There are four kinds of Orha in the Queendom of Nenamor: Mudmouths, Sparkmouths, Gustmouths, and Floodmouths, like Corith and her best friend, Zennia. They’re wards of the state, destined at age 18 for a mandatory service placement. A month ago, Zennia was sent to be the Floodmouth at House Shearwater, which like all noble houses keeps a set of one of each Orha type. Now it’s Corith’s birthday, and to her horror, her placement is House Shearwater. No noble house would keep two Floodmouths—and Corith’s terrible suspicions are confirmed: Zennia died in “an unfortunate accident.” At House Shearwater, she has occasional important magical tasks but is mostly engaged in menial labor. Surprisingly, the nobles make enslaved Orha mages perform tasks such as fetching water from the well and mopping floors. But Corith isn’t bored—she’s received a secret note promising information about Zennia’s fate, found a letter in code that Zennia left for her, and been recruited by local rebels. Throw in some cute noble boys, counterfeit magical jewelry, political intrigue, and illicit pamphlets espousing Orha rights, and the result is so many plot points that character development gets short shrift in the sometimes clunky prose. In this primarily white world, Corith is cued white.

Things are turning around after the dashing of Kerrigan’s dreams of becoming a dragon rider for another house. Through her relationship with Fordham, heir to the House of Shadows, she’s found belonging. To finalize her membership, she’ll have to travel home with him and be accepted by his father, King Samael Ollivier—but the House of Shadows is known to be especially cruel to humans and the half-Fae. In addition to swearing fealty to the king and developing a necessary (but inexplicably missing) bond with her dragon, Tieran, Kerrigan must also complete a year of training with Tieran. She also has to outrun the machinations of the Red Masks, a terrorist organization hellbent on erasing humans and half-Fae from society. The plot has many threads to follow and features few action scenes and a preponderance of dialogue that doesn’t always further the story; much of the time, the dragons aren’t central to either the conversations or the situations. As in the previous book, there’s a questionable age gap between teenage Kerrigan and an adult man she’s in a romantic relationship with (Fordham’s age is ambiguous, but Kerrigan assumes that he isn’t “as young as she” is). This element, a lot of alcohol-fueled partying, and some explicit sexual interludes make the intended audience difficult to identify. Kerrigan and Fordham read white.

This freewheeling tour of human history and psychic life—by a professor of political science at the University of Chicago—invites us to think about our inner beings. The human “self” is no real thing out there, Oliver argues, but rather a complex construction of social, religious, and political institutions. The ancient Greek dictum, “know thyself,” really meant something more like “know your place”—know what your role is in the world and in the cosmos. So, too, Eastern religious traditions do not offer up a vision of an inner being as much as they guide ways of living in a changing world. Oliver interlards reflections on psychology and history with personal accounts of growing up and learning yoga. He weighs in, sometimes judiciously, sometimes superficially, on such current debates as the role of medication in mental health, the possibilities and pitfalls of psychedelics, the history of psychotherapy, and the rewards of meditation. “We’re typically the authors of our own distress,” he writes. Owning that authorship becomes the start of self-discovery. Oliver admits that his book is “an odd hybrid…part applied philosophy, part popular science, part intellectual history, and part ‘thinking person’s self-help’ book.” Based on a class he has taught at the University of Chicago, the book captures the tone of the charismatic professor. His advice will remain familiar to many: accept life’s challenges, don’t panic, think of others, go with the flow. He offers, ultimately, a vision of “transcendent loving”: “deliberately confronting our limitations” and “striving to rise above ourselves.” The final lesson of the book is “letting go,” to live courageously with life’s uncertainties.

The adopted daughter of an artist and his high-born wife, Winifred Cunningham has made peace with her childhood as an abandoned orphan and found contentment with her chosen family in Regency England. She is hoping that she can soon start another one with her friend Owen Ware, a younger brother of the Earl of Stratton. But when she meets another of his brothers, Nicholas, a colonel in the cavalry, her reaction to him makes her reevaluate what her heart truly desires. Nicholas knows it’s past time he marries and Grace Haviland, his commanding officer’s daughter, seems like the right choice—a woman of beauty and refinement who understands the military life. But his encounters with Win, who loves children and has no artifice, call forth a buried longing for the kind of passionate spousal affection he sees between many of his relatives. Despite their age difference of 13 years, both realize that their connection is special. Except for some minor tension while ensuring that the previous objects of Win and Nicholas’ affection are not harmed, there is no conflict in the plot. Much of the story takes place at a lengthy house party where Win and Nicholas end up conversing and understanding each other beyond their initial impressions—hers of him as a trained killer and his of her being plain and plainspoken. The novel’s events are preceded by a note from the author explaining the various characters from both their families whose courtships appeared in the Ravenswood and Westcott series, and the last fifth of the book feels like a list of the same people as they assemble for Win and Nicholas’ wedding. While some readers might find the low stakes and off-page sex make for an undemanding comfort read, others might be turned off by the leisurely pacing and scenes of rural socializing.

As part of a four-book series, this volume recounts the production side of both types of Japanese storytelling media, beginning with a short section on the origin of film and moving on to animation technologies with a specific focus on Japan. Next, readers learn about the typical career paths of mangaka (manga authors and illustrators), the major publishing houses, and the production cycle of anime, including how it’s adapted for international audiences. Bolte covers the common artistic styles, which include features like big eyes and range from cutesy (chibi and kawaii) to more realistic. Finally, the author closes by looking at other related formats—feature films, light novels (which are originally released in serialized form), and video games. The sidebars and photo captions highlight pertinent case studies and explore topics such as overworked artists, how the racial identity of characters is interpreted by some non-Japanese audiences, and the career of Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy. Written in an approachable style, the book includes seminal examples that serve as reading and viewing suggestions for new fans or greatest-hits montages for those in the know. Both types of readers will glean some insider knowledge in this work that’s aimed at Western audiences and assumes some previous knowledge of anime and manga.