Howling Frog Books

 Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh On a small asteroid, a tiny remnant of humanity cling to their ideology.  Earth was destroyed in the Majo War, and most of the human survivors live on one world of the massive, peaceful, and multispecies Majoda civilization that is managed by the Wisdom, a millenia-old transdimensional artificial intelligence.  But on Gaea Station, these survivors live an extremely Spartan existence dedicated to revenge. Valkyr has spent her life training as a soldier, just like her twin brother Mags, just like every Gaean child.  Now her group is up for assignment; each girl will be given a lifetime job in a section of Gaea to keep it running.  Kyr and her brother, as warbreeds, are excellent soldiers and both expect to be assigned as such, but Mags doesn't want it and Kyr discovers that she's expected to spend her life bearing children in Nursery, what with her valuable genetics and all.  The capture of a majo serves as the catalyst th...

 Happy March Magics!  Back in July of 2024, I joined a group of Diana Wynne Jones fans in reading the complete works, in publication order.  You can see the host at her blog!   She gave us a schedule and we dove in.  This has been such a fun project for me, and a real lifesaver during some rough times. It's very enlightening to read the books in order, because I could see her writing talent developing.  Every so often she would hit a new level of descriptiveness, of plot layering, of subtlety.   Themes come up and into focus, and get several treatments before subsiding in favor of some new theme.  So for example, Homeward Bounders (arguably her most tragic story) and Time of the Ghost (most horrifying) were written right next to each other.  What does that say about what she was thinking at the time? Reading so continually also brings out characteristics that last across many books, such as a love of joyful, possibly destructive, chaos...

 The Strange House, vols 1 and 2, by Uketsu  This is at least a trilogy, but so far only the first two have been published.  Uketsu is an odd Japanese artist/ Youtuber /author, whose videos and books have made something of a splash.  As far as I can tell, no one admits to knowing who Uketsu actually is -- the artist is always masked. The unnamed narrator is asked to investigate an unusual floor plan for a house that previously belonged to a married couple with a child.  This doesn't seem like something she knows much about, so she asks an architect friend who is into the occult; maybe he can come up with something.  Kurihara studies the floor plans, notes its oddities, and spins the craziest, most macabre theories you've ever heard.   Then they connect this house to the inhabitants' previous home, which also seems odd.  And a woman claiming to be the wife of a murder victim shows up, asking for help.  Everything just gets more complex i...

 I've had these sitting on the desk for a while, and I'm just going to take them all off at once.  These were all books on my TBR shelf that I finally got around to reading! The Stones Are Hatching , by Geraldine McCaughrean :  It's 1919, and Phelim and his sister live deep in the countryside.  Phelim is on his own when all the old folktales rise up at once and hit him -- the domovoy and the glashans take over the house, call him Jack o'Green, and tell him to hurry up and save them all from the Stoor Worm, as the Black Dog attacks from outside.  Phelim is to travel cross-country and gather up his allies: the Maiden, the Fool, and the Hobby-Horse -- but the trouble is, he's never been told any of the stories.  He hasn't a clue how to navigate a world gone back to every superstition come alive, and he can't understand why everyone thinks it's his job to defeat the Stoor Worm.  It's a well-told tale of discovering the world and himself. The Thorn Ogres ...