This set of mini-reviews is a little different that others — I’m going to talk about two recently-completed trilogies that I’ve enjoyed since the first books came out. The first is a YA fantasy series where the magical elite, the Grisha, manipulate matter down to the very atom to summon and mold the basic elements in the world. The second is a genre mish-mash that combines a dystopia with a crime procedural to explore big questions about what it means to be human.

I’ve tried to avoid spoilers as best I can, but there may be some hints of developments in the first and second books of each series that I needed to include in order to talk about what I love in each of these trilogies.

The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising

At the beginning of Shadow and Bone, Alina Starkov is a cartographer in the First Army of Ravka, a fictional, Imperial Russian-esque country where magic is possible. Ravka is split down the middle by The Fold, a place of magical darkness that few can safely cross. It soon becomes clear that Alina is more than a cartographer — she is one of the magical Grisha and her power is to summon the sun. As a sun summoner, Alina may have the power to destroy The Fold forever — if she can master her powers with the help of The Darkling, the most powerful Grisha in the world.

There are so many things I love about this series, but the center is always with Alina. She’s a wonderful heroine for this book — snarky, smart and brave but also insecure, impetuous and real. I also love the setting and the world building that author Leigh Bardugo managed throughout the series. The mythology is clean, the rules of the world are set, and the major questions raised in one book are answered in another. I listened to all three on audio book, narrated by Lauren Fortgang, and thought they were stupendous.

One other thing I want to mention is that this book actually has a bit of a love rhombus (square? quadrangle?) between Alina and three other men: her childhood friend Mal, The Darkling, and a Ravkan prince, Nikolai. Normally I’d hate this, but it works well in this series because there are credible reasons that Alina would chose or reject each of these men that are more serious than just their inability to be honest with each other (as seems to be the case in many YA love triangles). Alina and Mal, for example, have learn how their relationship changes when Alina is no longer dependent on Mal and when she has to make choices about the responsibilities of her power. I love the way it shows that teenage relationships can have real conflict.

If you enjoy fantasy novels, this is a series I highly recommend.

The Last Policeman Trilogy by Ben H. Winters

The Last Policeman, Countdown City, and World of Trouble

As I was trying to figure out what to say about this series, I realized by original review of The Last Policeman pretty much sums it up: “The Last Policeman has a lot of the character-driven, introspective sorts of features that you get in literary fiction because of the overarching problem of a world-ending catastrophe, but adds a whodunit murder mystery on top that keeps our main character and the story from bogging down too much in those philosophical questions. Ben H. Winter’s writing is quite lovely — very noir, without being over-the-top — and Peter Berkrot’s narration captures the gritty idealism that drives Hank Palace to keep on keeping on in the midst of the end of the world.”

But that’s not to say that the books are static in any way. One of the things I loved about this series is the way the major questions change in each book as the end of the world approaches. What is the point of solving murders when we’re all doomed? What is the point of being civilized when civilization is crumbling? What do we owe the people we love, and how would we spend our last days on earth? Hank stays remarkably, wonderfully consistent, but the demons he battles with change in each story.

Having just finished World of Trouble a few days ago, I can confidently that Winters absolutely sticks the landing of this trilogy. This is another highly recommended series.

Disclosure: I purchased all three books in The Grisha Trilogy and the first two books in The Last Policeman Trilogy. I received a copy of World of Trouble from the publisher for review consideration. 

Briefly // Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes on last week’s Currently post. I had a nice day off on Monday and a generally chill day on my actual birthday, Tuesday. Twenty eight is gearing up to be a good year.

Time and Place // About 8:45 a.m. at my desk. This weekend is our annual city festival, so this is the first time I’ve really had time to sit down in front of a computer in the last couple of days.

Eating // An apple and Zhena’s Ultimate Green green tea.

Reading // Despite having a crazy week at work (putting in time in the evening four out of five weekdays), I managed to get a lot of reading done. I finished up a couple of collected volumes of Y:The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn (awesome, can’t wait for the rest to come for me at the library). I also finished World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters (out Tuesday from Quirk Books — loved it) and How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer (enjoyed it a lot — weirder than I was expecting). I’m in the middle of Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and, so far, I’m loving that too.

Listening // I’ve been on a major fiction kick over the last month, so I decided to get into some nonfiction with my audio books. I used one of my Audible credits to get Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and so far I absolutely love it.

Watching // The boyfriend and I went to see Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt after the folks on the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast gave it a “pretty hearty thumbs-up.” We both really liked it, especially as a smart, action-packed summer blockbuster type of movie. I especially loved that the entire film didn’t focus on destroying things a la every superhero movie in the last three years.

Buying // This is a new “-ing” for this post to share some of the books I’ve been acquiring. This week I bought The Rook by Daniel O’Malley on the recommendation of a friend and The Shining Girls by Laura Beukes because her upcoming book, Broken Monsters, has been getting so much buzz among the writers over at Book Riot.

Blogging // This week I shared a post on books about life in the business of death (all great reads). I’m also hosting a giveaway of Knocking on Heaven’s Door by Katy Butler (big thanks to Katy for contacting me and offering to send five paperbacks to winners).

Promoting // I thought this piece from the New York Times about the ongoing dispute between Hatchette and Amazon was a good read — pretty fair to the arguments on the many sides of this issue.

Avoiding // I’ve been trying to get back into my One Little Word (curate) over the last couple of months. In June I put myself on a strict spending freeze and was happy with how that went. This month I’m experimenting with a social media freeze on my cell phone. Instead of browsing Twitter or Tumblr of Facebook when I’m bored and waiting, I’m going to try catching up on articles I’ve saved or reading a few pages in an ebook. I’ll keep you posted.

Loving // The high temperature today is only supposed to get into the mid-70s. That is beautiful July weather and will make covering a parade this afternoon so much more enjoyable.

Wanting // I’m so behind on comments. I wish I could just be caught up. I may have to admit defeat and start over from today.

Anticipating // I’m hoping that this week’s work schedule will be a little less brutal — I think it will be, but in the news business you can never quite tell. Fingers crossed!

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?

On Wednesday, I shared a post with three books on the business of death. After the post went up, Katy Butler, author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, contacted me about doing a giveaway of the book here at the blog. I loved the book (here’s my review from last September) and think the book should get into more hands, so gladly accepted her offer.

Katy is offering five paperback copies of Knocking on Heaven’s Door to readers in the United States. I also decided to provide one additional ebook version of the book as giveaway to international readers for a total of six copies of the book.

When you fill out the giveaway form, it’ll ask you to choose one giveaway to enter — please pick the one that best fits where you live so the ebook can be exclusively for readers who can’t have a book shipped to them. Thanks in advance for playing fairly.

Anyway, if you’re interested in entering a giveaway for a paperback or ebook version of Knocking on Heaven’s Door, please fill out this form. The giveaway will be open until the end of the day next Friday. Happy weekend!

This post originally appeared on Book Riot. In “Buy, Borrow, Bypass,” Book Riot contributors give brief reviews of their recent reads and advise whether you should buy, borrow, or bypass them.

I’ve always had a bit of a dark streak in my reading life. I love a good true crime story and often pick up memoirs with a bit of illness or tragedy. Recently, I’ve been on a kick for books about life in the business of death. I’m curious how our funeral industry operates and, even more, curious about how we can better prepare for the decisions that come at the end of our lives. With that in mind, here are three memoirs by women with some unique experiences living with death.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (And Other Lessons from the Crematory) by Caitlin Doughty (September 14 from W.W. Norton)

In her early 20s, Caitlin Doughty, a medieval history major fascinated by death, took a job at a family owned mortuary in California. Although she had no experience operating a crematory, Doughty’s odd enthusiasm for the work (and for learning about how people deal with death) makes for a really great memoir. Doughty peppers the book with historical facts about death and early ‘90s pop culture references (Pogs! Puppy Surprise!) that maintain a sense of dark, irreverent humor throughout the story. But behind the humor (and lets be real, entirely disgusting descriptions about what can happen when a body is burned up), Doughty makes a strong case for changing our relationship with the dead. The funeral industry, Doughty argues, has encouraged our fear of death and dying by sanitizing what happens to our bodies after we die and shifting the care of our dead from families to professionals. This book made me laugh, cringe and think.

Verdict: Buy, if you have a strong stomach and irreverent sense of humor. Otherwise, bypass.

Knocking on Heaven’s Door by Katy Butler

In 2010, Katy Butler wrote a wonderful, devastating piece for the New York Times Magazine called “What Broke My Father’s Heart.” In the essay, Butler shares the story of her father’s life after a severe stroke. At one point, in order to complete a relatively simple surgery, doctors fitted her father with a pacemaker. This pacemaker kept his heart beating strongly while his mind and the rest of his body began to fail. In this memoir, Butler extends out the threads of argument in her essay, making a persuasive case that medicine’s culture of over-intervention is taking away our choice to die with dignity and increasing the overall cost of treatment. The book is well-researched and approaches these issues fairly, but Butler also doesn’t hide her simmering outrage and the way the medical establishment let her father down at the end of his life. It’s an incredible piece of work.

Verdict: Read “What Broke My Father’s Heart.” If the essay moves you, buy this book. If not, borrow or bypass.

Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner City Funeral Home by Sheri Booker

At 15, Sheri Booker talked her way into a part-time job at a funeral home West Baltimore. For nine years, Booker learned lessons from from the business’ caring, temperamental owner, Al, and his charming son, Brandon. Along the way, Booker learned to steel her heart to the tragedy of caring for the dead – many of them young, black men killed as a result of gang violence in the city. Like Doughty, Booker also has a sense of dark humor about life in the business of death, but parts of this memoir fell a little flat for me. I wish that Booker had dug a little deeper into the stories of the people she worked with, especially Al, who turned his life from being a street hustler to funeral director. The memoir is good, but was just a little short of being great.

Verdict: Borrow

There many other great books on this subject I wish I could have included like We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down by Rachael Hanel, Stiff by Mary Roach, and The Restless Sleep by Stacy Horn. Commenters on Book Riot also suggested The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch, and The Corpse: A History by Christine Quigley. I’d love to get even more recommendations in the comments!