Blurker Gone Bad

Again, all about the books, and I'm halfway through two others.

Books
The Pomegranate Gate, by Ariel Kaplan. Jewish mythology inflected fantasy that touches on medieval history but is more interested in the fantasy side of things. I wish I knew a little more about the mythology the author was writing from but I enjoyed it for the most part. She was aiming a bit for the GGK vibe, less in the writing than in the tragic structure, but there were a couple of twists that I not only wasn't expecting but was not sure about (in terms of how well they were going to work for me). Definitely going to read the second in the series though.
Dark Moon Defender, by Sharon Shinn. Third in the Twelve Houses series. This time it's Justin who gets a romance and has to deal with the anti-mystic nuns who are nefariously working to overthrow the kingdoms. The personal plots, the overarching plots, and the cultural stuff all progress nicely. Next time round with this series I'm going to jump forward/back to 2.5, the most recently released book, and catch up with the aftermath of the romance in 2.

I was quite sick this week so I read a lot.

Books
The Last Soul Among Wolves, by Melissa Caruso. Second in this series, and it just came out with promises of a third. I continue to really enjoy the worldbuilding and the character development, which are both quite interesting. Also, I realized after reading this one that another commonality is these are both sort of locked-room mysteries as well, which makes them different from a lot of worldbuilding fantasies. I really need to go back and pick up the rest of the Caruso I've read.
Welcome to Murder Week, by Karen Dukess. Cath's flighty mom died but left her a ticket to a murder mystery week in an English village. While solving the murder mystery, Cath has to figure out why her mother wanted to bring her there and what her connection to the place is. Also there's a romance. A step above cozy mysteries but not litfic. I liked it and thought the buildup and outcome was good. I particularly liked that the romance was not a core focus to the exclusion of making friends.
The Winter Duke, by Claire Eliza Bartlett. This one came highly recommended by Dee, so I read it even though it's YA. Russian-inflected fantasy in which one daughter survives an assassination attempt on her royal family and inherits a magical dukedom. Everybody wants what she's got, so how does she survive? I liked both the characters and the worldbuilding, and the main character's chosen bride was a delight.
Mystic and Rider, by Sharon Shinn. First of the Twelve Houses books, which is a series I never got into. It's got that 80s-90s series vibe and I plowed through 400 pages in about a day. Definitely in for more of it.
Sugar, Spice, and Can't Play Nice, by Annika Sharma. Second in a series of contemporary romances among a group of Indian (subcontinental) friends in New York. This time she's an Indo-British fashion designer and he's a marketing guy. Their parents' companies are merging and want to seal the deal with a marriage. I think I enjoy these romances because a lot of factors that simply wouldn't matter as much to white Americans play a significant role in how the characters act and that changes the course of the stories.
The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar. Not quite a fairy tale retelling, though there's some of that in it, and not quite a song retelling, for all that it references a favorite of mine, and not quite Wolfe-ian (Gene) in its wordplay. But all of those things are ingredients in this novella and they're all very well executed.