wednesday reading into light

I have a lot to report on this week! But really I want to get back to reading Turning Darkness Into Light, so I may not be doing the other books the justice they deserve.

Les Disparus De Clairdelune ,Christelle Dabos. Much better ending than the first book in the series. I would recommend both this and the first book in the series, but would suggest reading them together, because they're really a single story. Unfortunately the local library only has the first one in English, which makes no sense to me, especially since they got 4 copies of it (and there are still 2 people waiting in line!). Maybe they're trying to sell copies of The Missing of Clairdelune?

I'm not entirely sold on the romance (they're appealing leads, I'm just not convinced she's actually into him) but I think my standards have gone up since I was a YA myself. Worldbuilding is doing interesting things: this feels more like a Brandon Sanderson book than anything I read as a teenager, though not at that level of worldbuilding detail. The mystery subplot wrapped up satsifyingly, and the series plot arc seems to be going somewhere interesting. Will be getting the 3rd book in French at the library, looking forward to it, but I have other books to get to first.

Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher. A has been trying to get me to read this series for ages, and I finally managed to get the first book from the library. (OK, putting a hold on it helped.) The beginning was a bit rough, overly male gaze-y despite having some female POVs, and also some awkward infodumps. But now our five different viewpoint characters have converged on the same place, which should help! However just as it was getting exciting I put it down, because I was more excited about:

Turning Darkness Into Light, Marie Brennan. I think I am liking this even more than the Lady Trent books, probably because I find poring over old books more appealing than travel. Oddly the jacket copy describes the setting as "Victorian-like", even though culture and technology have moved on since Lady Trent and it's probably closer to Dorothy Sayers in setting. Anyway people are deciphering ancient tablets,trying to figure out what is going on with the stuff they're translating, as well as in the wider world, where the owner of the text seems to be part of some sort of conspiracy, but it's not yet clear what. I'd guess that the tablets are actually fakes cooked up by the rival philologist -- except I don't think Brennan would do that to her readers!