X Never Marks the Spot

Okay, fine, enough meta already, okay, brain? Instead, talk about reading! One advantage to working a temp job far away (other than the money, which is a Good Thing, even if I wish it were a Better Thing, or at least a Better-Paying Thing) is that the lunch breaks and bus rides offered me opportunity to actually sit and read books, which I haven't done enough of lately. Finally finished Rob Thurman's Trick of the Light - which frustrated me in various ways for most of it, but the end redeemed at least half of the issues for me. Which was an interesting enough turn-around that I ended up liking the book, in the balance. ( Mild spoilers, but everything major is blacked out )

It's intended to be the first of a series, and I see how it's set up for more, though I kind of feel it works better as a one-shot - I feel the same way about Thurman's other series as well, that the characters' drama gets overplayed after more than a book or two (and Trick of the Light gets pretty repetitious even within just the one volume); but urban fantasy thrives on continuing series, so...

Then I started reading Mary Brown's The Unlikely Ones, which I'm only partway through but really enjoying so far - it's one of those books that I look at the page count and go yay! I've still got hundreds of pages to read! <3 I'd never heard of it before but it was recced to me by my roommate in response to me reccing her Howl's Moving Castle, fitting as it's in that tradition of Dianna Wynne Jones and Robin McKinley, fairytale/folktale-inspired fantasy, which is probably my favorite fantasy subgenre. Mary Brown has her own style that's quite different from either of those others, yet is reminiscent all the same. It's a dark fairytale, with witches and curses and terrible monstrous things, but also unicorns and talking animals and helpful(?) magicians. It's not a kid's book (the sexual imagery gets way too explicit for that) but it sort of has the feel of one anyway, the genuine wonder of magic - the book-flap likens it to Watership Down and yeah, I can see it.

(Though oh man, I was looking on Amazon and it's hard to explain how incredibly wrong this cover is for it...! I'm reading the hardcover, the one I linked, and its illustration is about the most fitting-to-a-book I've ever seen, not only in spirit but the details, down to the knight having a mustache and curly red hair...)

And now I am going to go read the latest Dresden Files!