Fire in the Mist (Holly Lisle)

This story has all kinds of magic, and makes no pretensions of coming up with "scientific" explanations, so it works just fine! A teenager is off tending sheep when everyone in her village is killed by a plague, and her emotional response is so magically powerful the leaders of the world's magical community come searching for her. A country peasant, she doesn't fit very well into the civilized and prejudiced magical university, but they convince her she needs teaching if she's to avoid harming anyone with her untutored power. In her first weeks, a horror from the past arises and threatens to destroy everything, and of course she's the one who winds up saving the day. The story was not the greatest (the end can't square with the beginning, for one thing, and I couldn't convince myself the big schism in the magical world could have persisted as completely as it did for hundreds of years), but still enjoyable enough.

A Discovery of Witches (Deborah Harkness)

I enjoy fantasy stories. This one has witches, vampires, and daemons, all together with humans in the present-day world. I was enjoying it until the author tried to explain everything using science, and missed that mark completely. Within the space of a page or two, she said (1) vampires have an extra pair of chromosomes than humans do; (2) when vampires are made, the maker first drains out all the human's blood and then replaces it with the maker's own blood (no explanation as to how the vampire survives this), and the advanced mutations in the vampire's blood triggers a spontaneous mutation in the DNA of every cell in the human's body (and "something similar happens with human blood transfusions), and (3) the secret to this may be in the "junk DNA" in human cells, which "has to be left over from previous selection, or it's waiting to be used in the next evolutionary change." I stopped reading there. Fantasy I have no trouble with, but this level of really bad science is too cringe-worthy.

The Dervish House (Ian McDonald)

Reading this sprawling, convoluted story wasn't easy, but it was worth it. In a near-future Istanbul, the lives of several people living in the same house come together in unexpected ways. One is a high-powered financial trader working on an almost-legal plan to earn millions. One is a trader in antiquities drawn into the mystical search for a legendary artifact. One is a retired professor of economics and former activist. One is a 9-year-old boy with a disability and a nearly magical robot. One is a woman who came to the city from a small agrarian community determined to make a name for herself in business. One is an empty-hearted drug user who begins seeing visions of djinni and saints. Their story begins with an explosion on a tram, and ends with a monstrous terrorist attack on the city. It was slow going, especially at first, but came together into a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.

Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)

This tragic and gripping post-apocalyptic tale jumps back and forth through the life of young Jimmy who grows into solitary, doomed Snowman. It starts grimly enough, with the world divided into the gated, guarded, isolated Compounds of the elite, and the desolate, chaotic Pleeblands. As Jimmy grows, the world lurches more an more into an ecological disaster. He befriends a cynical genius named Crake, and finally meets Oryx, the object of his childhood fantasies, just as the final catastrophe befalls the human race. The origins of that catastrophe, and how it relates to Crake, Oryx, and the strange people who survive, makes for an enthralling, heartbreaking story.

A Test of Wills (Charles Todd)

A very interesting psychological mystery set in England just after WWI. A well-respected Colonel is murdered in a town in northern England, and evidence seems to point toward an even more highly respected Captain, but nobody wants to consider the possibility that someone who wore the Victoria Cross and had met the King could have committed murder. An Inspector was sent up from London to sort it all out, but he is dealing with demons of his own, as the result of psychological stress from his war service. I admit I figured out one of the big surprises early, but the main mystery was satisfyingly convoluted. I will watch for more from this author.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender)

I loved this strange, compelling story. At the age of nine, Rose discovers that when she eats she can tell the innermost secrets of the people who made the food. Over the years this ability torments her, as she discovers things about her family she wished she didn't know and finds eating anything not made by machine a trial. With her, we discover even deeper family secrets, from her grandparents, through her parents, to her brother. The brother's part of the story was especially meaningful to me; I have a son with Asperger's Syndrome who relates poorly to people and spends most of his time in front of a computer, so Joseph's ordeal almost tore me apart. The air of magic blended perfectly with the reality of how Rose worked out her own successful life. Undeniably tragic, the story held a core of empathy and caring that pulled me in. Highly recommended.

Birds of Paradise (Diana Abu-Jabar)

I abandoned this one half way through. It was a book-club book and I just couldn't get through it before our meeting, and then the others in my book club explained how much they didn't like it, so I just stopped. This story of a family torn apart when the teenage daughter inexplicably just ran off to live on the streets was dark, sad, and depressing. Not for me.