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Thea Guanzon does not have her own Wikipedia page yet; only her first novel does. I chose it from a list of recommendations because I tend to like romantasies but had read very few, and some weren't straight enough for my taste. There was also the aforementioned intrigue of a Southeast Asian influence, but that's apparent only in the frequency of major storms.

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Up next is Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade by Keith Laumer. I've waited long enough for this.
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I had never read any of Sue Grafton's Alphabet series. My mom read a few of the books long ago and doesn't remember what they were like. Not knowing how they compared, I started on the first free copy I found.

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Up for another high fantasy, I'm starting The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon. I don't know many inspired by Southeast Asia....
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On the first of this month, there was a local production of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical. I didn't watch it, but it demonstrated that the 2005 start of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series still has its fans. That may have inspired my reading choice.

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To take a break from fantasy and sci-fi, I'll try Sue Grafton's O Is for Outlaw. Not long since my last mystery, but this one should be magic-free.
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Great, another book without a Wikipedia page. Even author Davinia Evans doesn't have one, because she's too new on the scene, with only two published novels afterward and none before. At least I can refresh my memory with others' reviews.

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Now I've started The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. At least it got a screen adaptation, however unpopular.
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I had not read any of H. Beam Piper before, nor do I remember who recommended this title to me. It's not significant enough for its own Wikipedia page, so I have to rely on my memory more than usual to review it.

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I was about to read a book set in Finland, but I'm saving it for a hot month. For now, I'll try Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans.
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After nearly six years, I still remembered Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb pretty well. The main hole in my memory pertained to Fitz's condition at the end of the novel: bedridden and having lost the independent use of the psychic Skill, thanks to an abortive attempt on his life. His illness dominates the early chapters of the second volume, until he finds the strength and courage to return to the royal palace after months.

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After those 675 pages, I feel like reading something shorter. That'll be H. Beam Piper's Cosmic Computer.
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I'd been wanting to read the second Dresden Files volume for years. Sure, I could have bought it myself, but I like to give my family lots of options on my wish list, and I have enough trouble reading books as fast as I collect them. For once, I didn't wait to start on one of my latest literary Christmas presents.

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Seems I'm on a sequel kick, partly because it induces me to give away prior volumes afterward. My next read is Robin Hobb's Royal Assassin.
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For some reason, I thought I'd read The City of Brass much longer than four years ago. I could remember the general outline but none of the character names, nor the circumstances at the very end. An in-book synopsis would have helped, but I settled for the cast pages, plus Wikipedia and a brief browse of the first volume.

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Nor do I know what I'll read next. Let's see what I get for Christmas.
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When I pulled this off my shelf, I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that it was not a novel. It is an incomplete collection of Larry Niven's short stories, excerpts from novels, essays, and (in larger print) commentary thereon. I figured that this would be enough to scratch my sci-fi itch.

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Now reading The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty. Back to a Middle Eastern flavor.
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I rarely read a book in its year of publication, especially when the author (Antonia Hodgson in this case) is brand-new to me. I think I was just eager to get one of the largest tomes off my shelf, tho the story doesn't run for quite as many words as I thought.

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Looking for sci-fi, I picked up Larry Niven's N-Space. A similar number of pages, but I'm not reading all of them.
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It's been almost three years since my last Silvia Moreno-Garcia reading. The two books were published so close together that each one ends with an excerpt of the other. Of course, they're not quite the same genre. Gods of Jade and Shadow may focus on the god of death, but it's still less charnel than this.

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I got the urge to pick up a less urban fantasy with fictitious maps up front. That would be The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson.
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A decade after watching a movie of King Solomon's Mines and nearly a decade after reading She, I finally got around to the other novel in the same binding. I would not have named a sequel after an already established protagonist, but I guess that sold back in 1887.

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Next up is Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic. Maybe I'll finish by the Day of the Dead.
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I was unfamiliar with the Grimm fairy tale "The Goose Girl." From what I gather, T. Kingfisher's reimagining bears very little resemblance. There are geese, yes, but they rarely figure into the plot.

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Now I'm in the mood for something older and more masculine. I've picked up H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain.
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Despite the title's implication, this is the fifth Thursday Next novel, not the second. That said, it reportedly kicks off a second series. While published in 2007, only 2 years after the previous entry, it's set 14 years later, in 2002.

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My next read is A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, whom I recently discovered is Ursula Vernon. I've been enjoying her Hamster Princess kid lit (not reviewed here), so now I'll try a darker fairy tale take.
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Normally, I'd wait longer to read another fantasy by a Black woman, for what I now realize are rather arbitrary reasons. But this one promised to be a little different, partly by being more genuinely YA (no sex, little swearing). Besides, the beautiful cover illustration drew me in.

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I have now picked up Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. That ought to be funnier.
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It's been more than five years since I read The Lies of Locke Lamora, the first book in Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard Sequence. Fortunately, I remembered the plot pretty well and was never confused for long when the sequel made reference to past events. You might even choose to start here.

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My next read is The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna. Back to a focus on country folk.
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When I picked up N.E. Davenport's 2022 novel, it reminded me a bit of Dragon Pearl: a sci-fi/fantasy combo featuring a young, non-White, female first-person narrator. I wouldn't count it as YA, tho, because it includes a sex scene, gore, and a lot of swearing. Good thing my previous read was so tame.

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Believe it or not, I still have an appetite for long, dark fantasy. Next up is Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch.
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I first heard of George MacDonald from his appearance in C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, serving a guide role similar to Virgil in Dante's Inferno. Years later, I caught some clips of MacDonald's own writing on a Facebook group (now disbanded) dedicated to him, Lewis, and G.K. Chesterton. When I found one of his two stories I could name in a Little Free Library, I finally gave him a try. It helped that at a mere 201 pages with frequent chapter breaks, I could easily finish the book right before my beach vacation.

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Speaking of dark fantasies, I've picked up The Blood Trials by N.E. Davenport. So far, it has an angry tone.
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It occurs to me that for all the nonfiction on language I've read, I never put any on my wish list. I certainly wouldn't have asked for one about cussing; indeed, I once gave up on such a gift almost instantly. Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance on John McWhorter's 2021 book, which has two subtitles: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever. (Nice use of the serial comma.)

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Now I've snatched George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin from a Little Free Library. I'm sure it includes no profanity whatsoever.
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I don't recall where I first learned of Jenny Greenteeth, the dangerous amphibious fairy from English folklore. It wasn't in A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits, which I still check on occasion. Regardless, Molly O'Neill's 2025 debut novel sounded promising.

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On a whim the other day, I picked up a Silver Age collection of Doom Patrol comics. It may be a while before I pick up a non-graphic novel.
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