Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

I had been waiting for this book for many months, ever since I finished Galbraith’s (J. K. Rowling’s) third novel in the Cormoran Strike series last year. I’ve listened to all of them on audio, and I was really looking forward to diving into this one in the same format. Unfortunately, it’s not gripping me as much as the other three. It’s slow to start, with a mystery that goes nowhere for nearly half the novel. Galbraith focuses a lot on Robin and Cormoran’s romantic lives, and I find that topic to be both irritating and uninteresting. Robin’s now-husband Matthew is still around being the most awful person in the world. Cormoran tries for nearly a year for a no-strings-attached casual relationship with a woman named Lorelei, a relationship neither Strike nor I as a reader care much about at all. To compound my annoyance, Galbraith brings back Charlotte for a cameo (or perhaps more, I’ve still got nine hours of the book left). Robert Glenister is a talented reader as always, I just find most of the book lacking. I’ve got a little less than half the book to finish in the two days remaining of my loan; I’m not sure I’m going to make it.

 

Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

This is a retelling of the legend of Anastasia Romanov set in space. Because readers will know this going in, one of the biggest “surprises” of the story, which is revealed about a third of the way in, is not a surprise at all. Other parts of the story feel familiar, too, particularly for readers who read a lot of space opera. Ana (the lost princess who remembers none of her past) is part of a ragtag crew of space pirates, which includes a Metal (android) named D09 whom she’s in love with, despite the fact that he claims he cannot feel human emotions. The lost princess in space reminds me strongly of Empress of a Thousand Skies by Rhoda Belleza, and the android who may or may not be “human” enough for its life to matter is reminiscent of Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray, both of which I liked a bit better. (These tropes were not new when Belleza and Gray wrote about them, either.) Still, Poston infuses her story with her own ideas, too: a humanoid alien race derogatorily referred to as “star kissers,” a bit of interesting political intrigue, the idea of “ironblood” and an iron artifact that rusts when it’s touched. It’s clear she’s put a lot of thought into the world she’s created, including its complicated history, and readers who enjoy SF world-building will be rewarded. The book is also casually LGBTQ, and its characters don’t fit neatly into our own established gender roles (the captain of the ship is a woman and many other leaders within the world are as well).