September was such a wild time. Between finishing an entire novel, a fraught day of business travel, and celebrating my seventh anniversary with the boyfriend, it was a busy time! Anyway, here are some books that weren’t read to me by some talented voice actors.

Finished in September

The Dragon Republic

What I Learned: Gray morality

Read my NetGalley eARC. Came out in August 2019. Rin is already an anti-hero from the first book. She makes piss-poor choices at times because the world proves time and again to be more complex than her narrow understanding of it. As we see glimpses of the world beyond the Empire and the Federation, there are no easy answers and no faction entirely has the right one.

Read Cover-to-Cover in September

Gideon the Ninth

What I Learned: Commitment to an Aesthetic

Read an ARC I got at BookCon 2019. Came out September 2019. This novel knows exactly what it’s going for from cover to cover. Humor is expertly layered between a deliciously goth mood with plenty of skeletons. A super fun read built to draw the audience into the adventures of disaster lesbian necromancers in space.

Saving Fable

What I Learned: Being Totally Meta Without Being Totally Campy

Read my NetGalley eARC. Came out in August 2019. The entire world-building of this book is a meta examination of how stories work and the ways different elements fold into each other. It’s done with so much heart though that it doesn’t feel contrived. I loved the adventure of this secondary character turned protagonist and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Homesick: Stories

What I Learned: Playing with Formats

Read my Edelweiss eARC. Comes out in October 2019. In addition to the emotional content of each of these stories, one of my other favorite aspects was the unabashed way Cipri plays with formats. One story is a quiz, another is an audio transcript. So much variation used to such great effect.

Manga

Land of the Lustrous (Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3)

What I Learned: Research Showing Up in a Work

Do you like existentialism, pretty gems, and jewel-themed body horror? Look no further than this anime about nigh-immortal people made of gems and the moon folk who attack them. The series is so thoroughly researched and that level of detail is something I haven’t seen in other works.

Tokyo Ghoul (Vol. 2)

What I Learned: Emotional Resonance

This manga starts pretty gruesomely, but it’s in this volume that we start developing attachment to some characters. And then Ishida-san rips that sentimentality from right beneath the reader’s feet. Truly heart-breaking stuff.

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October is also known as Break-tober, where I am just playing video games, catching up on shows, and not really working on writing until things happen.

Happy reading,
Jo