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I just took stock of my April reading - a good month for good books.
I was wowed by Laline Paull's The Bees. The book follows the life of an anthropomorphized worker bee. I felt it made a successful balance between analogizing the hive social structure without falling too far into bees-as-people. I've read a bit of scientific writing on bees and other social insects, and the author definitely did a lot of homework.
Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway is set at a school for kids who went to places like Narnia, then came back and need to move on. It's not a perfect book (but it is a short one - 173 pages), but if you've read a lot of portal fantasy it makes enjoyable, thoughtful reading.
I'm starting to think that Ilona Andrews' has hit peak Andrews in the Clean Sweep series and especially this second one, Sweep in Peace. The books center on a Texas innkeeper who caters to intergalactics in an "indistinguishable from magic" universe. Nothing earth-shattering about it, but a lot of genial fun that doesn't take its tropes too seriously.
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