* The Left Handed Booksellers of London - I wasn't familiar with the author, Garth Nix, when I picked this up. He does a lot of books aimed at younger readers. I feel like the start of this book was more serious, and then devolved into whimsy and random exposition. 1980s London, gender fluid character, booksellers who monitor the occult, and a plot that hooked me. I really wanted to like this and should have DNF'd it sooner.

Trying to avoid making a powerpoint presentation on the complexities of YA as a marketing term and how it makes my life harder. I don't want to double check everything to see if it's considered YA and discount it based on that, because a lot of stuff that isn't gets categorized that way. Sarah J Maas' ACOTAR being a prime example.

* Hell Bent - The sequel to Ninth House and the middle book of what will be a trilogy. It sounds like we should heard about the final book soon? Very excited. On one hand, I love the writing and am already looking forward to rereading both books in prep for the final one. On the other hand, the occult elements didn't feel as solid as in the first book. I loved it, but it's not to the bar of the first book. Middle books of trilogies are like that sometimes.

Of course try to look up anything about Ninth House and every website gets even more convinced that I want to see Gideon the Ninth stuff. On Amazon it's listed as The Ninth House Series. I think 'Alex Stern' is used as a alternate name to deal with disambiguation, but that only helps so much. The lesbian necromancers in space are inescapable!

* Blood Trail - I liked it more than expected. I am determined to read this series, but how often I was told to start with the later books was worrying. It drags a bit in places, but also it's an early urban fantasy book so I don't mind.

It is an amazing time capsule of that time in the 90s when technology became more part of our lives, but no google or cell phones yet. People needing to stay in for phone calls, discourse about whether screening calls with an answering machine is anti-social, etc. Also, cities being very gritty and dangerous. Obviously it wasn't intentional, but it's a very dense capsule.

Reading it so soon after a Di Tregarde book was funny because in the Tregarde books, Di is a romance novelist partially to deal with her odd schedule as Guardian, but in Blood Trail the vampire is a romance novelist to deal with his odd schedule. They are both writing similar sounding books involving sea captains. Also, both in cold cities and dealing with the cold winds, etc. There's a lot of notes in common, which may be them both riffing on the same thing or being plugged into the same trends. To be clear, the similar notes are interesting and amusing, not anything else.