Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Every year or so I feel I ought to try some new poet, and this year I decided to try the slim "first full-length collection" by Ocean Vuong, with the intriguing title Night Sky with Exit Wounds. It came out in 2016, and my copy is an undated fourth printing, so it's evidently been successful, as far as poetry goes. But sadly the book's best moment is the title itself. The rest is drivel, all moments and thoughts very personal to the author, but of little interest for anyone else. So, thirty-five poems spaciously spread over eighty-five pages in a slim book, and it really was a waste of time. A perfect exemplar of why the audience for modern poetry gets smaller and smaller.

Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker

Prosper's Demon is a novella by K.J. Parker, a pseudonym of Tom Holt. It is the tale of a mortal exorcist fighting possessions by immortal demons, in a quasi-medieval setting. The exorcist discovers that the famous self-proclaimed scientific genius, Prosper of Schanz, is possessed by a demon, and the exorcist begins a forbidden collaboration with the demon, seeming to aid the demon's long-term plans because they will outlast the exorcist. The dual between the two is clever, but the story is only moderately successful, and the ending is rather rushed. Prosper's Demon is  darker in ways than the other books by Tom Holt that I've read.

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

Witchmark is the tale of Dr. Miles Singer, secretly a witch who uses his forbidden powers clandestinely to heal people. It is set in an other world modeled after Edwardian England, where there is a great war ongoing between Aeland and Laneer, and the otherworldly beings called Amaranthines have sent a representative to Aeland to figure out what is happening to all the souls of the dying. Dr. Miles Singer was originally Sir Christopher Miles Hensley, part of the (hidden) elite who manage Aeland, who turned his back upon his family (including his sister, to whom he was supposed to be attached as a secondary magical power) and his position in society in order to serve in the war and become a doctor. In Witchmark he develops a quick romance with the Amarathine Tristan Hunter. Witchmark was nominated for Nebula Award, and a Lambda Literary Award (for LGBTQ content), and won the World Fantasy Award for Novel. It's a pleasant read, with not very involved world-building and not very well-drawn characters, and it should not in my view have been a candidate for any major awards. There are two sequels (so far) that I do not feel at all inspired to read.