For perhaps obvious reasons, my reading, such as it’s been, over the past few months has tended to be a bit more upbeat. I read two books by Katherine Addison, and enjoyed both, although they were very different in setting and approach. The first was The Angel of the Crows, and the second was The Goblin Emperor, justly praised by many. I found The Silver Wind by Nina Allan both melancholy and yet upbeat. On a lighter note, even if it’s more of a YA book, I did like T. Kingfisher’s A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. While there are a few (to me) technical flaws, I still was carried away by Victoria Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Although the book is strongly written and the main character definitely unique, I have mixed feelings about Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education , largely because the setting is unrelievedly grim, and that’s likely an understatement.

Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus definitely evoked in me a “fin de siècle” feeling, in her slightly alternate Europe of quiet, but potent and often cruel magic. I just finished Garth Nix’s The Left-Handed Booksellers of London. Being left-handed myself, I could be slightly biased, but I enjoyed it thoroughly, and it certainly lifted me away from the gloom of the past year.