I've been trying to catch up on reading, despite many and various claims on my time. I've actually done more reading than it would seem, but many are rereads, and some I set aside. Here are a few that I've enjoyed.

Ha'Penny by Jo Walton is a recent reread. This sequel to her superlative Farthing is structured the same, and even has one of the same main characters, but is different enough that one cannot predict what is going to happen. Farthing opens like a cozy English country-house mystery, but one soon discovers that this is not quite our world, and there are frightening political ramifications of what at first seemed to be a murder by a random member of a minority soon to be treated unsettlingly like fellows in our Nazi Germany. That novel is surprisingly polysemous for being so short--while still maintaining the structure of a brisk country-house murder story. Outsiders and insiders, people who choose to be outsiders or insiders, people who are forced to be outsiders and insiders--and what happens when one legalizes these social rings--builds like a distant thunderstorm until a smashing double-lightning strike of an ending. One could call it an intellectual horror novel: there are no easy horror tropes here, no zombies or prowling revenants. The horror is quiet, and for the most part is quite legal. That makes it far more disturbing.

In Ha'Penny once again we swap chapters between a female born of aristocratic privilege, and Inspector Carmichael, who is part of Scotland Yard, and soon will have an even higher posting. Viola in this world would be one of the Mitford Sisters. The evidence is there pretty much right away for anyone who knows their history; if you don't, the reader begins to learn that these sisters had a peculiar growing up, a kind of isolation bordering on abuse surrounded by the walls and expectations and assumptions of social privilege. What's real to you and me is not real to Viola; it's absolutely natural that she'd choose the stage as her career, thinking it real life away from her fantasy existence, because her perception of reality is bounded by fantasy. Privilege means nothing will happen to you that happens to ordinary folk, that you are always on stage. So when someone comes to you, inviting you to participate in a desperate anti-government plot, well, of course you'd regard it as exciting, maybe just a bit risky, but more like a play within a play, right?

It's a terrific novel, again with many layers of meaning and resonance, all the more compelling for being so short. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg is a recent fantasy with a sequel that just came out. I'm not far in, but it's good enough so far to make it difficult to put down. I'd seen things by this writer before, but I tend to veer away from fantasies with a lot of apostrophes in names and titles as most have proven to not be my cuppa. Also, the author came recommended by romance novel readers, and while I enjoy a good romance novel, so far, at least, romance novels with fantasy elements tend to disappoint me; so many of the ones I've tried use the same elements, and in the same ways. In a romance novel this is reasonable because the romance reader comes to romances for the love relationhship, and the rest of the story is mainly backdrop, broadly sketched in, easily recognizable. This is why I also avoid romances set in historical times.

Anyway, then I saw this book on the book racks at the local brick and board, but the cover art depicted an unpleasant-looking thug, not appealing to my eye. But the book showed up on several people's best of 2007 lists, making me feel pretty stupid for judging a book by its cover. The world building so far is really interesting: I find I don't mind unexplained French and Latin showing up in a fantasy world because the thought behind the uses is intriguing, and not predictable. The complexity of the world is interesting, a sturdy background for deftly-sketched characters.

The protagonist, Valen, is face down in mud when the book opens. He's wounded, and being robbed by his former partner. He's left to die. He's picked up and nursed instead by monks. Now, too often today monks are the signal for Bad Religion, evil monks and priests having been a staple of fantasy for the past thirty years. But Berg's monks have personality, they are not all child molestors or fakes. They are individual, and what's more, some of them even seem to have . . . genuine faith! Whoa, what a concept. Anyway, Valen has this book of maps, which seems to have magical significance. I haven't got far in, but the way Berg conveys her world, golds, myth, magic, and personalities is really compelling, and I fully expect to enjoy this novel.