The Glass Slide World takes places roughly twenty years after the events in The Naturalist Society. The story follows Ava, Beth and Bran's child who was conceived in the first book. She is studying to be a doctor and has an interest in microbiology. She also has arcane taxonomy powers like her parents.

Arcane Taxonomists draw power (like magic but not quite) from nature. Ava draws her power from the small: insects, fungi, bacteria, etc. This type of power is known as arcane practia. She's one of the first to draw power from life forms you cannot see or touch. She is often looked down upon by other Arcane Taxonomists for this, including her family.

While on a medical research trip her boat is taken over by pirates. Ava, and her unlikely group of new friends, have to stop the pirates and uncover their plans. In the course of doing so Ava learns a lot about herself, her powers, and her new friends.

I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review (thank you NetGalley).

I'll start off this time with what didn't work for me, the first being Ava's practica. This was driving most of her decisions throughout the book but it was undeveloped. I can appreciate that she draws power from the small, often microscopic world (I myself have some experience in molecular biology and microbiology is an interest of mine!). And I didn't expect it to be the same type of practica as book one, which was rooted in ornithology. But for a story called The Glass Slide World there wasn't nearly as much microbiology influencing her arcane powers as I'd expected. And when Ava started to get powerful with her practica it didn't feel like it had anything to do with bacteria. It was honestly confusing to me, and it felt like the rules that had been established in book one didn't apply to Ava.

There was also a subplot about a series of dime novels written about the fantastical adventures of Bran and Anton, Ava's biological dad and step dad. While entertaining, they felt out of place and didn't add anything to the main plot. If anything, they may have added to make the page count larger.

Moving on to what I did like! I enjoyed the writing immensely. It is very soothing and the voice and tone are perfect for this kind of book. Carrie Vaughn is a delightful and talented writer. I also thought the characters were interesting and unique from one another. I loved how Ava's interactions with them shaped her own character growth. The pacing was pretty good too - the scene with the pirates was awesome! It added that layer of adventure that this book needed to balance out the science and self-discovery.

If The Naturalist Society was a 3.75 out of 5 (I rounded up to 4 stars) then The Glass Slide World has got to be 3 stars for me. I did enjoy it and would continue the series if more are on the horizon. While it was ambitious to try and link microbiology and magic it didn't quite hit the mark.

This is an excellent sequel to Vaughn's The naturalist Society. It focuses on Beth's now grown daughter as she tries to find her place in the world. This fast- paced novel takes her on a sea voyage, where she encounters pirates, international political intrigue, and the impacts of war, all while trying to bring her emergent powers as an arcane taxonomist under control. The main story alternates with chapters of a fictional account of her adventurer father and step father, which tends to slow the story down a bit, but ultimately is fine.

I loved the first book and was excited to be back in this magical scientific world as Vaughn’s writing style is lyrical, cozy and welcoming. The plot was well paced and I found that the mysterious behavior of Ava’s shipmates kept me guessing at their true intentions.

I enjoyed watching Ava blossom as she struggled to breakout free from the shadow of her famous family and learn to embrace her own abilities. How she became aware that small, quiet, often overlooked elements can be just as powerful as grand displays.

I did find the whole “international intrigue” and the characters involved to be a bit distracting. I wanted more about Ava, her developing abilities and her developing relationships. I felt like I was teased with possibilities of burgeoning friendship and/or romance and then just left hanging.

Overall I enjoyed the story and think readers who like alternative history, scientific discovery and high seas adventures will enjoy it as well.

It was a fine historical fantasy book, very smooth and easy reading.
I like the world, it's an interesting naturalist/magic system. I like the choice of not having a romance in it, it felt right to the character and that's refreshing in today's fantasy scene. In general, I found many of the ideas interesting, but I just wish Ava had been more of a hero of her own story. As it was, I felt like she was just being pushed and pulled by the plot into many directions, but that the big plot points were basically exterior to her and didn't touch her emotionally. The emotional beats were entirely apart from the actual happenings, which felt like a strange choice.
This book remains a pleasant book to read to change your mind, cozy and fast to read.

A great new series, mixing science and magic in a unique way. Kept me reading until late - and I'm sorry it's an ARC, because now I need to wait longer for the next installment!

Disclaimer: I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’ll start with what I enjoyed. The author is a good writer, and the words flowed smoothly. The concept is unique and not something I’ve seen before: kind of a mixture of magic and science. I also haven’t seen a lot of novels that focus in on microbiology around the turn of the 19th century. I like a historical setting and so altogether it was very intriguing as a concept.

But sadly, as a whole, I had a hard time engaging in and enjoying this novel.

I believe the main reason for this was due to a general sense of ‘vagueness’ throughout the book. Ava’s journey of self-discovery was... muddy at best. Because her own experience was confusing and overwhelming, it translated to me as to the reader. There's nothing wrong with going through something like this, but she never once reached a larger point of understanding - and that was frustrating for me. I think I understood what the author was going for, but it left a film of confusion over the entire experience.

Another place of ambiguity was with the actual concept of Arcane Taxonomy. I didn’t read the first novel, so perhaps it was fleshed out better in that book. But since this was the book I read, I would have appreciated a clearer description of what it involved within these pages..

What I did discover from reading is, simply put, that some people have an ability to take on certain traits of the natural world. Most commonly, from living creatures. Want to make fire? Think about an electric eel. Need to see what’s happening halfway across the world? Borrow the eyeballs of a Tern. How does one do that? Couldn’t tell you. What are the limits and boundaries of this ability? Unsure, to be honest.

It seems that the abilities can only be used for moments. And there are people who are better at it, so naturally there’s a ranking system. But outside of this, I was never given a deep understanding of what Arcane Taxonomy was. It was just... there. And the concept was so vast and spoken of so casually that it became rather uninspiring. For building two novels upon this notion, I would have hoped to seen more comprehensive development.

Secondly: I found Ava to be a bland main character. She wasn’t unpleasant by any means. But she had almost zero strong opinions or feelings. A couple of times it was said that “she’d try not to be furious” or “she was preparing to be angry”. But never once did she actually land there. Come on, girl! Just feel something for once! And beyond that, she shrugged her shoulders at nearly every morally wrong or questionable occurrence. Except for war, I suppose.

And finally, the Gilda/Gordon storyline was absolutely mind-boggling and strange. That’s not to even mention the ‘throuple’ parenting situation Ava stems from... Laying down 2025 culturally acceptable morals onto a story set in 1902 is incredibly confusing, unnecessary, and distracting.

This book will likely be enjoyed by many, but ultimately I don’t believe I was the right audience for this story.

Synopsis: Through identifying and classifying the world, Scientists have discovered Arcane taxonomy, giving them the ability to harness the power of nature. Incanting "Bubo scandiacus" gives one the hearing of a Snowy Owl, “Piranga olivacea" sets things ablaze like the feathers of the Scarlet Tanager.
For Arcanist and (almost) medical doctor Miss Ava Stanley, her fascination lies with bacteria - fauna thought useless for Arcane practicum by the science community and her famous Arcanist explorer parents.
But when Ava's first science expedition is overtaken by pirates and the ship and it's passengers taken hostage, she comes to realise how important bacteria are for an Arcanist when fighting for survival.

Review: I loved how this book embraced the microscopic world, with each chapter named after a microorganism, and Ava's exploration of the tiny world around her seamlessly tying the story with scientific names and life histories. However, the plot felt like multiple "adventures" rapidly squeezed into one book so none felt climactic or like we'd reached the story's purpose.

With thanks to NetGalley and the Publishers for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Note: spoilers redacted here. See Goodreads or Storygraph for full review.

I'm sad that I didn't enjoy this book more. I mostly loved book 1 (except for the romance) because of the focus on the history of taxonomy and the field of natural history. The whole story was neatly tied together in that context, with a magical realism spin on history. This sequel was a bit of a letdown for me personally, for a few reasons:

* The subplot felt random and out of place. I wasn't particularly interested in reading an unrelated mystery story about deception. And the fact that Ava stayed with the rest of the group for that long seemed unrealistic.
* In book 1, I loved the interludes that painted real historical figures in natural history and taxonomy with a magical realism brush. I loved that so much. It spoke to my soul as a systematic biologist and zoologist by training. The interludes in this book, in contrast, are [spoiler redacted], and it felt unnecessary and also random. I don't get the point of it.
* Writing one of the women as suddenly [spoiler redacted] out of nowhere at the end of the book was, again, totally random and felt like it was thrown in there because the author wanted to check more boxes of including every possible hot sociopolitical topic. Look, I am relatively progressive on social issues personally, but I'm gonna be frank that this duology of books kind of read to me like [spoilers redacted]. I would say that the social issue content distracts a lot from the story, but I don't really think that's entirely a fair assessment because who am I to say what the "main story" is here?

What I thought was great:
* Depictions of how science slowly came to understand the world of microbiota and how microbes can cause disease. This was fantastic, same as the focus on natural history in book 1.
* Similarly, I appreciated the acknowledgements in this story that studying microbes and fungi is just as important as the "charismatic megafauna" like birds, and how this hasn't always been (and still isn't always) appreciated.

Digital ARC received from the publisher and the author via NetGalley.

A fitting sequel to The Naturalist Society! While I had a few quibbles, it was overall a very enjoyable read and definitely one I would recommend.

I liked how we delved more into Arcane Taxonomy as a study and how it would have evolved with the advancement of science and medical care.

Ava was a funny lead, with a good balance of witty banter and poignant reminisces of identity and purpose. I do wish she had more depth of thought in regard to plot events throughout the book. She seems to just be taken along for the ride because the reader isn’t really experiencing her perspective on events. Plus, for all her talk of Arcane Taxonomy being a science, she uses it in a very unscientific manner.

Compared to the previous book, I think having one POV may have held it back? Though I understand why, I couldn’t help but think that chapters from Gilda’s POV diving into her story would have been intriguing. She felt a little too blank for someone whose journey Ava seems to be watching so closely. Despite that, I felt like the side characters in the story were a touch more developed than in the previous book and held their own through the story.

Without giving too much away, the romance “subplot” felt a little too on the nose after the first book. It kind of made me wonder if this is a thing in all of the author’s book…? And the ending was a little too… IDK, I don’t like when books try and wink at a sequel like that, especially hinting to a plot that feels a little farfetched. This is just me being picky however.

If you enjoy alternative history fantasy, you can’t go wrong with The Glass Slide World.

I love how the story follows the child we got to know at the end of the first book. Altouhg the characters from the first book aren't prominently there - it's also not like they are completely gone from the story. Even less with the funny parts within the story that refer to books written about our two 'heroes' from the last book.

Competent, rather than thrilling. That's even true of the interpolated excerpts from the pulp fictionalization of the main character's two fathers; it's both more competent and less thrilling than real pulp fiction of the era. I think the lack of thrillingness, despite pirates and conspiracies and spies and disease outbreaks and the threat of a selfish person causing World War I to break out early because of an obsession with wealth, is down largely to three things.

Firstly, the main character, Ava, is not obviously emotional about any of it. Now, I yield to nobody in my liking for a level-headed, sensible, pragmatic female character rather than an emotional mess, but they should still obviously feel something, and I never got much of an emotional sense off Ava. I'm not sure if that's the character or the narration style, which is matter-of-fact throughout.

Secondly, there's no real driving plot question. (Some spoilers in this paragraph for a not-very-exciting plot; you really won't lose much tension by reading them.) <spoiler>Ava goes off on a self-assigned scientific expedition to Nassau, pirates randomly occur for reasons not connected with her, she and her fellow passengers and some of the crew deal with that, she ends up in what is now South Africa (then the Cape Colony) and there's a need for someone with medical training, which she has, at a concentration camp left over from the Boer War, so she deals with that, meanwhile noping out of the whole spies-and-international-intrigue plot which lay behind the pirates. Then she goes home and passes her medical exams (implausibly learning the results on the same day). The end. </spoiler>

Thirdly, the magic system is super loose and non-Sandersonian. The premise is that naturalists, by understanding nature, gain the ability to access powers that the creatures they study have, but a lot of it seems to be dependent on imagination, and while Ava insists that it's science (though not an exact science) and that it's not magic, it's totally magic. Her particular area of study is small and microscopic organisms, so her family think it's lacking in power, but it's really not.

Some of it is pretty dubious, too. At one point, needing a way to sterilize things in a field hospital, Ava turns water into alcohol using the power of yeast. Except yeast can't turn plain water into alcohol; alcohol has carbon atoms in it, and you need a source for those. Ava also learns to scry using bacteria, which are everywhere, and even has a vision of the future, feebly justified by the chain of life stretching through time as well as space.

The magic can do pretty much anything, and we don't know in advance what its limitations are, so it can be used to overcome any plot difficulty. Which is why Sanderson's First Law ("An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic") is so important. The stakes never feel very high, because we're never convinced that Ava is going to fail; she'll just pull a solution almost literally out of the air - plus she's not setting out to solve an overarching problem, she's just dealing with what's in front of her. Perhaps the next book, where she tries to prevent World War I, will solve the second problem if not the first.

But the book is, at least mechanically, very competent, like its heroine. I only noticed three sentences where there were missing or misplaced words in the pre-publication version I got from Netgalley for review, and the punctuation is impeccable.

The setting in 1902 feels authentic; it's not just scenery flats with some 21st-century people in cosplay performing in front of them. Sure, Ava's parents are what's now called a throuple, but it isn't like such arrangements didn't exist in the period. The poet Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938), author of 'Drake's Drum,' had a well-documented and long-standing polyamorous relationship with his wife and her cousin, for example, though as at time of writing his Wikipedia article doesn't mention it. The comparative openness of Ava's parents' arrangement - which seems to have been reached in the first book, which I haven't read - is perhaps slightly anachronistic, but given that one of her fathers is of African descent, anyone who's going to be shocked already is, so why obsess about hiding it?

Still, if this book was a contestant on American Idol around the mid-20-teens, Randy Jackson would describe it as "just OK for me, dogg," while Harry Connick Jr would say it was "all chops and no gravy". It's... fine. The competence would normally get it a Silver rating in my annual Best of the Year list, but I just didn't find it that exciting, mainly for reasons of craft that I've outlined above. An experienced author like Carrie Vaughn, who has written thrilling urban fantasy and supers books, can definitely do better than this.

Carrie Vaughn returns to the spellbinding world of The Naturalist Society with The Glass Slide World, a thoughtful, slow-burning sequel that trades sweeping romance and multiple POVs for a quieter, more introspective adventure.

Set against the backdrop of 1902, this novel follows Ava Stanley, daughter of two legendary Arcane Taxonomists, while her parents wield power through majestic birds and wild beasts, Ava's abilities hum beneath the surface, rooted in the delicate world of microbes and disease.

The Glass Slide World focuses solely on Ava’s internal growth and scientific pursuit. While this tighter scope may appeal to readers who enjoy character studies, it made the story feel a bit sparse emotionally. I found myself wanting more time with the supporting cast

An hour interesting take on an important part of history both in terms of microbes and allowing women to access education. In many ways the story of the journey and conditions in the Boer war prison camps would have been sufficient, but the author threw in a murder mystery and a fantasy element . It worked beautifully excellent

Unfortunately this one was a bit of a let down for me. I absolutely loved the first book so had high hopes for this one but it’s very different from the first book. There’s only 1 POV and no romance in it at all. I wish we could’ve got to spend more time with these characters and for the book to be a bit more fleshed out.