This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is about satisfying series, so let’s see what I can come up with!

1. The Peter Wimsey books, by Dorothy L. Sayers. At first, Lord Peter seems like a fairly standard series detective, with a distinctive background and manner, but no real chronology or development between books. But then in Strong Poison a love interest is introduced: she doesn’t appear in every book (e.g. The Nine Tailors or Five Red Herrings), but over the course of the books where she does appear, her relationship with Peter slowly develops until she is certain of her feelings and ready to accept his hand in marriage. The series ends with Busman’s Honeymoon, in which they’re married and different threads of their characters and experiences come together beautifully, as she understands his shellshock and he finds something of a shelter from it and the world. It’s a heck of a journey from Peter’s first appearance on-page, and very satisfying.
2. The Phryne Fisher mysteries, by Kerry Greenwood. There is a thread of character development running through the stories, but they’re pretty episodic/mystery-of-the-week, and you can dip in at most stages and be able to follow the action. This series is satisfying because it has a few predictable elements (beautiful young men, lovely food cooked by Mrs Butler, ravishing fashion as worn by Phryne herself) and always delivers.
3. The Memoirs of Lady Trent, by Marie Brennan. A perennial favourite of mine. Rereading it is just as satisfying as a first read, maybe more so, because you can see how the pieces will come together and how Isabella’s great discoveries will be made, what they’re leading to, etc. Each book adds on another block, until the last book — well. No major spoilers, this one’s worth experiencing for yourself. She also gets a personal arc of loss, grief, and second chances which is very satisfying too.
4. The Imperial Radch books, by Ann Leckie. Mostly the original trilogy; I loved Provenance and liked Translation State, but the original trilogy is a safe happy place for me. Not that the books are in any way cosy, quite the opposite, but there’s something about Breq, Saivarden, and the cast of characters around them that just calls me back every so often.
5. Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin. I don’t know of many authors so willing to look back at an earlier book, realise that there was something unpleasant about it — something they didn’t mean to say — and then work with it/against it so ably, within the world. Le Guin realised that A Wizard of Earthsea was sexist as heck, and then spent the rest of the books replying to it within the bounds she’d already set. And the best part is that A Wizard of Earthsea isn’t bad, it has a lot of beautiful stuff to say and is a book that’s very important to me, but the other books add to it and play with it and make it better.
6. The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper. I love these books so much. I read my copy to pieces, and every word of the books is familiar to me now, so much so that I’ve been giving it a long rest before reading it again. It plays with mythology and folklore, with huge and terrifying forces, and then at the end hands responsibility back to us. There are aspects that are a little iffy (the Dark rising with waves of immigrants who are then tamed by the land; I think this is mostly about invasions, like the Norse, the Saxons, the Normans, but it has worrisome connotations even paired with the scene where Stephen and Will defend an immigrant boy), and it probably feels very dated now to a young person coming fresh to it… but all the same, I love it.
7. The Greta Helsing series, by Vivian Shaw. Okay, I haven’t actually read the most recent book, but I’m sure it’s going to be a lot of fun. I love the idea of a doctor who treats monsters, and I love Greta’s dedication to the task, and the found family of Ruthven and Varney and Fass and Greta and and and. I admit I’d thought the third book was intended to be the end, and it would’ve been a very appropriate one, but I’m excited to read further.
8. Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. This story really goes places. It takes a while for all the pieces to come together, with two extended flashbacks filling in Xie Lian’s past, but when it does… wow. As a reader you certainly have to wait for the full payoff, and there’s a lot of suffering for Xie Lian (and various other characters, but primarily Xie Lian) along the way — but it really, really pays off. And there’s a reason there’s an AO3 tag, “Hualian invented love”: the devotion between Xie Lian and Hua Cheng is intense and their love story spans 800 years.
9. Fairyland, by Catherynne M. Valente. I reread this series every so often because I love the narrative voice. I don’t always love Valente’s writing — sometimes it gets too lyrical and purple-prosey for me — but it hits a sweet spot with Fairyland, calling on the same kind of warm, parental narrator’s tone as C.S. Lewis’ best moments, and September’s whole journey is a lot of fun.
10. A Side Character’s Love Story, by Akane Tamura. This series isn’t finished yet, but I already reread it once, because Hiroki and Nobuko’s relationship is just so cute. A slow-burner at first, but I love that they communicate and figure things out together, and the character growth they both get through the story. Plus there are some fun side characters, too.

Okay, that took me a bit of thinking, and I’m sure I could come up with a whole different list if you gave me long enough — but there’s some nice variety here, so let’s go with this.

It’s definitely beginning to feel autumnal here, with the temperatures falling and some very rainy days. I’m all for it — I love rain, especially listening to it against the windows while I’m reading, because I’m a cliché, and I’m also not super keen on very warm weather anyway (despite the problems I have with my poor circulation meaning I’m easily cold).

So it’s time too to think about my fall reading list, thanks to Top Ten Tuesday. I know there are a lot of books releasing soon that I’m interested in, so I’ve included a couple of those, but mostly I’m trying to leave those on my wishlist for Christmas, and focus on some of the neglected books of my TBR.

1. Mockingbird Court, by Juneau Black. I love the Shady Hollow series, and the one is due out on 7th October, so it has to earn a place on my list. It’s also set in autumn, so it’s coincidentally seasonally appropriate, too! Even though there’s murder and danger, these books are so cosy to me — I can’t wait to settle down with this one.
2. The Beauty’s Blade, by Feng Ren Zuo Shu. I haven’t read any baihe (f/f Chinese light novels, equivalent to the m/m danmei) yet, but I heard about this one and it sounds like a lot of fun. It’s due out in November, and I need to snag a copy right away so I can check whether my sister will be interested in it. (I mean, probably: badass ladies with swords who presumably end up kissing, it’s right up her street. But I do have to check for a happy ending.)
3. The Library of Ancient Wisdom, by Selena Wisnom. I’d actually sort-of started this at one point, but got busy and didn’t dig into it properly, but it looks like a fascinating history of Mesopotamia through the library of Ashurbanipal, and I enjoyed the chapter I read. It looks like a bit of a chonker, but I think it’ll be one I gladly sink into once I give it the time.
4. Pagans, by James Alistair Henry. I’ve technically started this as well, but it wasn’t the right moment, and now I want to get back to it. It’s a mystery set in an alternative universe where geopolitics has worked out very, very differently (e.g. no Norman invasion, Britain’s kind of a backwater, society is largely run by Anglo-Saxons with Celtcs being a heavily marginalised group, etc). Parts of it don’t seem to totally make sense, but I didn’t get that far into it, and I’m very curious how things work out, all the same.
5. You Should Be So Lucky, by Cat Sebastian. It’s on my TBR for this month, but I haven’t got to it yet (given that I’ve been warned it deals with an amount of grief and loss, last week didn’t seem like the right time mentally). I really want to read it, though, so it’ll probably be one of the next books I pick up! I love Cat Sebastian’s romances in general, and I feel like she’s also always improving as a writer.
6. The Duke at Hazard, by KJ Charles. Another one that’s on my September TBR but hasn’t been read yet. This one’s definitely a priority — I don’t know why I’ve waited so long on it. I love pretty much all of KJ Charles’ work, so I expect to enjoy it.
7. The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, by Christopher de Hamel. This is a bit of a random choice, but it’s been on my shelves for a while and I’d love to dig into it. I really enjoyed Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, and this one has in-page colour illustrations as well, so it should be fascinating. It’s a bit of a chonker, so I might not schedule it for the same month as the other chunky books I’m thinking about!
8. Folk Song in England, by Steve Roud. I like a lot of modern British folk, and the efforts of singers and groups like Jon Boden (and Spiers & Boden), Fay Hield, Eliza Carthy, Seth Lakeman and Bellowhead have given me quite the appreciation for traditional songs and their many variations. It’s another chunky book, so it’s a little intimidating, but I’m sure I can get to it!
9. The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, by Xue Shan Fei Hu. This sounds absolutely nuts as a concept, and I really want to dig in. I want to finish my reread of another isekai-type danmei, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, first… but once I have, I really want to get to this one, especially as it isn’t super-long (four volumes, I think?).
10. Paladin’s Hope, by T. Kingfisher. I’ve been loving Kingfisher’s Saint of Steel books, and this is the next up! It looks quite a bit shorter than the last one, but hopefully it will do justice to Piper and Galen. Galen deserves some happiness now!

Yes, yes, I know — a very varied bunch. Very curious to see what other people are hoping to read soon!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “villains”, which I’m finding pretty tricky to fulfil… but let’s see what I can do!

1. Shen Qingqiu, from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu). Well, okay, the original Shen Qingqiu is not that inventive as a villain… and to say we’re talking about Shen Yuan mostly removes his claim to be on this list. But I thought I’d be funny and give a nod to him for anyone else who knows the fandom. The real villain is Shen Yuan’s internalised homophobia and general obliviousness to Luo Binghe’s feelings, though, am I right?
2. White No-Face (Bai Wuxiang), from Heaven Official’s Blessing (Mo Xiang Tong Xiu). This guy is a genuine villain. No spoilers for his true identity, but he torments Xie Lian and orchestrates his fall from grace, and makes it so that he can’t die no matter what happens to him. Xie Lian suffers immensely just from that, but White No-Face also gets into his head and warps his reality, trying to damage his essential goodness. He’s a hell of a villain, even without getting into the spoilery stuff.
3. Anaander Mianaai, from Ancillary Justice (Ann Leckie). Anaander is a really fascinating villain, divided against herself due to her many bodies, and somehow managing to hold it all in balance and keep secrets against herself. She’d be run of the mill as a mere tyrant, but her war against herself makes her fascinating.
4. Melisande Shahrizai de la Courcel, from Kushiel’s Dart (Jacqueline Carey). Melisande is a complicated figure, with her own motivations that from her point of view are perfectly reasonable. She’s a villain because we care about the characters she moves against, and she’s amoral on her way to her planned victory… but if she’d succeeded in her aims, history might’ve cast her as a hero.
5. Roland, from the Kate Daniels series (Ilona Andrews). This one’s a long story, much of it spoilery for anyone who hasn’t read the whole series. There’s never any doubt, though: Roland will crush anything that doesn’t go the way he plans.
6. Kossil, from The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula Le Guin). The Nameless Ones are formless, dark and terrifying, but they’re like forces of nature. Kossil is self-serving, cruel, and motivated by worldly power. Her evil is so mundane compared to the dark weight of the Nameless Ones, which… actually makes her more awful.
7. Governer David Tate, from Feed (Mira Grant). A right-wing conspiracy taking advantage of a zombie plague is all too realistic, so I couldn’t pass this one up. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course (further awfulness follows in the later books). But no spoilers…
8. The Company, from The Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells). It looms large over Murderbot’s existence, so much so that Murderbot won’t even say the name of the Company and edits it out of everything it says and remembers. Capitalism’s everything in the Corporation Rim, and arguably the whole system is the villain here, but the Company is certainly a potent avatar of it.
9. Lancelot, from The Winter King (Bernard Cornwell). It’s rare for Lancelot to be cast as a villain — and admittedly he’s a very petty one — but this one’s memorable because it’s a very unusual choice to portray Lancelot as a small and cowardly run-of-the-mill villain, rather than some kind of tortured hero.
10. Regal Farseer, from Assassin’s Apprentice (Robin Hobb). Regal’s pretty much never likeable on the page, and his arc is pretty obvious from the outset, so in a way he’s a very obvious and unsubtle villain, and not exactly a favourite of mine. Still, he’s certainly memorable.

It took me a while, but I did it! I’m very curious what villains other people will name, though I spotted a lot of people going off-piste this week, so far…

This week’s theme from Top Ten Tuesday is all about the big chonky books. I don’t have stats on all my books, since I left Goodreads in a huff some years ago and then only settled into StoryGraph a year or two later… but let’s see what I can do.

I’ll skip the most obvious (The Lord of the Rings) and the technical (Control of Communicable Diseases Manual), I think! I also realised that the illustrated Earthsea I have is probably chonkier than any of these, but I didn’t think of it. So here we go.

1. The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard (899 pages). Some editions even run to ~1100 pages, but mine’s “only” 899, and apparently one of my chonkiest books. I’ve read this one, and really love it — I want to reread it soon. It’s wish fulfillment, about dismantling an empire and turning it into something fairer and kinder, but the relationship between the former Emperor and the main character, Cliopher, is really lovely. There’s also At the Feet of the Sun, the sequel (at 790 pages). It looks just as chonky on the shelf, though! I have to get round to it soon, but I’ve waited long enough thanks to a poor attention span that I really do want to reread the previous book first.
2. Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey (901 pages). I’m surprised this is so long, actually, because I know I’ve completely inhaled it in the past, and these days I seem to find 400 page books quite intimidating. It’s the start of a fantasy trilogy that I really love, though sometimes the violence (consensual and otherwise) is a lot to read, even with the conceit of Phèdre’s abilities.
3. The First Binding, by R.R. Virdi (929 pages). I don’t remember anything about this one! I haven’t read it yet, and I think I had it as an e-ARC. Oops.
4. Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, by Norman Davies (830 pages). This one’s still on my TBR, and I’m still looking forward to it, but… it’s just waiting for me to get round to it.
5. The Ember Blade, by Chris Wooding (824 pages). This is another one where I don’t really remember anything about it, it’s just been on my TBR a while. It sounds like pretty traditional fantasy, like it makes a point of being so even, so… maybe it’ll be fun?
6. Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, by Bettany Hughes (900 pages). I’ve liked some of Hughes’ work before, which I read because she got an honorary degree from Cardiff University at my first graduation ceremony. So I’m curious about this one, but it’s quite a commitment, so it’s been waiting on my TBR for the right mood.
7. The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn, by Tyler Whitesides (784 pages). Again, this sounds like pretty traditional fantasy, could be fun, but I haven’t got round to it yet.
8. Making History: The Storytellers who Shaped the Past, by Richard Cohen (708 pages). Understanding who is writing the history books is a very important thing, so this sounds very interesting. Though slightly daunting!
9. European Travel for the Mysterious Gentlewoman, by Theodora Goss (708 pages). I haven’t read the first book yet, so this one’s waiting behind that one. I didn’t realise this was so chonky — I have the ebook edition!
10. Plagues Upon the Earth: Diseases and the Course of Human History, by Kyle Harper (704 pages). As ever, can’t resist something about infectious diseases! I think it’s been on my TBR since last year? Ish? But I thought I’d probably enjoy it more when my MSc is all done and dusted.

So there we go, those’re my chonkers — mostly still waiting to be read!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is based around recommending books to get people out of a reading slump. That’s tough, because there are so many reasons why someone might be in a slump — but I’ll give it a shot and try to come up with a selection, anyway!

1. The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo.
   This is the first of a series of loosely linked stories, introducing Chih and their work in gathering stories and records for the Singing Hills monastery. You could choose any book of the series, but this one introduces the world and style well. Also, it’s a novella, so it’s pretty short.
2. The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman.
   All the books in this series are total romps: what if there was an interdimensional library, whose librarians can visit multiple worlds to collect books? Everything exists on a sliding scale between fantasy and sci-fi, with dragons and fae slipping between worlds and sometimes allying with, sometimes opposing the library. The main character gets assigned to a steampunky world, and meets up with an archetypical Great Detective… but also there’s fae and werewolves and all kinds of other shenanigans. It’s a series, as well, so this is the gateway into a lot of fun (the second book is partly set in an alternate Venice!).
3. Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates (AKA Cocaine Blues), by Kerry Greenwood.
   Mysteries are often quick reads, and almost all the Phryne books are pretty slim volumes, while Phryne herself is a fashionable, whip-smart delight. The books do tackle some horrible topics at times (such as child abduction in Flying Too High), but generally everything comes out OK in the end… and Phryne tackles danger very stylishly.
4. Band Sinister, by KJ Charles.
   How about a touch of romance? Band Sinister is my favourite, though Charles has a lot of really good options available — if you’re more into fantasy, for example, you might be interested by The Magpie Lord or maybe Spectred Isle. This one feels like a pastiche of Georgette Heyer, and features a really lovely exploration of someone embracing their sexuality, along with a heavy focus on informed consent and clear communication. I adore it: the first time I read it, I was struggling with insomnia, and spent the whole book trying not to giggle too loudly and risk waking up my wife.
5. Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher.
   I found this book (and the sequel) absolutely flew by. This one’s a book I read so recently that I haven’t even had chance to revisit it yet, but I’m pretty sure I will. It’s a fascinating world, though seen narrowly through the small band of characters who have been tasked with a seemingly impossible job to save their city. It’s linked with a wider universe of other books, like the Saint of Steel series, but Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine stand alone together pretty well, so there’s both the option of a series to get lost in, and a fairly self-contained story to begin with.
6. A Case of Of Mice and Murder, by Sally Smith.
   This was another recent read for me, but I know I’ll be returning to it. It’s a pretty cosy mystery, set within the grounds of the Inner Temple in London. The main character is a lawyer who has spent most of his time in the Inner Temple, avoiding the world outside — but he’s gentle and kind, and there’s a lot of heart in this and the sequel (A Case of Life and Limb). I look forward to reading more in this series!
7. Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett.
   This series combines fantasy and romance with a touch of mystery: Emily Wilde is an academic studying faeries, and in each of the books she ends up using her knowledge to solve any issues that arise. It’s a fairly recent read for me, but I look forward to rereading the series at some point. I actually read the second and third books quite close to their release dates, which is practically unknown for me — but I love the mix of whimsy (thanks to the fairytales) and Emily Wilde’s stubborn practicality, and it reminds me of another favourite series in some ways (Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons).
8. Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green.
   Tuberculosis is kind of my special topic. A few years back, when I was really struggling with anxiety, I read the advice somewhere that curiosity is the opposite of anxiety: one opens you up the world, the other wants you to close doors, and breeds on uncertainty. Given that infectious diseases really scared me at the time, I decided to face ’em head on, and read books like David Quammen’s Spillover and Kathryn Lougheed’s Catching Breath to that end. That led to me writing my BSc dissertation on tuberculosis. Long story short, those books are getting a bit out of date now, but John Green’s just became available, and it’s a really good introduction to a deeply fascinating disease (which deserves far more attention — and aid money allocation — than it receives). Sometimes the best way to break a reading slump is by reading something totally different, and though the topic is heavy at times, Green’s style is super readable.
9. The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff. Sutcliff’s books are often considered children’s books, but her attention to historical detail (based on available sources at the time) left her books feeling very fresh and vivid to me, both as a kid and now. The Eagle of the Ninth is my personal favourite, though I have to put in a word for Warrior Scarlet on my mother’s behalf (I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t). I love the characters, and Marcus’ journey from being an arrogant young centurion freshly posted to Britain to loving the British life (and a British woman, though the romance subplot is minimal).
10. The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu.
    How about trying something a little different? This is a work in translation, part of a genre called “light novels”, and in particular it’s a “danmei” — a romance between two men. This particular one features a guy from our world being sucked into a story that he read and got passionately cross about, with his instructions being to “fix” the story (with certain constraints) from within. In the process, he completely changes the story he slipped into, changing the character of Shen Qingqiu from being a rather slimy villain to being a conscientious teacher, friend and (eventually) husband. It’s different in style and outlook to the other stories I’ve been recommending, and I found it a surprisingly speedy read… and it’s one I’ve returned to a couple of times.
    To be fair, it probably isn’t the best starting point, because it’s an affectionate parody of “cultivation” stories, and plays around with the genre quite a bit. You might be better off starting with something like Heaven Official’s Blessing (which I’ve read and adore, but is quite a commitment for the full payoff) or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (which I haven’t read yet), both also by MXTX. But I started with SVSSS, and I can’t say I regret it, even if I appreciate some aspects of it a lot more now on reread than I originally did.

And that’s it! At different times, these have all helped me through reading slumps, either as new reads at the time or as familiar rereads.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else has picked!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is beach reads, and I… don’t really have specific books I’d read at the beach. So instead I’m going to tell you what I’d take with me to go on a beach holiday right now, if I was going to do such a thing — and you’ll have to just enjoy the weird choices!

(Technically it’s Wednesday here now, but I haven’t gone to bed yet, so nyah. It’s Tuesday.)

1. The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I should’ve started reading this earlier in July, because it’s a book club choice for a danmei book club Discord. Also, I’ve really enjoyed MXTX’s other series, and I’m very curious about this one, especially since people rave about it a lot.
2. The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker, by Roger Hutchinson. This is about the census in Britain, both the story of how the census came to be and how it’s been managed, and also the story of what it says about Britain. I’m partway through it, so if I was heading off on a beach holiday, I’d definitely take it with me. Also, it’s fascinating!
3. Dreadful Company, by Vivian Shaw. I’ve been rereading this series before reading the latest book, and I’ve let myself get distracted from the second book for far too long. So this one would have to slip into my bag. It’s a fun story, set mostly in Paris, and is pretty breezy, too — definitely a good companion for a lazy afternoon.
4. The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association, by Caitlin Rozakis. This one sounds fun and pretty light, so I think it’d be ideally suited to a nice holiday spent lying around somewhere warm and comfy. (For me that needn’t be a beach: curled up on my new recliner works!)
5. The Judas Window, by John Dickson Carr. This is the most recent British Library Crime Classic reissue, and I’m eager to get to it. I’ve had mixed results with reading John Dickson Carr’s work at times, so I’m kind of curious where I’ll fall with this one.
6. Paladin’s Strength, by T. Kingfisher. Having just read Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine, I’m eager to get back to this series as well. It’s a liiiittle bit chunky-looking on the shelf, so maybe a holiday would be an ideal prompt to get stuck in.
7. Between Two Rivers, by Moudy Al-Rashid. This is a history of ancient Mesopotamia that I’ve been meaning to read for a while, and I’m choosing it for no other reason than that the cover keeps catching my eye.
8. The Love Hypothesis, by Ali Hazelwood. I’ve been meaning to read more of Hazelwood’s romances; maybe this is the moment? Might be a good quick read while I’m so busy with moving stuff…
9. Idylls of the Queen, by Phyllis Ann Karr. This would be a reread. I mentioned this in a recent Top Ten Tuesday post about books I want to reread, and this seems like a good moment! I just saw my copy in the great unboxing of books; surely I’ll find it soon as I properly sort through and alphabetise?
10. Elusive, by Genevieve Cogman. I might have to reread the first book first, but I remember tearing through it — if the second book is the same, that could be a very fun holiday read!

I know, I know, as ever it’s a bit of a weird mix. I can think of others, like the next volume of the Solo Leveling manhua… but it’s time for me to think about sleep, so let’s stop there…

This week the Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “books that take place in/set in X”… and I’m not feeling very original, so I’m just going to talk about ten books that take place in fantasy worlds that have a deep place in my heart. I’m going to try to pick secondary world fantasies, rather than books set in slightly alternate versions of our own reality… but we’ll see.

I’m also going to try to set this up by going through my more recent reads and reviews, instead of reaching automatically for the same books I always pick. Let’s go have a look!

1. A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation (manga), by Misaki, Momochi et al. This is kind of “isekai”, in that a character from one world ends up in another world. But the fun thing is that neither are our world, pretty clearly; we don’t hear a lot about Lizel’s home world, but it obviously isn’t our modern world, at the very least — and he has magic, as does his king, so it looks like a transfer from one fantasy world to another. There are hints that it could also be time travel/alternate dimensions… but either way, it’s all fantasy, all the way down. The setup of adventurers, magic and dungeons immediately places it as something rather like a Final Fantasy game, which tickled me as well — but mostly, really, I love this series because Lizel wanders around having fun and enjoying the concept of being in a new world. Also he makes very good friends in Gil and Eleven.
2. Clockwork Boys, by T. Kingfisher. I just finished reading this on Sunday, and I had an absolute blast with it. It’s the same world as some of Kingfisher’s other books, including Paladin’s Grace, which I read recently. In some ways it’s quite a generic fantasy world quest sort of story, but Kingfisher’s style and dialogue make it lively. It’s like she’s playing with fantasy tropes with warmth and affection, not cynicism, even when she’s presenting us with a fairly typical paladin character who is trying to be oh so noble, and then has the narrative give him a thwack upside the head for being a bit of an idiot at times.
3. The Warden, by Daniel M. Ford (+ sequels). Brilliant young necromancer and mage gets assigned to a post she considers beneath her, is snooty and dismissive of the villagers, and slowly begins to settle into that village and care about the people… but at the same time, boy, Aelis reaaaally wishes she could get back to the city. (Which she does, for a while, in Advocate.) There are things that irritate me about Aelis (she wings it far too much, relies on her wealth far too much, and asks way too much of other people) but I find the magic really fun, and as Aelis’ adventures bring her to explore more of the world that shaped her and her problems, I’m really intrigued by it.
4. A Letter to the Luminous Deep, by Sylvie Cathrall (+ sequel). I loved this series so much, with Henery and E. slowly getting to know each other through letters and shyly forming a bond, despite their anxieties and (in E.’s case) outright OCD. It’s a frankly bizarre world in some ways, and it isn’t always clear about how it got that way (though at the end of the duology there are some explanations). There’s so much wonder about the sea and the mysteries within it, and I tore through both books trying to absorb and understand their mysteries.
5. The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett (+ sequel). I’ve enjoyed the fantasy worlds in several of Robert Jackson Bennett’s books, but this is the most recent I read. It’s a Sherlock Holmes homage in a fantasy world that roots the detective and the mysteries deeply into that fantasy. The mystery element isn’t always as clever as it wants to be, but the world is fascinating: the leviathans, the whole empire, the ways people have been deliberately and unintentionally altered by contact with technology derived from leviathans… I wonder where the overarching story is going, and it’s fascinating to explore the world along the way.
6. The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. I would include the spin-off series as well, except that I found the handling of a particular relationship in the final one (so far?) bizarre. Maybe I’ll enjoy it more on a revisit when it doesn’t feel like a betrayal, but in the meantime I’ll use The Goblin Emperor as my exemplar for this fantasy world. Addison does a lot of worldbuilding, especially around language, but also technology, magic, culture and religion. There’s a lot going on, and so much that’s hinted at but not explored in the plot — at least, not yet.
7. The City in Glass, by Nghi Vo. This book felt like an absolute fever dream. It’s really tightly focused on a single city and the actions of an angel and a demon (not quite our religious versions of angels/demons) as they fight and thwart each other and try to guide the city. It’s really hard to describe, but it’s beautifully written, and the descriptions of the city and of Vitrine are vivid and strange.
8. The Teller of Small Fortunes, by Julie Leong. This is cosy-ish fantasy, in that there are some big stakes in the background, but mostly our characters want to stay out of the way of it all, travel together, create their little found family, and solve their fairly ordinary (for a fantasy world) problems. I found Tao’s magic (and how she chooses to use it) fascinating, and really enjoyed the journey — though compared to some of the fully realised fantasy worlds I’ve mentioned here like in The Tainted Cup and The Goblin Emperor, the world-building is a bit thinner.
9. Heaven Official’s Blessing, by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I debated whether this should be in the list, particularly as I think there are meant to be correspondences between places like Xianle and Yong’an in the story with actual locations in China, while Hua Cheng’s aesthetic and background is considered a nod to Miao/Hmong origins… but I couldn’t resist including it anyway, as it also isn’t supposed to be historical China. It’s more historical China inspired, along with Chinese traditions, etc. It’s such an epic, spanning 800 years of suffering and longing, and there’s always the sense that all kinds of magic could (and will) happen. From Ghost City to the domain of Black Water Sinks Ships to Mount Tonglu and the Kiln, there’s a lot of history and magic to discover as you read. (Also, a beautiful love story.)
10. The Hands of the Emperor, by Victoria Goddard. There are so many ways this is wish-fulfillment, as Cliopher is hyper-capable, and hyper-able to push through world-changing reforms that make everyone’s lives better with no downside, and it’s full of the virtues of more communal ways of living and being, and different ways of thinking. Nonetheless, the differences between this and most Western Europe-inspired fantasy are a lot of fun, and sometimes wish fulfillment and people using power in wholesome ways is just fun to read. Plus, I adored the friendship between the Emperor and Cliopher.

That was pretty fun, especially the restriction to proper secondary world fantasy instead of fantasy set in our world… I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s lists!

This week’s theme from Top Ten Tuesday is “Books with honorifics in the title”, which I’m really not sure I can actually get a total of ten for. I guess this might be pretty dependent on genre! Anyway, let’s see how I do…

1. The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes, by Kate Strasdin. A non-fiction which discusses a Victorian woman’s “dress diary”, containing snippets of cloth from her clothes (and sometimes clothes worn by her friends and family). I found it a really fascinating delve into fabric and social history.
2. The Doctor who Fooled the World, by Brian Deer. I know, this sits kind of oddly with other books from the list, but it’s a really good takedown of the lies spread by Andrew Wakefield, and highly recommended if you’re on the fence about whether his allegations about the MMR vaccine (or vaccination in general) actually hold any truth. I consider Andrew Wakefield a mass murderer, to be clear, a man so blinded in his own search for fame and profit that he endangered the whole world — but I don’t blame people who were led astray by a man who used his position as a scientist to inspire false confidence. I feel so sorry for people who believed in what he had to offer.
3. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This is a book I’ve reread a couple of times, despite being huge. I know that not everyone enjoys it, and I honestly wouldn’t even have predicted that I would, but there’s such dense world-building and some really fun ideas about magic.
4. The Magpie Lord, by KJ Charles. I’ve read this a number of times, and it remains fun. Lord Lucien Crane isn’t entirely a good person, but he seeks his own kind of justice and fairness, and I love the way that he and Stephen Day are drawn together.
5. Siren Queen, by Nghi Vo. I really loved this slightly fantastical, dark Hollywood. It was completely enchanting. I actually might give it another read at some point.
6. The Mysterious Mr. Badman, by W.F. Harvey. I’ve more or less forgotten the plot of this one, I must admit, but I gave it 4/5 stars at the time! It’s a classic mystery, and a fairly conventional one, according to my review, which explains the rating. I really love classic mysteries, but not so much because they’re innovative or unusual — usually, more because they’re not. They’re very comforting in their predictability.
7. Mr. Pottermack’s Oversight, by R. Austin Freeman. This is also a pretty classic mystery, but an unusual one in that it shows us the commission of the crime to begin with, and then the efforts at covering it up. It’s quite slow-paced, and I did find that it dragged a bit, but I ultimately gave it four stars for making me care about the criminal. It’s very carefully written, and I did enjoy it.
8. Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates, by Kerry Greenwood. Also known as Cocaine Blues, this is the first book of the Phryne Fisher series, and it’s so much fun. For some reason, I didn’t love it when I first tried it, but when I gave it another go, Phryne won my heart. A reread is tempting…
9. Miss Jacobson’s Journey, by Carola Dunn. I read this series out of sequence, but had a lot of fun going backwards to read this one: Miriam is a great romance protagonist, and I did get fond of her two potential suitors as well — perhaps somewhat helped by the fact that I already knew one of them from the second book. I’m getting tempted to reread the whole trilogy!
10. The Duke Heist, by Erica Ridley. Putting this book here has reminded me there’s a couple of books in this series I haven’t read yet! They’re somewhere in my boxes of books in the storage unit, but perhaps once I dig them out, it’ll be time to pick them up. I’ve found all the books in the series so far really fun, and The Duke Heist is no exception. Lawrence takes a while to sort out his behaviour totally, but the way he interacts and becomes playful with Chloe is adorable.

Look at that, I made it! Maybe a couple of these are kinda cheating, but we’re gonna call it good anyway.