Books

Demon Magic and a Martini, by Annette Marie

Book 4, first book is Three Mages and a Margarita. After some heavier reads I'd been looking for a lighter story to listen to on my work commute, and the premise of a woman stumbling into a bartending gig for a guild of mythics (people with magic, hidden from the rest of society) by accident and handling it all through sheer force of personality and no small amount of sass sounded fun. It was all that, but it also became an engaging world with interesting and thoughtful characters, individual and mutual character growth, and well, now I'm four books in and trying out some of her other series.

Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang

Kuang's Poppy War trilogy in fact is among those heavier books I mentioned having read above, so I knew her works were good. With all the recent talk of AI plagiarism plus the ongoing topic of who can tell what stories and so on, I thought this would be an interesting read. Kuang does a good job of painting what exactly the world is like - the publishing world, but also the online world, society in general, the people out of the loop... this book doesn't answer the questions so much as it makes you think about them from all the different angles. It's really well written and thought out.

The City of Brass, by S.A. Chakraborty

This kept getting recommended to me when I'd look for steampunk stuff, which is weird, because it's decidedly not that at all. Still, it seemed interesting enough, and once I picked it up, it was incredibly engaging. Main character Nahri has been hiding a magical talent, accidentally uses a bit too much and summons a djinni, and this lands her smack in the middle of a political mess in the titular city between the various elemental beings of middle eastern mythology. Each time I thought I figured out what this book was going to be, it seemed to veer in another direction, yet always a predictable one if you really thought about the characters and their backgrounds and motivations. Looking forward to book 2. For a more adventurous, sea-faring romp by the same author, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is an incredible story, and the audiobook's first person narration could not be better (City of Brass I read in epub form, not audio, so I can't speak to it).

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna

It seems like the subgenre of cozy slice-of-life fantasy has been really popular post-pandemic, and this contemporary fantasy is a pretty great example of one. Finding family, finding acceptance, being a small, positive change in the world, and being able to be yourself around the people you love and who love you. A super cozy read.