Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef by Cassandra Khaw

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I bought this book as part of a story bundle collection.

I haven’t read any of the other books in the “Gods and Monsters” universe, but (as one of the ads at the back of the book says) it’s somewhat similar to American Gods. The gods of various religions and traditions are real and interact with humanity. This book (more like novella) takes place in Malaysia where Rupert Wong cooks humans for some gods or demi-gods. Interestingly, this story has almost nothing to do with that.

By the end of 2022 I had 2793 digital books and magazines (a change of 264). Around twenty-four of those came from free books I get monthly from Tor.com and Amazon Prime. This year I’m also going to start the amount of audiobooks I have: 144. In 2022 I started up my libro.fm subscription and listened to quite a few great audiobooks.

Although this year I read some cookbooks and comics, I read far fewer of each of those than in other years. The biggest surprise was the discovery of the trilogy starting with Gideon The Ninth. The world is so incredibly vast and the narrative voice was so much fun. I heartily recommend it to all. The Becky Chambers stories starting with the book A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was the nice, cozy story that I needed as the real world continued to get crazier and crazier.

Continue? The Boss Fight Books Anthology by Gabe Durham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This whole collection of essays makes me think a lot about the semi-gonzo video game reviews that Tim Rogers is known for. The shorter format allows the authors to be much more creative than they can be in the full-size Boss Fight Books. It’s a very fun read overall. Here are my thoughts per entry:

Ken Sent Me - A fun piece about playing Leisure Suit Larry back in the 1990s and more recently. I was also a big fan of the Sierra games of the period, although I never played LSL. The essay is written with just the right amount of humor for talking about an early Sierra game.

Witches Be Crazy: A Tale That Happened Once Upon a Time in the Middle of Nowhere by Logan J. Hunder

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ever since I put this book on my shelf “digital-on-deck” - most likely somewhere around 2019 - I’d been looking forward to reading it. The title seemed interesting and the description on Goodreads seemed fun. (I got this book as part of a Humble Bundle) It seemed as though it might fall into either a Terry Pratchett-like parody of fantasy or maybe a fractured fairy tale. At first it seemed to go alright - it had some dad-joke level puns, and I like those. (eg a town called Farrawee) Or a Who’s-on-First style joke with someone named Herrow.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A love letter to New York meets Lovecraftian Horror and you get this book.

I believe this is probably one of those love or hate books with very little room in between. As someone who married into a NYC family, I was able to nod along with a lot of the narration in the book. I could see some of it going over the heads of people less familiar.

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, that was incredible and deserving of all the praise it got. I was already a fan of T. Kingfisher from when my eldest daughter convinced me to read A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, but this was just so perfect to me.

It’s essentially a fairy tale, but told for adults. Not in the way that Shrek or other fractured fairy tales make everything into sexual innuendo and fart jokes and so on. Just a fairy tale that can go a little darker, maybe speak about material that would be a bit much for the average child. Even mundane things like the politics of kingdoms and how that affects the choices we have. In that way it reminded me a lot of Tress of the Emerald Sea, which I just read last month. Except Tress has a more whimsical nature to it and is being narrated by a narrator that is in conversation with the reader. So more about the tone than the style as Tress is also told as a fairy tale for adults. One other commonality is that Tress is Princess Bride if Princess Buttercup had more agency. This book is a typical fairy tale if one of the princesses had more agency. This book also has more horror elements to it. The market scene also gave me strong vibes of the spa in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. In fact, the book seemed to have a somewhat similar tone to his manga and anime in that it’s mostly naturalistic, but with magical/supernatural elements sprinkled throughout.

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading. I dropped the rating from 2 to 1 star

The first time I read this book, I thought, “I’m done with Rincewind stories”. And this second time around cemented that. The book is essentially Pratchett riffing on every Australian stereotype, Mad Max parodies, and what I think (having learned about it recently, but not having seen it) a parody of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by Tara Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thoughts as I first read through this collection:
Boy, modern English is so dumbed down. I love to read and read voraciously and still found it so laborious to read some of these short stories. Everyone speaks in purple prose and it takes a bit to figure out what each sentence is saying. (And that’s before even considering the words that have morphed since then)

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a Kickstarter backer on this campaign, I was able to read this book immediately on the first day of the year and I bet it will be tough to find another book that I will love more this year. As the back of the book (and Goodreads description) says, this book is basically “What if Brandon Sanderson wrote The Princess Bride?” It even has a Vizini battle of wits moment and an eel moment! I do not know if the regular commercial versions of the books will have the amazing art in the kickstarter versions, but definitely find a way to see the illustrations - they are beautiful!

Dead Man’s Hand by James J. Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This first book by Jim Butcher’s son has prose that reads like a combination of his father’s prose and John Scalzi’s prose. It’s fun and sarcastic, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious stakes. I was actually quite happy that Butcher tends towards realism. For example, in a scene where a character normally would have rallied to a heroic speech, the character acts according to what we know of their personality.