Extremely Local Comic Books Day

Went over to C&G's house for the now-traditional (in that we've done it twice) discussion of potential Hugo nominees and opportunity for me to browse/skim/read in their graphic novel collection. I was reminded that Aliette de Bodard's Xuya universe is series-eligible (and I want to nominate it even though I haven't read the most recent installment yet; I've enjoyed a bunch of them and I'm sure I'll get there eventually) and that Sacha Lamb's The Forbidden Book counts as a YA.

Some comics:

When I Arrived at the Castle, Emily Carroll. I like Carroll's work but this was just too surreal and oblique, over the line for me into my not being able to make heads or tails of it at all. :(

Plain Jane and the Mermaid, Vera Brosgol. I'm a long-time Brosgol fan (going back to Return to Sender) and this was cute and fun and delightful and I'm adding it to my nominations.

Young Hag and the Witches' Quest, Isabel Greenberg. This has gone onto the to-read list but I wanted to mention the exciting new experience I had of picking up a comic and finding the text was too small for me to read comfortably. :( Hoopla tells me my library's collective daily borrow limit will reset at midnight and I'm hoping I can read it in my browser and just embiggen it as much as I want. Plan B involves my reading glasses, which I have hitherto only used for sewing.

The Deep Dark, Molly Ostertag. I read the first ~30 pages of this and I am *so hooked*.

Swordcrossed

Swordcrossed, Freya Marske, 2024 novel. This is a classic sweaterboy/absolute nightmare romance novel set in a vaguely-early-modern secondary universe (or maybe I mean late medieval?) with a plot centered around rivalries between merchant families in the wool industry. Is that romantasy, or does romantasy specifically have to have magical elements, or even more specifically nonhuman love interests? Anyways, if you wanted Swordspoint to be cozier, this is the book for you. "High Heat. Low Stakes. Crossed Steel." as it says on the cover. (I really liked it but I am pretty much exactly who this book was catering to. People on goodreads were like "too many wool facts" and here I am delighted by a book where I can read dudes banging and falling in love and also learn some wool facts. I would read one of these a year set in a different late medieval industry until the end of time, or until running out of industries forced the introduction of the industrial revolution and the world got less fun.)