What MRK is reading & loving
By Mary Robinette Kowal
By Mary Robinette Kowal
As Mary Robinette reads books and falls in love with them, she adds them to this list. Seriously! These are all amazing! Buy them and support these other authors.
The Mountain in the Sea
Ray Nayler
$28.00 $26.04The moment I started reading this, I started recommending it. Usually, I wait until the end to see if the author sticks the landing (he did) but with The Mountain in the Sea, the book made me think and raised thoughts and ideas in my head that I wanted to explore with other people. It's a wonderful journey and very thoughtful.
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Zach Weinersmith and Kelly Weinersmith
$32.00 $29.76I read this with the intention of blurbing it, but it was so useful that I kept stopping to take notes and totally missed the deadline. Consider this my recommendation to SF writers and just folks interested in space. A City on Mars is a realistic look at the feasibility of living off the planet Earth and it's also a fun read. With cartoons!
Lavender House
Lev Ac Rosen
$26.99 $25.10This is a tightly plotted murder mystery in the noir tradition. It feels like a book written by Dashiell Hammet and is also gloriously gay. I love books that do two things at once. This one does three. It's a murder mystery. It's a coming out story. It's a found family story. It's satisfying on all three levels. PLUS it feels like the 1950s. I cannot stress to you enough what an amazing job Lev does with the voice here. This book is outstanding and you should read it.
Charlotte Illes Is Not a Detective: A Modern and Witty Mystery
Katie Siegel
$16.95 $15.76When former child detective Charlotte Illes stepped onto the page, I felt this immediate deep love for her. She's clever, she's depressed and she has no idea that she's depressed. The friend group that loves her makes me remember the camaraderie of Nancy Drew's friends. Each has their area of specialty and each has their own baggage. The mystery is fun and just threatening enough to be engaging but not so much as to break the coziness. It's nice to read a book set in and around NYC that feels like the city and isn't gritty. There's a particular joy in reading a book and wishing you could be friends with the characters -- Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective kept me guessing and left me with a warm and happy glow.
The Deep Sky
Yume Kitasei
$29.99 $27.89The Deep Sky is a beautiful tightly-wound mystery. It is both an intimate character portrait and a thriller. The space geek in me loves the way the voyage feels like a completely plausible extension of our current billionaire-fueled space race.
The Monsters We Defy
Leslye Penelope
$18.99 $17.66A prohibition era, Black Washington heist novel with ghosts. I loooooooved this book. I love a good heist novel and this one was delightful. I also really enjoyed the interstitials that gave us backstory about the various team members without slowing the story down. Clara Johnson is smart, damaged, and compelled to help people. Even if she weren't cursed to help anyone who asks her, she would still get up and help. I listened to the audiobook and the narration was fantastic.
Station Eternity
Mur Lafferty
$17.00 $15.81What a glorious romp. Murder, sentient space stations, and banter. It had everything I wanted.
The Last Dreamwalker
Rita Woods
$27.99 $26.03The Last Dreamwalker is deeply evocative and clings to you like the humid air of the South. It is a creepy, moving tale in which intergenerational trauma reaches out of dreams and makes the waking world a nightmare. I keep thinking about it.
Iron Widow
Xiran Jay Zhao
$17.99 $16.73Iron Widow is really compelling and the voice is incredibly vivid. The giant mecha battlebot armor things were very cool and I very much liked the world-building that went into how they worked and why they existed. My only problem was that I just wanted the main character to make better choices. She's a teen. I understood why she made the choices she did but they were also not always her only option. But she's building a found family and I hope that she gets to experience some kindness and trust in the future. Don't get me wrong, she's deeply real and believable, but also tragic in ways that were hard to witness.
When Franny Stands Up
Eden Robins
$16.99 $15.80This is a fucking powerhouse of a novel. If you think it's a fantasy Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, you're missing the wonderful and glorious nuance of this book. This is a book about comedy and trauma and family. It is funny and heartbreaking on every other page. I could not stop reading it, and I had deadlines and kittens that should have pulled me away. I love Franny and all her awkwardness and strength. I loved her family. The only things I didn't love were things that were supposed to make me uncomfortable and did it with mastery. Eden Robins is a helluva powerful writer. This book is a Showstopper.
Dial a for Aunties
Jesse Q. Sutanto
$26.00 $24.18This book is SO much fun. It's equal parts dark comedy, romance, and family genre. It's a great example of why genre labels can shut down great stories because this doesn't fit neatly into any category. What I can promise you is that you'll be in for a fun ride that twists and turns to places that you don't expect. I can promise you a gaggle of Asian Aunties who are a delight. I can promise you a protagonist who is competent and vulnerable. Also a sweet, sweet love story. I loved this so, so much.
The Space Between Worlds
Micaiah Johnson
$18.00 $16.74Oh, my heart. I've just finished The Space Between Worlds and it is not often that I finish a book and think "that ending was perfect" but it was for me. The premise of the book sounds straightforward and inevitable. Travel between multiverses is popular. Earth One is only slightly different from Earth Zero while Earth 255 is very different. So far, fairly standard. If a version of you exists in that world, the other can't enter. Which means that the most valuable traversers are the ones most likely to have died young. The people who live on the margins. From that premise, The Space Between Worlds delivers a twisty story that always bends away from conventional plots and leads you down paths that you don't expect. I cannot wait to see what she writes next.
The Murder of Mr. Wickham
Claudia Gray
$17.00 $15.81Have you ever read a book that you felt was written specifically for you? The Murder of Mr. Wickham is everything I wanted it to be -- a cozy murder mystery, with my favorite Jane Austen characters, and a delightful romance. Also, on a technical front, Claudia Gray did her research on the Regency and it shows with beautiful attention to historic detail. It kept me up late reading and guessing whodunnit.
The Kiss Quotient
Helen Hoang
$16.00 $14.88I loved this so much. It has the sexiest, most consensual first kiss I've ever read. This couple makes sense together and watching them come to understand that it was okay to trust was so lovely.
Vengeful
V. E. Schwab
$18.99 $17.66I read Vicious, book 1 in this series, and loved it. Book 2 raises even more questions about the difference between a hero and a villain. Each character feels real and vivid and lost in different ways. She does things with structure that make me deeply jealous on a craft level. Like, in another author's hands this non-linear timeline would be a jumbled mess, but here it's clear and unrelenting, giving you information exactly when you need it in ways that ramp the tension up with quiet unforgiving dread.
Servant Mage
Kate Elliott
$19.99 $18.59Fellion is a complex character who gets swept up in an epic. I think what I love most about this is how messy the world is. There are no clear and easy choices. The ride is filled with magic and swashbuckling heroism but for causes that are not unquestionably good -- the imprints of revolution and colonization mean that there are no good choices for Fellion, just ones that are less harmful. She stays a shining light and true to herself and her people. I would follow her anywhere and am a little sad that this is a standalone. It's satisfying as a novella, don't get me wrong. There are no cliffhangers here, but because things aren't neatly resolved -- and shouldn't be -- it feels messily real in ways that many epics don't. It feels like a world where conflicts will continue and that seems right. I highly recommend this. I stayed up way too late finishing it and am still thinking about it a week later.
After the Dragons
Cynthia Zhang
$19.99 $18.59This is a slim, beautiful jewel-box of a novel. It is vividly atmospheric and feels real as if tiny flocks of dragons might sit on telephone lines in modern-day Beijing. It explores falling in love in the wake of grief and the ways in which we try to exert control over our lives. It's quiet intimacy will break your heart and give you hope -- and also dragons. Perfect, beautifully drawn dragons. It's a lovely debut and I look forward to seeing what Cynthia Zhang does next.
The Raven Tower
Ann Leckie
$17.99 $16.73Wow. I'm a fan of Ann Leckie and she does not disappoint with The Raven Tower. I'm also impressed as hell with the structural integrity of this novel, which I realize is a very writerly thing to think about, but she is writing on Hard Mode in this. You want to know what flashbacks are for and how to use them? This book understands how to use them to ratchet tension up. You want to understand how and why to use second person vs. first person? OMG, the creeping dread that she managed to wring out of me as the book progressed and I understood what was happening. There's a mystery and betrayal and court politics, wrapped up in a tightly plotted bundle of deliciousness. Also, I listened to the audiobook and Adjoa Andoh is a stunningly brilliant narrator.
Ghost Station
Dan Wells
$29.99 $27.89This is a fantastically paced and tense novel. Following a cryptographer in Berlin, right after the wall goes up, is absolutely gripping. Dan Wells consistently writes characters that I relate to deeply, even when I have little in common with them. In this historical novel, the tensions of the Cold War were palpable. I have never felt so committed to a string of numbers in my life.
Last Watch
J. S. Dewes
$18.98 $17.65What a fun ride! Snarky banter, space battles with physics that makes sense, and appropriate use of tethers -- look. We all have our priorities. -- I enjoyed the heck out of this debut and look forward to seeing what she does next.
Unmarriageable
Soniah Kamal
$17.00 $15.81This is exactly what it promises on the tin -- a straight-up retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in modern day Pakistan. The plot follows the same arc and its fun to see how iconic moments are reshaped to fit the culture. Oddly, what I most enjoyed are the chapters where it deviates from the original plot. This might be because those were the ones where I was surprised. I particularly liked when the Anne de Burgh substitute breaks from her archetype and speaks. In the novel, her disability renders her voiceless and here she is consciously not.
Secrets and Lies
Selena Montgomery
$8.99 $8.36I love a book that makes me cry and a good romance always does that. Secrets and Lies is hot, vulnerable, and a thriller. I finished reading it and want to track down all of her other novels so I can get glimpses of Sebastien Caine before he goes to the Bahia. And THANK YOU for a heroine that's a woman in STEM and completely kick-ass. I loved Dr. Lyda. (Also, I think, it's secretly science-fiction. Fight me.) PS I was supposed to be writing and totally stayed up late to finish reading instead.
Bacchanal
Veronica G. Henry
$14.95 $13.90If you took the Night Circus and viewed it through the gaze of a young Black woman in the Great Depression, you might get Veronica Henry's Bacchanal. Demons, lies, and secrets. This book is not an easy read, by turns uncomfortable and demanding that readers meet it partway. The journey is worthwhile.
The City in the Middle of the Night
Charlie Jane Anders
$19.99 $18.59This was a completely fascinating, fully realized world full of deeply flawed characters. I loved the hope that came out of damage and also kept wanting to take Sophie and Mouth away and ply them with tea and warm blankets.
The Forever Sea
Joshua Phillip Johnson
$27.00 $25.11I can rarely remember being this excited for a debut novel. This was everything I wanted it to be. Wind-swept prairie seas, pirates, magic, and found families.
