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Chosen. Again. by J. Emery

She saved the kingdom once. She didn't expect there to be a repeat performance. At sixteen, Ari fell into a portal and found herself in Callaria, a magical alternate world in need of a hero. So she did the coming-of-age quest. She saved the kingdom and kissed the farmboy turned King. And when she was done... she went home. She never forgot about her time in Callaria. It never forgot her either, and now thirteen years later, she's back. Drafted into the role of Champion once more, Ari discovers that magic doesn't mean freedom from consequences. Her actions a decade ago caused ripples that didn't go away when she did. The gawky apprentice wizard she once called a friend is now a cynical Royal Wizard with a penchant for floor length velvet robes and dangerous secrets. Her magic sword is giving her the silent treatment. The evil ruler she thought she defeated is living in the dungeon, making cryptic predictions that sound a little too much like fact. The farmboy turned King...
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Beneath The Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children, #3)

Beneath the Sugar Sky attempts to fix something broken before it loses all possibility of ever being right again. There's a sense of urgency defined by absence rather than presence; tension created by what ought to be but is not.

The world-building is fantastic, both for the specific places they visit and for what those places say about the multiverse as a whole. It moves along with the best answers we have for now and then tells the reader new answers as the characters discover them. It made it feel like discovering something wonderful along with people who know enough to be guides while still having a sense of awe at every new thing.

This returns to the setting of the first book to advance what looks like it will be the main narrative of the series, tracing the lives of the children at the school during their tenure (while the even numbered books tell more about people during the time they did not reside there). I knew a little of that structure but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of settings in this one. The school is a locus but it doesn't constrain the story at all, getting out of the way so that we could have a quest this time. I like seeing different sides of old characters and meeting some brand new ones.

CW for (internalized) fatphobia and references to dieting.

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Purple clouds in a blue sky over a pink soda sea with a slightly open door hovering in the middle

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