Weekly Update 9-5-2019

Hi, I'm back, like I said I would be.
I started work on a new short story that I'm pretty excited about, although as always we'll see if that goes anywhere. And while I'm still working out the plot of my urban fantasy murder mystery, I'm starting to put together some of the whys and wherefores of the murder itself, which had been a real sticking point.
I have so far managed to read exactly one Agatha Christie novel, and only part of Pride and Prejudice, but I have two others out from the library. I also read Adam, so I could decide for myself what I thought about the controversy surrounding it. Short version: I didn't like it, and it was cringey as hell, but there's meaningful nuance around the parts that are bothering people. I wrote up a whole thing about this on Facebook, and I will crosspost it here sometime this month.
I read Demon Bound, by Caitlin Kitteridge, about which I can say very little without massive spoilers, other than that it seems to start the overarching plot of the series, and I feel unnecessarily called out by Jack as a character. Also What If It's Us, by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, which is exactly the kind of cute, fluffy, self aware mlm romance that I needed more of when I was an actual teenager. And Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, which is an oddly compelling quasi-dystopian YA...thing, and refreshingly unafraid of not always making sense. What we know about the tech doesn't always line up with what we see it do, and the existence of magic is as-yet unconfirmed, although there's a sequel so who knows. It's nifty.
I finally got around to reading The Glasswright's Progress, which goes some way towards addressing the autism question from the first book. I'm still ambivalent, but it did the bare minimum that I needed it to do.
Oh, and I read Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee, which is amazing. I'm not gonna say anything about it here because I'm going to review it later this month, but you should read it. Especially since the review will contain spoilers.
Most recently, I read The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long, which is this weird Tam Lin/Snow White mashup. It sort of works, and gives a decent balance of who rescues whom, but the pacing is super weird, and it's Prince Charming Jack whose heart ends up in a box (or is a box?), while he plays the role of the Huntsman at the same time. And that's actually a really valid consolidation, but we've also got Jenny's brother Tom as our Tam Lin for most of the story, only to have his extraction from Faerie be carried off rather anticlimactically so Jenny can go back and do the final rescue with Jack. (And she will change me in your arms, etc.)
As you can see, I have not been idle during my long absence. If nothing else I've kept up with my reading. The next three books for me to read are gonna be The Unkindest Tide (October Daye), Night Seeker (Indigo Court), and Seawitch (Greywalker). Also there's a new season of Bakeoff out, so I'll likely be getting more writing done than usual.