Swords and Spaceships for November 6: Comfort Reads

Stormsong only edges out Witchmark because as much as I love the latter book, I do not like the narrator that much so that’s an “only read in print” situation. But I like Moira Quirk, and I like hearing the story of Dame Grace trying to figure out how to save her country while making sure it atones for the terrible wrong its done, all while she falls in love with a lady who’s a nosey and clever newspaper reporter.

This is actually the first of N.K. Jemisin’s books I ever read, and I got it as an audiobook… and it just completely grabbed hold of me and has never let me go. It’s a hidden princess dark fairy tale with deadly, dynastic politics and gods and ancient wrongs that need to be discovered and redeemed. Love this book, love this narrator, and it’s been a regular listen since I first read it over five years ago.

I love this book for a multitude of reasons, but most of all because it’s ultimately about a character whose superpower is empathy and kindness slowly figuring out how to navigate cut throat politics without letting them destroy what is best about him. Plus, I’m admittedly not very good with a lot of constructed language stuff, and listening to it helps me keep track of the characters and vocabulary in a really useful way. Plus, Kyle McCarley is a really good narrator.

Look, by now there can be no doubt that I love the entire Vorkosigan Saga, and I’m here to tell you that Grover Gardner is my favorite audiobook narrator of all time—and he does the whole series. I re-listen to these constantly. I just picked Memory as my favorite because it’s the book that marks black sheep and snarky, hyperactive, and disabled pain-in-the-ass Miles Vorkosigan shifting from his space military commander phase to his space Nancy Drew phase.

I’ll admit this is not the most relaxing book to read, because it’s an urban fantasy mystery where stuff is constantly going down, but the reason I love this book and its sequels is because listening to it is a transformative experience compared to reading. Listening to Daniel José Older read his own prose reveals a cadence like spoken word poetry. It’s honestly pretty unusual to run across a writer who’s actually really GOOD at reading their own work, and he sets the bar HIGH.

Sin du Jour is a series of seven novellas; this audiobook covers the first three. I love them because they’ve got a diverse set of characters running an urban fantasy catering company for the magic underbelly for demons and elves and such that always tweaks the nose of current events. There’s a fun plot that mixes humor and some scary stakes that’s really there to string together some fantastic food porn.

I’m calling this the “bonus not actually SFF pick but this it Alex’s list of things that bring them comfort when their brain is melting and it would be super dishonest not to put a romance novel on it.” Look, I love this book. It’s got an awesome trans lady as a protagonist, a hot physics professor, a You’ve Got Mail-but-updated thing where they fall in love via an internet that forgot AOL a long time ago, and the narrators are fantastic.