Sarah J. Maas, House of Earth and Blood: Okay, they’re on Midgard (possibly Earth fifteen thousand years from now), where humans lived first but then Fae and werewolves and vampyrs and others invaded and now rule, though there’s a rebellion on the big continent that humans are trying to spread to the littler one on which our story takes place. Somehow despite all this change (?) they have television, the internet/social media, phones, and even SUVs (though the power is generated by magic, I think). “Pizza delivery” exists but not “Middle Eastern” food. I understand the issue—especially if you want to have a high-tech magic-using culture you might not want to invent new terms for clearly recognizable concepts; it’s a cognitive load on readers you could use for other types of worldbuilding. But for that, I will give you cars but not SUVs, food delivery but not pizza. Especially since it is central to the plot that pre-conquest human memories/books/religions have been deliberately targeted for nearly successful extermination; I don’t think you get pizza and USB drives if you do that. (You could also have a narrative voice that says “the difference between pizza and what they ordered is not relevant to the story; so: they ordered pizza,” but that voice is a Choice and I understand not using it.) Anyway, I had more dissatisfactions than suspended disbelief.

Maas continues her Id Vortex thing of inhumanly beautiful nonhuman “males” and “females,” in this relatively modern etting. Plotwise, there are demons trying to break through the sealed-off rifts, new drugs that mix magic and science, palace intrigue, and enslaved angels who were part of a failed rebellion against the gods. The central conflict is the murder mystery investigation by the half-fae, half-human girl who was the best friend of the murdered werewolf heir apparent. It’s an awful lot.

 Devil’s Ways, ed. Anna Kashina: Various stories of deviltry from various cultures, including two—two!—Jewish variants as well as others drawing on African and Chinese backgrounds. Nancy Kress contributes a small biblical story; Michael Swanwick and Avram Davidson were the other two names I recognized.
 
John Scalzi, The Last Emperox: Conclusion to his trilogy about a collapsing space empire. Bad people mostly get their comeuppance and good people mostly prosper, and it’s reasonably satisfying, though the solution such as it is ends up relatively abrupt (or really: now there’s fifty years of science to do!) on a plot level.
 
KJ Charles, Slippery Creatures: Will Darling is a WWI vet saved from abject poverty by reconnecting with his bookseller uncle, who then died and left him the bookshop. When a strange man shows up demanding “the information,” Will is swept into conspiracy and spycraft, and a liaison with the intriguing Kim Secretan, a former Bolshevik with a scandalous past, a dubious present, and a lovely fiancee. It was fun even though I want more fantasy from Charles!
 
Rebecca Roanhorse, Black Sun: Based on pre-Columbian cultures, the story follows the Sun Priestess (raised from a low caste and beset by machinations from the other priests, most of them from much higher stations), a sailor from an all-female culture whose voice can calm storms, a Carrion Crow warrior trying to keep the peace despite the not-yet-forgotten slaughter of many of his people not too many decades ago, and the man who might be the host of the reborn Carrion Crow god. As they head towards the confrontation between Carrion Crow and the Sun, they configure in various ways; it was an intriguing start to what looks like a trilogy.
 
Octavia Butler, Unexpected Stories: Two previously unpublished stories from Butler, one about power relations in a species where dominance comes from skin color and seems to be at least partly biological (now I really want to know what Butler would have done with A/B/O), and a shorter one that was supposed to appear in the last Dangerous Visions anthology, which never appeared. That story is about telepaths and the racial divides that keep them from uniting despite what appears to be common interest. They are both very distinctively Butler stories.