The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (6)
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (7)

The Thief is probably YA, but doesn't have the typical feel of a YA.  It is mostly character work while a group is traveling to the thiefing target.  I liked it.  There seems to be more going on under the surface of the pretty basic plot, so I'll be at least reading the next one in the series of five.

The Loney.  A friend wanted to start up a monthly-ish book club, and this was one of his suggestions.  It's ok.  It's billed as a horror novel, complete with a Stephen King cover blurb and some awards.  I'm not sure why.  It has some creepy vibes like, "here's a strange local," or "why did the church get vandalized," or "we found a dead animal in the field."  But it all builds to absolutely nothing.  There is no payoff for any of it.  That said, the writing is good, especially the characterization.  So I guess King liked it because it also flubs the ending?

30 last year for me.  That also seems low from the halcyon days of no kids or other responsibilities, but I'm on the rise.  Does that mean I'm taking less responsibilities?  Maybe the kids are less demanding.

For sure (maybe) reading this coming year:
Reread of TGO and TUC
Last two of the new Osten Ard books
Books 3-5 of Ruocchio's Sun Eater series
KJ Parker short story collection out in spring some time
Muir's Locked Tomb series

But so far
Isolation by various authors (1)

Short story "horror" collection broadly around the theme of isolation.  This was actually pretty good all around.  The last horror anthology I read last year (Howls from the Dark Ages) was... amateurish and often not that good. All the stories here are good.  There is a lot of variation in how each author tackled the theme, whether physical isolation or social, emotional, spiritual (?), etc.  The best story came from Laird Barron (I read some collection of his a while back that was lovecraftian), who had a completely wild far future "true crime" kind of story.  The worst, easily, came from Ken Liu.  Surprising, because he's one of the few authors I'd heard of.  His was kind of a "what if the pandemic was the first of many" kind of thing.  It wasn't very creative or interesting.  It felt like he just wanted to make some commentary about the social and political climate of the past few years, while kind of making it a sci-fi story in the dullest way possible.
That one aside, I fully enjoyed the other stories in this collection.  Worth checking out even if only to read the Laird Barron submission.

I keep forgetting about the Goblin Emperor sequels (I think they are only loose sequels).  I'll have to read them before I forget again.

After Tigana, there just doesn't seem to be enough fantasy in GGK's books for me.  Under Heaven might as well have been historical fiction, from what I remember.  I think the "barbarians" had some spirit magic thing going on, but even that was "maybe they have magics."  I read it when it came out 12 years ago, and haven't really desired to read GGK since, despite him being a good writer.

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay (23)

I liked this one well enough.  It was highly praised by a friend of mine, and they're making a movie sometime next year.  I figured I'd read it to see how much M. Night ends up making it worse.  About 50 pages in, I was worried the book was just going to end up being a 300 page elaborate Trolley Problem.  It ends up being more than that, but really drops the ball on some other more interesting concepts it gets close to but then ignores.  Maybe that was chosen with a view to keeping it short and quick.  What I really think is the author came up with a "wouldn't this be cool/crazy/intense!" scenario and just churned out a story without taking the time to think through some implications.

It was enjoyable to read, plenty of tense moments like any thriller.  And there is some good character work; although every pov, of which there were 7 or so, pretty much spoke with the same voice, so I never really felt like I was seeing through different peoples' eyes.  It's mostly written in present tense, which is fine I guess.  Flashbacks are in past tense.  I always feel there needs to be a good reason to choose a present tense narration, and often times it seems it's chosen just to be "different."  There was an excessive amount of unnecessary positional descriptions, like the author wanted to write a screenplay or stage directions at points.  I don't need to know the detailed layout of the cabin and positioning of everyone in a scene.

That's a lot of criticism for something I ultimately liked.  I read it in about a day.  And it should make a better movie, but....  we've seen what M. Night is capable of.

Blindsight by Peter Watts (19)

I read this not long ago (2020), but I convinced a friend to read it so I audiobooked it so we could discuss.  Not bad, this was my first audiobook experience.  It was nice being able to listen while I did boring stuff at work or drove, but I don't think I'd want to multitask if it wasn't a book I was already familiar with.  In that case, I'd just read.

The Darkness that Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker (20)

For the slog reread on discord.  Really slowing down my reading of The Last King of Osten Ard "trilogy," which are massive books of course.  I'll get through it when I get through it.  The reread has been enjoyable.

Tower Lord by Anthony Ryan ( )

DNF about halfway through.  So sad, as Blood Song was enjoyable.  The biggest problem with this was pacing, I think.  It expanded from the one POV in book one to 4 or 5 here.  None of them were developed enough to get me to care about what they are doing or why.  Most side characters just seemed to be there as plot devices to get the main characters to go where they needed to.
This is typical second book syndrome, and I should expect it.  Book one has been worked on for a long time before it gets published.  Book two is pushed out before it is ready.  Or is more concerned with setting the stage for another sequel.  Or the author just can't handle the larger scope of the story/world.

On to better things.

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan (16)

I liked this quite a bit.  It has the framing everyone seems to use lately, where we start at the end of the story the bulk of the narration is relating how we get to that point.  Sometimes I find it annoying, but here it works very well.  Possibly aided by the story not taking multiple books to get back to that point.  The author does a good job of knowing what to skip.  Plenty of things happen off-page, and years of the protagonist's life are briefly summed up to keep the narration from bogging down.  I'll definitely read the next two books (it's a trilogy of course), and am interested to see how it's framed, since we caught back up the timeline in this first book.

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks (13)

This was quick.  It's basically journal entries and some interviews about this little tech commune that gets stranded when Mount Rainier erupts, then bigfoot attacks.  I never read Brooks' more popular zombie stuff, but he seems to do well in this niche of epistolary, multi-source, faux accounting of terrifying events.  I was surprised at how good the characterization was.  I expected it to be very shock, plot, action focused.  But within all that, Brooks managed to flesh out some nice character arcs.  It's been many years, but I think Crichton did the scary primate assault better.  Congo was certainly better researched and grounded, but I guess a bigfoot story has to be silly if you look too closely.  It was an enjoyable read that didn't require too much brainpower.  Recommended if you want some quick palate-cleanser or something.

The Judging Eye by R. Scott Bakker (14)

This continues my eternal rereads of TSA in between other books.  I just had from the sranc attack in Cil-Aujas to the end.  Very good, highly recommend.