Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

The Hawthorne Legacy

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Previous book here.  I'm going to keep the public review of this vague, and then discuss details below the spoiler cut.

I liked this book a whole lot better than the last one, because it finally Gets Down To Business and actually works on explaining--WITH REASONABLE REASONS--why Avery was tapped to inherit the Hawthorne millions despite not genetically being a Hawthorne. (Which frankly was a whole lot better than what book one posits, i.e. Avery's birthdate and the anagram of her name. Come on.) I'll get into that stuff below the spoiler cut, but it's mostly actually a reasonable reason--or is for most of the book, anyway. There was a last minute swerve I DID NOT LIKE (sigh), but the book at least tries to justify it, I suppose. But I really enjoyed the mystery they had going on and unraveling the missing person case that's the heart of this book. We find out who's secretly related to who, including how Skye's idiosyncratic (also "duh") naming schemes for her children are pretty obvious as to their paternities, hah. And there's a past dramatic event that has kicked off everything, including the puzzles to solve. I liked how that worked. 

I did enjoy how most of the characters band together to work on solving the mystery, including helping Avery when she's unable to physically go to places.  I also like how Max at one point is actually liberated from her parents on her 18th birthday and happily joins in the case. There may be some vibe between her and Xander, as he'll make her some droids. That's very sweet. 

As for the romances: Avery vacillates between Jameson and Grayson in this book. I don't really get the "relationship" with her and Grayson, which seems to have some attraction, but Grayson mostly doesn't want to act on it and says he wants to stay friends, and frankly, he doesn't spend that much time with Avery for us to get to know him or care. Meanwhile, Jameson has personality out the wazoo and likes to hang out with Avery and nickname her and puzzle solve with her, and after awhile he is All In on this, and I was all "Jameson, I am down with you, please." I did like how Max suggested that Avery figure out which guy she wanted by imagining which one would come up to her if she was on a cliff alone. At first Avery is all "Actually, I imagine myself alone," but later, well... I'm good with it, I'll say that. 

What's not great: see below spoiler cut. I'm also rather stumped as to how Avery survives a near-death experience that involves a coma, but we don't even really find out what injuries she suffered and after she comes out of the coma, she's fine? Shouldn't that have been more injurious? Did she get burned? Unable to walk? Anything? It's also kind of unclear what happened regarding the rule that Avery can't spend more than 3 nights a month away from "home." Is there a loophole for the hospital? I'm unclear, but we're told the rule wasn't violated...somehow? 

I'm going to give it four stars overall because I think it's a vast improvement and fairly well satisfying compared to the last one, even if I'm a wee bit bothered by the one swerve. Good job! Now on to the spoiler discussion!

The Inheritance Games

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Avery Grambs is just trying to get by. Her mom's dead, her dad's a deadbeat, and she's being nominally raised by her older sister Libby, who's in an abusive relationship and Avery's about ready to start living in her car to avoid that situation. She has dreams of going into actuarial science and making a life for herself as soon as she can.

And then out of fucking nowhere, she finds out that she's inherited billions of dollars from Tobias Hawthorne, a now-dead billionaire Texan SHE'S NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE IN HER LIFE. She's forced to live in the family mansion in Texas for a year and isn't allowed to throw out any of the mostly-disinherited family members, most of whom are reasonably cheesed off at not getting much money in the will. We're told the will is diehard, that if anyone challenges it they lose their money, and that in a previous will, Tobias planned to disinherit his entire family anyway and just give the majority of the money to charity. And no, Avery ISN'T in any way related to the Hawthorne family (DNA testing appears to have gone on quickly offscreen). SO WHY THE HELL DID SOME STRANGER GIFT A TEENAGER BILLIONS? 

All Avery gets in a posthumous letter from her benefactor is a note saying "I'm sorry." THE FUCK? 

Naturally, the female relatives in the family--Tobias's daughters and one confusingly-vaguely-related teen girl named Thea--Have Issues with this. And then there's four hot young grandsons ranging from 17-22 hanging around the house. Nash, the oldest "rescues" people and at one point was engaged to Avery's new lawyer (huh?). Grayson is suspicious of Avery. Xander and Jameson are friendlier and more intrigued, but particularly Jameson, who introduces Avery to his grandfather's obsession with puzzles and how this is all some kind of giant puzzle to be solved. 

So essentially this book is about solving the mysteries that a dead guy left behind, combined with the mystery of Dead Girl Emily--the housekeepers' granddaughter who had bad health and various entanglements with the teenagers. And Libby's shitty abusive boyfriend is all PAYDAY!!!!! and gets more and more horrendous as the book goes on, of course. 

I'll say this: it's intriguing, but not much is solved or resolved by the end of this, which I found VERY FRUSTRATING. By the end of the book you will only have slightly more of a clue as to "why Avery?" and I was really irritated by that. I also can't figure out for the life of me if I am supposed to be rooting for Avery to have any kind of romance with any of the Hawthorne boys. She kisses one of them, but seems to get attracted to at least the younger three at different points, and they're all a mix of "I'm not sure if they're good or bad or have ulterior motives or WHAT" here. Do I want her to be with any of them? Is that a good idea? HELL IF I KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON HERE.

I'm not even sure if I want to read the next book (though I did reserve it at the library, I admit it...), given how irritated I am at the finish of this one. I usually really like this author's books (The Fixer and The Long Game being my favorites for tricksy shit) and you'd think this is more of the same, but the vague open-door-ness of this one was just frustrating as fuck and as things went on and you're more like "I don't think much of anything is going to resolve here," uck. There's one Crucial Reveal at the end about someone we've barely heard of that suddenly becomes A Big Deal. I also kind of wondered at the attention paid to Avery's perpetually-locked-up best friend Max, who seems to only be there so Avery can't manage to have a conversation with her most of the time? The girl needs support outside of the situation and she can't get any, apparently. 

I don't know....it was just a frustrating experience for me to read this book. Kinda leaves a bad taste in the mouth when reading it made you annoyed and mad, and usually the author's a lot better at not doing that. Three stars. 

Pride and Premeditation

By Tirzah Price.

This alt-universe version of Pride and Prejudice has the Bennets as lower middle class working people, in which Mr. Bennet is a barrister with a business called "Longbourn and Sons" (I see what you did there) even though he only has Mr. Collins around to inherit. Lizzie desperately wants in the family business, but of course she's a woman. She tries to drum up some business by sneaking into jail to visit a guy who's been accused of killing his divey brother-in-law....that'd be Mr. Bingley. Of course Mr. Bingley's already got a barrister, his buddy Mr. Darcy, but Lizzie is on the case to figure out whodunit anyway.

I was...mildly into this and also kind of mildly finding it hard to stick with. I got it as a library book so that made me have to get through it more. It's both kind of interesting and kind of middling?  Maybe a bit slow somehow? Like I enjoy Lizzie as a more active detective, for sure, and it's less maritally obsessed. The Bingleys as a more broke family who keep having their ships pirated and a shitty brother in law is rather refreshing. One character ends up being more of a dynamic personality in this one. However, with regards to whodunit, well, you should presume that your least favorite characters in the original are Up To Something in this one. There's not that much romance in it by comparison, but this Mr. Darcy is a pretty nice bloke in the end. It did speed up with a lot more crazy action at the end, which I did like.

Though factually....I kept thinking "ain't no way a woman's going to be allowed to be a barrister" and I did some Googling and well, nope, not in Austen's time. Yes, the author took some liberties with that one, and I appreciated the author's note about the legal system back then.

Overall, three stars.

Fugitive Telemetry

By Martha Wells.

Previous (?) book here. 

This may be the first Murderbot book I'm not as into as the other ones. It feels more like a one-off episode rather than continuing story, and I think it takes place after the fourth novella but before the first full on book, so if you were hoping for the continuing adventures of ART and Murderbot, prepare to be disappointed. Instead, Murderbot is hired to investigate a strange murder on Preservation Station. Mensah and her people are in it a bit off and on, but mostly Murderbot is dealing with Indah, someone who isn't terribly thrilled to have Murderbot around or in her computer systems. 

There's nothing wrong with this one, other than (a) it does feel like a one-off side adventure and (b) there's not that much emotional development or relations. The fun of Murderbot is its conflicting emotions with humans, but somehow it doesn't feel like it spends enough time with anyone to really have any. Not that much super uncomfortableness (though Gurathin shows up for a bit!), Murderbot figures out mostly how to deal with Indah in a way that doesn't involve bad jokes, Murderbot figures out what's going on and who needs rescue, end of story.

I'm giving it three stars purely because I know darned well I'm not going to really remember the plot of this later, sigh.

Quotes:

• "I would have either disposed of the body so it was never found, or made it look like an accident." When asked about that, Murderbot replies, "If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I've already disposed of." Ratthi is all, "It's joking," and then privately says "Stop joking."
• Indah to Murderbot: 'You are the most paranoid person I've ever met, and I've worked in criminal reform for twenty-six years." "I don't even know how to respond to that. She's not wrong but hey, I need my paranoia."
• "All I wanted to do was watch media and not exist." YOU AND ME BOTH, MURDERBOT.
• Murderbot's response to being asked to the theater: "You know I don't like fun." Of course it goes anyway. 

Murder By Other Means

By John Scalzi.

Previous book here.

I find it hard to review a book that I had to listen to only--in this case, had to listen to twice to be able to write it--but since nobody else seems to have a review of the book online (I guess for that reason), I'll give it a shot.

It's a couple of years since the last book, and due to budget cuts (and losing the consulting with the cops gig Tony had in the last book), Tony's doing the occasional gray area job, like shooting a businessman who wants to get back to China ASAP. Tony goes for it and then when he goes to deposit some of his pay in the bank, a bank robbery happens. Of course the robbers can escape in this world by shooting each other, but when one of them stays dead--those 1 in 1000 deaths--that throws things off. Even worse, the guy who died turns out to be a dispatcher Tony knows and recently talked to, even if Tony turned down the "choke club" job. He still has some standards.

Anyway, Tony suspects--reasonably--that a bank employee who also got shot during the job was involved in it and kind of snoops around for his old sorta-buddy cop Langdon. He thinks that's the end of it, until Langdon's new nosy partner Bradley kills himself--or well, "kills himself," which kicks off a number of other suicides, or "suicides" because it seems unlikely that all of them would have made that choice. Bradley was investigating Tony since Tony has enough awkward coincidences going on with the case. Langdon thinks Tony needs protection, and she's not wrong, since it seems pretty logical to just about everyone else that Tony could very well be involved since he knows a lot of the people involved.  

This one continues to delve into the implications of this world, which I appreciate, such as "how do you murder someone without technically murdering someone?" (see title) and "how do you threaten someone when death is only sorta on the table?" Even though Tony says he's a dispatcher because he never had any other skills, he's a sharp detective. There is a lot of strong coincidence in this one that makes Tony look guilty, but I did appreciate how all the pieces came together, and even stuff like the opening scenes and Tony's living arrangements turn out to all fit into a puzzle I wasn't expecting. Pretty cool. 

If anything isn't super great in this, it's my kind of realizing that Tony....I dunno, needs some more inner life in some respects, perhaps? Hobbies? Something to him beyond just being a dispatcher/detective? He seems incredibly distant from everyone. He doesn't seem to have family or anything other than books and takeout. He has people he is "friendly" with but isn't friends with, and says this of about everyone. Does he have anyone he'd consider a friend? He doesn't really seem to have connections with anyone or attachments to anything. At one point Tony's apartment is burned down, and having had a friend lose his home in the fires recently so I'm at least a little aware of what shit he's going through, I kind of felt like this just....didn't affect Tony all that much? He's very drifter-y, I'd like to see Tony have some more to him than just the case. I can say that by the end of the book he's actually acknowledging that he's friends with Langdon, so there's that.... 

Zachary Quinto continues to do a great job of narrating and sketching out the various voices in this one. I really like him as a narrator. 

Anyway, I look forward to book three  Four stars. 

The Relentless Moon

By Mary Robinette Kowal.

This is the interquel to The Fated Sky, taking place on Earth/the Moon while Elna is off on Mars. Our narrator this time is Nicole Wargin: former ballerina, pilot, astronaut, and wife of the Kansas governor. She's 50 years old and getting annoyed that she's considered "old hat" these days socially, but is still involved in periodically working on the Moon colony.

And then just TONS AND TONS OF SABOTAGE starts happening everywhere around her. There's bombings, there's poisonings, there's sabotage, which feels like it's happening every other day. Nicole has high security clearance, so she's "read in" on how the Earth First organization, which is (a) rightly pissed at the fact that not everybody is going to be allowed to leave the planet, (b) also pissed that money is going to space and not to trying to improve things on earth, has now (c) decided to go terrorist and try to destroy the space program.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK.

So Nicole, a lady of special skills from Swiss boarding school and being EXTREMELY knowledgeable about codes, and social manipulation and engineering after being a politician's wife for so long, is told to be the secretary to the guy running the moon (note: she doesn't type) so she can investigate the situation. Just getting to the moon is dangerous under these circumstances, and Nicole finds herself investigating while having her dominant arm broken, having her anorexia triggered out the wazoo, all kinds of things going wrong, and strange blackouts happening every sixteen minutes. She's got amazing backup in having Eugene, Myrtle, and Helen on her side to help, and those characters really shine in this book. Like "Go Eugene!" in particular. But it's a very tense spy/mystery thriller sort of book this time rather than about the coolness of going to space, though sexism is still, as ever, a thing. 

Nicole is awesome. I love how she calculates all social stuff in her head, she strategizes, she works a plan. Though even as life gets more and more stressful, she's more and more affected even as she plugs on. 

I'll say this as someone reading during the pandemic and having a hard time again: I spent the day reading it pretty compulsively, but emotionally it was somewhat hard going at times. A Big Hard Thing does happen about two thirds of the way through the book that is sad-making. And well, since the polio vaccine didn't go so well in this universe, there's a polio outbreak on the moon somehow, but I will say that it's not fatal. 

I would like to say that I found page 90-91 to be delightful, as Nicole finds out about Nathaniel and Elma's secret messaging system. 

• 'I hope you don't think I am so delicate as to be shocked or offended by innuendo involving rockets, thrusters, or orbital insertions."
• "Men can be such delicate wilting flowers."
• "Honestly, their rocketry innuendo was embarrassing. They were married. Just say "dick" and "masturbate" like an adult. Poor innocent dears." 
• "I remember when I showed Elma my vibrator on the Moon and I thought she'd melt her spacesuit with the heat of her embarrassment. She's adorable."

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH LOVE IT. I know I watched an interview with the author where she said that making space dick jokes is definitely a thing astronauts do.... 

This author is great at portraying loving relationships and happy marriages, and this continues with Nicole and her husband Kenneth, who may have differences of opinion but they are still close, even when on different planets. "Our marriage was strained and compromised in every direction, but the one thing i knew with absolute certainty was that Kenneth had my back." For various reasons it's not as happy/idyllic as other people, but it's still good, and hits the heart. 

I'm going to do some spoiler talk below the spoiler cut.

Anyway, I'm going to give it 4.5 stars. This is very good to read, albeit kind of emotionally hard going at times, but maybe that's just also the times I'm reading it in. Excellent job. 

Deadly Little Scandals

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

Previous book here.

It's summer! Time to go hang out by the lake, join a secret society of ladies called the White Gloves, come across a dead body while doing that, and investigate one missing mom and baby. 

"That's just how things work around here. Fancy shindig, scandalous happenings, murmur murmur, and voila." -Boone on how parties help solve issues. 

That's about the plot. Sawyer's still kind of quietly reeling from the revelations of the last book, while eventually creep out in this one. Olivia and JD's marriage is going terribly, Lily's not sure what she wants, Sawyer is slowly edging towards attempting a romantic flirtation with Nick, and Greer's now eight months fake pregnant. Let's see how THAT goes.

But seriously, the girls both investigate the missing third girl while being rushed to join a secret society called the White Gloves who do daredevil activities. Their leader is Victoria Gutierrez, a relative of the missing girl and a shrewd chick in her own right, I like her. Meanwhile, Lily's quietly cruising towards a nervous breakdown and Sawyer is slowly edging into a relationship with Nick, even as she's all "I never want to fall in love."

And then there are CRAZY CRAZY FAMILY REVELATIONS AHOY, Y'ALL. Like DAAAAAAAAAAAAMN the ending DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN that's crazy much. I'll take that below the spoiler cut.

What do I like? Sawyer's growing. There wasn't much in the way of romance in the last book, but her edging towards one with Nick even as she's kind of freaked is sweet. You feel for Lily as her world is slowly shattering around her, and then it gets even worse. I liked the White Gloves's overall mission, even though it doesn't get much play and mostly they just come off as a daredevil girl group combined with Rose and Grave or something. ("You're here because you know what it's like to be powerless....Because when people say that well-behaved women rarely make history, they leave out the little tidbit that the women who do make history rarely do so alone.") I liked the use of their secrets and the dares that came afterwards to change up the girls's set mentalities. I like Victoria, who's as into the mystery investigation as Sawyer and seems like a cool slightly older mentor. I don't think I got much more of Nick's personality in this, but at least I got more of why she's into him--there's something about him that makes her want to reveal all her secrets (been there, girl), and he's ready for a relationship when she's not (yet). 

What's a bit off? The "oops, I wasn't actually pregnant" revelation that the book seems to be cruising toward is completely glossed over and you're like, whaaaaaat?!?!The White Gloves aspect of the book kind of fades out after awhile and given the promise of them, that disappointed me. But mostly, the ending is just crazy crazy crazy Southern gothic nuttery, and make of that what you will. The mind boggles. It's not out of nowhere nuttery, per se, but after awhile you are just like GOOD GOD, WHOSE KID IS WHOSE HERE? 

"Just remember, what we're about to tell you doesn't change who you are. It's just like musical chairs, but with parents." -Sadie-Grace

So, to the spoiler cut we shall go for that one. Overall, I give it three and a half stars. Well done, set up well, but craycray.

Little White Lies

By Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

"Every Southern lady should know how to drug and frame a scoundrel surely in need of drugging and framing."

Sawyer Taft's mom Ellie used to be a debutante, until she got pregnant and kicked out at age seventeen. Since then, life's been iffy and shifty and involved living above a bar, and Sawyer sounds like she's had to be the responsible one in the relationship. So when her long lost grandmother Lillian shows up offering her five hundred thousand dollars to live with her for nine months and become a debutante as well (and note that her mother's run off again), Sawyer takes her up on it. Not just for the college money, mind you, but to see if she can figure out who her father is. 

Sawyer quickly finds friends, as she hits it off with her cousin Lily and her beautiful-but-anxious friend Sadie-Grace. And then there's Campbell, the sister of lily's ex Walker, who has figured out Lily's secret blogging project and uses it to blackmail everyone else into helping her do...what, exactly? Sawyer isn't afraid of Campbell, but she's intrigued by a mystery, and not just the one about her parentage either.

What's good about this one? This author does badass teen ladies well and Sawyer is no exception. She's smart and tough and knows where to push back and where not to, she's strategic, and she's even protective. Lily and Sadie-Grace are sweet (Sadie-Grace starts doing ballet when she's nervous, which is cute). Campbell starts out as the villain, but has hidden depths that made me quite fond of her. She's conniving, but for a good reason, as it turns out, and Sawyer is delighted to join in the scheme. And Lillian the grandmother is a quiet badass. As for the boys in this world, I'm fond enough of Walker, but got a kick out of Boone, the snarkiest one in the book and I wish he got a bit more play.

What's not so great? Nick, the vague love interest of Sawyer, doesn't get a whole lot of characterization despite his somewhat importance to the plot, and if you're into romance, there really isn't any here. Sawyer's mom Ellie is perennially confusing and lies and I never know what to make of her and her life choices and clearly Sawyer doesn't either. And while the "who's my daddy?" plot goes well and intriguing at first, there's a final twist thrown in that I frankly did not like. I will rant about that in the spoiler space, though. 

I also didn't really like the framing/flashbacks/flashforwards setup of this book, in which some total newbie cop is forced to deal with the debutantes at the jail and we get tiny excerpts of his confusion that are breadcrumbs for the reader as to who is who and what they are talking about. It was just kind of interrupty and annoying after awhile and I'm not sure it added anything to the book, which could have been told straightforwardly without missing a thing. I also continued to roll my eyes at the one character that everyone finds out is faking her pregnancy--very bad soap plot there. 

Overall, I give it three and a half stars. To the spoiler space we go....

Tuesday Mooney Talks To Ghosts

By Kate Racculia.

This is like the modern day equivalent of The Westing Game, y'all. I deeply enjoyed it.

Our title character is a researcher of rich donors for a hospital who mostly keeps to herself ever since her best friend Abby disappeared/died when they were sixteen. Her one friend is Dex, the best gay best friend ever, who was by far my favorite character and I'll rave about him more later. Dex and Tuesday attend a fancy gala dinner, where Dex quickly befriends a lady named Lila Korrapati Pryce...and then everyone sees her husband Vincent drop dead in front of everyone. But after his death, Vincent has engineered a scavenger hunt/mystery game for his fortune, and Tuesday and Dex both befriend the widow and her gay best friend Bert, and join in. Also joining in is Dorry, Tuesday's teenage neighbor pal, and Archie, the rich son of a disappeared rich father who's got a boatload of family issues of his own. 

What's great about this?

• Vincent Pryce is one of the best posthumous characters ever and you really wish you could have met him. He's a theatrical delight. Fun game, too. 
• The use of karaoke is sparing, but fitting and good.
• Lila, a.k.a. Lyle, is mysterious but interesting.
• Bert, who quickly becomes Dex's love interest, has a cute chemistry with him. 
• Archie.... I won't get into it because of spoiling, but wow, I liked the twists that went on with his character. Good job. 
• Tuesday talks to one ghost....specifically she's haunted by Abby after she used a Ouija board to try to talk to her. After ghost talking had consequences as a kid, Tuesday's cut off the voice, but Abby comes roaring back. She's also a great posthumous character and her dialogue is a delight. 
• Tuesday herself is all right, if a bit of a quiet cipher by comparison to everyone else. I do, however, wish I could do her job, which sounds right up my alley. How the hell do I get hired to do research for a living? 
• And I love, love Dex. I am not a gay male banker, but I feel like to some degree I live his life. Dex was a theater kid who gave it up for money, and is now hating his life. I hear ya, sir.

What's not so great?

• Dorry has a protective dad who quickly sidelines her from hanging out with Tuesday. This is very plausible in adultland, but at the same time kinda sucked for fiction reading since it detached her to some degree from the action and she had to go in on the side, as it were. 
• The romances are kind of barely started. Like at one point it's mentioned that two people slept together and you're all, "Wait, WHAT? When did this happen?" The chemistry is sold between Dex and Bert and Tuesday and Archie, but I could have used some more of this. I kind of felt like after a certain revelation, Bert dropped out of this more than I'd like.
• I also would have liked a little more Lila. She's cool.

Also, this book is hella quotable. 

• "Archie's father had disappeared. Archie knew how it felt for someone in his life to up and vanish. It didn't make her trust him any more, but it explained what she saw in him." 
• "I've started this email several times. Every time it gets weirder. At first it was like, "Dear Sir, I would cordially invite you to my home in Beacon Hill for brunch." Then it turned into "Dear Person I Barely Know, You tried to resuscitate my husband, and even though that didn't work out, I'd still like to get you drunk by eleven a.m. I am having trouble calibrating my gallows humor." -See, this is why I like Lila. 
• "Singing like a giant, showboating, asshole chameleon--an undeniably talented one, but still--was one of the only ways he could remind himself of well, who he was, and what he loved. He sang like an attention-seeking missile and remembered everything that weeks and months and years of pretending to care about money and how to sell it to other people had conspired to make him forget. Whenever he wrapped his fingers around the mic and opened his mouth, he, Poindexter Howard, was back."
• "And Dex thought, It's you. At last. And there was no worry or rush or panic or any of the things he usually felt when he met someone he was going to fall in love with. Only a warm opening in his chest that could have been happiness." 
• "I would rather eat falafel than get married." Another reason why I love Lila. And then the story leads to her finding true love with Vince in a karaoke bar. And he had Singing Poe-a-gram sent to her after his death, singing the song she heard him sing that night. Awwwwwww.
• "Vince was a lunatic in all the best ways. He's not done with life, despite being dead. He's not done with me or you or you, or anyone who takes him seriously enough to play this game.... I'm just saying if you want to win, even if you just want to play, think like a lunatic. A theatrical lunatic." --Lila again.
• "Implacable, unflappable Tuesday--his favorite emotional iceberg was on fucking fire."
• "It seems that being intensely frustrated was the most fun Archie'd had in months." 
• "Then Bert wrote back. And Dex had to fight the urge to squeal. This behavior was unusual and troubling." 
• "Dex didn't believe in coincidences. Wait. That wasn't true at all. Dex believed in coincidences, and fate, and signs and wonders, and all the great interlocking gears of the universe telling him to do things, and though he'd gotten pretty good at ignoring what the universe was telling him to do (most recently: quit your soul-sucking job and open a karaoke bar!), it didn't mean he couldn't still hear it screaming."
• "She almost said: That's what I recognized the first time I saw you. Not your brother but your father. Your father, and the weight of his absence. I know. I know how it feels to be haunted. But she didn't. She left him not long after. She didn't kiss him. She wanted to, but she also wanted to prolong the inevitable, stretch that feeling between them like warm taffy, because that game was its own kind of satisfaction."
• "He did not want to make a living like this. But he didn't know how else to live."
• "He wanted all these other parts of him to be seen, to live beyond this narrow life." 
• "I've had some odd things happen to me over the course of my life. I've learned to embrace the mysterious. Because the strange, the extraordinary--those experiences that make you look at the world like you've never seen it before, really pay attention to it--the strange changes you. Shows you new things about yourself. About life. Other people." -Bert, this is how I feel about that stuff happening to me too. I like him. 
• Dex in costume: "This Dex, painted for the gods (or at least the Madonnas), was a dead-serious joke, the ghost of who he thought, once upon a time, he was supposed to be. A singer. An actor. A light on a stage who could share infinite other lives for a moment with strangers, easing the sting of being so very finite indeed. This Dex was a reminder that he had lived long enough to have known other versions of himself, that the self he was now wasn't permanent, or didn't have to be; this Dex was many, and could become someone else still."
• "He was never more in danger than when he allowed himself to be most himself. When he was most himself, he ran the constant risk of being entirely Too Much." I hear ya, Dex.
• "And what he was meant to be was an artist, and what he was meant to do was to sing, and to move in the spaces surrounding the definite, between the sacred and the profane, the body and the spirit, the silent and the spoken, the living and the dead....The practice of this art was the transmutation of love." 
• "Don't cheat your friendships. Don't ask them to mean less to you than you do, or think they only have value if they're a stop on the way to a real relationship." -Tuesday
• "....that Tuesday could almost pretend they'd met like ordinary people, and that whatever they were to each other, now or in the future, could be easy. Then another part of her said, You never wanted ordinary or easy, and you know it."

This book is poetic and inspirational and deep and wow. Four and a half stars. Near epic.

The Hound of Justice

By Claire O'Dell.

Previous book here.

This book is kind of a slow starter, mostly focusing on Janet's getting back into the swing of working as a doctor again with her new arm, which she dubs "Lazarus." Eventually we get into a plot with Sara, who's still after their mutual enemy and once she gets back in better graces at her job, goes into the New Confederacy to work on that. Then Janet's asked to join her down there because they need a surgeon, which is more interesting to read about. I liked the ladies they were hanging out with in the Resistance. Janet gets a love interest and she and Sara still don't really ah, do anything. The love interest is nice enough but feels temporary since she suspects Janet is up to something but Janet can't say what. 

I really can't think of much to say about this book. It was pleasant enough but didn't really grip me so much? So about three stars.