What’s interesting to me is how specifically Brookmyre feels he needs to emphasize that things do indeed go back to “normal.”

The problem with these novel is that, as long as we are purely inside its protagonist's story, there is no way to square the circle of her own ambition, and a politics of inclusion that goes beyond the non-intersectional hierarchy of “least marginalized first.”

Reading this novella feels like being inside of someone else’s dream.

read one at the beginning of the year and one at the end, and both have left flashes of scenes in their wake, moments of darkness and brightness that rise up like my own memories, catching me unaware.

My reading fell into two basic categories this year: books to distract from the tire fire, and books to face it head-on.

I could go on and on. It wasn’t a good year at all, and it was. There is so much more.

In all the best missing person books, there is a motivation beyond merely the desire to find the missing person.

Lindqvist’s English editions claim that he is the “Swedish Stephen King.” But Ajvide Lindqvist is Ajvide Lindqvist, and that is a wonderful thing.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly in terms of genre, the magic never seems forced as an external element, a language that needs to be learnt, but something that is part of a way of being and living.

Likeable characters help elevate The Dragon Prince above its generic narrative premise.