Book #6: The Kaiju Preservation Society, by John Scalzi: A fun read overall! I like Scalzi because he goes in for the lighthearted indictments of modern society and does it extremely well. It's definitely of its moment for 2021, though, so some of it has aged a bit strangely in the last five years.

Book #5: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: a "what if the UK government had time travel?" novel that inevitably got compared in my head to The Rise And Fall of D.O.D.O., somewhat to its detriment. It's much more introspective but it meant that I could spot the thread a little too easily.

Books 2-4: The Scholomance series by Naomi Novik: a beloved re-read and my hands-down favorite take on "magic boarding school." It's really fun to re-read these because it has some GREAT foreshadowing that really sharpens when you run them back.

Book #1: Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret, by Benjamin Stevenson: technically a holdover from 2025 and my Christmas Episode of reading, part of the Ernest Cunningham series of fair play mysteries. I continue to find them delightful even if I am atrocious at solving the mystery myself.

these are usually lighthearted comedic books so i'm not like. trying to advocate that they need to be grimdark to satisfy their "we're the villains" premise but like... some degree of cartoon villainy would be welcome. make them a necromancer or SOMETHING. literally anything to support the bit.

it feels like 99% of the time none of the characters even have any discernible villainous traits. a good-natured all-loving heroine who is never negative about anything doesn't really read as "evil" just because the narration tells me that she would be ruthless in some hypothetical situation

and it weirdly irks me? it just feels like a waste of the premise, because instead of being the rag-tag heroes fighting the evil king, we're the rag-tag "villains" fighting the "righteous" (but secretly evil and terrible!) king