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Birthday Books, 2025
Jun. 29th, 2025 09:35 pmAll of these were fun!
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - An extremely cozy fantasy novel about a former adventurer who trades her greatsword for an apron and opens a coffee shop. It’s a fun little wish-fulfillment adventure with relatively low stakes. I had to grit my teeth as they set their prices without discussing costs AT ALL; but besides that it was fun.
Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson - I read Wilson’s blog for a while, years ago; she’s one of the child stars who seemed to come out of it reasonably healthy and still speaking to her parents. This was less a memoire (it’s not really chronological and also she’s younger than I am) and more a collection of life stories organized by theme and narrative that sometimes overlap. Wilson clearly wants to be a storyteller, and I see no reason to stand in her way. I hope she does enough randomly entertaining things in the next few years to warrant more books.
Adrift In Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire - Another standalone Wayward Children novel, this one featuring a little Russian girl with only one arm who loves turtles, and who gets transported to a world where everything is underwater. (And the physics is superhero-grade nonsense, but “it’s magic” and at least no one pretends to understand it.) This one has some pacing issues; the chapters are of irregular lengths and time-skip several times in places where they probably could have used more interstitial tissue. Still decent, still makes some good points about growing up different, still an interesting exercise in worldbuilding; but not her best.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler – The second half of the story of Dark Lord Davi, who breaks her time-loop existence by driving completely off the rails and becoming the Dark Lord she was supposedly there to fight. This does manage to explain everything and wrap up all the loose ends, though I’ll admit to being slightly miffed that it’s all ramifications of her time-loop existence rather than more iterations of it.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi - In some ways, this is a short story collection with a bunch of connective tissue moreso than it’s a novel. While there are some recurring characters, most of the chapters are vignettes about how people across America deal with the moon suddenly transforming into a same-mass ball of cheese. It feels even more purely like satire than most of Scalzi’s work, and that’s saying something.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - An extremely cozy fantasy novel about a former adventurer who trades her greatsword for an apron and opens a coffee shop. It’s a fun little wish-fulfillment adventure with relatively low stakes. I had to grit my teeth as they set their prices without discussing costs AT ALL; but besides that it was fun.
Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson - I read Wilson’s blog for a while, years ago; she’s one of the child stars who seemed to come out of it reasonably healthy and still speaking to her parents. This was less a memoire (it’s not really chronological and also she’s younger than I am) and more a collection of life stories organized by theme and narrative that sometimes overlap. Wilson clearly wants to be a storyteller, and I see no reason to stand in her way. I hope she does enough randomly entertaining things in the next few years to warrant more books.
Adrift In Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire - Another standalone Wayward Children novel, this one featuring a little Russian girl with only one arm who loves turtles, and who gets transported to a world where everything is underwater. (And the physics is superhero-grade nonsense, but “it’s magic” and at least no one pretends to understand it.) This one has some pacing issues; the chapters are of irregular lengths and time-skip several times in places where they probably could have used more interstitial tissue. Still decent, still makes some good points about growing up different, still an interesting exercise in worldbuilding; but not her best.
Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler – The second half of the story of Dark Lord Davi, who breaks her time-loop existence by driving completely off the rails and becoming the Dark Lord she was supposedly there to fight. This does manage to explain everything and wrap up all the loose ends, though I’ll admit to being slightly miffed that it’s all ramifications of her time-loop existence rather than more iterations of it.
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi - In some ways, this is a short story collection with a bunch of connective tissue moreso than it’s a novel. While there are some recurring characters, most of the chapters are vignettes about how people across America deal with the moon suddenly transforming into a same-mass ball of cheese. It feels even more purely like satire than most of Scalzi’s work, and that’s saying something.
