(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss.)
Surrey, England, 1818. Eleanor Woodford lives in Appleshaw House with her wido(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss.)
Surrey, England, 1818. Eleanor Woodford lives in Appleshaw House with her widowed father and cousin Charlotte. Since Charlotte's father was disinherited, Eleanor's parents agreed to take Charlotte in as a child and give her a "proper" upbringing. The young women are like sisters, though Eleanor doesn't always understand how difficult life can be for Charlotte, a biracial girl existing in white, upper-class Victorian society. Sometimes Eleanor is too busy trying to live up to her late mother's ideal that she's ignorant to the injustices around her.
Rounding out the trio of besties is Georgiana "George" Kingsley, who lives in nearby Chilworth Hall with their widowed father and n'ere do well brother, John. Though George was proclaimed a girl at birth, they prefer to wear men's clothing, and took an "unfeminine" interest in the estate's business affairs from a young age. Luckily, George's father is more aware (and accepting) of their differences than they realize, and leaves the estate in George's care upon his passing.
BUT.
Now that the friends are approaching marriageable age, they're facing increasing pressure to find husbands - preferably rich ones, to guarantee their futures. Problem is, no one's really interested in what they're "supposed" to want. George is not-so-secretly in love with Eleanor. Eleanor wills herself to love Henry, but he's 1) a scoundrel; 2) promised to another; and 3) not George. Much to Eleanor's chagrin, Charlotte finds herself falling for Robert Miller, a humble farmer on George's estate, whose station is seemingly "beneath" her. And then there's Phillip the vicar (ugh). Cue a romantic comedy filled with missed connections, misunderstandings, and poor communication.
I'm not a huge Jane Austen fan (I hear this is a LGBTQ reimagining of EMMA?), but that's okay: I came for the queer historical fiction, and was not disappointed. Reminiscent of THE PRINCESS AND THE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH (which I also LOVED), I SHALL NEVER FALL IN LOVE is a new favorite. It's witty and charming, with gorgeous artwork and characters you want to root for (even if Eleanor can be a bit insufferable at times). It's got great representation in terms of sexuality, gender identity, race, and class, and I especially appreciated the ways in which Conner dealt with the issue of slavery (George's refusal to invest in unethical industries like coal mines and plantations was a lovely detail).
I can't recommend this book enough - it's definitely in my top ten of the year. ...more
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley. Content warning for death, violence, and allusions to sexual assault.)
-- 4.5 s(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley. Content warning for death, violence, and allusions to sexual assault.)
-- 4.5 stars --
If you knew me, you'd know how wild it is that I've reached the ripe old age of 46 without reading WATERSHIP DOWN. I've always been a voracious reader and an "animal person," and, especially as a middle schooler, I absolutely devoured stories about animals, particularly anthropomorphized ones (THE SECRET OF NIMH and CHARLOTTE'S WEB are favorites). I guess the title gave off strong World War vibes (and, to be fair, it is widely regarded as an allegory for WWII), and I've just never been that into military history. And at 478 pages, it's also a pretty big time commitment for an adult who doesn't have as much time to read as she'd like. Which is all to say that the graphic novel seemed like the perfect entry point into the 'verse of Watership Down.
Before diving in, I brushed up on the basics via Wikipedia and, from what I can see, the graphic novel feels like a rather faithful adaptation. The graphic novel follows the same structure as the novel, from The Journey, to Watership Down, Efrafa, and Hazel-rah. Some of the more ancillary characters are combined or omitted altogether, and only several of the El-ahrairah stories - the folklore of the rabbits - make the cut.
Even with the reduced cast of characters, it's sometimes hard to keep all the rabbits straight. Illustrator Joe Sutphin does a commendable job differentiating between most of the main characters (Bigwig is especially striking), but things do get a little confusing when you add Cowslips's and the Efrafa warrens.
The artwork is simply charming and Sutphin makes it impossible not to fall in love with Hazel, Fiver, Dandelion, Bigwig, Kehaar, and the rest. The rabbit's culture - language, mythology, proverbs, and traditions - is drawn with love and care. Admittedly I haven't spent much time considering the story's parallels to WWII, though I appreciated the lessons about friendship and living in harmony with the natural world (and most notably the Western world's inability to do so).
Something that I didn't expect: much of the story's plot revolves around the Watership Down warren's efforts to procure does for breeding purposes. (Or, put in more noble terms, so that their warren will survive past the current generation.) The founding members are all bucks, and they quickly realize that their efforts will be fleeting without a new generation to take over the warren. They talk about "stealing" does from Efrafa, which reeks of sex trafficking, but it eventually becomes clear that they only intend to rescue those females who will leave with them willingly. Efrafa's leadership, on the other hand, is an authoritarian state that retains its citizens with force, including the threat of death for runaways and traitors. There's even a scene where Hyzenthlay - one of the would-be escapees - asks Bigwig if the does who join Watership Down can "mate with who we choose," heavily implying that they are raped on the regular in Efrafa. It's disappointing that these themes aren't really elaborated upon - but then again, there's an interesting section in the Wikipedia entry about criticisms of gender roles in the book:
[L]iterary critic Jane Resh Thomas said Watership Down "draws upon ... an anti-feminist social tradition which, removed from the usual human context and imposed upon rabbits, is eerie in its clarity". Thomas also called it a "splendid story" in which "anti-feminist bias ... damages the novel in only a minor way".
In terms of adaptations, WATERSHIP DOWN: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL is about as good as it gets; I definitely want to check out the novel(s) and animated movie as well. But the source material definitely isn't without its issues. ...more
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley. Content warning for violence including murder, assassination, and sexual assau(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Netgalley. Content warning for violence including murder, assassination, and sexual assault, as well as generational and interpersonal trauma and mental illness.)
So I was originally approved to review this title on NetGalley waaaay back in October 2023, but after slogging through the first few pages, I quickly gave up: the text was too small and pixelated to read without getting a massive headache. (Note to publishers: please do better!) That alone was almost enough to turn me off of FEEDING GHOSTS, but I'm so thankful that I picked up a physical copy when it finally turned up at my local library, some eight months later. FEEDING GHOSTS is likely one of my favorite graphic novels of 2024, and THE single best graphic novel memoir I've ever read.
Author Tessa Hulls is a second generation immigrant; her mother came to America from Hong Kong as a college student, eventually settling down in a small rural town in California. Seven years later, Rose brought her own mother, Sun Yi, to join her. A former journalist who faced persecution in China, Sun Yi's struggle with mental illness seemingly began after she published her 1958 memoir, EIGHT YEARS IN RED CHINA, which became an instant bestseller (although Sun Yi only saw proceeds from the books' first print run). She hung on just long enough to get herself and her young daughter to safety - fleeing China for Hong Kong - and then slowly slipped into psychosis. (Aside from later dementia, Hulls doesn't elaborate on Sun Yi's specific diagnoses.)
As a child, Tessa only knew her grandmother as a vaguely defined shadow. Sun Yi and Tessa did not share a common language and, even if they did, Sun Yi remained glued to her desk most of the day, obsessively (re)writing the story of her life. Yet the relationship between Sun Yi and Rose - not as mother and daughter, but dependent and caregiver - cast a shadow on Tessa's own relationship with her mother, who saw her as another broken thing to be fixed.
After college, Tessa left home in pursuit of the freedom that only the wild frontier could provide a cowboy like herself: bicycling solo from California to Maine; taking on seasonal work in Alaska and Antarctica. But after the death of Sun Yi, Hulls begins to question the efficacy of her "no strings attached" lifestyle. She spends six months holed up in a cabin, drafting the outline of this book. She gets a grant to have Sun Yi's memoir translated into English, and another to travel to Hong Kong and China in pursuit of her matrilineal history. (Hulls's father is British; her mother's father, Swedish.)
The result is FEEDING GHOSTS, an absolutely epic story that adeptly demonstrates how the personal is political, and vice versa. Hulls excavates several generations of trauma, showing how political violence and repression fractures communities, families, and minds - including those of the survivors' descendants, born decades after the fact. The women in this story are complex, multi-layered individuals, who sometimes do the 'wrong' thing despite having the best of intentions. Hulls weaves the stories of her mother's and grandmother's lives with the history of China, resulting in a rich tapestry that's often painful to behold.
I guess my only complaint is Hulls's harsh judgment of her grandmother as a "gold digger" (although she does revise this somewhat towards the end of the narrative). Whether Sun Yi used her beauty to ensure the safety of herself and Rose is really immaterial, imho; the problem lies in social structures that value women for these attributes, such that their very survival depends on it. And what of the men who willingly participated in these transactions? Hulls seems to view them as dupes rather than active participants. Idk, the very term seems painfully outdated to this Gen X-er, and I've got a good decade on the author....more
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)
When Tessa's longtime crush Maddie passes her a note referencing 'all that the(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)
When Tessa's longtime crush Maddie passes her a note referencing 'all that they have in common,' Tessa is stoked: could Maddie possibly a werewolf too? Maybe the "curse" she's been wishing away her whole life finally has an upside. Or, no, that's clearly too much to hope for; if Maddie isn't a werewolf, what kind of supe could she be? (Witch? Banshee? Vampire? The possibilities are endless.)
But the big reveal goes horribly wrong, and Tessa is left feeling even more alone and alienated (from her pack, classmates, and the world in general) than before. When her pack alpha and surrogate dad, Mack, gets some intel about a group of hunters who are working with a rogue witch to cure werewolves, Tessa strikes out on her own in search of them. Not to neutralize the threat, but to offer herself up as a guinea pig: she's sick of being a werewolf, and a middling one, at that. (Her younger sister, Kylie, shifted a full two years before Tessa, and Tessa has yet to shift fully.) But a lone wolf is a dangerous one, and Tessa's teenage angst quickly puts everyone she loves in danger. Can she finally surrender to the wolf inside of her, before it's too late?
FULL SHIFT is such a great book that I'm willing to add it to my favorites bookshelf, even if I could barely make out the artwork. When it comes to e-ARCs of graphic novels, I usually get a digital copy that has some degree of pixelation; worst case, it's bad enough that I can't read the text without getting some serious eyestrain. This was a little different in that the text was crystal clear, while the artwork was nearly indecipherable. Luckily I was able to follow the story, even if I didn't get to marvel at Kristen Seaton's gorgeous illustrations. I mean, I'm inferring from the cover, but my hopes are high, especially for the wolves.
The story itself is entertaining and filled with pathos and heart. Tessa's feelings of loneliness - even in a lodge packed to overflowing with her extended wolf family - is the stuff of epic ballads. I love her scenes with Maddie (and Maddie's scenes with Mac), and the convo that kicks off the story is pretty hilarious. Ditto: the "what are your intentions with my daughter" interrogation; I'm not usually a fan, but the queer/werewolf spin makes it work. There are so many great little details, from the FAQ about werewolves to Tessa and Kylie's relationship and Tessa's meeting with her dad in the afterlife. Speaking of dads, I was all geared up to hate the replacement dad, but Mac is a pretty stand up guy. And his backstory with Anderson is fantastic too. I even loved the TWILIGHT references.
Honestly, I just can't say enough good things about FULL SHIFT. Gay werewolves? Sign me up! ...more
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Content warning for violence.)
In another life, Cyn was a cybernetic enforcer (Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Content warning for violence.)
In another life, Cyn was a cybernetic enforcer for the Protectorate. Before that, she was the wife of a government official, injured almost beyond hope in an unspecified incident. Now, she just wants to be known as Meris, and live a quiet life free from violence. The universe has other plans for her.
When Ness and his adopted daughters, Del and Phea, find Meris passed out in an alleyway, the former mechanica doesn't hesitate to bring the stranger home with them. Though the materials required to fix Meris's broken solis light conductor are no longer in circulation, he's confident that he can scavenge them. Until then, he welcomes Meris to stay and help out on their homestead - which also serves as an animal sanctuary. Ness encourages Meris to save one life for every one she's taken - 527, and counting - as the penance she seeks.
Like Meris, Ness has done things he's not proud of - and it's Ness's past that threatens to undo Meris's future. Can Meris ever truly leave Cyn behind in a world ruled by brute force?
I didn't expect to love CYN as much as I did (though I did get a good feeling from the cover art, which shows Cyn cradling a dog protectively). Tbh, it was the animal rescue - and the lessons Ness drew from his canines - that really did me in. Ness's story about Rizzy - likely exploited as a fighting dog and then tossed out when no longer useful - was simply lovely, filled with compassion and empathy. After his leg - damaged beyond repair - was amputated, Ness used his skills (and, presumably, his limited funds) to build the pup a cybernetic leg (!). And when it came time to flee to avoid carnage, there was no question: this evacuation includes the nonhuman family members as well. No doggo left behind!
Of course, Cyn and Ness's character arcs are compelling as well - both stories of exploitation and redemption. I feel like I'm missing some essential backstory for Cyn - who I think might have origins in Ibrahim Moustafa's 2021 comic, COUNT - but overall it didn't detract from the narrative.
CYN is one of my first favorites of 2024, and I think Ibrahim Moustafa might be a new insta-read for me. CYN is full of heart and love and hope. Just what we need in these here dark times. ...more
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)
For seventeen-year-old Callie Benson, the high school experience has been espe(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley.)
For seventeen-year-old Callie Benson, the high school experience has been especially ... challenging. She can see the echos of plants and animals who have died but not yet moved on - and her furtive conversations with invisible spirits have earned her the reputation of the "crazy" girl on campus. Her father is a demon who's always gone, traveling between the human world and other realms in search of magical objects for his antiques store. Her mother - well, Callie doesn't know much about her; it's just been Callie and her father for as long as she can remember. Callie knows that she's not human - at least not entirely - but beyond that, she's not sure what she is. Just that she's nothing special.
Callie's world opens up when she discovers that a fellow classmate named Declan can see the spirits, too. Callie helps him gently dispel an especially giant spirit who has camped out in front of his house (and, more alarmingly, watches him sleep at night), and the two become fast friends. When Callie's dad goes missing on her birthday, she and Declan enter the other world in search of him. With the help of a demon named Lasser and the spirit of one very possessive radish, can Callie rescue her father - while also coming to terms with what she is?
NOTHING SPECIAL is one very special strip. (Sorry, I had to.) The storytelling is magical, and I especially love the spirits that follow Callie around. (A sassy radish? Sign me up!) The mystery of Callie's lineage is a juicy one and I enjoyed the big reveal with her mom at the end. Cook's artwork is charming with just the right amount of cutesy mixed in. Bonus points for bonding over pop culture references.
You can also find it on Webtoons, where Katie Cook is already well into Season Three. (This book comprises Season One, chapters 1-29.) ...more
(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for violence, including sexual assault and harassment.)
I great(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for violence, including sexual assault and harassment.)
I greatly enjoyed Robin Ha's graphic novel memoir, 2020's ALMOST AMERICAN GIRL, which detailed her abrupt move from Seoul, South Korea, to Huntsville, Alabama, as a teenager - and her subsequent discovery of comic books, which helped her cope with the isolation and loneliness. As much as I was already anticipating THE FOX MAIDENS, I've got to say - Ha has really outdone herself. This queer, feminist reimagining of the Korean Fox Maiden story is simply breathtaking.
Kai is the youngest of General Song's three children - even though her mother is his first wife. When Meorhu Kim failed to conceive, Tamjin felt compelled to take a second wife, who bore him two boys, Bisap and Jinho; a happy surprise, Kai arrived several years later. Despite her culture's rigid patriarchal norms, the celebrated General Song - slayer of Gumiho, the Fox Maiden responsible for a veritable killing spree - decides to train Kai alongside her brothers. She first learns, then comes to dominate in Palgwaedan; as a teenager, she even joins her father as a detective in the Royal Legion.
Naturally, this doesn't go over well with everyone: not with Bisap and Jinho, nor their mother, Madam Lee; not with General Song's colleagues; and certainly not with many of the villagers. Rumors of sorcery follow Kai wherever she goes. Even Kai's own mother is dismayed by her daughter's inability to act more "ladylike."
However, when General Song's enemies, the Peacekeepers, orchestrate a coordinated attack on the family, it is Kai and her own mother - who, as it turns out, is a surprisingly deadly archer - who drive the invaders away.
Just as things are looking up for Kai - who, against all odds, is able create the nontraditional sort of life she envisions for herself - her mother's closely held secret threatens to upend everything she's built.
I so very badly want to say more, but so much of the joy is in the discovery!
THE FOX MAIDENS is a magical tale that's epic in scope. Kai, Sura, Meorhu, Tamjin, and Gumiho's stories dovetail in ways that are both tragic and uplifting, enchanting and electric. Meorhu and Gumiho are especially compelling characters, and I wasn't surprised to find myself rooting for the 'villains' and 'monsters' in what is essentially a rape revenge story. The artwork is equally masterful: the fox maidens in particular are bewitching, and the full-page panels at the beginning of each chapter are *chef's kiss* tattoo worthy.
THE FOX MAIDENS is an instant favorite, one of my firsts this year....more
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