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A few quick takes, entirely out of order:
"Space Opera", Catherynne M. Valente (novel, interlibrary loan): Take Douglas Adams; get him hopped up on a blend of Tumblr, man's inhumanity to man, and coke-fueled glam rock; and set him loose to work out his feelings in permanent marker on the walls of a hipster London dive bar's bathroom stalls. That's the best I can come to describing my impression of the vibe; if that's your thing, cool, but turned out not to be mine. This is apparently quite unlike her other works, which I still hope to check out sometime.
"Head On", John Scalzi (novel, interlibrary loan): I actually liked this one. Subtle moments of humor in an otherwise straightforward narrative work well for me, as does his reasonably invisible writing style.
"Sword and Sorceress XXVII", various (anthology, trade paperback): As often happens with anthologies, I liked some and not others. I hadn't read this series before, which made a few stories frustrating, because they were written within worlds that had been established in earlier volumes. I disliked the structure of a couple. "The Salt Mines" was grimmer than I care for; "The Ghost Pyres" was as well. But I was surprised to like Leah Cypess's "Straw-Spun", which is probably unfair; I just remembered not caring for the way one of her novels resolved, but this story worked well for me. I especially liked "Mahrut's Road" by Nathan Crowder (strong worldbuilding), "Netcasters" by Layla Lawlor (a fun tension between twisty and stolid characters and a setting in which a lack of wealth does not equate to grim misery), and "The Rising" by Pauline J. Alama (which is pretty grim but has a satisfying resolution).
"The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart", Stephanie Burgis (novel, Kindle): It was fine, but I didn't really connect to anyone. I may have burned out Burgis's flavor of heroine.
"Chupacabra's Song", Jim C. Hines (short story, Kindle): This is a pretty short story that doesn't cover much ground and includes animal harm (not gratuitously at all, but still).
"Bad Gurus: Fiction from a Near Future", Jay O'Connell (short story collection, Kindle): I generally appreciated these stories. Most of them struck me as the 1990s vision of the future -- corporate-libertarian cyber-dystopia -- as filtered through real people actually living in it, rather than being a pristinely grimdark vision. "Things Worth Knowing" probably has the most punch; "Other People's Things" was effective (and recently topical); and the novella "Of All Possible Worlds" kept me invested throughout.
"The Vampire's Mail Order Bride", Kristen Painter (novel, Kindle): I suspect I picked this up after seeing it referred to as ... "sweet romance"? Not sure that was the right term. Basically, I sometimes enjoy reading romance but find erotica tedious, and I saw reference to romance-without-the-explicit-sex being an actual genre. This definitely qualifies as that, but pretty much all of the conflict was short-lived at best, so there wasn't much by way of stakes. It was fine, and the cat was never in danger so we're cool, but I don't feel much pressure to look into the rest of the series.
"Rabble Starkey", Lois Lowry (novel, borrowed hardcover): It's a year in the life of a girl, and that's pretty much it, as far as I can tell. I don't think anything really developed. I'm probably missing something.
"Space Opera", Catherynne M. Valente (novel, interlibrary loan): Take Douglas Adams; get him hopped up on a blend of Tumblr, man's inhumanity to man, and coke-fueled glam rock; and set him loose to work out his feelings in permanent marker on the walls of a hipster London dive bar's bathroom stalls. That's the best I can come to describing my impression of the vibe; if that's your thing, cool, but turned out not to be mine. This is apparently quite unlike her other works, which I still hope to check out sometime.
"Head On", John Scalzi (novel, interlibrary loan): I actually liked this one. Subtle moments of humor in an otherwise straightforward narrative work well for me, as does his reasonably invisible writing style.
"Sword and Sorceress XXVII", various (anthology, trade paperback): As often happens with anthologies, I liked some and not others. I hadn't read this series before, which made a few stories frustrating, because they were written within worlds that had been established in earlier volumes. I disliked the structure of a couple. "The Salt Mines" was grimmer than I care for; "The Ghost Pyres" was as well. But I was surprised to like Leah Cypess's "Straw-Spun", which is probably unfair; I just remembered not caring for the way one of her novels resolved, but this story worked well for me. I especially liked "Mahrut's Road" by Nathan Crowder (strong worldbuilding), "Netcasters" by Layla Lawlor (a fun tension between twisty and stolid characters and a setting in which a lack of wealth does not equate to grim misery), and "The Rising" by Pauline J. Alama (which is pretty grim but has a satisfying resolution).
"The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart", Stephanie Burgis (novel, Kindle): It was fine, but I didn't really connect to anyone. I may have burned out Burgis's flavor of heroine.
"Chupacabra's Song", Jim C. Hines (short story, Kindle): This is a pretty short story that doesn't cover much ground and includes animal harm (not gratuitously at all, but still).
"Bad Gurus: Fiction from a Near Future", Jay O'Connell (short story collection, Kindle): I generally appreciated these stories. Most of them struck me as the 1990s vision of the future -- corporate-libertarian cyber-dystopia -- as filtered through real people actually living in it, rather than being a pristinely grimdark vision. "Things Worth Knowing" probably has the most punch; "Other People's Things" was effective (and recently topical); and the novella "Of All Possible Worlds" kept me invested throughout.
"The Vampire's Mail Order Bride", Kristen Painter (novel, Kindle): I suspect I picked this up after seeing it referred to as ... "sweet romance"? Not sure that was the right term. Basically, I sometimes enjoy reading romance but find erotica tedious, and I saw reference to romance-without-the-explicit-sex being an actual genre. This definitely qualifies as that, but pretty much all of the conflict was short-lived at best, so there wasn't much by way of stakes. It was fine, and the cat was never in danger so we're cool, but I don't feel much pressure to look into the rest of the series.
"Rabble Starkey", Lois Lowry (novel, borrowed hardcover): It's a year in the life of a girl, and that's pretty much it, as far as I can tell. I don't think anything really developed. I'm probably missing something.