I took so long finishing my post for July that it's already September, so you're getting two months of book reviews at once! For those of you who just stumbled on my blog, you can find my past reviews here and an overview of my rating system here.
As always, unmarked spoilers may follow.
A Single Lonely Star (Huang Xiaotian, tr. Amy Wong)
I don't usually read science fiction, but one of my friends pitched this to me as "barely even science fiction, basically just a mystery", and while that might have been overstating things a little I still enjoyed it. The basic premise involves a murder mystery on a moon colony, but not one of Earth's moons -- instead, it's a moon colony of a planet around another star, and they don't have FTL, so the colony can only meaningfully interact with the planet it's orbiting and another moon colony on a different moon. My friend tells me that some of the choices that seemed a little weird (it's a background plot point that they left Earth because dungeons only appear on Earth) are standard genre conventions in Chinese SF, but I haven't actually read any other Chinese SF, so I don't have any idea if that's true -- let me know in the comments if you can confirm!
The protagonist (an auditor at an insurance company, who gets sucked into trying to solve a murder as part of an investigation she's doing for her job) was pretty likeable -- she's got a bit of a dry sense of humor that won't work for everyone, but it worked well for me. Without spoiling the twist outright, I thought the resolution to the mystery was reasonably satisfying, and did a good job of being foreshadowed without being wildly obvious.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⬛, would probably get a full 5 if I liked SF
On the Edge of Remembrance (Tala on the Edge #8) (Azul Medina Reyes)
I'm going to be real here: we're eight books into this series. You already know whether you're going to like this book. With the exception of #6 (seriously, I will never understand why authors think "the victim was actually kidnapped by a dungeon" is a satisfying twist), every book in this series has been an absolute banger. I will never get sick of the basic "Tala and her girlfriend Elodie go somewhere interesting and solve a mystery" formula (this time they've been sent to Brazil), and the author's incredible depth of research really shone through in their descriptions of downtown Recife. For a more spoilery take, I also thought the author did a good job of making the culprit in this one sympathetic but also obviously in the wrong -- I've read books that were aiming for that but missed the mark in both directions, so it was nice to see something actually stick the landing.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Lilies in Summer (Madison Martin-Ward)
Yet another entry in the "dungeons and espers show up earlier than they actually did" genre of historical fiction. (See here for my review of The Esper and the Emperor (dungeons show up in ancient Rome) or here for my review of Finest Hour (dungeons show up in WW2).) This time they're showing up in the middle of the Hundred Years' War. Pays somewhat more attention to most books in the genre to the question of "how did society survive", albeit not enough to make it actually plausible. Joan of Arc is an esper and gets some cool lines.
The biggest issue I had with this book was that it really didn't want to engage with the fact that a lot of historical people had values that were kind of terrible. Like, okay, I get that sexism is no fun to read about, but do you know what else isn't fun to read? Multiple different male characters giving speeches about how Of Course Men And Women Should Be Treated Equally. Pro tip to authors: if you want to write historical fiction but with no sexism, skip the giant speeches.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⬛⬛⬛
Dear Meighan (Alexandra Moon)
Kinda formulaic romance novel. Meighan is a consultant in her mid-twenties with dreams of starting a restaurant! Josiah is a widowed chef caring for two young children! Meighan flies around a lot for her job, so Josiah starts writing letters to her! Except it's the twenty-first century, so when he says "letters", what he actually means is... emails, but he's formatting them like a formal letter for some reason.
This one was fine, I guess, but there was nothing all that special about it -- I was optimistic about how they were going to handle Josiah's kids, but I've read multiple books this year that did it better. The epistolary elements were fine, but nothing I haven't seen before.
I did like the plot point about how starting a restaurant is actually a lot harder than it looks, and it did a good job of setting up Meighan's ultimate decision to give up on the restaurant without making it feel like a bad thing.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⬛⬛
The Wrath of Providence (Robert Washington)
Look, I know this one is a "classic," but I'm going to be honest with you: I did not finish this book. I am just not that into the concept of "guy from the seventies agonizes about how espers are a punishment from God", and the fact that this book is technically fiction is not enough to make up for that.
EDIT: I am aware that the author was orphaned by a dungeon. That's really unfortunate! I feel bad for him! But it does not make his book good.
Overall rating: ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
The Summer I Turned Twenty-Five (Tariq Faisal, tr. Tariq Faisal)
The only non-fiction I read this month two months! Recommended by the same person who recommended me The Wrath of Providence, but about a million times more fun to read. This one's a memoir by a guy who was an emergency medic in Egypt in 1971, and his experiences adapting to the crisis. The author has a great sense of humor, and honestly that was half of why I liked it so much -- but it did also do a good job of the "actually providing useful information" part. Supposedly you can basically skip all of Chapter 4 if you know things about Egypt in the seventies, but if (like me) your knowledge was basically "less of a disaster than you'd have guessed" it's not actually any less good than the rest of the book.
Originally published in Arabic, but the author did his own translation into English.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Four Keys (Mina Phung)
This one is a romance AND a mystery AND historical fiction, three great tastes that taste great together! Lâm is a journalist whose brother has been voluntold to serve in the French army during World War 1; Hoa works in a textile factory, but she's got a bit of a talent for getting herself into interesting situations. When a protestor who'd been trying to convince people to evade the draft goes missing, his wife goes to Hoa for help, and she (eventually with Lâm's help) has to track him down. The romance is a bit of a slow burn, but they do end up together at the end, and (bigger spoilers) they ultimately manage to find the missing guy. The author was signaling the connection to his activism strongly enough that I thought it had to be a red herring, but I ended up being wrong -- instead, the twist was that he'd been kidnapped by someone nominally on his side who disapproved of his tactics.
The anti-war message was a little heavy-handed, and some of the dialogue between Hoa and her boss made me think the author wanted us to be absolutely sure we understood that the boss was being unreasonable, but apart from that I thought this one was pretty solid, definitely worth reading if you're into this sort of thing.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⬛
Lavender & Linden (Destiny Coleman)
If I never have to read another romance novel where the conflict between the lead couple is resolved by them getting kidnapped by a dungeon and forced to talk things out, it will be too soon. At least this one was short.
Overall Rating: ⭐⬛⬛⬛⬛
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