We did it, we’re here, it’s February in this, the Year of Our Lord 2023? As I write this, it is also 20 degrees below zero. That’s not great! Let’s think about books and not the weather, shall we? You can still say hi anytime. You can still follow me on The StoryGraph. And we’ll all still be here in March.

The Book of the Month:

Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, by Laura Warrell

I don’t remember why I put a hold on Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm. I’m not sure at all where I heard about it. I can tell you, though, that I loved it. Circus Palmer, the middle-aged jazz trumpeter at the center of the novel, isn’t a perfect man — he barely has a relationship with his daughter Koko, he runs away from a woman who tells him that she is pregnant — but he grows, grows into the relationship with Koko, grows into life beyond music, comes to better understand the people around him. Warrell gives all of her characters grace and her writing is beautiful. If the book spends more time with Circus than it does other characters, well, the grace Warrell gives them (even when they make things very messy) makes the book worth every minute. This was a beautiful read and a great way to start the year.

The Rest:

The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie

The Raven Tower was a great introduction to Anne Leckie’s work. It isn’t at all what I expected it to be, it isn’t what it said it would be, it isn’t really like anything I’ve read before, and I won’t say anything else about it because I think it I liked it much better for not being spoiled.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel

Alison Bechdel is great! This is not really a surprise! The Secret to Superhuman Strength is richer if you come to it having read her other graphic memoirs (Fun Home in particular), but it stands alone as well. Bechdel tackles fitness fads, her own faults, and the way the world has changed over the last 50 or so years. The book is funny even when you least expect it and wonderful start to finish.

Paper Girls: The Complete Story, by Brian K. Vaughan

Brian K. Vaughan does some very fun, very Stranger Things stuff, with Paper Girls, which sends a group of 1980s papergirls on a quest through time and space. The art is incredible, I love the color work, and I am not at all sure the story hangs together. It doesn’t matter, though! Paper Girls rules.

Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk

Recently, I have spent a lot of time listening to Cecile McLorin Salvant’s 2022 record Ghost Song. McLorin Salvant, an incredible jazz vocalist, says that she wants her records to feel like flipping through someone else’s notebook. (Listen to Ghost Song. It’s so good!) Olga Tokarczuk achieves this in Flights, which I found difficult to read but fascinating. I am not at all sure that it works? But I can’t stop thinking about it and it really does make a wonderful pairing with Ghost Song.

Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Basically a cup of coffee. An orc settles down to open a coffee shop in a city where no one has heard of coffee. Delightful, delightful, delightful, and the best sales pitch for biscotti you’ll ever read.

The Golden Enclaves, by Naomi Novik

I enjoyed this! And that’s why I wrote about it!

Star Wars: Darth Vader, by Charles Soule

I like Star Wars a lot and I really enjoy Darth Vader! He does not have main character energy, really, and Charles Soule’s run as writer for the Darth Vader comic didn’t do a lot to change my mind on that. I really enjoyed this, but it was inessential.

Star Wars: Darth Vader, by Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen gets slightly higher marks from me than Charles Sole as a writer of Darth Vader comics, if only because giving Darth Vader a fun and dysfunctional sidekick gives the stories a little more life. Vader still doesn’t really have main character energy, though. I really enjoyed this! It was inessential.

Royal Assassin, by Robin Hobb

Character work isn’t enough to save a novel. This one is far, far too long, with an ending I saw coming hundreds of pages before it arrived. Robin Hobb is a great writer of her narrator, but I struggled many other aspects of the book. Fantasy names are often terrible, but the enemy Red Ship Raiders take it too far. Although I enjoy the narrator, I don’t plan to finish the trilogy. I certainly don’t plan to read the 13 after that.