the magic circle

Much less reading in May than in April. Partly that was because I was less in a mood for reading; partly it was because I started in on some longer, denser books that I didn't get through before the end of the month. The latter in particular is why this post skews toward shorter, lighter reading . . .

The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire, India Holton. Third of the "Love's Academic" series, and I'm glad to say this one felt stronger than its predecessor. It looks like I never posted about that one, so in brief: The Geographer's Map to Romance suffered from a collision between its core trope (the romantic pair are in a marriage of convenience but estranged) and the series pattern of "the characters will spar a lot while secretly being into each other and also sure the other person doesn't reciprocate their feelings." In the first book that worked fine, because the leads were rivals in a contest and started out by thoroughly deceiving one another in pursuit of their goals; it therefore made sense that any signs of romance would fall under suspicion of being just another gambit. But in the second book, it required a degree of emotional stupidity on the part of the characters that I found more grating than charming.

In this third book, the trope is friends-to-lovers, which means the growing warmth between them can be interpreted in that light/suppressed because they don't want to ruin the friendship. Meanwhile, the sparring is because the heroine's job security will be threatened if she's suspected of canoodling with a colleague, so they've agreed to fake-hate. This combination works much better than it did in the previous book. Meanwhile, though I found the magical plot to be slightly muddy in its execution, the ending was entertaining.

I think the series is complete here. Each book stands on its own, though (it's a series in the romance model, where the volumes follow different characters), so you can skip the second one if you want. Me, I think I've had enough of this particular madcap flavor for a while; I overdose on it very easily.

Star*Line 49.2. I've gone ahead and joined the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which means I now have a subscription to their quarterly poetry journal. I don't know that I have a ton to say about it, but poetry was a good match for my short attention span in May!

A Counterfeit Suitor, Darcie Wilde. Another of the Rosalind Thorne Regency mysteries. The mystery in this one did not pull together terribly well for me; there was never a point at which I felt the satisfying "click" of the pieces slotting into place, just "oh, okay, I guess that's what's going on." The personal side was much better, with the heroine's sordid family history rearing its head as a real threat to the life she's built for herself.

At this point I am done with the official Rosalind Thorne series, but I've been told the Useful Woman series is a direct continuation under a different name. So if I want more of these, they're available!

The Bishop’s Tale, Margaret Frazer. As mentioned before, I'm slightly sad that the last couple of books in this series have taken Frevisse out of her nunnery, because one of the things I enjoy here is the view into medieval religious life. However, the usual mystery series consideration applies: you can only have so many murders in one place! Especially when that place is supposed to be cloistered away from the world!

In this case the reason for the departure is very moving, though, and I liked the mystery. It was very obvious to me (as it probably is to many readers) just how the victim actually died -- as opposed to what the characters initially think happened -- but the "who" was less immediately obvious. It also built up to a moment of very effectively understated drama at the end.

The Fallow Year, Margaret Owen. Not actually a novel in the conventional sense, but at over 60K words I'm treating it like one. These are ten connected short stories Owen wrote (and posted to AO3) to cover the year that passes between the second and third books of the Little Thieves trilogy, and what goes on with Vanja and Emeric in that time. I sort of wish I'd known about these stories before I read Holy Terrors, because of course the key events here get described there. If you're invested in the characters, though, it's absolutely worth reading the mini-novel that explores those events in greater detail.

Platform Decay, Martha Wells. New Murderbot! Not my favorite Murderbot, though, I have to admit. It's a perfectly fine extraction mission with good character moments, but at this point I find myself wanting a stronger feeling that some kind of metaplot is approaching culmination, and that's just not what the series is here to do. Murderbot's emotional growth continues, but the external events are much more self-contained, rather than building much on previous installments (though there is a little bit of the latter).

The Water Kingdom: A Secret History of China, Philip Ball, narr. Derek Perkins. This was one of the longer, denser things I started, and the only one I finished this month. I'm not sure audiobook was the best choice: though my familiarity with Chinese names is better than Malagasy ones (cf. last month's post), it's not so excellent that I didn't occasionally lose track of details. Also, while I'm not qualified to judge Perkins' pronunciation, I was irritated by the frequency with which his intonation and pacing announced THIS IS A CHINESE NAME -- he has a tendency to put micro-pauses around them, in a way he doesn't for European names. Possibly that's meant to be an aid for listeners like me, but I found it grating.

The book itself, however, is great! Enough so that I bought a paper copy afterward so I can re-read the sections I'm the most interested in. Ball is comprehensive in his approach to the topic of "water in China": it starts off with information about the hydrology of the region and what its rivers are like, then wanders through the role of water in Chinese philosophy, why it plays such an important practical and symbolic role in politics, historical and modern efforts to control it, how it factors into poetry and art -- you name the angle, there's probably a chapter for it. The result is very interesting both from a "learn more about China" perspective and a "learn more about rivers" perspective.

The Boy’s Tale, Margaret Frazer. Because these are such comfort reads, I ended up reading a second one this month. Yay, we're back at the convent! I had a theory for who the killer was that I quite liked until circumstances pretty obviously spiked that theory, but it would have been in keeping with a pattern I've noticed with Frazer: the killer is rarely A Bad Person Who Deserves Their Punishment. Quite frequently it's someone for whom you're invited to have sympathy -- which does mean that, despite these being comfort reads, I shouldn't pack them too close together. The discovery of the culprit often comes with a side order of feeling bad for how everything fell out, even when I'm enjoying the story.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://www.swantower.com/2026/06/08/books-read-may-2026/)