graculus

What I've recently finished reading:

Europe at Midnight and Europe in Winter, the second and third of the Fractured Europe Sequence by Dave Hutchinson. The first was a reread (and again, I was surprised at how much I'd forgotten in the 10 years since I read it the first time), but I really enjoyed the SF aspect of

spoiler for the cool reveal at the end of the first book, which is explored in the second book

the Community existing as a private England overlaying Europe in another dimension; the idea of the map (somehow) becoming the territory is just fascinating!

The third book went into more detail about Rudi's family background, and about how the actual mechanism of [spoiler] is basically the biggest and most important secret in the world, and about the Coureurs and their function.

I actually requested this for Yuletide, and one of my prompts was "worldbuilding - what's happening in the US?" and...one character meets with someone who has a Texas passport, so, there's a whole lot hinted at by that tiny detail right there!

What I'm currently reading:

Europe at Dawn, the finale of the series. This one feels more like various vignettes set in this universe, though I expect everything will come together eventually. I do like how the Situations that the Coureurs handle are all matter-of-fact cloak-and-dagger: a woman walks up to our POV character and says something fairly banal, and he responds with a similar sentence; when she's gone, he finds a slip of paper in his pocket with the name of a hotel in another city; he goes there and checks in, and there's another slip of paper in the bedside Bible; he finds the car with the number plate on that paper and he gets in and drives across the border and leaves it in the parking lot of a certain cafe, then he takes the train home. It's all very mysterious! and fun! (and leaves me wondering why go to all that trouble to hide things in places in so many steps, but...)

(B is reading the Fourth Wing series and enjoying it. I'm kind of gobsmacked.)

What I started watching and abandoned:

The Fall of the House of Usher, which, okay I liked the transposition to a very modern gothic story about the Sackler pharmaceutical empire a family which developed and heavily marketed an extremely addictive opioid, but I am not a fan of horror and gore and shows in which everybody is a horrible person. We lasted 3 episodes.

What I'm watching now:

Season 3 of The Diplomat, which got off to a magnificent and twisty-turny start!