Finished reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. I loved this, even though the story mostly ended up being “what did Duchess do this time, and how are the rest of them going to clean up after him?” (Wait, he did what?? But — !)
Finished rereading The Far Side of the World by Patrick O’Brian. A lot happens here, but still he leaves large gaps that earlier books would have filled in, and the ending is one of his most abrupt yet (though it wouldn’t have told us anything we couldn’t figure out on our own).
(It took me a few days to finish Matrix, not just 24 hours — it took me a while to figure out what I thought of The Mask of Mirrors.)
Finished reading Matrix by Lauren Groff. This was lovely: An imagining of the life of Marie of Shaftesbury, creating a feminist haven out of a failing abbey in 12th-century England. I got very strong vibes of both Nicola Griffith’s Hild and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lavinia (though this doesn’t quite rise to Le Guin’s level — which is no failing — and Groff wasn’t trying to write either of those books).
Finished reading The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick. I ended up enjoying this fantasy novel centered around a long con, but several weak points wanted changing: an emotional beat that falls flat, a character with nothing to do, and about one or two hundred extra pages. Maybe a more strict editor would have helped?