Some Book Nibbles - Which Should I Read Next?

I have a bunch of debuts that I've sampled lately, and I thought I'd post my thought on what I've read so far.

(I have actually finished a book recently. It is What Happened to the Indians by Terence Shannon. I'm going to be reviewing it for Self-Publishing Review, but I'll post a snippet here.)

The only current debut in this group is Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont. I'm finding it a bit opaque. After a prologue (the subject of a future post) that didn't engage me with any characters, I was ready for the official chapter one. However, it reads a bit like a vocabulary exercise. We have a "verdigrised helm" (which means its tarnished from copper), a menhir (which is an oblisk) and "almond eyes of burning gold nictitated to life." (I had to look that one up, and it means "to blink"). This kind of hits on a reader pet peeve of mine. I subscribe to the Mark Twain school of thought when it comes to readability, and that is to "Use the right word, not its second cousin."

The rest are older debuts.

Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti engaged me immediately, and has the strongest hook of the group. It's about a young woman who delivers messages over a clockwork city by means of a set of mechanical wings. It opens with her rescuing the occupants of some sort of skyway car that is about to crash.

Innocent Mage by Karen Miller reads like a character development novel. I'm finding it readable, but also easy to put down. Its about a young fisherman who goes off to live in the big city. Little does he know his coming was prophesied, and that the friends he recently make are carefully shaping his destiny.

I'm actually about one-quarter of the way through Griffin's Shadow by Leslie Ann Moore. It continues with the story of Jelena as she goes to meet her father, the king of the Elves. Right away she finds herself in the midst of political manuvering. The repressed half-elves of the novel are fascinating, and there's a satisfying amount of conflict, especially from an unexpected source. However, there are so many point-of-views in this novel that I'm having trouble keeping engaged.

I've read the first three chapters of The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. It's about a modern-day girl who runs away from both her hometown and her ability to read lace, which is a way to read the future. She is called back to town--Salem, Massachusetts--when her lace-reading elderly aunt disappears. It is both readable and engaging, and I could easily keep going.

I snagged a copy of Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley at the used bookstore last month. Last night I read the prologue, which interested me deeply. (That's they thing about prologues. They work when they work, and they don't when they don't. Probably the worst prologues for me to get through were the ones written by Robert Jordan.)

I'm looking to read something non-challenging. Which one do you think I should read next?