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Four books new to me. Two books whose genre isn't immediately clear to me, two fantasies. Three currently lack final cover art.

Books Received, May 30 — June 5


Poll #34694 Books Received, May 30 — June 5
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

The Magical Cheese Emporium by Sarah Beth Durst (January 2027)
8 (57.1%)

A Devil of a Crime by T. Kingfisher (March 2027)
9 (64.3%)

Nocturnus by Greer Rivers (February 2027)
1 (7.1%)

Lock Her Up by Elizabeth Searle (October 2026)
1 (7.1%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (7.1%)

Cats!
9 (64.3%)

Frieren Vol 4+5 and Skipshock

Jun. 5th, 2026 08:10 pm
alobear: (Default)
[personal profile] alobear
Volume 4 of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End was fine.
Some cute moments.
Some deep moments.
Some heartwarming moments.
Some stupid moments.
Volume 5 was really great, with Frieren and Fern entering a competition-style exam to gain the highest magical qualification available. There were a lot of new characters to keep track of but also lots of really interesting character development, magic use and intrigue about where it was going next - which left me wanting more!

Skipshock by Caroline O'Donoghue follows Margo, a teenage girl, who slips into another dimension and finds herself in a strictly regimented set of worlds, where the days can be anything from 2 to 36 hours long. She meets Moon, a salesman who travels between the worlds, and they get mixed up with a rebellion against the regime that's restricting everyone's freedoms.
The switching between viewpoints was initially very annoying because Margo's POV was third person past tense and Moon's was first person present tense, even though they were almost always in the same place and the different chapters followed directly on from one another. But then I realised it was the author's way of getting the reader to experience the 'skipshock' of the title, which is a disorienting sickness people suffer when they move between worlds too much. After that, it was still annoying, but I could see it was also clever and deliberate.
The setup of how the different 'time zones' worked was absolute nonsense - the more I thought about it, the less sense it made, but once I acknowledged that and just went with it, things were a lot smoother. I also wasn't a fan of the romance, which felt quite 'instalove' and a bit too obsessive for my tastes.
All that said, though - I really enjoyed this book and was extremely irritated that it ended on a cliffhanger, with no release date yet for the sequel! I thought it was standalone, but I seem to have inadvertently launched myself into a YA dystopian romance - but it was really good!

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

Jun. 5th, 2026 08:46 am
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Soyoung Rose Kang would like to have her cake and eat it too. Happily for Ms. Kang, she lives in a world where that’s possible.

To an extent.

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod

Jun. 4th, 2026 09:15 am
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A programmer is dragged into a geopolitical squabble, complicated by untoward existential revelations.

The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod

the most entertaining personalities

Jun. 3rd, 2026 06:35 pm
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[personal profile] musesfool
So as you may have surmised from my posts over the years, I've been a sports fan all my life. I'm pretty well versed in baseball, football, hockey, and used to follow tennis as well, but I've only ever been a playoffs basketball fan, though since the Knicks have been in the playoffs the last couple of years, I've become more familiar with them (I was pretty familiar with the Ewing-era Knicks, because all my college friends were into basketball, and the spring/summer of 1994 when both the Rangers and the Knicks were in the playoffs was pretty memorable), so I didn't actually need this, but I did think it was pretty funny: The Knicks Are in the Finals. Act Like You've Been Here Before. #Go New York go New York go!

*
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This new Kobolds Ate My Baby! Bundle presents Kobolds Ate My Baby!, the cult-classic tabletop fantasy roleplaying game of anti-dungeon-crawl silliness, in its 2024 Orange Book edition from 9th Level Games.

Bundle of Holding: Kobolds Ate My Baby!
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Io the cat and Io's owner Ásta need a pragmatic friend. Happily for the pair, Unna could be that friend.

Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir (Translated by Mary Robinette Kowal)
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Merchantship Loki is retired war criminal Bet Yeager's ticket off Thule Station and away from murder charges... but Loki offers hazards of its own.

Rimrunners (Rimrunners, volume 5) by C J Cherryh

You'll Always Have Us

Jun. 2nd, 2026 06:00 am
no_apologies: (Fritz! (one of my fave pics of him))
[personal profile] no_apologies
Getting an idea and gentle, warm suggestion from Fritz to do a song for a good friend of mine. He understands what she's been through, over the loss of a dear friend of hers. Awwww...

Yeah, I get it. Let's try to finish this, before this hotspot my mom and I have been borrowing has to go back to the library today.

(Mood: Comforting. Supporting. Caring. Fritz and I actually relate to a really good friend's situation in a way. I'm thinking of someone I knew, and Fritz was reminded of someone he knew... Genre: Slow, moody emo rock ballad with violins and cellos to help deliver the emotion that's to be produced in this song.)

Lyrics... This is for you, Mezandria. With love, from Fritz and me. )

https://suno.com/s/agUz2Gzyencn3A6o Fritz, I'm glad we did this together. Thank you! You're the best mentor friend I've ever had. I appreciate you so much!!

(no subject)

Jun. 1st, 2026 10:56 pm
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
Quick note that post-by-email and comment-by-email is (sometimes?) failing silently without actually posting right now! I'm pretty sure this is related to last night's shenanigans and will be fixed once Mark can finish the full fix for it, which he's working on, but if you've posted or replied by email in the last 24 hours, fish it out of your sent folder to check if it posted!

EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.

closer to the great bambino numbers

Jun. 1st, 2026 10:18 pm
musesfool: close up of the Chrysler Building (home)
[personal profile] musesfool
Bedtime is repealed!

I must say, I really am enjoying the Mayor Mamdani experience. And go Knicks!

*
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Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition (and compatible systems) knavish adventure in Acheron Games' Brancalonia.

Bundle of Holding: Brancalonia (from 2024)



An all-new bundle of recent Brancalonia supplements.

Bundle of Holding: Brancalonia Bounty
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Whether actively harmful or simply inept, certain mentors seem to do more harm than good...

Five Terrible or Useless Mentors in SF and Fantasy

June 2026 Patreon Boost

Jun. 1st, 2026 10:03 am
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James Nicoll Reviews offers readers a relentless barrage of human-created reviews of human-created works. I am the John Henry of speculative fiction reviewing.

You can help fund James Nicoll Reviews in several ways.

(no subject)

May. 31st, 2026 10:00 pm
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Robby has managed to put in a temporary fix for the site errors and things failing to refresh or not showing up where they should! The permanent fix is going to need Mark's experience, and unfortunately -- seriously, this literally never fails -- Mark has been on an international flight all day, because of course he has. (Never. Fails. He and I are not allowed to both take vacation at once.)

The site will work just fine with the temporary fix in place, things just might be a little slow here and there. We'll keep you updated.

honey, don't you fool around

May. 31st, 2026 09:36 pm
musesfool: trinity santos from the pitt drinking coffee (lord beer me strength)
[personal profile] musesfool
I meant to post earlier but then I kind of dozed off, whoops! Yesterday, I took my 90 mini cheesecakes and Baby Miss L's books and headed out to my sister's for Alyssa's birthday barbecue that was postponed from last weekend due to all the rain. Well, unfortunately, the weather yesterday was not really conducive to an outside party, so we ended up staying in the house. And my youngest niece, whose birthday was also yesterday, already had plans, so she (and my brother's family) couldn't make it. But it was nice.

When I got home today, I ended up having a long call with Friend L, who let me know that she's moving back to Atlanta (after being in New York for 30 years) to help out her sister with their mom, whose health has been declining. I kind of had a feeling this was going to happen, with how often she was going down there and how long she was staying each time, but she was in denial about it for a while. Hopefully I'll get to see her before she goes, and we can always facetime.

I also did the May recs update, and though there was some wonkiness with DW earlier, I think it's fixed now.

[personal profile] unfitforsociety has been updated for May 2026 with 8 recs in 2 fandoms:

* 7 Heated Rivalry
* 1 The Pitt

***

(no subject)

May. 31st, 2026 08:59 pm
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're aware of site traffic issues and are working to fix them for the people who are having problems! (The tactics the damn bot traffic uses are endlessly shifting, and they're really good at looking like real traffic, sigh.)
unfitforsociety: aquamarine necklace (aquamarine)
[personal profile] unfitforsociety
Heated Rivalry

2.0 by [archiveofourown.org profile] orangememory
Twenty-seven years, and not once has a stranger looked at David Hollander and his son and seen a father. Then Ilya Rozanov sits beside him in a restaurant and a server says, "Can I get anything else for you and your son?" David does not correct him. Sad and quiet and lovely.

Boston Lily & the Queens of Montreal by [archiveofourown.org profile] thekatriarch
Lily joins the WAG group chat and makes some new friends. <333 I love Ilya + WAGS stories.

Keptin Canada by [archiveofourown.org profile] hoosierbitch
"Well. If the C goes to one of us, of course Ilya will be captain."

There was a moment of silence before half the cameras turned towards Ilya and the sound of shutters struck like a tsunami.

Ilya Rozanov, not just in a red Canada jersey, but with a "C" on the front—?

The MLH, the media, and apparently the entirety of Canada reacted Very Normally to this.
<333

Lessons in Two-Factor Authentication by [archiveofourown.org profile] merakily
Ilya Rozanov's gmail gets hacked in February 2021. To everyone's surprise, they find zero sex tapes, one Shane Hollander-shaped grocery list, and one list of travel notes. this is adorable.

Lily My Friend by [archiveofourown.org profile] AshwinMeird
Hayden gets unwittingly roped into a business partnership with Shane’s secret girl Lily behind Shane’s back but at least he gets a kind of cool friend out of it… even if she is oddly reluctant to call them that. Oh heart... this is a lot of fun.

my love's ugly bloom by Anonymous
Ilya gets Hanahaki disease. Not usually a trope I'm into, but this is really lovely and soft.

Unsportsmanlike Flirting by [archiveofourown.org profile] aleksandriel
Shane Hollander is trying to win a hockey game. Ilya Rozanov is trying to win a hockey game, commit psychological warfare, and maybe flirt so aggressively it becomes a league-wide PR incident. Hee!

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