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An interesting story of a young girl who helps her mother and father run an inn by the river. Only, she and her mother do all the hard work of keeping the inn running while the father does other 'monetary activities' and they have to clean up after him.

That cleaning up includes getting rid of the corpses of officials and others that the father kills to prevent them interfering with his business of making money. Resentment builds up in the girl when she sees her father been flattered by the villagers while she and her mother are ignored.

But it all comes to a head when a ghost appears and exposes the whole operation. And now, the girl must act in the only way she can to save the business, even if it means being mean to her father.

Part of what I love about reading the Murderbot books is the sampler-box of competency porn. SecUnit themselves is a high tech assassin/RoboCop, ART is immensely clever, and all of Preservation is just chock-full of emotional and social intelligence, with all the Preservation humans demonstrating empathy, compassion, humility and emotional honesty.

I want to be adopted by Preservation. SecUnit is thus a tender combination of ruthless protector and vulnerable child — and so are the people of Preservation, in almost entirely complementary circumstances. it's so satisfying to see each of them displaying their competencies to protect each other.

It's genuinely a relationship novel, but without pair-bonding, jealousy, or sex — two different systems that need each other, in a long slow burn of trying to be together and be different at the same time.

Sometimes you need something cozy and heartwarming where a dwarf and an orc can fall in love over pastries and 'moist' books. These books are the literary equivalent of a comfortable chair in front of a cheerful fire with a good story in your hand and a mug of coffee and some sweet treat on the table beside you while a pleasant rain tinkles to the ground outside. Cozy and warm and lovely.

Of course, now I need to immediately re-read Legends and Lattes.

A road trip through a landscape littered with the debris of robots and mechanical creatures from an unsaid war, while most of humanity is apparently too preoccupied wearing headsets and living in a virtual world to the point of starvation. Said road trip is by a girl and her 'pet' robot that behaves in a rather unrobotic way. The reason for this, and the purpose of the road trip, only becomes clear at the end when the girl (also the narrator) provides the reason.

The book is filled with illustrations from the road trip, of a landscape where robots roam at will and emaciated people gawk in wonder through their headsets.

Going to your friend's family for a Christmas gathering for the first time may make you anxious. But the anxiety level only goes through the roof (literally) when you discover your friend's unusual 'tradition' that must be performed for peace to return to the family.