This was so fun! I almost want to round it up to five stars, but I actually think I wanted this to be a full novel, so I'll leave it rounded down for This was so fun! I almost want to round it up to five stars, but I actually think I wanted this to be a full novel, so I'll leave it rounded down for now. Might change my mind later. Cozy fantasy and found family readers, this is one to check out. I really like Em X. Liu's style; even more excited now for their debut novel in September....more
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was a really good time. I loved reading fairy-tThanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn't affected the contents of my review.
This was a really good time. I loved reading fairy-tales as a kid, and listening to this felt sort of like the adult version of my experience with that. We've all read "adult versions" of fairy-tales before where the author just makes things really dark or really sexual or both and then calls it a day, but T. Kingfisher's adult fairy-tales take a more clever approach. It felt really fresh and interesting, and Toadling (a human stolen from her parents at birth and raised by fairies) as a character was so lovable, I just wanted to hug her. The way this plays with the Sleeping Beauty story was very pleasing, and even though I was worried about the ending, I shouldn't have been because she pulled it off beautifully.
I did the audio version, and while I thought it was perfectly fine, the narrator's voice didn't aid the story in my opinion; in fact it flattened out some things I think I would have laughed at had I read the book with my eyeballs. She was just way too serious of a narrator for Kingfisher's voice. ...more
This was really good! I loved the vibes and the writing and the setting. Definitely reading book two. I'm honestl30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 4 Book 27/30
This was really good! I loved the vibes and the writing and the setting. Definitely reading book two. I'm honestly surprised how much I liked this. It's really hard to find great, vibesy sci-fi these days. A lot of sff authors go for the colder, more depressing, gritty machine-like futures, I think forgetting that humans like to be COMFY. Even though this book is set after humans have colonized Jupiter (of all places); the humans here like their tea and their big warm blankets, and they go apeshit over animals (who are rare bc humans destroyed Earth). The two MCs plan their entire day around going to this special restaurant called Slow Burn that sounded AMAZING.
In hindsight, this makes sense because this book is all about ecosystems, both organic and human-made. Of course the author is concerned with how humans and systems live together on a harsh (groundless!) planet, the same way the characters in this book are attempting to painstakingly recreate the best possible potential ecosystem for repopulating Earth. (The title is actually a gut punch once you realize what it's referring to.)
Anyway, this is actually a murder mystery! And it is definitely in the Holmseian tradition, with a sapphic/sci-fi twist. Our Holmes is Mossa, a definitely neurodivergent investigator who we meet when she is looking into the disappearance of a scholar who appears to have unalived himself by stepping off the platforms that make life possible on Jupiter, directly into the planet, whereupon he will freeze to death and then be crushed into atoms. Her investigation leads her to Pleiti, her old housemate from university, who is also a scholar and who Mossa feels can provide valuable insight. Pleiti, of course, is our Watson, and in grand Watsonian fashion, the story is told from her first person POV. Also, in true Watsonian fashion, she is super gay for her Holmes.
I've already placed a hold for book two at my library and very much hope there is a book three!
[4.5 stars]
Read Harder Challenge 2024: Read a sci-fi novella....more
I actually really liked this, and I'm really surprised about it. This book deserves a longer, more thorough review, but I'm just not capable of doing I actually really liked this, and I'm really surprised about it. This book deserves a longer, more thorough review, but I'm just not capable of doing that at the moment. I can see how this book wouldn't work for some people, but if it doesn't, it seems a matter of taste to me. I feel like Emily Tesh knew exactly what she wanted to do with the story, and pulled it off. The concepts, characters, plot twists, and everything else this book was wanting to explore I thought it explored really well, and did so with nuance and care*, for the most part.
*The one moment in here that absolutely should have been removed was the scene at the end with a certain two characters touching each other's hair/hair-equivalent, as like a gesture of solidarity? It was genuinely one of the cringiest things I've ever read.
Not gonna do a summary here, not enough mental energy, you can read the blurb. I'll wait.
Light spoilers here: I've seen some pushback to the idea that Kyr would have been deprogrammed so quickly and easily, but I think what happened here was right. Kyr was never going to change, unless world-altering circumstances made her. First they force her to question everything, which she never would have done on her own, and then her brainwashing is broken by essentially (view spoiler)[giving her new perspective via timey-wimey stuff that literally gives her new memories (hide spoiler)]. I don't think anything less than this would have been able to get Kyr out of her own head enough to reevaluate things, at least not in time to save her or anyone else. And that's a damning enough message in itself!
This book wanted to explore an unthinking adherent to a fascist death cult, what that person's life would look like to others, and what it would take to shake them out of it. The story had me the whole time, even when I didn't like anybody. It was an interesting way in to the narrative, where you have to literally read between the lines at what is not being said, or what Kyr is not noticing or understanding in order to get a more full picture.
The last half of the book gets pretty wild in terms of sci-fi concepts, and I blew through it, not expecting a book with such grim subject matter to give me those "fun" feelings. I will definitely read from Emily Tesh again....more
This wasn't bad, but it could have been so much better. I think I just really don't gel with this author. I read a short story from her that one year This wasn't bad, but it could have been so much better. I think I just really don't gel with this author. I read a short story from her that one year I voted for the Hugos and it turned me off so hard from her stuff. She seemed like the kind of author who was more interested in being artsy and impressive than in telling a good story. Those kinds of authors and I usually butt heads. So when this book was chosen for December's Illumicrate, I almost skipped my first box (I try to give all the authors a go, otherwise what's the point of a subscription box). But strong reviews persuaded me to give her stuff one more chance. And like I said, I didn't hate it. It just left me wanting.
The premise here is that in some far future timeline, potentially in another galaxy or universe, who knows (maybe not even the author!), A.I. has advanced enough to become truly sapient, and A.I.s (in this instance A.I. ships) are considered real people and members of families, and can even marry and have children. Our main characters are Xích Si (a scavenger captured by pirates) and Rice Fish (a sentient ship, the widow of the Red Scholar, leader of the Red Banner pirates). Rice Fish offers to marry Xích Si for protection in exchange for her help proving who killed her wife (because she's good at technology? I would argue it's more important that she's an outsider, but this is never mentioned). The fate of the pirate consortium seems to be at stake. There's lots of weird pirate politics and Xích Si is very conflicted about liking Rice Fish and feeling safe, between knowing these people she's getting to know regularly perform violence and steal at best, kill at worst, innocent people to maintain their own safety and wealth.
This book needed to be at least two hundred pages longer. Everything, from the worldbuilding to the character relationships, needed more development and explanation. The best way I can describe this author's style is that it's a painting in word form. We get the surface level version of everything, the visual, and then you as the reader seem to be responsible for extrapolating the rest, just as if you were looking at a piece of art. How does the technology work? Do they have FTL? What is the overlay (seriously, could you have even tried to explain this, author?) We get no wider context for the universe this takes place in, which I guess is fine, but I like that context. I'm not usually satisfied by sci-fi that holds off the big picture.
The real killer was the relationships, though, and in particular the romance between the two main characters. This book takes place over a month, and after basically a week, the two are in love with each other after like, what, four interactions?? And barely speaking to one another. At least that we see. We do not see them fall in love, and I barely got an inkling of why they were attracted to each other, even by the end. Because of that, this read perilously close to instalove. The sci-fi pirate plot was definitely the strongest element in the book, but even that could have been expanded. We don't see any of the stuff I wanted to see, including important moments where characters change their minds or make decisions. Again, it's assumed.
And lastly, there are some cultural considerations to be made in any sci-fi or fantasy book because other cultures are foreign, even made up ones, and especially here, with a culture that seems to be based on Vietnamese culture. Still, there is only so much leeway you can be expected to give. This book was written in English for an English-speaking audience, so when characters go from calling each other "Big Sis" and "Little Sis" one second to fucking each other the next, I'm gonna get uncomfortable. The least this author could have done is written those terms in Vietnamese so I'm not getting weird incest vibes.
So yeah, this author is not for me, but at least I know that definitively now! It's a shame, though, because some of the ideas she was working with were really interesting. The way she used them in her story, though, just made me frustrated, so I will be moving on!...more
I will have a lot more thoughts on this in the reading vlog on my channel that should be posting within the next week or so (depending on when I finisI will have a lot more thoughts on this in the reading vlog on my channel that should be posting within the next week or so (depending on when I finish Fourth Wing tbh) but in general I liked it. But it's a book that refuses to indulge in tropes and play to the crowd, so to speak, and instead sticks to its own purposes, which is upsetting and infuriating, as all stories accurately depicting how indigenous peoples are treated by colonizers should be. The MC is also more of a cypher for the plot and doesn't really have a lot of character growth (she's already done most of her growing before we get to her). People around her are the ones that grow and change. It also wasn't as compelling as I wanted it to be, maybe for the above listed reasons. I will be reading the rest of the series though. More thoughts in my reading vlog! (Channel is linked in my bio.)
This cover remains impeccable, but this isn't my favorite Scalzi. Fun! A great time. But not my fave. More thoughts soon.This cover remains impeccable, but this isn't my favorite Scalzi. Fun! A great time. But not my fave. More thoughts soon....more
This was a weird and unique read. If you like darker fantasy that plays with ideas as the basis for stories, this might be a good one for you to checkThis was a weird and unique read. If you like darker fantasy that plays with ideas as the basis for stories, this might be a good one for you to check out. It was relatively short, but the imagination the author showcases was really fun, and the icky elements were icky in a good way. I'm not quite sure how to talk about the book, though!
The main character here is Devon, a Book Eater, which is a human-like being who instead of eating food, eats stories and words and other communications printed on paper. The 'You are what you eat' mentality is literal here, because if a Book Eater snacks on a map, they now have that map inside their mind, and if all they are fed is fairy tales from a young age, as Devon is, those are the ideas that shape their being and mindset. The Book Eaters live in secret among humans, but their society is dying out.
The main conflict of the book is that Devon has a son, and some time before the narrative starts, she and her son have fled from the other Book Eaters. This is ostensibly because her son is a Mind Eater, a more rare type of Book Eater that needs human brains to sustain their lives, and in a similar way, who absorbs the information inside those brains in a truly creepy way. But there is also more going on here than would first appear.
This wasn't a perfect book, and I don't know if I would read it again, but I found it an interesting way to spend a couple of days, and the elements that intrigued me were so interesting that I will definitely be checking out more books from Sunyi Dean in the future....more
I am really enjoying this series. It has so many things that I love: Lonely people falling in love, hijinks, magic, secrets, murder mysteries, an overI am really enjoying this series. It has so many things that I love: Lonely people falling in love, hijinks, magic, secrets, murder mysteries, an overarching plot that advances while leaving each book to be satisfying on their own, a fun Georgian England setting, queer representation in a historical time period, cheeky humor (there is a runner in here about pornography), benign and helpful ghosts, and I could keep going but that would be a bit much. And this one’s set on a boat! I love a story on a boat. They can’t go anywhere!
Our two main characters are Maud (sister of Robin from the first book) and Violet, an actress (scandalous) turned heiress on her way back to England after years in New York City. Maud had traveled to NYC due to the events of the previous book, and now she is escorting one of the three women who did the spoilery thing I can’t talk about back to England in the guise of her lady’s companion. However, the first night on the ship, her employer is murdered, and not just murdered, but murdered with magic. She begins to investigate the murder, thinking that the murdered woman’s secrets, the ones that Maud is involved with, were the reason. Violet, a companion at Maud’s table, becomes involved after some shenanigans, and they start investigating together. Investigating turns into friendship turns into flirting, and then whoops! sexytimes.
I’ve seen some people call the relationship instalove, but I really don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Besides the fact that shared trauma and forced proximity can foster intimacy in a much shorter time than circumstances in the normal world, the two girls do not instantly fall in love. They are pretty immediately attracted to one another, though, and then feelings lead to love, even if the timeframe of all of that is truncated. I thought their emotional arcs were handled with care and made total sense.
I am super excited to see how book three turns out, especially since it’s going to be about Hawthorn, the fabulous crank we met in book one and who the girls clash with and then partner with in their boat adventures in this book, and Alan, a lower class man of disreputable origins who we meet this book, and watch as he and Hawthorn butt heads the entire time. It’s going to be so great....more
May 2023: I loved this! I'm so glad I loved it, also, because I own two copies of it and I don't want to get rid of eDecember 2023: Eeeexcellent fun.
May 2023: I loved this! I'm so glad I loved it, also, because I own two copies of it and I don't want to get rid of either one. They are PRETTY. The American cover I love so much, I want a poster-sized print of it for my wall. And my other edition has a beautiful gilded map on the endpapers with Amina and Payasam on either end, and little ships and sea beasts sprayed on the edges. I would have CRIED had I not loved this book. But I did love it, I barely had to try.
I went into this knowing almost nothing, so I don't want to say anything but these few vague things:
*Forty-something female pirate captain. *Getting the band back together. *Dangerous quest to find kidnapped young woman. *Adventure! *Set in the same world as her Daevabad trilogy, but in medieval times on the Indian Ocean. *Queer non-white characters faffing around in the middle ages. *Found family and friendship feelings.
I really have zero complaints. This book implanted itself firmly in my mind and it was a fun time from beginning to end, with my preferred cocktail of hybrid tones. I love a good tonal mish-mash. I demand book two at once.
"I am Rose House, entire, and have never been anything else. I am not lonely. I do not wish to be a companion of elsewheres."
This was so atmospheric a"I am Rose House, entire, and have never been anything else. I am not lonely. I do not wish to be a companion of elsewheres."
This was so atmospheric and a pleasure to read, even though I'm pretty sure I didn't understand half of what was going on.
The main conceit here is that this is a sci-fi take on a haunted house, where the haunt is an A.I. that IS the house, not that inhabits the house or was installed there, but is in every molecule. The house belonged to a real creep, though a famous one, named Basit Deniau, and he has left it to his former protégé, a woman named Selene, who is only allowed in the house once a year for a period of days. Deniau has been dead a year when the AI makes a mandatory reporting call to the local police precinct to report a body, and the body does not belong to the only person allowed to enter the house.
Don't go into this expecting any sort of whodunnit, the book doesn't care about that. What it does care about doing is creeping you out with the eerie nature of technology and how just its sheer existence makes questioning everything else about reality a slippery slope.
I was left mostly unsatisfied by this novella, but that's the way the author wants it, I think. And the atmosphere is so thick it nearly makes up for any answers you don't get.
Chipping Away at Mt. TBR, Spooky Season Edition —Book 2/31...more
“How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re I love everything this book chooses to be.
“How do you take the fight out of half the population and render them willing slaves? You tell them they’re meant to do nothing but serve from the minute they’re born. You tell them they’re weak. You tell them they’re prey. You tell them over and over, until it’s the only truth they’re capable of living.”
This book is a scream of rage into the night, and I’m so glad it got published. Even if you don’t normally read YA, I would urge you to shelve your preconceptions and pick up this book in any way that you can (and per the author’s note at the end, if you read it for free, leave them a review!)
In addition to being a science fantasy set on some other planet, presumably in the far future, this is also a stealth historical retelling, as the main character is a reimagining of a real historical figure, whose role in history I won’t spoil if you aren’t already aware of her (as I wasn’t), because then the plot of the book will be that much more fun for you to read.
Wu Zetian lives in a world where women are subjugated. Her feet were broken and bound as a child, and her sister was sold off to become a concubine for a male Chrysalis pilot. Chrysalises are the repurposed husks of the alien beings who invaded this world thousands of years before, and the humans eventually figured out a way for them to essentially be turned into giant mechas to fight back against the alien Hunduns. But in this fight, where men and women (boys and girls) are piloting each Chrysalis, most of the time, doing so kills the girl. Zetian’s sister is killed in this way, so she vows to enact her revenge, selling herself to the same pilot as a concubine, intending to kill him and forfeit her life in the process. But things don’t go as expected, because Zetian’s qi overpowers that of the boy, killing him in the process, and Zetian becomes a rare Iron Widow. Her revenge mission morphs as she goes, and she’s going to fuck up as much shit as she possibly can. I love her so much.
“Perks of refusing to play by the rules: you don’t have to choose between the boy who’d torture a man to death with you and the boy who welcomes you back with pastries.”
Something else I love about this book is the way that it explores gender roles using the metaphor of the mechas. Zetian as a character refuses to do what she’s told, and discovers the lies of the system she grew up in as a result. The three main characters (Zetian provides POV) are exercises in smashing gender stereotypes, and to make things even better, the love triangle here (between the sweet boy from Zetian’s village, who turns out to be the son of a millionaire, Zetian, and the pilot she’s paired with who has killed all his concubines and murdered his own family) morphs into a polyamorous relationship between the three of them, I was so incredibly pleased and elated. This is the best way for love triangles to resolve, in my opinion. I’m spoiling this on purpose because I’m using it as a lure for people to read the book.
I thought I would have a hard time reviewing this book, especially since it’s been two months now since I read it, but the story and the characters are still vivid in my mind, and I have lots of very clear feelings I’m finding easier than usual to express. Perhaps it’s the rage.
“Shame and humiliation are self-imposed emotions, and from here on out, I choose not to feel them.”
Read Harder Challenge 2022: Read an adventure story by a BIPOC author....more
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