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The Second Mango, The Money Book, The Franchise Affair
The Second Mango – Shira Glassman A newly-crowned queen and a lady knight go on an adventure to find the queen a girlfriend, and on the way end up rescuing a bunch a people and defeating an evil wizard. It’s super fluffy and super adorable! Everybody is Jewish and the queen has food allergies and it’s great. And for about half of the book I appreciated the humor and the light-heartedness, but then it tried to be more serious and things went awry. Because I was so attached to all the fluff in the beginning, I couldn’t make the transition over into seriousness, and I ultimately didn’t like the writing…
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Threshold by Jordan L. Hawk (2013)
This is the second book in the Whyborne & Griffin series and it is much like the first: wonderful plot, great characters, iffy sex scenes[1. more unfortunate word choices ruining otherwise okay sexytimes, although at least each sex scene involves important character/plot development things. I hate when you can cut out sexytimes entirely and lose nothing from the book; what’s the point of having them if they don’t DO anything?] and fun historical paranormal mysteries. Well, not FUN. More like terrifying.
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Iron & Velvet by Alexis Hall (2013)
As you know, I am a huge fan of Alexis Hall’s Prosperity series, which is a steampunk historical romance horror thing with amazing characters and a fantastic setting. Her Kate Kane series, meanwhile, is an urban paranormal mystery series with romance elements set in modern day London. I burnt out on urban paranormal mystery romances some years ago, but I had faith that AH wouldn’t just regurgitate the same old tropes that originally turned me off the genre. And he didn’t! A lot of the story elements ARE the same as other urban fantasy series– there are werewolves and vampires and witches, the protagonist is a half-faerie princess PI with…
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Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk (2012)
I somehow stumbled across Widdershins while browsing through something on Scribd. I’m so glad I did, because I ended up having an amazingly fun time reading it.
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The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper (2007)
This was my first Sheri S. Tepper book![1. I was supposed to have read The Gate to Women’s Country for a college class on dystopias and uptopias. I never did, probably because it was the end of the semester and I was tired of all the depressing stuff.] I do know enough about the history of scifi to know that Tepper is one of its major authors, and so I knew I’d pick up one of her books eventually. I choose The Margarets mainly because of its cover, which is cool in an early-2000s sort of way. I was also into the story, which is complicated and multi-layered.
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Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce
I liked this one SO MUCH more than Wild Magic! Which is really great, because I still rated that one fairly high despite my dislike of certain aspects. If you’re new to Tortall (like me) I’d say Alanna would be a good place to start. It’s the same sort of coming-of-age story, but with a twist: the protagonist is a young girl disguised as a boy, training to become a knight in a world where women mostly aren’t. And it totally works! (Perhaps because she starts her disguise before puberty set in.) I had to take a lot of things for granted, sure, but getting to know Alanna and co.…
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False Colors by Alex Beecroft
I had a nice chat on Twitter with the author after September’s #WizardBBC book chat[1. about power issues in fictional couples, actually.], and I went looking for her books on Scribd afterwards because another club member recommended them to me. I adore historical romance[1. It’s the only kind of romance I go looking for deliberately.] and I especially adore anything set in the Age of Sail. False Colors had a picture of two sailors and a historical ship on the cover; I was in, even before I read the summary.
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A Case of Possession by K.J. Charles
So remember how much I loved The Magpie Lord? Take that love and apply it to A Case of Possession, because it was just as good a read! All the great stuff from the first book is in here– great characters[1. including Stephen’s magic partner, who I was very excited to meet. She is snarky and hard as steel, but with a marshmallow center. Love her!], and interesting setting/worldbuilding, fun (yet scary) magic stuff, tricksy mystery, etc. etc. It’s not just a copy-cat of The Magpie Lord, though. For one thing, there are Chinese vampires instead of evil wizards. Also, things are complicated from being in the city rather than…