When comes the wind that billows our words' sails?

The Jasmine Throne
by Tasha Suri

This fantasy novel is set in a world reminiscent of ancient India. The action largely takes place in Ahiranya, a land subjugated by the Parijatdvipa empire and whose language and religion have been suppressed. Priya is a maidservant in the regent's household, serving Bhumika, the regent's Ahiranyi wife. Both of them are former temple children of the Hirana, survivors of a conflagration that killed elders and children alike. Bhumika and Priya each try to help their people survive under Parijatdvipa rule. Then Malini, sister to the Emperor, is imprisoned in the deserted Hirana temple. Priya is then assigned to be Malini's servant and the two of them find themselves on new paths towards freedom and power (and a bit of vengeance).
The Jasmine Throne was really good. I loved the world-building, and the way things about the magic and the history were revealed through Priya and Malini's experiences and memories. Suri takes her time with both the world-building and character development. It can feel a little slow, but is well worth it. Priya, Malini, and Bhumika are all complicated, and often morally ambiguous, women with different ideas about how to change the world so that it serves them better. I especially liked the growing relationship between Priya and Malini, full of longing despite their being on different sides of the political conflict. Suri explores the different ways people can find and use power, and the ways women's power is both feared and underestimated.

The Stars My Destination
by Alfred Bester

This 1956 sci-fi novel is set in a far future where humans have mastered interplanetary travel and have developed the ability to teleport themselves distances of up to 1000 miles. The story concerns Gully Foyle, a former mechanic on the spaceship Nomad. When the Nomad is attacked, Gully is the only survivor, trying despearately to survive on a catastrophically damaged ship. Another ship, the Vorga, passes by and knowingly abandons Foyle to his grim fate. He somehow survives and dedicates himself to discovering the person responsible for giving the order to ignore him and then exact revenge on that person. Foyle's quest brings him to a strange cult living on an asteroid augmented with the wreckage of spaceships, an underground prison, and the mansions of the wealthy. Along the way he transforms from an ignorant brute into a clever and cultured man. The final result of Foyle's quest is the unlocking of a incredibly destructive power and an equally productive power.
I quite liked this book, despite its old-fashioned aspects. Foyle undergoes a lot of change, starting out cruel and ruthless, and ending up more humanistic, self-aware, and forward-thinking, if still not necessarily a truly good person. I don't think there was much redemption there as in his transformation. Bester's vision of the future was fascinating, especially the ways teleportation changed society and the ways in which scientific advances weren't necessarily equalizing or conducive to social progress. The ending was a real tour de force with its space and time defying action and its really cool depiction of synaesthesia.

A Choir of Lies
by Alexandra Rowland

This is the sequel to A Conspiracy of Truth. It takes place a few years after the events of the first book. Ylfing has become a Chant and is living in Heyrland, a harbor town that resembles 17th century Holland. Recovering from the trauma of the events in A Conspiracy of Truth and feeling conflicted about his calling as a Chant, Ylfing puts aside storytelling for a bit and takes up a position as a translator in Sterre de Waeyer's business. Once Sterre realizes what Ylfing is, she gets him to put his storytelling skills to use to foment desire for the exotic flowers she is selling. (Why yes, this aspect of the plot is based on the Tulip Mania.) During this time, Ylfing also falls in love with the rakish junior member of a merchant clan, and encounters another Chant, with whom he has a contentious relationship. When things with Sterre's scheme go south, Ylfing has to really face himself and his relationship to stories.
I enjoyed this book a lot. Rowland beautifully examines the meaning of stories and storytelling, and the uses and abuses of them, but from a very different angle than in the first book. I really liked the way she delved into how writing a story down affects the story. Ylfing could be a bit frustrating, but I sympathized with him a lot, especially around his struggles to deal with what he had been through. He has a lot to grapple with and basically no one to help him with it. Even when he meets the other Chant, she is generally more interested in making sure he is fully aware of all the ways in which he is Doing It Wrong than in giving him any real help or support. Even after he tells her about what happened. That made her even more frustrating than he could be.

The Cambridge Companion to Bach
edited by John Butt

This volume of essays did a good job of covering the immense subject of J. S. Bach, his music, and its importance in Western classical music. Given the vastness of the subject, I very much appreciated that the introduction laid out the context and aims of the volume, since there was no way it could be comprehensive. I especially enjoyed the essays that strove to give a sense of how Bach and his work was situated in the musical world of the 17th and 18th centuries.The discussions of Bach as a teacher were also really interesting.

Sovereign
by C.J. Sansom

This is the third Matthew Shardlake mystery, set during the later days of Henry VIII's reign. Shardlake is sent along on the king's great Progress in the north of England. The King is there to gain the submission of a formerly rebellious region of his realm. Shardlake is there at Archbishop Cranmer's behest to ensure the prisoner Broderick, a member of a conspiracy against the king, is kept in good enough health to be transported to London for questioning by the torturers of the Tower. When a glazier in York fall to his death, Shardlake finds himself a target of a dangerous and murderous conspiracy.
This mystery was very intricate and clever. There were multiple threads to it, and more than one culprit. It's also more than just a murder mystery, it has aspects of a thriller based around a deep conspiracy. I liked the way the story explored the intricacies of Tudor politics and court life as well as the machinations of power, status, and lineage. Shardlake is such a relatable character. He's very smart and observant, but also kind of grumpy and touchy and sometimes difficult.

Translation State
by Ann Leckie

This is a thoughtful sci-fi novel set in the same universe as the Ancillary Justice trilogy and takes place some time after the events of those books. The story revolves around three people wo are each at a crossroads in their lives. Enae, who has spent most of eir life as a companion and caretaker for eir cantankerous grandmother, has taken on a diplomatic mission after eir grandmother's death. Reet is a mechanic whose origins are unknown but was adopted into a large and loving family. He has recently discovered some aspects of his biology and potential origins that lead him to unexpected and not entirely wanted places. Qved is a Presger, a strange and often brutal alien race. They have been bred to be a Translator, a human-shaped diplomat trained to serve as a liaison with the human worlds. Their paths will bring them all together against the backdrop of a Conclave of the humans and aliens where the treaties that make peaceful coexistence possible are re-negotiated.
Translation State is a masterful meditation on identity and belonging, and the roles biology, nurture, and self-determination play in them. Along the way, Leckie also looks at some romance tropes, the different effects of loving and non-loving parenting, and political machinations. All of this is done through a really good plot and some excellent characters.

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold
by Seanan McGuire

This is the 11th Wayward Children book. Nancy, a former student at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children, returns from the Halls of the Dead looking for help in saving her world. The unquiet dead have turned on the living denizens of the Hall of the Dead, killing and devouring them. The Lord and Lady of the Halls are unable to stop the onslaught, so Nancy turns to her former classmates. A handful of them answer her call for help and go with her to the Halls of the Dead to find out why the dead are destroying the living.
I enjoyed the story, which is a fairly straightforward quest. It was great to spend time with characters from earlier books. Nancy's arc in this book is really interesting. I also liked the themes around belonging, obedience vs. questioning, the different ways people find peace, and what happens when guardians fail to properly protect or care for their charges.

Usurpation
by Sue Burke

This is the final book in the Semiosis trilogy, and takes place a on Earth few centuries after Interference. The bamboo has grown from seeds brought to Earth and has lived through a recently concluded period of war and upheaval. Human society is still recovering, and it is in this context that Levanter, a bamboo based in a research center in Bayonne, France, reveals her intelligence to a small group of humans. When a mysterious fungal disease starts driving umans and bamboo to madness and death, Levanter, her fellow bamboo colonies, and her human associates must work to find a cure. In the process, Levanter leads the bamboo in revealing their true nature to all of humanity. The story concludes with humans and bamboo working towards greater understanding and a deeper relationship.
I really enjoyed this book, and it is a fitting conclusion to the trilogy. I really liked Levanter, as she had a development arc about finding her own voice and confidence after being squished down by her sibling bamboo. I also liked her friendships with the humans at the research center, especially Denis and Brian, as well as her appreciation for Bayonne's mayor. I loved Burke's take on the ways in which we need to be in harmony with the natural world in order to have true peace among ourselves, and the ways in which that is a two-way relationship and must be seen as such.

Semiosis
by Sue Burke

This is the first novel in a sci-fi trilogy about people colonizing an alien planet and their first contact with intelligent aliens. A group of humans leave a war-torn and environmentally depleted Earth to find a new home. They eventually land on a planet they christen Pax, in honor of their desire to live in peace and in harmony with their new environment. As they struggle to domesticate food crops and acclimate to their new home, they slowly begin to realize that the vines are sentient. When the move to a city left behind by the earlier visitors to Pax, they learn that the bamboo-like pant that grows around the city is not only sentient, but intelligent. Over generations, they develop a mutually beneficial relationship with the bamboo and eventually accept it as a full member of their community. Eventually, the humans also encounter the remnants of the earlier visitors and must figure out how to relate to them as well.
Semiosis is incredibly fascinating. I found Burke's concept of what an intelligent plant would be like very compelling, as well as her ideas of how it would relate to humans. Each chapter in the book is told from the perspective of a different character, mostly moving forward through each successive generation. Thus there is a focus on the development of the human-bamboo relationship and the settler society rather than individual character development. It gave me a lot to think about around what it really means to live in harmony with the natural world. It's very reminiscent of Le Guin's work in a lot of ways.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
by Louise Erdrich

This beautiful novel focuses on Father Damien, a priest serving on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota during the twentieth century. His great secret is that he is a woman who has lived as a man for most of his life. When another priest comes to the reservation to investigate the sanctity of Sister Leopolda, a deceased nun of the reservation convent, Damien must decide whether to reveal the truth about Leopolda as he reflects on his life.
The Last Report... is a wonderful book that reveals a lot about Native American life in the early 20th century, and also explores what goodness and saintliness really are, and what makes a life truly holy. Damien's quiet, loving, empathetic service to the Ojibwe community is contrasted with Leopolda's forbidding and harsh devotion to the Church. The book is filled with so many wonderful characters, especially the elder Nanapush, Mary Kashpaw, and Damien himself. Erdrich gives us a good look at how religion can function in a community, and how that community can shape that religion. There's a lot in this book, and it's all worth discovering.