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Henry Thompson is living the life of a fugitive in Mexico, where his stolen money goes a lot further than in the US. And where he's a lot safer. Until a Russian shows up, recognizes him, and tries to collect the money. Henry survives the encounter, but concocts a plan to return to the US.

So thus begins the new descent, which follows a lot of the same plot elements as book 1. Multiple groups chasing Henry for money he doesn't have in his possession but which he could theoretically lead them to. Bad guys betraying other bad guys. People getting killed, many of them by Henry himself.

The main differences this time? Henry doesn't feel quite as bad as before when he hurts people. And instead of being chased through the streets of New York, he's being chased from Mexico to California to Las Vegas.

Still fun, but doesn't feel as new.

I gave myself a comfort reread of this book to remember again how much I enjoy it. It's still great.

Winter's Orbit is a queer romance / science fiction book. Personally, I think folks who like one genre but don't read the other would enjoy this book, but in practice it seems like the combination seems to make folks bounce from the idea. I wonder if perhaps this is why nobody else seemed intrigued to read this for hashtag SFFBookClub. Also, the romance is largely PG rated, if that's important to you one way or the other.

The plot hook is that reticent and duty-bound Count Jainan has recently lost his husband; in order to politically preserve an interplanetary treaty, he is quickly remarried to easygoing and irresponsible Prince Kiem. When Kiem's friendly overtures are rebuffed, Kiem tries to give Jainan space to mourn and not push him or through his silences; meanwhile, traumatized Jainan (who believes himself at fault for everything) feels pushed away but also that he deserves to be.

One trope that can frustrate me in a lot of romances is where two characters don't communicate and I feel like I need to yell "why won't y'all just talk to each other". Here, it feels less that these two don't talk, so much as they continually try, but end up talking past each other and making bad assumptions about why it's going poorly. This dynamic manages to work for me because the writing makes it believable why both of them think what they're thinking and why they don't push each other for better understandings. (But, I could also see this not working for some readers!)

The afterword mentions that this is a book that came from fanfic, and between how grippy it is to read and its use of some popular tropes, I think it shows (in a positive way). It opens with arranged marriage and there is definitely a scene with only one tent. (I don't know which fandom this is meant to have come from.)

But I also think saying this book comes from a fanfic undersells it. What I love is how solidly it intertwines the developing relationship between Kiem and Jainan with the developing space politics. For plot reasons, these two need to uncover the truth around the details of the death of Jainan's former husband, but this also results in uncovering Jainan's traumas and fears. Being vague for spoiler reasons, but the climax of the book has Jainan wrestle with being gaslit about his past, having to trust Tiem, working through his insecurities, and holding true to the strong parts of himself; and all this directly in the context of solving the space politics plot. It's this moment in particular where this book really melds these two genres together perfectly.

Or maybe he's just a dick, I dunno. Certainly the Harry Dresden character reads like a self-insert character and he's a bit of a dick. Anyway, the ups:

Talking cats! Who save the day. And frankly they were written very well. Obviously Butcher knows and loves cats. Could have used more cat action.

Kickass ladies all over the place.

Great airship battle writing. That was fun.

An intriguing setting.

The downs:

The intriguing setting not well-explored or adequately explained. Humanity has been living in spires for at least 2,000 years, and the surface of the planet is basically uninhabitable. Full of strange, dangerous creatures that become maddened by a slight taste of human blood. OK... but why is one spire "Albion" (blegh, read the Book of Koli for why this is barf-worthy) and one spire "Aurora" and why are the clearly stand-ins for the British Empire and the Spanish Empire?

In this vein, the power sources in this book are basically magical crystals that seem to have some kind of consciousness, which means that the airships they power can be thought of as discrete sentient beings, which offers intriguing potential for exploring nonhuman awareness and suchlike things, but all that happens is that a girl learns to talk to a ship and the ship is like "My captain is so cool" and the girl is like "Yeah he is" and that's the extent of it.

A bit too long. Action needs pauses sometimes, and there was rather too much time spent with the antagonists of the story. This could have been OK if there weren't so many overlapping protagonist POV storylines interweaving throughout. Edit! Edit!

I don't FULLY regret the time I spent reading it because it was an audiobook, and the narrator did a great job, and mostly I was doing other things at the same time. But if I'd sat down and read it I'd be annoyed.

I can tell where Butcher is going with the sequels, but I'm not going to follow him there - I don't care enough about the characters.