Books, to begin with
Mar. 27th, 2026 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamajoanI don't even know where to start when it comes to "bringing this journal up to date," ha ha, so I'm going to ramble a bit about books I've read recently.
Belatedly last week I tried to update my "read in 2026" tag on LibraryThing, but I'm not entirely sure that I remembered everything I've read so far -- and there are some books I can't quite remember whether I read them in January or December so I didn't add them. But the tag currently has 19 books in it, which is pretty good for the end of March even if I'm not missing anything.
(Nine of those 19 are by T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon, whose work is my latest intense obsession, but that's a topic for a different post)
A lot of those were rereads; I've been on a rereading spree over the past year or so and have reread a whole bunch of books/series that I hadn't read in a long, long time. Some of which were quite literally gathering dust on my shelves (*blush*). Among other things, I reread the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, the Ancillary series by Ann Leckie, the Jumper series by Stephen Gould, and the delightful "Sorcery and Cecelia" series by Patricia Wrede and Carolyn Stevermer. It has been SO interesting to discover how much, or in many cases how little, I remember about books that I loved in the past!
But the ones I'm going to talk about here are the Kestrel series by Kate Ross, because in that reread I had the unique experience of reading a book where I remembered one particular huge plot twist very clearly, while at the same time remembering absolutely nothing else about the plot!
I'm going to try to explain this without too much spoiler-ing, because these books are amazing and you should really read them.
In the mid- to late 1990s, Kate Ross wrote four books in her Regency mystery series featuring amateur detective Julian Kestrel. Tragically, she died of breast cancer shortly after writing the fourth book -- she was only 42! -- so those four are all we have, which is truly a shame because they're SO good. #fuckcancer
The books take place in England in the 1820s, and Julian, the main character, is a "dandy" -- i.e. a young man with no actual job or title, who is notable in Society for his elegant clothing and manners, and who spends most of his time gambling, partying, and flirting. Nowadays I think we'd probably call him a fuckboy. ;) But unbeknownst to most of London Society, Julian is actually really smart and principled, and a lot more intellectual than the persona he chooses to present. In the first two books he accidentally stumbles into murder investigations and of course ends up solving them. In the third and fourth books he's asked to investigate by family members of the murder victims.
The fourth and final book in the series, The Devil In Music, takes place in Italy and involves a murder that happened a few years prior but was covered up by authorities. When the victim's family finds out that he was murdered (rather than dying of natural causes as they had been led to believe), they ask Julian to come to Italy and investigate.
A large part of the mystery hinges around the identity of the murder victim's protégé, a talented young singer whom the victim was keeping hidden because he wanted the singer to make a big splash in society once he was ready. So the singer was only referred to by a code name "Orfeo," and only a few people knew his actual identity -- one of whom was his singing coach, who is conveniently blind so he can't tell anyone what Orfeo looks like. The mysterious singer disappeared on the same night as the murder, so naturally everyone assumes that he did it, and a lot of the plot involves the characters trying to figure out who Orfeo really was, where he is now, and why he killed his patron/benefactor.
Well, the identity of Orfeo was the ONE thing that I remembered about this book. The specific circumstances of the murder, the victim's personality, the victim's actions before the murder, the various other characters and their relationships to the victim and to each other, other murder(s) that take place during the investigation, other big plot points along the way, the reveal of actual killer and how Julian figures it out and how / why the killer did it... I didn't remember any of that! All I remembered was the dramatic moment at the almost-very-end of the book where Orfeo reveals his true identity.
So that made for a very, very interesting reread. I can't really explain this part any more without lots of spoilage, so go read the books and maybe come back and comment here if you want to discuss. ;)
I think my next series rereads are going to be the Russell/Holmes mysteries by Laurie King and the Temeraire dragon series by Naomi Novik. Those should keep me occupied for a little bit -- maybe even until the next Murderbot book comes out? (My intense obsession with Murderbot is probably yet another topic for another post....) Meanwhile I *am* also reading some new-to-me stuff, and of course recommendations are always welcome!
Belatedly last week I tried to update my "read in 2026" tag on LibraryThing, but I'm not entirely sure that I remembered everything I've read so far -- and there are some books I can't quite remember whether I read them in January or December so I didn't add them. But the tag currently has 19 books in it, which is pretty good for the end of March even if I'm not missing anything.
(Nine of those 19 are by T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon, whose work is my latest intense obsession, but that's a topic for a different post)
A lot of those were rereads; I've been on a rereading spree over the past year or so and have reread a whole bunch of books/series that I hadn't read in a long, long time. Some of which were quite literally gathering dust on my shelves (*blush*). Among other things, I reread the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, the Ancillary series by Ann Leckie, the Jumper series by Stephen Gould, and the delightful "Sorcery and Cecelia" series by Patricia Wrede and Carolyn Stevermer. It has been SO interesting to discover how much, or in many cases how little, I remember about books that I loved in the past!
But the ones I'm going to talk about here are the Kestrel series by Kate Ross, because in that reread I had the unique experience of reading a book where I remembered one particular huge plot twist very clearly, while at the same time remembering absolutely nothing else about the plot!
I'm going to try to explain this without too much spoiler-ing, because these books are amazing and you should really read them.
In the mid- to late 1990s, Kate Ross wrote four books in her Regency mystery series featuring amateur detective Julian Kestrel. Tragically, she died of breast cancer shortly after writing the fourth book -- she was only 42! -- so those four are all we have, which is truly a shame because they're SO good. #fuckcancer
The books take place in England in the 1820s, and Julian, the main character, is a "dandy" -- i.e. a young man with no actual job or title, who is notable in Society for his elegant clothing and manners, and who spends most of his time gambling, partying, and flirting. Nowadays I think we'd probably call him a fuckboy. ;) But unbeknownst to most of London Society, Julian is actually really smart and principled, and a lot more intellectual than the persona he chooses to present. In the first two books he accidentally stumbles into murder investigations and of course ends up solving them. In the third and fourth books he's asked to investigate by family members of the murder victims.
The fourth and final book in the series, The Devil In Music, takes place in Italy and involves a murder that happened a few years prior but was covered up by authorities. When the victim's family finds out that he was murdered (rather than dying of natural causes as they had been led to believe), they ask Julian to come to Italy and investigate.
A large part of the mystery hinges around the identity of the murder victim's protégé, a talented young singer whom the victim was keeping hidden because he wanted the singer to make a big splash in society once he was ready. So the singer was only referred to by a code name "Orfeo," and only a few people knew his actual identity -- one of whom was his singing coach, who is conveniently blind so he can't tell anyone what Orfeo looks like. The mysterious singer disappeared on the same night as the murder, so naturally everyone assumes that he did it, and a lot of the plot involves the characters trying to figure out who Orfeo really was, where he is now, and why he killed his patron/benefactor.
Well, the identity of Orfeo was the ONE thing that I remembered about this book. The specific circumstances of the murder, the victim's personality, the victim's actions before the murder, the various other characters and their relationships to the victim and to each other, other murder(s) that take place during the investigation, other big plot points along the way, the reveal of actual killer and how Julian figures it out and how / why the killer did it... I didn't remember any of that! All I remembered was the dramatic moment at the almost-very-end of the book where Orfeo reveals his true identity.
So that made for a very, very interesting reread. I can't really explain this part any more without lots of spoilage, so go read the books and maybe come back and comment here if you want to discuss. ;)
I think my next series rereads are going to be the Russell/Holmes mysteries by Laurie King and the Temeraire dragon series by Naomi Novik. Those should keep me occupied for a little bit -- maybe even until the next Murderbot book comes out? (My intense obsession with Murderbot is probably yet another topic for another post....) Meanwhile I *am* also reading some new-to-me stuff, and of course recommendations are always welcome!
