful and creepy and gay. I wish that it had gotten more explicit with the gay stuff but it was still great.

• The Dream Hotel - Laila Lalami

A well written and depressing novel. It certainly is on the nose about for-profit prisons and women’s autonomy (or lack of it). I definitely wanted a juicier ending then her being freed because she was a nuisance to the system, but her deciding that she still wanted to help her fellow detainees after being released was nice. It was a little too “real” for my tastes overall but it was fantastically written.

• Godkiller - Hannah Kaner

When I first started it, I felt like it was a bit juvenile but I ended up liking it more and more as I read. Great characters and a nice classic fantasy feel with good descriptions of food, fighting, and traveling. As I got near the end I was scared because I didn’t see how she could finish the story…and then I learned it was a trilogy. So I just placed the other two on hold.

• All System’s Red - Martha Wells

This is the first in the series “The Murderbot Diaries” and I picked it up because I watched the tv show based off of the book and loved it. Weirdly, the tv show is better than the book - which almost never happens. The show just managed to add so much depth to each character that is fulling missing in the book. I also feel like Murderbot because affectionate for the humans way too fast in the book. I loved how the show gave us extreme anxiety in Mensah and all the messy polyamory stuff. None of that is in the book. I am going to read the second one for science’s sake but I don’t have super high expectations. It wasn’t bad it just paled in comparison to the show.

• Dungeon Crawler Carl - Matt Dinniman

Wow this was so much fun to read. It’s very simple - not an earth shattering concept. But like…it really absorbs you and like consumes your brain. Easy to read , but not in an eye-rolly kind of way. It also made me tear up twice. It is the first of eight books and I already ordered the second.

• Carl’s Doomsday Scenario - Matt Dinniman

Yep, I love this series. I ordered the third already. I am so deeply rooting for Carl and Donut (and Mongo)

• Sunbringer - Hannah Kaner

I was surprised by how much I didn’t like this one. Godkiller had adventure and special relationships and this one had none of either. I didn’t like the characters being separated and I didn’t like the war shit. Why suddenly have two bad guys instead of focusing on the gang vs. Arren? I’m gonna read the third but it will need to be very different for me to like it.