while it is a fantasy trilogy it's not a fantasy trilogy, if you know what I mean. the books are about different things, the tone shifts.

honestly mostly what I have to say about this is that turns out I still wasn't fully recovered. enjoyable mostly-not-very-fanastical fantasy series. kinda Regency, but with occasional poor people. nice political manipulations, but still focused on the characters. nicely queer!

The Fall of the Kings - Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman

The Privilege of the Sword - Ellen Kushner

Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner

Green Dot - Madeleine Gray
had dinner with a friend halfway through reading this today and mostly what I can think is that she probably shouldn't read this, it will be too upsetting for her. funny (what a voice) but also such a slow moving tragedy.

maybe it's like Animorphs, but written by Stephen King

many kids, a tangled mess of them, and adults too, and there's no escape from the tensions of family and community. but you wouldn't want there to be, really. that's where the meaning comes from.

and an edge of fetish in there. mind control and animals fucking and... but just the edge of it

Book of Love - Kelly Link
a day of rest, mostly reading this. it makes me think of those Neil Gaiman books set in the real world but magic is real. except those are always somehow about how the magic is cooler and more meaningful than the world. about a single special kid. this is the opposite.

lots of fucking but rarely horny in itself, it's just interested in how each dynamic unfolds, it reads kind of like a Joseph Heller in the way it stays detached from the array of events it describes. but with a little bit more flamboyance, of course.

Faggots - Larry Kramer
hey I read a book in small pieces over an extended period of time! to the end! I never do that.
anyway, yes, a rich book written in and about a time and place now several layers of history removed. with a layer of satire and fantasy which if anything evokes it better.

My Usual and You - Mina V Esguerra
What a sweet book! And hot, too, and what a good dynamic they have. In my headcanon they stay open, or at least that she still has the occasional hookup. Though tbh it doesn't seem completely implausible that they go unicorn hunting at some point.

There Is No Antimemetics Division - QNTM
Have read the original stories, have read the self pubbed version, now read the Official non-SCP version. Still bangs! And the new version is more focused - there's a love story in there that's been excavated and polished to a high shine.

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. short and intense. The flip thing to say is, huh, yeah, I guess this is a book about the importance of safety mechanisms in larp. Good nature writing, light, heat, bodies, shame, fear.

A Theory of Haunting by Sarah Monette
Read mostly at my Dad's over Christmas when I was feeling fatiguey - I was also reading Glorious Exploits but that was too strong to binge. Well done but I don't really like haunted house books, I read this because I love the Grief of Stones series so much.