#40 Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

When you start reading the book you thing the main plot is a retelling of Rumplestikzen using the story of a Jewish moneylender’s daughter as the main character. Miryem is tired of people not paying back her father on loans, being disrespected by everyone in the village and her mother sick and needing medicine they can’t afford. She starts collecting the monies owed either in favors, goods, or cash. Things start to turn around and as the story progresses you meet Wanda, who is now working for Miryem to pay off her father’s debts. There are cold based Fae that prey on the people and steal their gold. One hears about Miryem making money and forces her to covert silver into gold. This is the hinge of the story and brings in a tsarina as the third woman and a new folktale to into the mix with her.

The story switches between the three women seamlessly and it works great. A lovely self-contained story that doesn’t beg for a sequel

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss

#41 A Study in Honor (The Janet Watson Chronicles #1) by Claire O'Dell

This is set in a future America that is in the middle of a second civil war and uses some of the framework of Sherlock Holmes to talk about it. Watson is a disabled army doctor missing one arm and her prosthetic arm doesn’t work well enough to allow her to work as a surgeon. Sherlock and Watson are introduced to each other by a mutual friend that does show up again and again in the story. Sherlock is moodier in this one and Watson is dealing with PTSD and underemployment at the VA. The story works well in the framework of the Holmes type of setting, but things are changed to fit the new setting and even by the story the mystery is solved but the societal things have not been changed that much. A decent SF near future dystopian story that uses the Holmes and Watson motif but doesn’t slavishly follow it to the letter.


Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss