Spear, by Nicola Griffith

This is a very good after-dinner read, a solid re-telling of one of the Arthurian stories, the tale of Percival (the afterword is very worth reading where Griffith goes into the naming). A historical name for Percival is Peretur, which our protagonist goes by. In this telling Peretur has a secret (though not a plot twist, so I'm not giving anything away)--Peretur started out as a girl, Dawnged or Tal depending on her mother's mood. Peretur's pronouns remain female throughout, she is simply built and destined to be a knight in a circumstance where women aren't knights.

Queer retellings still fill a void, though they are not as new and fresh as they were a decade ago. Now you have to seriously bring the narrative skills in order to expand the space. Nicola Griffith is a master and does this effectively.

Nona the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

It took me forever to read this book. Superlative and plot overload. There is so much going on, and I was able to relate some of it back to the earlier books but the whole thing just never did resolve and make sense to me. Could have to do with it being kind of an impromptu book wedged in between Harrow and Alecto. Nona is kind of a cute character, but I was really distracted trying to relate what she was narrating, and what the others were doing, back to Gideon and Harrow. Gideon Nav appears but is really someone else (happens a lot) and Harrow might be appearing? "Dead" is a term of art, dead people walk around and act pretty much like anyone else (except in John's interludes, which are the most interesting part of the book since they give it a little structure)(are we on Earth for this one?), and the word and idea are used so much, with so many different kinds of fairly animate people, that the word loses its meaning.

Layered snark also loses its effect with repeated use. Again, the other books push the line in interesting ways, but this one just goes over.

There are complex plots and there are confusing ones, and it's a fine line an author has to walk to write a book like this. The other two in the series just barely pulled it off for me, and this one just didn't.

My Goodreads Review