This book is a retelling of ‘The Princess and the Pea’, but where it’s an ordinary girl who gets thrown in with the royal family, and eventually earns her place there by being herself. Alyssa is separated from her party in a storm and ends up at the Winter Palace. After completely charming the 11-year-old […]
The Princess Companion – Melanie Cellier Read More »
I’m just fascinated by fungus. They also frustrate me, because unlike wildflowers, they’re hard to identify down to a specific level (and I have a deep seated need organize things). This book reinforces why that’s the case. If you’ve never studied fungi much, they are just so diverse, and so fascinating. The author’s fascination with
Entangled Life – Merlin Sheldrake Read More »
It’s interesting reading reviews of this book – people seem really divided about how badly humanity is portrayed in this book. Not that they started out looking too good in the first book of the series, but things get really grim in this second story. I’m really intrigued by this world building where humans really
Murder of Crows – Anne Bishop Read More »
This is an interesting book – it’s an alphabetical listing of lands that have appeared on maps at some point in time that don’t actually exist. It’s an interesting mix of mistakes, exaggerations, and outright lies. I think it’s easy in this world with GPS and Google maps, to forget that there was a time
The Phantom Atlas – Edward Brooke-Hitching Read More »
Irene is now the Librarian in Residence in her particular alternate world, with her apprentice Kai. When he’s kidnapped, she finally has to track down his family (of royal dragons), and ends up diving more deeply into the Fae’s worlds of chaos then she ever thought she’d be able to go. It was definitely interesting
The Masked City – Genevieve Cogman Read More »
Henrietta Howel has power over fire, and has therefore always feared being found out by the royal sorcerers, because women should not weld magic. But she is finally discovered, and it turns out that they’ve been waiting for a girl that can weld fire. And so she is apparently the Chosen One. I enjoyed this
A Shadow Bright and Burning – Jessica Cluess Read More »
Interesting overview of flowers in the Northeast. It was nice to see some plants outside of normal New England stomping ground. The author’s chosen some interesting groupings, and I learned quite a bit, some of it seemingly random, from the accompanying essays. This is the kind of book I wish I had the time to
Summer Wildflowers of the Northeast – Carol Gracie Read More »
I am very quickly becoming very impressed with this author – she’s written what could be an incredibly dark story with such gorgeous language that it transcends the darkness. Jack and Jill are twins being jammed into roles planned by parents who know nothing about raising children, when they find their way through a door
Down Among the Sticks and Bones – Seanan McGuire Read More »
It’s a measure of how much I trust this author that I read a story of hers about a plague. Because I can safely say that for the most part, too soon. (I have Connie Willis’ The Doomsday Book sitting in my TBR pile, and though I have heard nothing but good things about it,
The Physicians of Vilnoc – Lois McMaster Bujold Read More »
This is the last book in the series about Herald Mags’ children – in this case, his youngest son Tory is off for an adventure with his best friend, Prince Kyril, to help out Mags’ cousin who leads the Sleepgivers. Bey’s daughter has disappeared, and he needs help to find her. I enjoyed this story
Spy, Spy Again – Mercedes Lackey Read More »
