The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski

Posted on August 19, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This entrancing debut stars triplet witches who can see the future, but must work together and individually to grasp their own.

Stacy Sivinski’s first novel, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, is a sweet, wise balm of a story about family, change, and coming into oneself.

The Quigley triplets, Anne, Violet, and Beatrix, have always been close. Their beloved mother was a powerful Diviner, able to read the future in various signs. Her daughters put the same skill to use in the Crescent Moon Tearoom, where the three young witches sell magical teas and delectable baked goods and tell fortunes to hordes of Chicago’s women and witches. The tearoom (run out of the family home, itself an endearing character with a will and magic of its own) does a booming business, but all is not well with the Quigley sisters. A challenge comes from the Council of Witches: the younger three must help three older witches discover their Tasks, which is a witch’s very reason for existence and is imperative to complete before a witch passes, or she’s “doomed to linger as a spirit for all eternity.” If they fail, the Council will close their shop. The events entwine with a potential curse on the sisters, threatening to undo everything the sisters love.

Although nearly identical in appearance, the Quigleys are quite different individuals. Their mother used to say, “Violet has her head in the clouds, and Beatrix’s nose is in a book. But [Anne’s] feet are always planted firmly on the ground.” While Violet (the family baker) is volatile and in constant, foot-tapping motion, Beatrix is shy and dreamy. Anne is the caretaker, the brewer of teas, and has secretly been holding back her own magical powers so as not to surpass her sisters. They “had been locked in their web of affection and dependence for so long now. Their bonds had taken shape during childhood and seemed to be coated in bronze.” As they struggle with the ominous Council’s extraordinary demands, their differences are highlighted, even as each sister finds opportunities for new growth.

Sivinski’s droll telling details the lovable Quigleys with all their quirk and charm, each with their own moving emotional arc. Chapters are headed with signs and symbols, as one might find in tea leaves at the bottom of a cup, with brief descriptions of their meaning: a fan suggests flirting with temptation; a bat foreshadows a fruitless endeavor. Each line captivates: “As seers, the Quigleys had long ago accepted that questioning what they saw in the remnants of their customers’ tea was about as useful as trying to wash cherry jelly out of a silk blouse.” With its sweetness, realistic challenges, and satisfying resolution, The Crescent Moon Tearoom is a rare pleasure. Readers will miss the Quigley sisters at this novel’s end.

This review originally ran in the July 26, 2024 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 petals.

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In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on July 19, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This fantasy novel(la) comes billed as a reimagined, queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Perhaps I’m just working at a great distance from that original, but it didn’t recall it strongly for me. There is definitely a young girl kept captive in a palace by a being that’s understood to be a monster, and their relationship changes. The palace itself may have some powers. I see the parallels, but would never have thought of Beauty if I hadn’t been told to.

All of which is neither here nor there and has no bearing, for me, on enjoyment of the book. (Novella? At almost 200 pages, it might be pushing novella-length – these things are so tricky to define! – but it felt that contained, to me.)

Yên and her mother live in a somber village in a post-apocalyptic world, in which creatures called the Vanishers have (yes) vanished, but their legacy lingers: mysterious viruses, illnesses, and spirits, dangers lurking everywhere. Yên has failed as a scholar; her mother has value to the village as a healer, but as her mother’s just-mediocre assistant, Yên’s future is not assured. It does not surprise her to be sold away to pay off the village’s debts, to a frightening dragon: everyone expects she will be tortured to death by her new master, Vu Côn, but it turns out that Vu Côn (who can shape-shift between human and dragon forms) has other needs. She is the mother of intelligent, willful twins. And Yên, who had been teacher to her village’s children (apparently this was not judged a value??!), finds herself with new pupils.

Vu Côn and her children live in an abandoned Vanishers’ palace, a place of disconcerting, Escheresque, physically impossible dimensions and movements. The twins, Thông and Liên, possess powerful magic, and being nonhuman, as well as the children of her master, they give Yên different challenges than she’s faced with the village children. But they are children, nonetheless, clever and respectful of their new teacher (if headstrong), and she does care for them. Her feelings for Vu Côn are more complicated, blending desire with fear and resentment, and it appears this conflict is mutual.

The dragon’s eyes were a light grey, the color of storm clouds gathering. She was looking at Yên with an expression that was half-irritation, half-hunger, as if she would gobble Yên whole, given half a chance.

And what scared Yên most? This might, in the end, be just what she longed for.

Yên is dissatisfied living in the frightening Vanishers’ palace. She misses her mother and fears for her mother’s safety in their village; she misses home and knows it is unavailable to her, as the village elders who sold her away would never allow her return. She doesn’t know where to turn. And the readers understand before Yên does that there are deeper, darker secrets in the Vanishers’ palace than she’s yet discovered. But there are opportunities, too.

It’s a curious fantasy world, offering familiar elements (as they do) of our human desires and conflicts, but always with a twist – shape-shifting dragons, sure, but also, for example: Vu Côn has a magnetic sex appeal for our protagonist, but where I’m accustomed to seeing this expressed as heat, Yên experiences Vu Côn’s dragon-body as cold, wet, briny, and very sexy in these elements. That’s a new one for me, and I don’t find it easily accessible: “sea salt and cold, tight air, and a faint aftertaste like algae,” “wet cold creeping up her skin like fingers” – slimy, even! It’s an interesting twist, and one where I have to just trust in Yên’s tastes for Yên. But that’s what fiction asks of us, in different ways, right?

This was a fascinating adventure for me, in the ways that it did and did not fit into my expectations. And in the end, it calls upon some useful universals: big thinking about right and wrong, the way we relate to lover, friend, family, and community, the yearning for self-actualization and belonging. Dragons? Sure. I find Aliette de Bodard a lively imagination and I liked this punchy tale.

Rating: 7 strokes.

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The Twilight Garden by Sara Nisha Adams

Posted on July 1, 2024 by pagesofjulia

From the author of The Reading List comes a pleasingly similar, sweet novel of unexpected connections. In a shared garden in London, two sets of neighbors in two timelines (2018-19 and the 1970s and 80s) navigate conflict, build community, share love and struggles, and grow flowers, food, and strong bonds. It’s an optimistic story, which I perhaps don’t get enough of in my life.

I’m thinking of both this and Adams’ first novel as sort of meet-cute, enemies-to-friends stories, with rom-com sweetness but where the relationships that form are not romantic. Rather, neighbors and community members come together, across diversity in age, gender, sexuality, and race, and form deep and meaningful friendships and built families, caring for each other in profound but not romantic ways. There are romances among the cast of characters, but not in the relationships whose trajectory defines the novel. I’m thinking of these as non-romantic love stories, a genre I’ve not thought about before but am trying to define here.

We first meet two neighbors in contemporary London. Winston is a young Indian immigrant who has lived in his rental home for some years with his partner, Lewis, although their relationship seems to be drawing to a close. He’s lonely, disconnected, and a bit depressed, although his work in a nearby convenience store offers a wholesome and healthy dose of community connection. “He was always chatting to customers in the shop, but when it came to the neighbors on his road, he barely knew faces, let alone names.”

Bernice has just moved in next door, newly divorced, with her ten-year-old son Seb. She is white, well-off, privileged, uptight. Because chapters alternate between their perspectives, the reader knows that each is suffering their own private pains, but to one another, Winston and Bernice are each the nightmare neighbor. Their conflict centers around a shared garden, which Winston has treated as a private sanctuary and Bernice views as a death trap for her son. This garden, now in disrepair, transports readers back to the earlier timeline and two additional protagonists.

Maya first moved in (to what is now Winston’s home) with her husband Prem when they were newly arrived from India. They were soon joined by a daughter, Hiral. Next door (in what is now Bernice and Seb’s home) an older woman named Alma lived in the house she’d been raised in. Initially prickly, and permanently ornery, Alma becomes a dear friend to Maya’s family, a relationship that began in the garden. Alma is a very serious gardener and a bit of a control freak, but Maya encourages her to accept help from their community, and they wind up very much a neighborhood hub for food, fellowship, work, mutual support. In Winston and Bernice’s time, mysterious missives inspire the feuding neighbors to attempt reawakening the rich shared garden of years past, and the bonds of community come, slowly, along with it.

This story is deeply sweet, perhaps approaching what my mother would call ‘precious,’ but never getting there. There are no bad guys, although there are some bad behaviors; instead, these are humans who suffer and sometimes handle it poorly, but feel badly about it and try harder next time. The loves (familial, friendly, and romantic) are real and deep. I cried several times. It felt wholesome and good. There is tremendous diversity here in several senses, and closeness is possible across all those lines when humans reach out and make efforts, or when there is real need. It’s a lovely, hopeful version of the world, and I’m here for more of it.

Rating: 9 banana leaves.

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Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Posted on May 17, 2024 by pagesofjulia

A little bit of a fairy tale retold, relying more on Mayan mythology, recast in 1920s Mexico: culture, myth, and universal coming-of-age. I found it absorbing and will read more by this author (helped along by the teaser chapters at back of book from one of her other novels!).

We meet Casiopea when she is in her teens. She still thinks often of her father, a sensitive poet who taught her about the stars and named her for a constellation. Since his death, she and her mother have returned to her mother’s family home, where they are very much treated as poor relations, Casiopea doing a lot of scrubbing on her knees while harshly spoken to. Her grandfather is harsh, her aunts dismissive, but it is her cousin Martín who is cruelest. She is well aware of the Cinderella story and would prefer not to be framed this way–“she had decided it would be nonsense to configure herself into a tragic heroine”–but the reader sees it too. Instead, she resist self-pity, aims to never let her tormentors see her cry, and dreams secretly of escaping her small-minded small town and returning to her father’s city of Mérida.

She gets there by the most unexpected of paths: she accidentally releases a god of death, Hun-Kamé, who has been long imprisoned in a chest in her grandfather’s bedroom. With a fragment of his bone imbedded in her thumb, they are bound together. Hun-Kamé, dethroned and locked up by his twin brother, is missing a few key components–eye, ear, finger, and necklace–without which he cannot be. In his weakened state, Hun-Kamé needs the connection with Casiopea to move and live and make a bid for redemption, although this bond will make him increasingly mortal over time. And Casiopea will weaken and die if he does not remove the bone. But in the meantime, she gains a traveling companion, a meaningful quest, an adventure.

As a traveling companion, Hun-Kamé can be irksome; he has a tendency to boss her around, like everyone else in her world does, and servitude and submissiveness have never come easily to Casiopea. She is not afraid to work hard, but does not respond well to peremptory orders. She has to remind herself that this is a god–especially when traveling companion begins to feel like friend, something she’s really never had, and then even like something more. For his part, Hun-Kamé makes an effort to treat his traveling partner with respect. They have something, surprisingly, in common: both know the world mostly only at a remove, she from books, he from a distant deity’s omnipotence.

There is a lot to love about this story, several layers. Casiopea is a fun heroine: plucky, exasperated, curious about the world and yearning for fresh new experiences, yet concerned about breaking free of the rather conservative lessons she’s been taking in for a lifetime. The wider world is in flux: especially the cities she visits, like Mérida, Mexico City, and Tijuana, are full of music, fast dancing, and short-haired women in short dresses, all considered scandalous in the dusty village where Casiopea has spent her Cinderella years. In the company of a god who can pick up rocks off the ground and make them appear as coins, she suddenly has access to (for example) good things to eat, and I really enjoyed the repeated scenes where the mortal teenager is hungry and the god sort of sighs and patiently visits one café or restaurant after another even though food is not really his thing.

So we have a good-hearted, mature, responsible teenager–who is still a teenager–on a very important quest, the implications of which she and we learn only gradually, but also learning about the world, which is filled with cars, nice clothes, appealing snacks, flappers and ballrooms, and oh yes, a handsome god who is becoming part-mortal and therefore increasingly relatable. But also, because we’re drawing on Mayan myth, plenty of blood and monsters and decapitation and the highest of stakes. (Casiopea is as horrified as you are). Romance, mythology, violence, humor, dances and dresses, and family drama: in a fitting parallel, Hun-Kamé’s rival twin chooses as his own mortal champion the bumbling, cruel Martín, who is unlikeable but only human in his own struggles, to face off against Casiopea. It gets harder and harder to see how these characters will fight their way out of a pickle that involves fate and gods and a truly horrifying underworld, but read on til the end.

I love every bit of it, and got lost in this unique world. Can’t wait for more.

Rating: 7 waves.

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The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

Posted on May 13, 2024 by pagesofjulia

“There was a brief lull in the general chatter when the bandit walked into the coffeehouse.” It was not because he was a bandit; this was fairly commonplace. It was because he was extremely attractive. Nevertheless, chatter eventually recommences, until a fight breaks out – waitress, belligerent customer, manager, the beautiful bandit, and then a homelier bandit #2 – smashing the place to bits. It’s an appropriately exciting first chapter, setting up a cast of characters that we will follow well beyond the bounds of the coffeehouse. In fact, the majority of this short, lively book is set in the jungles and on the roads of a kingdom in turmoil.

The waitress is quickly recognized by her shaved head as a nun in the Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water. She is clever, resourceful, quick-witted, and highly trained in combat, but also a bit innocent. She follows our bandits (who are lucky no one noticed they appeared on a Wanted poster in the coffeehouse) and part-forces, part-cajoles her way into their gang, otherwise all male; the men are variously intrigued by the idea of a woman cooking for them (she turns out to be a terrible cook) or being available for sex (she sweetly informs them she would have to castrate them afterwards), or annoyed by her presence. Her devotion to the goddess she serves is very strong. As our nun-waitress-bandit and the rest of the gang get to know each other and pursue their banditry, conflicts arise in their approaches to religious fervor, history, and interpersonal relations, but they will find common cause.

At just 158 pages, The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water was easy to devour in an evening. It combines playful humor with very real tragedy, political messiness, the truest of friendships and the beginnings of romance. It’s a swashbuckling series of escapades with ideologies, justice, religion, relationship issues, and more. With some twists on gender and sexuality, this thrilling, silly-yet-earnest adventure tale is definitely a readalike for Upright Women Wanted, although it feels a bit more fully realized in its small package. Absolutely recommended, and I’ll take more from Cho.

Rating: 7 jade prayer beads.

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A War of Swallowed Stars by Sangu Mandanna

Posted on May 6, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This review contains spoilers for books that precede it in the series, but is spoiler-free for this book.

This is the third in a trilogy, following A Spark of White Fire and A House of Rage and Sorrow. And it had me pretty rapt, y’all. I was on the edge of my seat throughout, and I cried at the end, but in a good way, which makes me feel glad for the newly-12-year-old I’ve just gifted it to for her birthday. (I teased her that she had to wait because these books are labeled 12 and up!) The world we have come to care about over three books is in great peril, as are the relationships we’ve invested so much in. And it’s not that nobody we love is lost in this book; but it all ends in a way that feels right.

The Celestial Trilogy has featured magical weapons, gods and monsters, murderous family members, and friends where we’d least expect them. Esmae has experienced great and intense trauma, and weathered some very real depression. “I don’t know how to make my way through to the other side of it… I can’t see anything but the dark. I feel like I’ve fallen down a cold, dark hole and I’ll never get out.” Whew. But she has good friends. And she has good on her side. Hang in there, readers.

Mandanna took us through a lot in this series, but the emotional roller coaster has been well-earned, and it pays off in a big way. I can’t wait to hear what my young friend thinks. And you all.

Rating: 8 moments of eye contact.

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A House of Rage and Sorrow by Sangu Mandanna

Posted on April 29, 2024 by pagesofjulia

As I’ve decided will be my regular procedure around here, this review contains spoilers for books that precede it in the series, but is spoiler-free for this book.

Following A Spark of White Fire is A House of Rage and Sorrow, book 2 in the Celestial Trilogy by the author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. I love it.

Esmae is still reeling from the loss of her best friend at the end of book one. Also quite painful is the fact that Rama was killed by her twin brother in a duel, as he thought he was fighting Esmae herself: not only did Rama die, but her brother meant to kill her. Esmae’s anger is beyond description. She wants to burn it all down. She is also carefully avoiding a burgeoning romance, because (I judge) she is as angry with herself as with anyone, and doesn’t think she deserves it.

She is also, however, making friends. Surly Sybilla has cracked open and become as loyal to Esmae as to Max; beloved Rama’s sister Radha has appeared on the scene and begins making her way into the group, not without hiccups. There is a small, new, perhaps fragile, but very real family of friends forming around the girl who has always mourned not having a family.

Then again, the political intrigues and betrayals surrounding her flesh and blood keep multiplying, and the revelations and bad news keep coming. Just how much can one teenaged girl go through? A House of Rage and Sorrow ends on a cliffhanger, not unlike book one; but unlike that finish, this time I had the next installment at hand. Stay tuned for book three in this trilogy.

I love that romance keeps developing (and not just for Esmae!) alongside anguish and intrigue, and a very real and believable coming-of-age arc in which Esmae tries (at least a little) to balance her rage against her better wishes for her loved ones and her wider world. I can’t wait to see where we’ll go next.

Rating: 7 lions.

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Soulstar by C. L. Polk

Posted on April 15, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Book three of the Kingston Cycle does not disappoint. It did feel somewhat like a shift in tone for me, and changed up my pacing. But I am a big fan of Polk and hope they’re at work on more like this.

In this installment we see a new protagonist again: Robin Thorpe, who we knew in the first two books as a nurse, Miles’s dear friend, and a witch of the less-privileged, illegal sort. She is also an activist and an important member of the movement to free the witches from asylums and gain some basic human rights for all citizens. She was suspicious of Grace at first (for which I don’t blame her), but also a big enough person to remain open-hearted and learn to trust. (This process we also saw with Grace learning to accept Tristan over her original prejudices.) We’re building communities and coalitions: Robin working with her people, including the Solidarity movement, and their elected official; Robin, Miles, Tristan, and Grace working together and with the Amaranthines for the good of Aeland and its people. Trust has to develop slowly and naturally in several of these relationships; the process is slow and messy, but it’s working.

Early in the book, we have a bit of a revelation. One of the freed witches is Robin’s spouse, Zelind. Mere kids when they married in secret, they are now reunited, but only after decades of separation and trauma. Robin will now navigate the political activist roller coaster she’s entered into, while also trying to reintegrate a longed-for relationship with some profound challenges. Zelind of course turns out to have some talents to offer as well, aside from being Robin’s love.

It was my feeling that Soulstar takes a darker turn than the previous two books. The stakes are getting higher, or the problems the reader is aware of are getting bigger – they’re not new, but we’re getting deeper into this world and learning more. As I’ve said before, this world’s problems are easily seen as analogous to our own.

Grace led us through the gilded reception hall, looking neither left nor right at the people lifting priceless works of art from the walls. It pricked my conscience until I turned my face up to behold our reflections in the mirrored tiles in the ceiling fixed together by gold moldings. Solid gold, I remembered from the time we trooped into the palace as schoolchildren to stare at all the finery I now understood to be hoarded wealth. The taxes of five hundred clan houses held those mirrors together. The wealth in that ceiling could fed the entire country for a year. This ostentation and greed had to end.

The dream team our leaders are putting together is up for this dismantling if anyone is, but the bad guys’ power is considerable and they’re not giving up easily. There was one special challenge mounted late in the book that about broke my will, although luckily these characters are tougher than I am.

Race has been a sort of understated issue throughout the trilogy. Class and privilege make up an obvious one, and climate change, and politically, we’re moving towards self-determination and communal systems of support. The issue of race is less clear: characters are sometimes noted as being Black or white, or described in terms that imply race (blonde, dreadlocked, dark skin), and privilege sometimes lines up with race, but I think not always. I’m not certain how this is meant to be read, whether we’re looking at a mostly-race-stratified society or simply a diverse one. Queer relationships have also been centered throughout. Book one saw a romance between two men, book two featured one between two women, and in book three, Robin is rejoined to her nonbinary spouse. (We also see a triangle marriage buck against Aeland’s societal norms, although it’s not unusual in Samindan culture.) Queerness seems to encounter some raised eyebrows, but not enormous resistance (the triangle marriage is much less accepted).

As another note, now that I’ve got all three books in me, I want to appreciate the covers, which are visually pleasing and offer some clue as to setting, and feature modes of transportation associated with the protagonist of each: a man on a bicycle for Miles on the cover of Witchmark; two figures in a coach for Grace (Stormsong); and now a couple skating for Robin in Soulstar. It’s a neat nod to the world Polk has built here.

As a trilogy: fantasy, world-building, romance, allegory, lovely writing and beautiful details, easy immersion. This writer is a great talent. I hope there is so much more to come, whether in Aeland or anywhere else Polk chooses to take me.

Rating: 8 sweaters.

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Stormsong by C. L. Polk

Posted on April 8, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Book two in the Kingston Cycle is every bit as riveting and delicious as the first, and I immediately opened book three upon its conclusion, so fair warning there. As is my practice, this review will contain mild spoilers for book one but not this book.

Witchmark‘s narrator and protagonist was Miles, but having seen him through danger and triumph and into the beginning of a delightful new romance, we are moving on to a new central character: Miles’s sister the indomitable Dame Grace Hensley narrates and stars in Stormsong. I was only sad for a moment; Grace is an exciting woman to follow, and anyway Miles is still on the scene, and his partner Tristan plays at least as big a role. (Miles is recuperating from injuries sustained in the big crescendo finish to Witchmark.) Many common threads continue: political intrigue as well as familial, as Grace and Miles’ family is one of the most powerful in the land. Romance, as Grace finds her own love, although she must navigate it amid all that intrigue. Self-actualization. “You make me want to be better… you know exactly who you are, even if it’s not what you’re supposed to be.” There are some neat instances of thinly veiled reference to our real world, as with worsening weather patterns (and the people demanding the government control the weather – which in this case is possible, because witches), and labor and civic unrest. Crime and punishment, just government and revolution, compromise and how to best run a country: it’s huge stuff, but it’s also still a sweet story of relationships, romantic love and siblinghood and respectful alliances. Oh, and I think I failed to say with book one, Polk writes really tantalizing food and the details of things like fashion which don’t usually interest me but do here. But especially food.

These books have momentum and atmosphere. The world-building is well thought out, which I think is evident for any series that shifts its focus between protagonists with each novel. They are sumptuous stories to get lost in, while dealing with serious themes. I’m impressed. And I’m already well into book three, so stay tuned.

Rating: 8 outfits on the bed.

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Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Posted on March 29, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This is book 2 in a series, following Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

This review contains spoilers for book 1.

Having wrapped up adventures in Hrafnsvik, Emily has returned to Cambridge and a more comfortable *tenured* position there. Her nineteen-year-old niece, Ariadne, has arrived on the scene as a student, as Emily’s self-appointed assistant, and as a fan and annoyance. Wendell remains nearby, also a fan: his proposal (from near the end of book 1) remains an open question. Now we know his own courtly-faerie identity, it also transpires that would-be assassins have begun to hound him, to reduce his threat to a distant and fearsome fae crown. Meanwhile, an antagonistic department head (ha) is also hounding Wendell and Emily both, seemingly out of some combination of suspicion about their academic integrity and a sense of late-career threat. Obviously, then (that is sarcasm), the whole troop winds up traveling together – Emily, Wendell, Ariadne, and the grumpy Dr. Farris Rose – to a tiny village in the Alps where a controversial dryadologist named Danielle de Grey disappeared some 50 years ago.

This returns readers to a little-populated setting Fawcett clearly favors. Not quite a closed room, the village and surrounding natural world still offer a useful limitation on outside distractions. Compared to Hrafnsvik from the last book, the residents of St. Liesl play a smaller role in this novel’s cast. It keeps that character list neat: Emily (still curmudgeonly, genius, deeply socially awkward, and more caring than she’d like us to know), Wendell (hedonistic, lazy, compulsively neat, and in love), Ariadne (enthusiastic and committed, but oh, young), and Rose (who may have something to offer, if he could get past his own unpleasantness), as well as the famed de Grey and the lovelorn scholar who has chased her, in turn, into misty faerie worlds. With this limited cast, Fawcett does well with humor and the tension Emily feels about her good friend and would-be lover. The fae creatures she studies continue to be a diverse and diverting bit of world-building. Action and development occasionally felt a bit rushed to me, more than I remember from book 1, but it was still a good time, and this is a book with momentum, that motivates the reader to stay up for just one or two more chapters. Also, I’m still pleased by the mild snark about academia, and the quirk of Emily’s character that she’s always thinking about what a good paper or conference presentation her current adventure will make, no matter how dire as it happens. I’m in for book 3.

Rating: 7 carrots.

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