War crimes and winter

[bloodygranuaile]

 In a remarkable move for me, I read a book within a month of it being published! I am never so timely. But in my last batch of things I checked out from the library I included C. L. Polk's Stormsong, the sequel to the utterly charming Witchmark, which just came out in February.

 

Stormsong follows Miles' sister Dame Grace Hensley as she attempts to manage the fallout of the destruction of the aether network, which has left the entire country of Aeland without power. Newly appointed as Chancellor, she has to manage several different parties' political maneuvering, and determine how much of the truth should be allowed to get out--and manage the justifiable outrage that would ensue if it does. Grace's initial political instincts are bred of her class position and are, predictably, extremely cringe; she gets better as the book goes along (which is probably also predictable, but in a good way, because I want to be correct when I predict that a book will tell a good story instead of a bad story). Grace also has the hots for a nosy reporter who used to be an heiress but ran away from her family to be scandalous at a newspaper; perhaps unsurprisingly, Avia Jessup is my favorite character in the book.

 

While this book is sadly lacking in bicycle chases, it's still charming and I was able to devour it pretty quickly. The politics it has are not very subtle, and are solid if not particularly revolutionary, amenable to most modern progressive sensibilities--the shock at the end of the last book has worn off by this one so the depictions of monopoly, corruption, exploitation, climate change, and other hot topics aren't quite as viscerally upsetting. But it's still all very well done, and I'm glad I got to it so fast for once.