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Andrews, Ilona. Blood Heir - Overdrive ebook. This is the first book in a sequel series to the Kate Daniels books. The focus is on characters who were part of the supporting cast in that series, and they have a strong reason not to ask for support from the primary characters of that series. I'm hoping that the series will wander away from Atlanta because I'm interested in what the wider world looks like.

Bishop, Anne. The Weapons of the Queen - Latest in the Black Jewels series. I keep reading these, and I keep finding myself deeply ambivalent about them. There's a lot of 'been there, done that' to the plots and to the antagonists. I just also know that I'll read the next one when the library gets it. The series is like... It's sort of like off-brand candy that doesn't taste right but is still sugar.

Charles, KJ. The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting - Overdrive ebook. M/M historical romance. I can't recall if it was Regency or early Victorian era, but it wasn't more recent than that. One of the heroes is a fortune hunter; the other is the uncle of the girl the other guy targets. I liked their romance once it got past a certain point in the story, but prior to that, I found both of them unpleasant to spend time with.

Cooper, Isabel. Highland Dragon Rebel - Overdrive ebook. The pacing of this book was peculiar. I'm pretty sure I've said that about this author's work before, and I'm now thinking that it's just normal for Cooper's work. In this case, it's partly because it's forced proximity (bodyguard) combined with a mystical journey through medieval Scotland, England, and Wales (with a side trip to Faery). The heroine is a dragonshifter and a warrior. The hero is a mage. He needs her because of a handwavy magical threat that really doesn't do much for most of the book. The final confrontation comes across as an 'Oh, hell, I forgot I needed to resolve that plot. Do I have to?' It kind of reminds me of the abrupt appearance of Plot in the last 30 pages of a Mercedes Lackey book. A slice of life that can't be allowed to end as such.

Cooper, Isabel. No Proper Lady - Overdrive ebook. Historical romance and time travel fix-it for a Lovecraftian apocalypse. This had considerably better pacing than other books I've read by this author. The time traveler is a woman. Her mission is to find a sorcerer and his book and destroy both before they can let extra-dimensional horrors into our universe to eat the world. The hero is a former friend of the sorcerer and is a man who has some magical training of his own. The setting is England, late enough for automobiles to be known but early enough for them not to be things people have actually ever encountered.

de Bodard, Aliette. The Citadel of Weeping Pearls - Overdrive ebook. I wish I had something intelligent to say about this novella. It's an SF mystery that touches the edges of science that could be mistaken for magic. There's a lot in it about people letting go and not being able to let go. As I read more of de Bodard's novellas, I'm starting to get a better feel for the setting and culture; I'm sure I will always miss nuances, though.

Estep, Jennifer. Spider's Bite; Web of Lies; Venom; Tangled Threads - Overdrive ebook. Elemental Assassin Series book 1-4. I like the characters in these, mostly, and the plots tick along nicely, but the world building makes me want to tear out my hair. There are story elements that make this very much not our world with our history, but there's also a general handwaviness that assumes that our world's history and customs and such can be wedged into every crack in the facade. It's like the author wanted to have magic and vampires and giants and dwarves going back hundreds of years but didn't want to put in the effort to establish how that changes things. Which is fine given that these are popcorn books but will also continue to bother me going forward. Some of the tropes don't work together. I'm also disturbed by the-- How to explain? It's that thing where Batman's Gotham is the brokenest broken place, and the best solution is to punch bad guys into submission rather than to try to fix the infrastructure or what-have-you because anyone who tries to fix them is delusional. The protagonist here is an actual assassin, and there's a serious case of protagonist centered morality as the foundation.

James, Anna. The Map of Stories - Overdrive ebook. This is the third book in the Bookwanderers series. The series is still fun, and this volume wraps up some of the plot threads about ongoing antagonists. I'm bothered by the fact that all of the deeply beloved books the characters discuss are older than I am, older than my mother is, even. Not that Alice in Wonderland or Shakespeare or A Little Princess or Dickens aren't good reads, just that I have difficulty thinking that most tweens would consider those or anything like them their Absolute Favorites. I've seen this in other works aimed at kids, and I suspect that it's a combination of focusing on public domain books and of wanting books that the author of the present work thinks will still be around and loved in another decade or three. Well, and also wanting books that parents and grandparents of potential readers will have heard of and approve of. The problem is that it leaves me feeling like the protagonists live in an alien world and/or aren't even vaguely normal tweens.

Martine, Arkady. A Desolation Called Peace - As a physical book, this is kind of overwhelmingly heavy. As a story, I had a lot of fun. I feel like this one had more obvious dangling threads than A Memory Called Empire did, but I also feel that it's sufficient. I want to know what happens next, but I don't have to. The aliens were alien but made sense in their own context. The political maneuverings that tried to make hay out of potential war made sense, too, as the sort of thing that real people do.

My Neighbor, Hayao - This volume contains photos from an exhibit at the Spoke Art Gallery of works inspired by Miyazaki's films. I got this from the library and suspect that it's pricey otherwise because art books tend to be. The works are the usual mixed bag with some things I loved and some things I hated and a lot that I could take or leave. Worth a look.

Pandian, Gigi. The Masquerading Magician; The Elusive Elixir; The Lost Gargoyle of Paris - Overdrive ebook. Books 2-3 of An Accidental Alchemist and a novella set shortly after Book 3 in the series. Book 3 resolves Dorian's health issues which came as a profound relief to me. I was concerned that trying to solve the magic of Backwards Alchemy and his creation was going to drag on further, possibly with no resolution ever coming. The mysteries in the novels remain peripheral to Zoe's goals in a way that makes for odd reading. (The novella actually centers the mystery more.) It's like she's trying to follow a path and, as she looks around for signposts, she has to clear the trail of fallen trees, fill in holes, and bridge streams. She can't go forward without dealing with the obstacle, but the obstacles don't matter. Possibly, I'd be happier with this series without the murder mystery aspects, but I've also never been into mysteries as mysteries.

Pape, Cindy Spencer. Ashes & Alchemy - Overdrive ebook. Steampunk/fantasy romance in the same setting as the other books I've read by Pape. An impoverished mother seeking medical care for her daughter meets a police inspector with ties to the government's agency for addressing supernatural crimes and threats. The two of them discover that someone's been using the school the daughter attends as a cover for 'medical' research that has killed multiple children. The daughter survives. The mother and the police inspector fall in love. The book's actually quite short, so the plot is without a lot of complications or flourishes.

Pape, Cindy Spencer. Dragons & Dirigibles - Overdrive ebook. Set in the author's steampunk/fantasy Victorian England. The hero is a former merchant sea captain who has, unexpectedly, inherited a title from his brother and is now trying to track down a smuggling operation that's using his land. The heroine is testing a small dirigible of her own design when someone shots the vessel down. She crashlands in the hero's garden. She works for the ubiquitous government agency and calls for help when she and the hero start to realize just how bad his situation actually is.

Raybourn, Deanna. An Unexpected Peril - Part of the Veronica Speedwell series. I'm still enjoying these books and the romance between the leads. I like that both of them are competent but with different focus, that neither is always right or always wrong when they speculate about an investigation. In this case, Veronica is asked to stand in for a missing head-of-state, the ruling Princess of a fictional Germanic country who goes missing during a trip to London. The Princess's staff seem oddly unconcerned about her absence, more irritated at the thoughtlessness of making them have to cover for her during a state visit when there are things the Princess has promised to do.

Thomas, Sherry. The Immortal Heights - Overdrive ebook. This is the 3rd in a YA fantasy series. This is the one in which the protagonists face the Big Bad in the Final Showdown. I felt like some of the plot beats were too obvious but have no idea what would have fit better. Overall, I liked the series; I just have a dozen nitpicky things that I'd have preferred to be different.

Tidbeck, Karin. The Memory Theater - I found this book... adequate. It may delight not-me people, but if I had had to return it before I finished reading it, I wouldn't have bothered to check it out again. There's a lot of magic here and things happening in liminal spaces, but I'd have preferred not to give Augusta so large a percentage of the pages; she was nasty, destructive, and incapable of change. I think that part of the point was that a lot of people enabled her and the rest of Garden because those people didn't expect anyone would do those sorts of things and because they never thought to check up after. I think that Thistle's need for his name is meant to come across as more visceral than it does; at least, I hope so. I'd have been interested in getting more of Dora's POV.

Started but not finished:
Aveela, Ronesa. A Study of Household Spirits of Eastern Europe - I found this slow going because it had the sort of jumbled formatting I expect from a game supplement with sidebars and vignettes with different background colors inserted in the text. I hate that format with a burning passion, so I gave up about 20 pages in. The writing about actual beliefs tended more toward lists that included regional beliefs that contradicted each other while using the same names for the spirits. I'm pretty sure that's accurate to the material, but it was also confusing in as much as I was never quite sure which bits went together.

Bardugo, Leigh. Six of Crows - Overdrive ebook. I read 47% of this before I had to return it. I put another hold on it and should be able to finish it the next time I have access. It'll be a while because there are many people ahead of me on the waitlist. Cordelia predicted that I wouldn't like it, but I enjoyed the part I read. I have difficulty taking the characters as the ages they're stated to be, however, and keep finding that I've added 5-10 years to everyone's ages. It's not that I mind reading about teen characters so much as that there's too much backstory and that they all act older. Fantasy heist novel.

Berne, Lisa. The Worst Duke in the World - This is a perfectly charming historical romance (at least it is up to the part where I stopped reading) that I've renewed three times without picking it up to read further. At this point, I don't think I'm going to, so I'm returning it.

Hodder, Mark. The Return of the Discontinued Man - Overdrive ebook. Part of the Burton & Swinburne series. I got about 10 pages in and didn't feel any real urge to keep reading.

Jones, Darynda. First Grave on the Right - Overdrive ebook. I disliked the protagonist immediately. Since I was looking for a popcorn book, that was a dealbreaker.

Lowe, Natasha. The Power of Poppy Pendle - This was fine. It's a kids' book about a girl who's being forced to learn magic but would much prefer to bake. I just wasn't in the right mood for a book like this, so I returned it to the library to get it off my shelf.

Oakes, Cory Putman. The 2nd Best Haunted Hotel on Mercer St. - Overdrive ebook. I read about a fifth of this and couldn't let go of my questions about the world building. I knew that the book wasn't going to answer any of them because the world building was set up to create the central conflicts. This is a middle grade saving-the-family-business story, just with the business being haunted hotels and the big corporation offering a standardized, predictable set of ghosts by requiring said ghosts to adhere to a strict script for all encounters.

Simak, Clifford. Time Is the Simplest Thing - Overdrive ebook. I read 20% of the book and found the style not congenial. It may well work for someone not-me.

Tsang, Katie. Dragon Mountain - This is the first book in a middle grade fantasy series. I read about half of it and just wasn't very interested. The plot and characters were on the simple end of the middle grade scale and felt very flat to me. I'm pretty sure that a lower elementary school aged kid would disagree, though.