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Recent books (both borrowed from the library, and read while sitting under a cat):
Pocket Apocalypse, by Seanan McGuire
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, by Lois McMaster Bujold
I enjoyed both of these, and they are both part of ongoing series; neither is a good place to start.
The McGuire is part of her inCryptid series, involving over-the-top magical cryptozoology and the narrators' family's attempts to protect the cryptids from an organization that thinks all cryptids are dangerous and evil. This is I think the second with Alex Price as the viewpoint character/narrator; I'm not sure if the series is running out of steam, or if I just like the ones told by his older sister Verity better.
The Aislin mice are always fun. They're sapient pantheistic rodents that invent new rituals at the drop of a hat, and the colony we read about has adopted the Price family as their gods. When Alex accompanies his girlfriend Shelby to Australia to help her family with a werewolf epidemic, they take six mice with them, rather than risk having something go wrong without the mice there to witness. Along with the werewolf problem, Alex has to deal with Shelby's father, who would mistrust any man his daughter was dating, let alone an American with a cuckoo, a member of a species of telepathic predators, as a cousin. Both his family and hers have a "family is everything, you can count on them even when they don't love or even like you" attitude. In Shelby's case her father interprets that as "so nobody gets to marry my daughter without my permission, and how dare they consider settling in the United States?"
This is definitely a page-turner, though I did go "wait a minute" at Alex and Shelby's willingness and ability to smuggle an assortment of weapons through JFK airport—specifically JFK, where we are told the Price family have suitable (mostly nonhuman) contacts, and there's no mention of New York City's strict gun laws. Alex also has adequate-in-his-own-mind reasons for why it's okay for him to be violating Australian quarantine regulations, even as he approves of them for other people; it turns out a few chapters later that the plant whose leaves he was smuggling is an invasive introduced species in the part of Australia they're going to.
Things work out okay in the end; the book is told in the first person, so it's no surprise that Alex survives all those close calls. I'll probably read the next one, assuming McGuire writes one, especially if it's from Verity's viewpoint again.
The Bujold is part of her Vorkosigan/Barrayar series, finally focusing on Cordelia again after umpteen books about her son Miles (though he does turn up unexpectedly, with Ekaterin and their children).
The story is set on Sergyar, three years after Aral dies. Cordelia is still Vicereine, but thinking about retiring and having more children; she froze a bunch of eggs, and Aral froze sperm cells, decades earlier. She startles Admiral Jole (who we first met when he was Aral's secretary) by offering him a few of those eggs, with her chromosomes replaced with Aral's, so they can have sons.
From there, the book is partly about Cordelia and Jole working out what sort of relationship they want/can make work; it's now canon that the three were a triad, with Aral at the hinge of the V. The book is also partly about going on after grief.
I enjoyed this book, but I would have liked a story by Bujold about that triad set while it was happening, not just years in the past. (Yes, that would have taken the focus away from Miles, but at the end of Cryoburn it seemed as though she was done telling his story.)
This book also belongs on the too-short lists of science fiction books (or books of any genre, really) about older women; Cordelia is 70, and makes no attempt to hide it, though of course no 70-year-old today is thinking in terms of bearing and raising a half dozen children.
I saw a criticism of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen on the grounds that "nothing happens"; quite a bit happens, but it's true that there aren't many explosions. If you want a one-threat-after-another story, Pocket Apocalypse is more what you're looking for. I said above that neither is the place to start; in the case of the McGuire it's because you might be confused, and I think the Bujold relies more on the reader already knowing and being interested in the characters.
Pocket Apocalypse, by Seanan McGuire
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, by Lois McMaster Bujold
I enjoyed both of these, and they are both part of ongoing series; neither is a good place to start.
The McGuire is part of her inCryptid series, involving over-the-top magical cryptozoology and the narrators' family's attempts to protect the cryptids from an organization that thinks all cryptids are dangerous and evil. This is I think the second with Alex Price as the viewpoint character/narrator; I'm not sure if the series is running out of steam, or if I just like the ones told by his older sister Verity better.
The Aislin mice are always fun. They're sapient pantheistic rodents that invent new rituals at the drop of a hat, and the colony we read about has adopted the Price family as their gods. When Alex accompanies his girlfriend Shelby to Australia to help her family with a werewolf epidemic, they take six mice with them, rather than risk having something go wrong without the mice there to witness. Along with the werewolf problem, Alex has to deal with Shelby's father, who would mistrust any man his daughter was dating, let alone an American with a cuckoo, a member of a species of telepathic predators, as a cousin. Both his family and hers have a "family is everything, you can count on them even when they don't love or even like you" attitude. In Shelby's case her father interprets that as "so nobody gets to marry my daughter without my permission, and how dare they consider settling in the United States?"
This is definitely a page-turner, though I did go "wait a minute" at Alex and Shelby's willingness and ability to smuggle an assortment of weapons through JFK airport—specifically JFK, where we are told the Price family have suitable (mostly nonhuman) contacts, and there's no mention of New York City's strict gun laws. Alex also has adequate-in-his-own-mind reasons for why it's okay for him to be violating Australian quarantine regulations, even as he approves of them for other people; it turns out a few chapters later that the plant whose leaves he was smuggling is an invasive introduced species in the part of Australia they're going to.
Things work out okay in the end; the book is told in the first person, so it's no surprise that Alex survives all those close calls. I'll probably read the next one, assuming McGuire writes one, especially if it's from Verity's viewpoint again.
The Bujold is part of her Vorkosigan/Barrayar series, finally focusing on Cordelia again after umpteen books about her son Miles (though he does turn up unexpectedly, with Ekaterin and their children).
The story is set on Sergyar, three years after Aral dies. Cordelia is still Vicereine, but thinking about retiring and having more children; she froze a bunch of eggs, and Aral froze sperm cells, decades earlier. She startles Admiral Jole (who we first met when he was Aral's secretary) by offering him a few of those eggs, with her chromosomes replaced with Aral's, so they can have sons.
From there, the book is partly about Cordelia and Jole working out what sort of relationship they want/can make work; it's now canon that the three were a triad, with Aral at the hinge of the V. The book is also partly about going on after grief.
I enjoyed this book, but I would have liked a story by Bujold about that triad set while it was happening, not just years in the past. (Yes, that would have taken the focus away from Miles, but at the end of Cryoburn it seemed as though she was done telling his story.)
This book also belongs on the too-short lists of science fiction books (or books of any genre, really) about older women; Cordelia is 70, and makes no attempt to hide it, though of course no 70-year-old today is thinking in terms of bearing and raising a half dozen children.
I saw a criticism of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen on the grounds that "nothing happens"; quite a bit happens, but it's true that there aren't many explosions. If you want a one-threat-after-another story, Pocket Apocalypse is more what you're looking for. I said above that neither is the place to start; in the case of the McGuire it's because you might be confused, and I think the Bujold relies more on the reader already knowing and being interested in the characters.
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From:
CONTAINS SPOILERS
For me, I think the "nothing happens" came down not to "no explosions" but to "no character development." Cordelia doesn't have to face any challenges over her decision, though one child at any age as a sort-of single parent is a big challenge and six at seventy on a frontier planet just seems -- uncomfortably like a series of girls' school stories which I know principally by osmosis but where implausible fecundity and smiling uncomplicated motherhood is a big thing.
I was also disappointed with the central relationship, in that
I liked it better than Cryoburn and Captain Vorpatril's Alliance but I wished the Sergyar book had been different, all the same.
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