Brother, Sister and their inventor make a strange group. When their inventor is suddenly forced to leave without them, the giant, powerful beings are on their own – and are forced to learn things like morals, and lies. Beautifully written. The ending was a bit weak, but I can't bring myself to care when the rest was so good. Not adding the quotes to the quotes list because they don't make too much sense out of context: “Eve had had the knowledge of good and evil handed to her, but Sister had to create it for herself from first principles, and it went slowly.” “If she could no longer trust herself to speak the truth, that perhaps she would die. Her nanites might also learn to lie and then they would wreak falsehoods upon her metal shell.” This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.

Excuse me, a ninja assassin and an anti-stereotype paladin? I'll have to read the second part right away. Both quippy and touching, manages to strike a balance between excitement and character growth (while admittedly favouring excitement a bit.)

Mona has bread magic, including a semi-sentient sourdough starter and animated gingerbread people. But when magical people start getting persecuted and her city is in danger of being invaded, she has to turn her abilities to the salvation of everbody. This book isn't cosy-in-text – a lot of terrible things happen. But it is cosy-in-intent, in that the terror of these things is acknowledged. This is realistic, of course, but it felt like the pendulum moving too far to the other side, maybe? Or maybe it's just that I'm not the audience anymore. Anyway, cute book, good read. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.