Welcome to Litsy!

#TBRPile 📚 “Rachel White flung the cab door open, tossed the driver a banknote and dived into the rain.”

I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description or reason for wanting to read the book. Some are old and some will be new. Don't judge me - I have a lot of books.
Day 248

#tbrmountain #bookbuyingdiet

My order from myscificlub.com finally came in the mail, late because of...you know the f'ed up mess at the postal service. I'm still waiting on a package from discoverbooks.com, which according to tracking number, has been sitting in Toledo since 12/29.

Books: 12

Pages: 3,221

Longest: City of Bones (485)

Shortest: Hex Vet: Witches in Training (80)

Favorites: The Deep, Wicked Fox, The Weight of Our Sky, and American Hippo

Set in an alternate 1930s England after the discovery of an afterlife dimension--Summerland--& the vast array of ecto-technology that goes along with it. Rachel works for the Winter Court, an intelligence agency whose counterpart, the Summer Court, has been infiltrated by a mole. Unfortunately, no one believes her. A highly inventive alternate history. A bit convoluted & confusing at times, but a very interesting read.

New month, new tbr

Audio dog walking (and an appropriately titled book for the heat 😂)

I‘m making no headway with Summerland. I like the basic idea and the writing is great but there‘s a lot going on with very little context. I usually love incidental world building, but I forgot that I don‘t love Cold War spy thrillers so I just found everything Much Too Hard. Maybe another day. Or maybe I‘ll try a different Rajaniemi first.

Hannu Rajaniemi imagines a world that diverged from our own, not into the brass technology of steampunk, but into a world where the dead can be communicated with by Marconi's devices, a world of ectophones, ectotanks, and spirit cages.

A solid fantasy spy-thriller set in a world where Great Britain has colonized and monetized the afterlife, but it was a bit too blunt and emotionally disconnected. For me, the choice to reveal the mole to the audience early on really negated a lot of the tension, and so much of the book had to be carried with solid characters and inventive worldbuilding. Flawed, but intriguing.