Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire

Well... I'm shook. I apparently missed an InCryptid book. It doesn't quite matter, I don't think. I read Installment Immortality thinking it was #13 and there's enough retreading of backstory that it felt like I'd read it... aaaaahhhhhhhhhh. I'm facepalming so hard right now. Just ordered Aftermarket Afterlife. Anyway... here's my review of Installment Immortality. Enjoy.

 

So, although I am definitely more into the Cryptid side of the Incryptid series, I do enjoy the occasional dip into the ghostly side. Mary’s been an interesting character, even moreso now, I think, that the Crossroads are gone. I really like that there are so many different kinds of ghosts, which I’m sure we knew, but I honestly kind of forgot. It’s been a while since the last Incryptid book, so my memory’s a bit… holy. Lol.

I like that we got more of the Harrington-Price branch of the family. Elsie’s quite fun and I liked getting a peek at how Arthur’s doing… not well, apparently, but I feel like that’s more a function of him being stuck around people who knew him as Artie than anything else. Arthur needs to figure out how to get out more and figure out who he is despite his inserted Artie memories, in my opinion. It was also interesting to see how they’re handing the Aeslin mice situation. I’m not sure we’d have gotten much of the mice this book anyway, but I did sort of miss them.

Installment Immortality was fun. I like Mary. I like seeing her interact with different members of the family and the ghost community as well as other Cryptids who have heard of her.

Last thing: The Covenant really just needs to give up the ghost, so to speak. If what Heitor told Mary was true, they shouldn’t be a problem for the Price’s much longer… and good riddance, honestly.

Favorite Lines 

"Sexism can help you narrow the field, when you know how to apply it." - Mary Dunlavy

"She'll figure out where she wants to point it sooner or later, and then a lot of shit is going to be on fire. Metaphorically. Actual fir is Antimony's job." - Aeslin Mouse

"Annie's more than moderately terrifying," I said. "She's probably the culmination of all the traits the Covenant was breeding for when they introduced your grandmother's grandparents." - Mary Dunlavy 

"Hatred of bedbugs is the unifying factor of all sapient life," - Phee

"Original sin isn't real. There's only so much time you have to spend apologizing for the crimes of people you never knew. At the end of the day, you're only really responsible for yourself." - Enid Healy

“Mourner’s Waltz”

This was really cute. I’m glad Verity has friends to help care for her and her children. Malena was a nice surprise. She’s a fun character.

Favorite Lines

"Always take care of the living before you take care of the dead, and if you aren't sure which category someone falls into, always take care of the most people you possibly can." - Verity Price

"We've allowed you to wallow in grieving for this long because you're a gestating mammal, and gestating mammals are irrational. William said so." - Candice

The Masterharper of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

First Read of 2025!

I'm really, honestly not sure how I feel about The Masterharper of Pern. It was quite good and enjoyable. Didn't feel quite like a ticking off of events that needed to happen, although there was definitely a fair amount of that, but it didn't not feel that way either. I was aware of those events, but wasn't sitting there, just waiting for things to happen. The story around them was engaging.

I was honestly mostly struck by the relatively rapid (although it had about 200-odd Turns to get there) rejection of "common knowledge" across Pern. Or knowledge at all, in some cases. More distant Holds just rejecting any kind of teaching and Fax straight up barring Harpers to prevent knowledge getting to "his" people. That whole bit feels really prescient here at the beginning of 2025, when we have this unfettered access to knowledge, both true and not... I've been saying as I've been reading Pern chronologically how the plague stuff hits differently these days than on my first read... well this rejection of knowledge and truth hit harder. This isn't a reread for me, but as Fax appeared at the beginning of Dragonflight, he wasn't an unknown. But where he was basically a first antagonist for Lessa in Dragonflight, here Fax looms about Pern in an unsettling manner, especially given a reading through the 2025 lens.

Outside of Fax, I did enjoy getting to know Robinton as he grew up. Robinton's always been one of my favorite Pernese characters. I felt his heartbreak, even though I figured it was coming. Such is the fun of a chronological first-read/reread journey. I was definitely less impressed with Petiron, as we're supposed to be. His relationship with his son was just... gross. I knew I wasn't going to like him from the moment Robinton was born. I'm glad the entirety of Harper Hall was on the same page.

For some reason, I'd always imagined Robinton to be about F'lar's age, though that was clearly wrong. Getting used to Robinton actually being a contemporary of F'lon was a fun thing to wrap my head around.

The Masterharper of Pern is definitely one of those books that deepens the context around the earlier books in the publishing order. I was kind of expecting the ending to be where it was, chronologically speaking, but I wasn't expecting it to be exactly what it was. Getting another perspective on that was a bit of fun. Took care of the overall, looming conflict that was Fax, without adding something ridiculous for Robinton himself to overcome. That's actually another thing I liked about The Masterharper of Pern: Robinton didn't have his own "Chosen One" story, really. Not in the way, say Lessa, does later. I mean, given the book title and former knowledge of who Robinton becomes, it was a forgone conclusion from the beginning. It wasn't surrounded by pomp and circumstance or Robinton doing anything especially daring or specific to get the job of Masterharper. He went about his life and just kind of fell into the position. Suited to it, of course, but... yeah. The story of how, without any wild craziness tacked on.

Favorite Line

"That's what I especially love about you, Rob. Your perceptions and understanding. Merdine... was not an understanding man. Not the way you are. And I think -- on balance -- that's very important in creating a good harmony for a long life together." - Kasia

Winter Lost by Patricia Briggs

Winter Lost was somewhere between filler and a romp, mostly. It was definitely good filler/rompy goodness. The stakes were ultimately really high, but I wasn't ever really worried Mercy wouldn't solve the problem. That's what she does, after all. I honestly feel like Winter Lost had one problem to actually solve and the rest of the story was just getting Mercy to a place where the solving could happen. (Slight spoiler in the second-to-last paragraph, just btw)

As usual with the Mercy series, I really loved the interweaving of mythologies. It makes total sense to me that beings that have been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years would know each other and probably even be friends.

I also loved the bits of character development we got outside of Adam and Mercy. I definitely didn't remember Mary-Jo's love-interest, but it was nice to get a slice of her life and flesh her out a little more. We didn't really get a lot out of Darryl's bit of story, but Sherwood and Warren's bit had me laughing. Gotta love these little, low-stakes vignettes where characters we don't normally "see" interact do so.

The stuff at the lodge was vaguely interesting, but I spent most of that going "there's not that much book left," over and over to myself. The characters there were mostly just... whatever. They were there. The mystery wasn't that deep and kind of deus ex machina'd away thanks to whatever Mercy's damage was from Soul Taker... which was a lot more serious than I remembered, so I guess that was fun? Eh. The point was really to get Grandmother to "fix" Mercy's main, most pressing issue so... yeah.

Winter Lost was not that deep, but it was fun. Was a nice break from my read-through of Kelley Armstrong's Cainsville series where everything is super serious.

Favorite Lines

"Fine. When they shovel our frozen corpses out next spring, they can put 'They thought it would be fun' on our gravestone." - Mercy Hauptman

"Are you embarrassed that your audiobook started in the middle of a very hot sex scene between three men in a swimming pool?" asked Sherwood politely. "There's not reason to be embarrassed about that."

"Saddest thing in the world is listening to nineteen minutes of a twenty-minute sex scene," said Sherwood in a mock-mournful voice.

"Locks only ever keep out people who aren't determined to come in," - Grandmother Spider

First Test by Tamora Pierce

A Reread Review, Possible Spoilers

I've read First Test a few times and, during this reread, it really struck me how much more detail there is in Keladry's story than there was in Alanna or Daine's. I can much more easily visualize life as a page during Kel's time. We also get a good chunk of Kel's inner dialogue, which makes her character feel much more like a person.

We know from the start that Lord Wyldon doesn't think women have any business being knights or even fighters. However, it really, really struck me this time around just how ridiculous his views on that are. The standout among his views was this:

"My experience with females is that they begin early."

Pertaining to flirting and relationships. Kel is 10 in this book. 10. And Wyldon believes she's going to start being all flirty and distracting the boys in a sexual manner. I really wanted to punch him upon reading that this time. While he does allow Kel to stay at the end (that's not a spoiler, this is a tetralogy after all), his views haven't exactly changed and he believes that her feelings growing up might be an issue. I heartily rolled my eyes. Wyldon does, however, treat Kel fairly, in my opinion. Do I wish he'd insisted that, starting that year, everyone would be given a probationary year before becoming a page? Yes. Yes, I do. But since that doesn't happen and given what does and how he reacts to it, I'd say he actually does treat Kel fairly despite his obviously messed up views on girls.

There is a scene between Duke Baird and Kel after one of her fights with Joren and his crew that reminded me very much of a semi-similar scene in Stephanie Meyer's New Moon. This scene was far superior to the New Moon scene. Neal's ranting both to Kel and himself made me chuckle.

Speaking of Neal... He's my favorite side character. He's just the right kind of snarky BFF Kel needs to balance out her very Yamani-esque affectations. On a side note, I do really like that Kel had some experience with fighting training in her past, even if it wasn't precisely what she needed for Tortallan knighthood. That Kel's experiences in the Yamani court before the age of ten were helpful at all was honestly kind of surprising, but... yeah, apparently they start them young on the Yamani Islands.

I had fun rereading First Test, though I don't really have any more thoughts on it. Definitely an excellent start to the Protector of the Small tetralogy.

A Side Note

While rereading this, I kept thinking back to how, when I first read Protector of the Small, I thought it was really neat that Tamora Pierce had a Japanese analog culture in her writing. I remember voicing this thought to my best friend and she was very dismissive and semi-angry about it, as though having another culture represented in a fantasy novel was a bad thing or something. I don't quite remember. We were 12.

Bastion by Mercedes Lackey

A Spoiler Free Review

Bastion is actually where Mags gets a 99% normal “year” training to be a Herald. I rather enjoyed this one, though it doesn’t actually feel like a finale at all. Not that those things are mutually exclusive, but… yeah. Bastion had Mags and friends headed out on Circuit for that last bit of training they all needed… and for a change in Mags’ identity apparently.

I know that most of the Heralds series are either duologies or trilogies and The Collegium Chronicles is the longest series. However, that really doesn’t mean we can’t remember the important bits of what happened in the last four books. There were several instances of straight-up text-lifting in order to refresh us on Mags’ memories. As soon as I realized this, I skipped them wholesale. I feel like, had I read them, they would have dragged the momentum of the current story down.

I was not expecting Lita to be the “other person” added to Mags’ band during Circuit. I like that Jakyr had someone he knew well to bounce off of and Lita turned out to be a good addition overall. I also feel like Jakyr got some more fleshing out here, which was good because most everyone else is still fairly flat. The story isn’t really about Bear, Lena, Amily, or the adults, but it would have been nice for more of their personalities to come through. I think Lena barely did anything in Bastion worth her actually being there, to be completely honest.

I was pleasantly surprised to see an empty Tayledras Vale. I would have thought there might be more of those dotted around Valdemar, but I guess not. I was also actually surprised that Jakyr had met some Tayledras. Guess at least one Herald a generation is their quota.

On another note: the Companions are apparently burying even the very idea of magic and mages. Dallen telling Mags “it doesn’t matter” during Bey’s little sharing session confirms that. On the one hand, this makes sense as there apparently weren’t any Mages born between Vanyel and what’s-her-face-Princess-something… On the other hand, I feel like it puts Valdemarans at a disadvantage to cultures that have more than mind-magic to go on, like the Tayledras and Karsites. Just in The Collegium Chronicles we have the Heralds being completely in the dark about the vrondi and that was actually kind of important but reduced to a footnote.

Speaking of Bey, he is easily the most well rounded secondary character of the lot. He’s clearly got a personality on him that vaguely clashes with his assassin thing. I liked him a lot.

Bastion was an alright end to an alright series. Definitely went out with less of a bang than I maybe thought it might. I dunno, I enjoyed it overall.

Favorite Lines

:Yes, well, civility is an art form not practiced nearly enough,: Dallen observed

"The person who throws his weapon at the enemy is an idiot. A few moments after that, he will be a dead idiot." - Mags

Time's Fool by Karen Chance

Spoilers for the first 134 pages.

Well, this went straight to the DNF pile.

We last left off with Dorina, Ray, and Kit stranded in Faerie, where Mircea had apparently decided to chase after his long-thought-dead wife. Dory and Louis-Cesare were left danging by Hassani just about to tell them why the Fey wanted Dorina. Aaaand now we've jumped back to the late 1500's...

Time's Fool is divided into parts denoting where we are in time and with which characters as the main focus. The first part, which was alright enough to keep me reading, was Dory and Mircea. Really, during this part, I just kept being angry at Mircea for apparently wiping Dory's memory (which we already knew about) to the point where she doesn't even recognize him aside from some vague feeling she kind of does... Just... Nope.

The second part follows Kit and Gillian. Gillian's a witch and it was nice to get some actual witch lore because I've been sitting here going "what's the difference between Witches and Mages aside from every Mage we meet being male?" So, got that question answered, but then we go out into London and are baraged by everything Karen Chance has learned about 1500s London that you only really wanted to know if you got dropped there by an errant time traveler. I get world-building and needing to set a scene, but I don't see why I need a primer on the different types of thief looks and punishments.

I noped out of the Cassie series because of the overly long, info-dumpy jaunts into the past and I'm sad to say that's exactly why I'm noping out of the Dory series. I'm vaguely interested in why Rhea and Hilde are back in the 1500s, but not enough to slog through the Kit and Gillian portion of the book to find out. I might keep an eye out for whatever the next Dory book is in hopes that it gets back on track with the rest, but I'm not holding my breath over it.