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Coworker convinced me to read this trilogy so I grabbed the audiobook from the local library, since the wait time was shorter than the text copy. The voice actor got a bit tedious after a while - she always sounds slightly on the verge of being whiny - but I can't hold that against the author. I read a lot of old, traditional fairy lore back as a kid so I'm aware of the dark, sinister side to the old-style fae and this book dived right into embracing that, which was fun. All the stuff about having to wear rowan berries and salt your food and mortals dancing themselves to death, has been kinda left out of more recent sparkles-and-unicorns-and-crystals type magic stuff. So, good to see the author had clearly done at least a little bit of research.

The story itself didn't grab me immediately - it's very Young Adult at the start, teens in school, bullying each other, wanting to be popular, etc. The heroine Jude is a little bit hard to like at times also. However, by the end of the book I did like how much many of the main characters had actually learned and grown, instead of just remaining the same selves they started out as. And there were twists in the plot I definitely didn't expect; instead of going for the short predictable ending the author takes you on unexpected plot turns and I always appreciate that. So, while I still don't extremely embrace the protagonist, I followed up with the rest of the trilogy.

I have no memory of why I added this to my "to read" list but when I got to it, I had trouble putting it down again and read the entire thing in under two days. The story follows two men: Adam, a CIA agent who has brought being "unnoticeable" to the next level; and Rao, a UK civilian with an uncanny ability to detect what is true or not true. Paired up, they are brought in to investigate an unusual phenomenon: objects are appearing around a military base which appear to have been manifested through sheer nostalgia of the people nearby. From a cassette tape to a teddy bear to an entire greasy spoon diner, the objects have simply appeared with no explanation, and have a captivating effect on the people for whom they embody nostalgia. Together Adam and Rao attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery while also attempting to deal with their own problems. Enjoyable, interesting read with quite unpredictable twists all along the way.

A second book following The Murder of Mr. Wickham, in which many of our favourite Austen characters are once again gathered together, and of course, another death occurs for our intrepid young duo to investigate. Unlike many Austen spin-offs, these novels are well written (I mean, nothing can be up to Austen standards, but they're really pretty well done) and the choice to make the two protagonists children of characters in the Austen books means that they can observe all the characters we know and love but without needing to remain perfectly true to however Austen might have written them, since they didn't exist in her novels. I also especially like the austistic coding for young Darcy and how it's portrayed in the setting of the time. I definitely recommend these for Austen fans, especially those who enjoy a good murder mystery, but do read the first book before this one.

This is very odd to read as it's written entirely in the second person, despite switching between a few main characters. Interesting experiment but for an entire novel it's a bit tiring. It was written in 2007 and deals with a heist involving online computer games; and while Stross evidently had some experience with computer games at the time, and while I have seen far worse mistakes made by the likes of Gibson and Stephenson, nonetheless even with the most generous suspension of disbelief I really struggled with some of the "technical details" (since I personally have worked making online computer games since 2007, and know exactly why some of these things don't, or couldn't possibly, work that way). Still, if you aren't personally bothered by those details it's a decent plot - as long as you can wrap your head around the second person. Overall it was quite a struggle for me, YMMV.

Connie Willis is an author I will always read and almost always enjoy. This is a collection of three older novellas I hadn't read before; they're not really connected in theme except perhaps that in a general way they are exploring potential futures.

The first and longest is sort of a western SF setting; surveyors on an alien planet trying to do their job, but also having their exploits documented as "pioneering heroes" of sorts back home. When a new person arrives who is a "fan" of their work and has some episodes of the show based on them, they see themselves through the eyes of back-home media for the first time and it leads to some reevaluation of their relationships. This story was also interesting in a couple of other ways; first because it is very ambiguous about the genders of several of the characters and I was most of the way through the story before I figured out that one of them was in fact female. And second, because it includes that the company funding the survey has to comply with very strict guidelines around the indigenous residents and deals with that in a detailed and often rather tongue-in-cheek way.

The second story is a look at intellectual property and what a world would look like when it's so easy to recreate the digital likeness of famous actors from the past, that nobody wants to see any new ones any more.

And the third story is about a very smart young woman who absolutely does not want to go into the interstellar service yet is inexplicably (to her) accepted into it anyway, despite the fact she never even applied.

I enjoyed them all in different ways, probably the last one best. I do think Willis' full length novels are my preference as it gives her time and space to tell a more detailed story in full length, but I enjoy her writing in any form.

This short novel is a fun cross between science fiction - junior anthropologist Nyr who is the only remaining member of a research expedition to observe a long-ago established and then lost colony - and a fairy tale fantasy - fourth-eldest princess Lynnesse sets off on a quest to win the help of the mythical wizard in order to save the land. The story is told from both viewpoints, so we alternately see Nyr as a depressed, despairing, second-class anthropologist and an incomprehensible, immortal, powerful wizard of legend; and the world they are on and the monsters they battle alternately as the stuff of fairy tales and the stuff of science. Even the language they use to communicate translates unexactly, so Nyr has literally no way to describe himself that doesn't translate into Lyn's language as "magician" or "sorceror" even though he is trying to say "scientist" or "academic" or similar.

The whole thing is a fun, very readable exploration of Clarke's Law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It was a quick read and I could easily have read more, but I enjoyed it.

This is the first book in a while that I've had trouble putting down, it kept me reading later than I intended more than once. It's a complex, touching story about friendship and the value of play, which spans several decades. During that time Sam and Sadie meet, have quarrels, make up again, quarrel again, fall in love with other people, and make video games both together and separately.

It's set in the world of video game development so knowing some of those terms probably helps a little but I don't think it's really necessary; it's more about creating art together than the games themselves. (The game making is a little simplified, and as someone who works in the game industry I found it a little unbelievable in places - making an MMO with the staff they appeared to have? No way.) But waving those beside in suspension of disbelief, I doubt they'd bother anyone who doesn't actually make games for a living.

Really the book is about friendship, and flawed, complex characters, and art, and loss, and being human. It's refreshing to read an entire book about a couple that is about friendship rather than romance. It was sweet, and touching, and thought-provoking, and also occasionally annoying when the characters are clearly being idiots, but they're so well written that at least you can understand why they're being idiots. I would highly recommend this book.

Trigger warnings: there are a couple of violent deaths mentioned, and there's non-graphic description of an inappropriate teacher-student relationship with non-consensual bondage elements. These are not dwelled on any more than needed for the story's purposes, but are unavoidable elements of the plot.