Not much read this month.
First up was The Ragwitch by Garth Nix, a standalone children’s portal fantasy -- two Australian children are transported to a land of magic and help the goodies defeat the evil Ragwitch of the title. I rarely read YA, let alone books for younger children, but I picked this up on spec from a charity stall since I'd enjoyed a couple of books by Nix, and found it engaging and easy to read.
That was followed by another easy read in the shape of The Knocker on Death’s Door by Ellis Peters, one of a murder mystery/detective novel series written well before she launched the Cadfael books, and very different from them -- set in the then-present day (this one is from 1970), more intricate and involved both in plotting and prose, but without the Cadfael series' engaging characters. A medieval door and its sanctuary knocker newly "returned" to a village church from the local manor house, a dead philandering aristocrat and his now-impoverished family, and some timely murders form the plot, which is well put together. Dated, but not without interest.
I got through those relatively quickly, then spent three weeks inching my way through The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey, which I'd started in 2019, but then couldn't get past the second chapter. A supposedly historical religious thriller-mystery in which the history is abysmal, the religion on show ignores at least two of the most fundamental aspects of Catholic belief and practice, there are no thrills and the mystery is pretty obvious from the start, which is also the end, as the story is told backwards over four days. The author is a tutor in creative writing and by golly is that obvious, and the whole thing rather reinforces my prejudice against literary novels extravagantly praised by the broadsheets where the plot makes no sense and is entirely secondary as to how the MC feels.
Assassin's Quest is still on hold, but I've come back to fantasy with A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham after AndrewT's enthusiastic comments on the series, since I very much enjoyed The Dagger and the Coin series by Abraham last year. Only a couple of chapters in, but very much enjoying it already.