The Marci Rating System

Purrcy and I woke up together and he was *super* adorable and loving and everything a cat should be in the morning.

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My list of 2026 books continues!

#5 A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, re-read.

Really 4.5 stars, rounded up. It's got so many things I love: bio-based tech, the struggle against the human tendency to bend at the knee, disaster bisexual protagonist! But the big plot revelation undercuts the point Bennett is trying to make, because

spoiler

the super-cunning antagonist is actual royal, when real royalty is mid. You can't raise someone to be super-smart unless you can pick parents who are above average and then have them raised by people who can give them intellectual cultural capital.

The struggle Din has, between feeling that only fighting at the Wall matters versus "mere" Justice work, seems to me odd because I'm so used to thinking of justice work as being part of a very large, nationwide, group effort. As it must be! the efforts of Ana (who Din is starting to see clearly) to Watch the Watchmen will only be effective if the potentially corrupt curb stay their hands *knowing* they may be watched. You can't police every action, you *have* to get people to police themselves.

In any event, this is a super thoughtful work in a thoughtful series, not just a Nero Wolf-like mystery but also an ongoing exploration of how human beings can create a society where "you are the empire".

This latest re-read was prompted by KJ Charles' goodreads review, which notes "there's something really odd about the use of exclamation marks in Ana's dialogue, I swear to God it's a reference to something that I can't put my finger on, this is driving me nuts". I re-read paying close attention, nothing came to mind at first. I now wonder if Ana gets some of her verbal tics from Bertha Cool, of Rex Stout's Cool & Lam series. "Fry me for an oyster!"

#6 To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose, re-read to get ready for sequel coming out Jan. 27.

This time I savored the Uncleftish Beholding quality of the science, as Blackgoose enjoys herself building a world that never had Christianity, to spread Latin & Greek as the language of learning through Europe. In fact I don't think it has had Islam, either, the Kindah seem to be talking about a god of fire like Zoroastrianism, maybe? So I think maybe this is a world with no Judaism nor any of its descendants, which is a BIG change, all right.

The thing about the world-building that really nags at me is that I know more about living on Nantucket, her "Mack Island", than she does -- my knowledge mostly coming from long experience with Block Island, another of the glacial remnants off southern New England. On the map, "Mack Is." is Nantucket, "Nack Is." is Martha's Vineyard -- which she has given a completely implausible coal mine, for AU reasons. People seem to be able to canoe between them easily, even in winter, which ... no. That's not possible, the waters are too rough, and in winter they're MUCH too cold. Even today, Block Is., the Vineyard, Nantucket will have winter days when the ferry can't run because the weather is too bad. Nantucket has the worst weather because it's the most exposed, and that means it had the worst corn harvests.

Blackgoose is a member of the Seaconck Wampanoag Tribe, who are trying to reconnect with their heritage ... but who don't, for historical reasons that are 100% NOT their fault, have the continuity of experience that other Native writers are bringing (Stephen Graham Jones, Darcie Little Badger, Caskey Russell).

#7 Grave Expectations, by Alice Bell
A humorous mystery where i actually laughed so hard at one slapstick scene Beth worried about the noise I was making! The protagonist is a mess, whiny, & needs to get a handle on her smoking & drinking, but being perpetually haunted by the ghost of your best friend and too English to actually track down what killed her (ugh, *feelings*) is at least comprehensible. She's an amateur detective who is actually amateurish, and that makes her much more believable.

#8 Displeasure Island by Alice Bell. Second in the series. It's cute enough, I'm not sure the mystery holds together, but at least by the end Claire is starting to become less whiny so I have great hopes for the future.

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I have now found the perfect way to insert spoilers: using the details HTML tag! Description and examples at W3 schools here.

My explainer: in the below, replace square brackets with pointy ones to turn into code:

[details][summary]spoiler[/summary]Here's where you write all the spoilery stuff.[/details]

Cool, eh?