Books!

I've been reading a bunch of really different, really good books lately; shall we discuss?

First up is Kill the Queen by Jennifer Estep. It's a fantasy, written for adults (as opposed to young adults) but possibly young-adult-appropriate, though certainly not without violence, and features a main character who is strong (and funny) without being too perfect.

I may have seen a review of it, but the first thing I remember coming across was a column about how it was much better than its cover, and that caught my attention. Either at that point, or sometime shortly thereafter (I bought it a few weeks later, anyway), I looked into it further, and found an excerpt on the author's website (at the bottom of the page here), which promptly hooked me.

I like the writing, the characters, and when I got the full book, the pace pulled me through so fast that I'm quite sure I missed some details in my rush to Find Out What Happened. I have to read it again.

(It's the first in a planned trilogy, and when I praised it on Twitter, the author replied to tell me the second one comes out in July--isn't modern life funny?)

Another race-through-it read was Tear Me Apart by JT Ellison, a thriller that was twisty and had a lot of improbable to it, but was still very enjoyable. I'm not sure I would enjoy reading a lot of hers, since the frequent perspective changes might get old, but it was certainly nice for once. Good library book.

Fantasy author Martha Wells wrote a four-novella sci-fi series called the Murderbot Diaries, and the final one, Exit Strategy, came out in October. I loved them all, both in book and in audio, and am delighted that she is writing a full-length book in the setting as well. I can go on and on about this if anyone is interested.

Switching to hockey now; if you're a sports fan, you may have heard about a new thing called The Athletic, which is a subscription-based program that has been gathering a lot of good sports writers (not just for hockey, though of course that's what's on my radar). I first noticed them when they hired Fluto Shinzawa away from the Boston Globe, and I kept seeing more writers who were going to work for them, so this summer, when I ran across a half-off deal, I decided to try it out.

I've been enjoying it since; they go really in depth into the NHL coverage, from a variety of perspectives, they can really delve, and it's nice that I can customize it to my interests (1: the Bruins; 2: hockey generally). One of my favorite writers so far has been a guy who goes by Down Goes Brown (actual name Sean McIndoe). He's both knowledgeable and very funny, which gets me right where I live, of course. When I learned he had written this book, I knew I would have to get it.

This was before I had even finished it, and look at all the flags on funny bits. Definitely recommend for the hockey fan; you'll learn a lot, and enjoy it all the way.

Next up is a middle-grade novel (what we called an 8-to-12 when I worked in bookstores, meaning the general age guideline) called The Collectors, by Jacqueline West. I think the first I heard of it was the PW review, and I decided to give it a try. It's a quick read (at least at my age), and I quite enjoyed it. Over halfway through, I paused to tell my mother that, unusually, I couldn't tell which side was the good guys and which the bad, since they were both making convincing arguments for their side, and without giving anything away, I will say that I appreciated the way that went by the end.

Up next is Kate Atherley's latest, which I was pleased to see got a starred review in PW:

She's the one who taught the War and Peace socks class I took in 2014, and I look forward to digging into this one.

What are you reading?