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cyphomandraSingle Player, Tara Tai
Address Unknown, Kathrine Kressman Taylor
Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer (re-read)
You Probably Think This Song is About You, Kate Camp
Seven Points, Amy James
Dragonsdawn, Anne McCaffrey (re-read)
A stocking full of spies, Robin Stevens
Single Player, Tara Tai. Cat Li gets her chance in the video gaming industry by being brought on to add romance storylines to an upcoming big budget release; but Andi Zhang, her new non-binary boss, hates romance, is traumatised by a previous doxxing, and is being set up to take the fall for the game failing by evil managers. Obviously they fall in love. I liked bits of this while never being entirely convinced by either the logistics of the game design or the characters.
Address Unknown, Kathrine Kressman Taylor. Short, quietly devastating series of letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco (who has relatives in Germany) and his former close friend and business partner, who has returned to Germany in the early 1930s. Published in 1938, unfortunately not difficult to read as currently relevant.
Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer. Re-read. Lavender is spoilt, highly strung, and the star of her aunt’s series of geographical readers in which they visit various countries; WWII having cramped their style somewhat, she ends up at the Chalet School and after the usual series of mishaps, becomes a much better person. I do think this could have been much more interesting if told from the pov of Lilamani, Lavender’s friend from Kashmir, who shows up here briefly (and only gets two years at the Chalet School) but it’s perfectly adequate and I do like Brent-Dyer’s Peace League and her insistence (via the staff) that the pupils are not sheltered from news of the war.
You Probably Think This Song is About You, Kate Camp. Kate and I are contemporaries (her mother was my English teacher) but although I recognise a lot of her childhood we had wildly different teen experiences (Camp’s involve a lot of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and violent unstable boyfriends; mine were more along the lines of some alcohol, complicated friendships, and a ridiculous amount of reading), although we intersect again in adulthood. I am, however, unsure how much of this is accurate and how much fiction; the opening chapter has this bit where the child Kate is obsessed with a few lines from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamboat, singing them over and over despite her family’s gentle mockery. But the lines Camp quotes (“always hoped that I’d be an apostle...” etc) are clearly from Jesus Christ Superstar, credited as such in the opening front matter, and I can’t quite decide if this is a genuine mistake or a signal that the author is not entirely to be trusted. However the writing is great and I liked the chance to get a different view on the same world and time.
Seven Points, Amy James. Novella sequel to Crash Test in which Jacob gets a chance to fill in as an F1 driver - but will doing this compromise his relationship with Travis? Not particularly tense and comes across as too much wish-fulfilment, plus I don’t like the pairing teased in the closer.
Dragonsdawn, Anne McCaffrey (re-read). I know I have read this before but the only bit that felt familiar was the bit when HNO3 is being described and starts sounding like the agenothree of the future books, because it annoyed me then and it annoys me now :D (not that it happens! But the description feels forced). First settlement of Pern, the discovery of fire lizards, surviving Thread, developing dragons, an impressively nasty female villain and her evil plot; this book has to get through a heck of a lot and sometimes logic and characterisation get jettisoned in the process. I find Sallah intriguing as a flawed (seriously) character, additionally hampered by McCaffrey’s always slightly disturbing takes on gender roles and romance initiation; I suspect last time around I was much more interested in Sorka (first to impress fire lizards, first Weyrwoman etc) but now I find her lacking in comparison to Menolly. I do not think I’ll re-read the other early ones but Dragonflight is still tempting me.
A stocking full of spies, Robin Stevens. Book 3 in the Ministry of Unladylike Activity series, and we’re at Bletchley Park, where Hazel is working and where May, Nuala, and Eric, can be usefully employed as runners and solve a murder while they’re at it, not so incidentally also clearing Daisy’s brother Bertie in the process. I do like the setting in this a lot and there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, but I will always miss Daisy and Hazel as narrators (not that I don’t like the others - just not as much, and somehow splitting the narrative between three feels much more crowded than having Hazel write it all down).
Address Unknown, Kathrine Kressman Taylor
Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer (re-read)
You Probably Think This Song is About You, Kate Camp
Seven Points, Amy James
Dragonsdawn, Anne McCaffrey (re-read)
A stocking full of spies, Robin Stevens
Single Player, Tara Tai. Cat Li gets her chance in the video gaming industry by being brought on to add romance storylines to an upcoming big budget release; but Andi Zhang, her new non-binary boss, hates romance, is traumatised by a previous doxxing, and is being set up to take the fall for the game failing by evil managers. Obviously they fall in love. I liked bits of this while never being entirely convinced by either the logistics of the game design or the characters.
Address Unknown, Kathrine Kressman Taylor. Short, quietly devastating series of letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco (who has relatives in Germany) and his former close friend and business partner, who has returned to Germany in the early 1930s. Published in 1938, unfortunately not difficult to read as currently relevant.
Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, Elinor M Brent-Dyer. Re-read. Lavender is spoilt, highly strung, and the star of her aunt’s series of geographical readers in which they visit various countries; WWII having cramped their style somewhat, she ends up at the Chalet School and after the usual series of mishaps, becomes a much better person. I do think this could have been much more interesting if told from the pov of Lilamani, Lavender’s friend from Kashmir, who shows up here briefly (and only gets two years at the Chalet School) but it’s perfectly adequate and I do like Brent-Dyer’s Peace League and her insistence (via the staff) that the pupils are not sheltered from news of the war.
You Probably Think This Song is About You, Kate Camp. Kate and I are contemporaries (her mother was my English teacher) but although I recognise a lot of her childhood we had wildly different teen experiences (Camp’s involve a lot of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and violent unstable boyfriends; mine were more along the lines of some alcohol, complicated friendships, and a ridiculous amount of reading), although we intersect again in adulthood. I am, however, unsure how much of this is accurate and how much fiction; the opening chapter has this bit where the child Kate is obsessed with a few lines from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamboat, singing them over and over despite her family’s gentle mockery. But the lines Camp quotes (“always hoped that I’d be an apostle...” etc) are clearly from Jesus Christ Superstar, credited as such in the opening front matter, and I can’t quite decide if this is a genuine mistake or a signal that the author is not entirely to be trusted. However the writing is great and I liked the chance to get a different view on the same world and time.
Seven Points, Amy James. Novella sequel to Crash Test in which Jacob gets a chance to fill in as an F1 driver - but will doing this compromise his relationship with Travis? Not particularly tense and comes across as too much wish-fulfilment, plus I don’t like the pairing teased in the closer.
Dragonsdawn, Anne McCaffrey (re-read). I know I have read this before but the only bit that felt familiar was the bit when HNO3 is being described and starts sounding like the agenothree of the future books, because it annoyed me then and it annoys me now :D (not that it happens! But the description feels forced). First settlement of Pern, the discovery of fire lizards, surviving Thread, developing dragons, an impressively nasty female villain and her evil plot; this book has to get through a heck of a lot and sometimes logic and characterisation get jettisoned in the process. I find Sallah intriguing as a flawed (seriously) character, additionally hampered by McCaffrey’s always slightly disturbing takes on gender roles and romance initiation; I suspect last time around I was much more interested in Sorka (first to impress fire lizards, first Weyrwoman etc) but now I find her lacking in comparison to Menolly. I do not think I’ll re-read the other early ones but Dragonflight is still tempting me.
A stocking full of spies, Robin Stevens. Book 3 in the Ministry of Unladylike Activity series, and we’re at Bletchley Park, where Hazel is working and where May, Nuala, and Eric, can be usefully employed as runners and solve a murder while they’re at it, not so incidentally also clearing Daisy’s brother Bertie in the process. I do like the setting in this a lot and there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on, but I will always miss Daisy and Hazel as narrators (not that I don’t like the others - just not as much, and somehow splitting the narrative between three feels much more crowded than having Hazel write it all down).
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Date: 2026-05-20 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-20 10:10 pm (UTC)I also really latched onto Sorka but she really is not that vivid when read as an adult ... I wonder if that's part of her appeal for kids though tbh, she's just enough of a Cool Blank Slate to project into.