Then and Now #45

Happy Sunday and welcome to July!  The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads!

Last Week 

I'm going to sound repetitive but this was a very fun but very busy week! There were two big work things, one a deadline and the other a guest-lecture, which took up quite a lot of my energy. The guest-lecture was super interesting and gave me a few really good ideas to keep thinking on, and the dinner afterwards was also really fun, but it was such a long day that I was destroyed the next day xD And the deadline came, I met it, and the feedback so far has been encouraging so yay. But you can't believe how much I needed this weekend of down-time!

It's the first weekend in a good month or two in which I don't have anything major scheduled so yesterday I just popped by a colleague's house to water her plants and then swanned around on the sofa with my cat, reading. The Dream! I'm so excited to do more of that the next few weeks, especially once the semester is over and there is a little less pressure to go over work things on the weekend!

Posted this week:

• Review: Her Perfect Life by Hank Phillippi Ryan
• Friday Friyay: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Review: Sisters of Shadow and Light by Sara B. Larson

Recommendation

I'm once again going to shamefully plug my own podcast... apologies! But this week I uploaded a medieval episode and I just wanted to share it here in case anyone would like to hear about an awesome Old Norse saga with female warriors, a drunk lion, and more!

Mailbox Monday

Blood from Air by Gemma Files (10/17/23; BooksGoSocial)

Angels and insects, holes in the known world’s fabric and what comes out of them, the love of death and the death of love. In award-winning horror author Gemma Files’s seventh collection of short fiction, the numinous and the awful tango together through a collapsing series of not-so-alternate realities, and everyone they touch emerges changed, whether or not they may have wanted to be.

This is fantasy of the darkest sort, horror-cured, marinating in its own transformative juices. So enter a fractured universe of creepy delights, one where the oldest tropes are turned inside out and wrung for their oddest components, as forgotten gods and monsters cavort beneath a storm of BLOOD FROM THE AIR.

I haven't read a horror novel or short story collection in a while, so when I saw Blood From Air it felt like the perfect opportunity to get back into it. I haven't read anything by Gemma Files before, but the blurb makes it sound like this collection holds plenty of good stuff!

The Treatment by Sarah Moorhead (8/31/23; Canelo)

The future of law enforcement has arrived, courtesy of private health contractor Janus Justice. Their ground-breaking ‘Offender Treatment Programme’ has been hailed as the most effective way of tackling crime yet.

As offenders move through the four-tiered system, their needs are dealt with, each tier more drastic in its methods:

Tier One: Low-risk crimes. Physical therapy encouraged

Tier Two: Trauma and addiction. Emotional and psychological reasons for offending are examined

Tier Three: Aversion therapy & moral punishment

Tier Four: Siberia, where all hope is lost

But Grace Gunnarsson, one of Janus’ most highly regarded rehabilitation psychiatrists, has uncovered a terrible flaw in the system, one that is allowing people to get away with murder...

I was absolutely intrigued by the blurb here and by where Moorhead would take this idea. I had kind of expected that the thing Grace would uncover was that the system judged unfairly harshly or something, but it rather seems like maybe it doesn't work at all? Plenty of reason to dive in next month!

The Book of Ile-Rien by Martha Wells (2/27/24, Tordotcom)

Both novels included in this volume have been revised and updated. These are the author’s preferred texts.

The Element of Fire

The kingdom of Ile-Rien lies in peril, menaced by sorcerous threats and devious intrigue, when Kade, bastard sister of King Roland, appears unexpectedly at court. The illegitimate daughter of the old king and the Queen of Air and Darkness herself, Kade's true desires are cloaked in mystery.

It falls to Thomas Boniface, Captain of the Queen's Guard, to keep the kingdom from harm. But is one man's steel enough to counter all the magic of fayre?

The Death of the Necromancer

Nicholas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman and the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien. On the gaslight streets of the city, Nicholas assumes the guise of a master criminal, stealing jewels from wealthy nobles to finance his quest for a long-pursued vengeance.

But Nicholas's murderous mission is being interrupted by a series of eerie, unexplainable, and fatal events. A dark magic opposes him, and traces of a necromantic power that hasn't been used for centuries abound. Nicholas and his compatriots find themselves battling an ancient evil.

And if they lose? Death would be preferable to the fate that awaits them....

I seem to be on a bit of a Martha Wells bender the last few weeks. I've never read anything by her and I don't think I'd ever heard her name either, but this is the second book, or maybe compendium?, of hers which I've requested and received a copy of. So I'm going to be spending a lot of time with Martha this summer!

That's it for me! How was your week?