A bittersweet sapphic story involving magical beekepers that has an atmosphere of inevitability to it, the cost of it all looming in the distance untiA bittersweet sapphic story involving magical beekepers that has an atmosphere of inevitability to it, the cost of it all looming in the distance until the end. It only makes sense that tarot reading is featured in it - so much of this story in some way involves fate - and that its title names three saints closely associated with bees. Bees as a legacy that keeps drawing you in. There's something mysterious about it, too, because the story doesn't tell you anything more than what you need to understand it; it doesn't have one word out of place.
Merged review:
A bittersweet sapphic story involving magical beekepers that has an atmosphere of inevitability to it, the cost of it all looming in the distance until the end. It only makes sense that tarot reading is featured in it - so much of this story in some way involves fate - and that its title names three saints closely associated with bees. Bees as a legacy that keeps drawing you in. There's something mysterious about it, too, because the story doesn't tell you anything more than what you need to understand it; it doesn't have one word out of place....more
I feel like for me it's more difficult to find new favorite short stories than it is to find new favorite novelsI've found a new favorite short story.
I feel like for me it's more difficult to find new favorite short stories than it is to find new favorite novels. Novels will stay with me more easily, but a story? Even if I like the author's writing - and I already knew I liked JY Yang's, because of the Tensorate and Waiting on a Bright Moon - not every story will hit me the right way. I won't get all of them.
This was raw and at times messed up and ugly and I understood it in ways I didn't expect. It's about a woman who was once a circus girl, and the ghost boy who haunted her during the worst year of her life, who helped her through a difficult time when she was a teen. It gets that feeling I can't put into words - when something from your past, especially early adolescence, comes back to haunt you, and you want to claim it as yours and really don't want to at the same time. It's your history but you also wish you had left it behind while wishing it would come back. A part of you and your history that is more you than everything but you're also ashamed of it.
It's also beautifully written and vaguely witch-y in the best way, and the atmosphere has that kind of rotten ruin charm that I love, especially in stories that have vague tones of aquatic horror.
Anyway: this is for those who like knife-throwing haunted girls, lost ghost boys who fight against their nature, helpful witches with the best aesthetics, and mysterious hunters with an obsession. I loved it so much.
Trigger warning for death of gay characters. I usually would have a problem with this - the main characters' sexuality isn't stated (I think - or maybe I missed it) and you could assume everyone but [dead guy] is straight, but honestly: I don't want to police what openly queer authors who usually write all-queer casts do with their stories and I assumed everyone to be queer anyway, but I recognize it could bother someone.
Merged review:
I've found a new favorite short story.
I feel like for me it's more difficult to find new favorite short stories than it is to find new favorite novels. Novels will stay with me more easily, but a story? Even if I like the author's writing - and I already knew I liked JY Yang's, because of the Tensorate and Waiting on a Bright Moon - not every story will hit me the right way. I won't get all of them.
This was raw and at times messed up and ugly and I understood it in ways I didn't expect. It's about a woman who was once a circus girl, and the ghost boy who haunted her during the worst year of her life, who helped her through a difficult time when she was a teen. It gets that feeling I can't put into words - when something from your past, especially early adolescence, comes back to haunt you, and you want to claim it as yours and really don't want to at the same time. It's your history but you also wish you had left it behind while wishing it would come back. A part of you and your history that is more you than everything but you're also ashamed of it.
It's also beautifully written and vaguely witch-y in the best way, and the atmosphere has that kind of rotten ruin charm that I love, especially in stories that have vague tones of aquatic horror.
Anyway: this is for those who like knife-throwing haunted girls, lost ghost boys who fight against their nature, helpful witches with the best aesthetics, and mysterious hunters with an obsession. I loved it so much.
Trigger warning for death of gay characters. I usually would have a problem with this - the main characters' sexuality isn't stated (I think - or maybe I missed it) and you could assume everyone but [dead guy] is straight, but honestly: I don't want to police what openly queer authors who usually write all-queer casts do with their stories and I assumed everyone to be queer anyway, but I recognize it could bother someone....more
I loved this. I loved it in a way that I didn't think I could ever love a graphic novel. The problems I had with it during the first read - 4.5 stars.
I loved this. I loved it in a way that I didn't think I could ever love a graphic novel. The problems I had with it during the first read - mainly, the fact that there was a lot of graphic violence and horror aspects I didn't expect - weren't problems during this reread, because I knew what I was getting into.
And the art. It's so beautiful, I could stare at the pages for hours, so beautiful it almost distracts from the story with its intricate, fascinating details, but let's be real, the illustration are the main reason I'm reading this in the first place. The backgrounds are themselves almost like characters.
Many people mention being confused by the worldbuilding and plot of Monstress. I understand why - there's a lot of information to take in - but it wasn't a problem for me in this reread, and as I always say, I'd rather be a little confused by the world at first than be bored by it later. It's difficult to follow because it's set in a complex world with history and plot-relevant mythology of its own (parts of it are inspired by Japanese mythology, but that's not the only influence here), and I loved all of it. I mean, how could I not love a gay steampunk matriarchy?
The whole plotline about magic animal-like people fighting magical humans told from the point of view of a human-looking girl who is actually not that human but very magical reminded me of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which I really appreciated. I also really like the theme of fighting your own monster in a monstrous world, and I think this story has a lot of potential.
___________________________________ Old review, written in August 2017
3.5 stars This was beautiful, but I didn't love it. It's not this book, it's me. The art was great! The translation, not so much (yes, I read the Italian version, and the dialogue wasn't as good as it could have been). The worldbuilding was well-done.
I really don't like seeing people who are dying/injured (even if it's a drawing). Reading about that doesn't affect me, but this... there was a fight scene every two pages, blood everywhere. If this doesn't bother you, you'll probably love Monstress. It's about matriarchal societies, war and ancient monsters. Sometimes it reminded me of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and in a good way.
The ending surprised me. I don't know if I'll continue - it depends on whether the sequel gets translated.
Edit during the reread for book #4: every time I reread this book, I love it a little more, as I finally catch most of what's going on. This series is amazing.
Merged review:
4.5 stars.
I loved this. I loved it in a way that I didn't think I could ever love a graphic novel. The problems I had with it during the first read - mainly, the fact that there was a lot of graphic violence and horror aspects I didn't expect - weren't problems during this reread, because I knew what I was getting into.
And the art. It's so beautiful, I could stare at the pages for hours, so beautiful it almost distracts from the story with its intricate, fascinating details, but let's be real, the illustration are the main reason I'm reading this in the first place. The backgrounds are themselves almost like characters.
Many people mention being confused by the worldbuilding and plot of Monstress. I understand why - there's a lot of information to take in - but it wasn't a problem for me in this reread, and as I always say, I'd rather be a little confused by the world at first than be bored by it later. It's difficult to follow because it's set in a complex world with history and plot-relevant mythology of its own (parts of it are inspired by Japanese mythology, but that's not the only influence here), and I loved all of it. I mean, how could I not love a gay steampunk matriarchy?
The whole plotline about magic animal-like people fighting magical humans told from the point of view of a human-looking girl who is actually not that human but very magical reminded me of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, which I really appreciated. I also really like the theme of fighting your own monster in a monstrous world, and I think this story has a lot of potential.
___________________________________ Old review, written in August 2017
3.5 stars This was beautiful, but I didn't love it. It's not this book, it's me. The art was great! The translation, not so much (yes, I read the Italian version, and the dialogue wasn't as good as it could have been). The worldbuilding was well-done.
I really don't like seeing people who are dying/injured (even if it's a drawing). Reading about that doesn't affect me, but this... there was a fight scene every two pages, blood everywhere. If this doesn't bother you, you'll probably love Monstress. It's about matriarchal societies, war and ancient monsters. Sometimes it reminded me of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and in a good way.
The ending surprised me. I don't know if I'll continue - it depends on whether the sequel gets translated.
Edit during the reread for book #4: every time I reread this book, I love it a little more, as I finally catch most of what's going on. This series is amazing....more
Not as compelling as the previous installments (especially since the fourth was my favorite in the series) but still solid and I have so many questionNot as compelling as the previous installments (especially since the fourth was my favorite in the series) but still solid and I have so many questions. The monster sex scene was something though...more
This book reads like a depressive episode, and I mean that as praise.
The first thing you should know about Catherine House is that it's not so much a This book reads like a depressive episode, and I mean that as praise.
The first thing you should know about Catherine House is that it's not so much a story as it is a feeling, and your experience with this book will be affected by mainly two things: your tolerance for meandering narratives, and for weirdness that is apparently there for its sake (though that might not be true). This book is pretty much plotless, it isn't so much character-driven as it is featuring the least driven character you've probably read about in the last year, and it's here mostly for you to savor the creeping dread and sense of alienation that is part of many people's college/university experience.
I wouldn't say that this book is pointless, but its point is both buried in and underlined by the slow creep of information about often unsettingly mundane events swimming around and past you without seeming to ever have any meaning or purpose... if not the one to show the reader the feelings the main characters is experiencing by only ever telling what she does. This is possibly the most meta use of showing vs. telling I've found, and Catherine House doesn't stop at that: I found this interview about "surreal diversity" - the way nearly everyone in this book is marginalized but there isn't any kind of strife - really interesting to read while going through the book as well; I can see how given the context this choice can simultaneously be escapism and a kind of warning.
Through this book, our main character Ines is dealing with what appears to be an institution which may or may not be nonconsensually experimenting on its students - but while this story does have a sci-fantasy twist, don't expect it to have any kind of action. As the years go by, Ines starts to lose sight of the school's weirdness, starts to accept its norms as not unusual, and her actions start to make less and less sense to an outsider. Which makes a lot of sense if what you're thinking about is the internal functioning of cults and what that might have to do with American college culture.
It's been weeks since I finished this novel, and I'm still thinking about it. About its ominous and ambiguous ending, about how much I liked reading about a queer main character who struggles to find the motivation to do things and that has a difficult relationship with time and reality, but mostly, about academic pressure and its effects. As I said, more than anything this book was a feeling to me, the feeling of being told to do the impossible for nebulous reasons while experiencing baseline mental illness, and it going on sometimes overly-vague, sometimes weirdly specific and nonsensical tangents reinforced that. The lie is that school is what matters the most, this story says, and the moment you break is the moment you start falling for it. There is a reason Catherine House seems to target students who have no other place to go.
That's not to say that this book never bored me (it did), that I think many people will like it (probably not?), and that creeping dread and alienated exhaustion are what you should want to experience in your free time, but it stands that I really appreciated what this book attempted, and that if you liked how it made you feel, you should definitely try Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko....more
Comparing a book like The Starless Sea to others feels like cheapening the magical experience to me, but the parallels are difficult to ignore, so I'mComparing a book like The Starless Sea to others feels like cheapening the magical experience to me, but the parallels are difficult to ignore, so I'm going to say it: this felt so much like Daughter of Smoke and Bone meets The Ten Thousand Doors of January. A book I loved and a book I didn't like much; it makes sense that my enjoyment of this was in the middle between the two.
The kitchen was my favorite character. Given which symbol they chose for the cover, I'm going to assume that whoever chose it agreed with me, and that's only one of the many reasons the UK cover is the best one.
Maybe I should write a more coherent review. Maybe I'll come back and write one. I don't know; this book wasn't coherent either but it worked anyway....more
Rereading all the previous installments before getting to this was the best choice I could have done, and I ended up enjoying The Chosen immensely; I Rereading all the previous installments before getting to this was the best choice I could have done, and I ended up enjoying The Chosen immensely; I think it might even be my favorite so far. I mean, this series is somehow managing to get gayer with every volume, so I'm not surprised.
It's still difficult to follow, but after a few rereads I think I can more or less see the outline of what is going on right now, even though I'm still confused about certain details; and while the scope of all of this + the beauty of the art are so overwhelming that I tend to miss the subtler things, like character development, they are there! I really appreciate seeing how Maika's priorities are shifting as she understands more about the ancient gods, and how Kippa is finding her own footing amidst all of this. This is turning more explicitly into a series about the senselessness of war and cyclical nature of harm, and I'm interested in seeing where the authors will bring these themes to.
My priorities haven't shifted, by which I mean I'm mostly here for the art (as usual) and the gay villainess aesthetic of it all. And this volume gave me a horrible F/F arranged marriage with backstabbing and a blood pact! (I've been looking for this kind of thing since The Stars Are Legion's Jayd/Rasida storyline... I can't believe how much this is reminding me of it.) Also, my favorite eldricht-god-possessed villainess - yes there's more than one and I'm living for it - kissed Maika with ulterior motives! This series is a gem.
Do I know where this series is going? Honestly, no, but I have some theories and can't wait to find out what Tuya is really up to. I also hope to see more of the Dracul....more
Yellow Jessamine is a queer gothic horror novella following shipping magnate, poisoner and pretend-widow Evelyn Perdanu as a terrifying plague of mystYellow Jessamine is a queer gothic horror novella following shipping magnate, poisoner and pretend-widow Evelyn Perdanu as a terrifying plague of mysterious origin devastates her already dying city.
I will start by saying that I'm not completely sure I got this. Horror endings are some of the most polarizing things to read for me, as them not resonating can break the book, and I think that's what happened here. The ending made sense, and it wasn't necessarily underwhelming, but I still finished the novella thinking "that's it?": it didn't make sense to me on an emotional level. However, that's something so personal that I don't think it should discourage others from picking the book up, despite it being the main reason I didn't get much out of this.
Because there is a lot to love about Yellow Jessamine. A story that knows the potential of a creepy poison garden is a story I want to love, and so is a story that explores how someone's paranoia can be at the same time their strength and their downfall. It is a creeping spiral from misanthropy to paranoia, all rooted in a self-loathing so overwhelming that it masks every other feeling in Evelyn's mind.
That might be one of the reasons people aren't recognizing this as a queer book, but it is, and it's clearly queer early on. No, the main character isn't in a place where she can think about loving or anything similar. However, anyone who isn't forcing heteronormativity on the novel can recognize that Evelyn is meant to be a portrayal of a lesbian who happens to be deeply unwell, given that from the beginning Evelyn spends a lot of time thinking about her maid Violetta undressing her, describes Violetta as (quoting) "special", "radiant", and the only good person in the world, and becomes clearly uncomfortable when men show any interest in her. I wish people realized that we're used to dismiss - often, even in ourselves - signs of women being attracted to women at every turn because of how homophobia and misogyny shape the way we understand and recognize desire. There's a reason "just gals being pals" about obviously gay situations is a lesbian meme. To not take this at all under account and just stating "this isn't really queer" is to reinforce heteronormativity. This isn't a love story, this is a tale about devotion and obsession and downfall. Queer people exist - and should get to exist in fiction - outside of clear romantic storylines.
Overall, I didn't feel strongly about this. Reading Yellow Jessamine felt like following something to its inevitable consequence, but the atmosphere wasn't strong enough for that to work: it should have felt creepy and ominous, but everything was too vague and barely-grounded. Maybe I would have liked it more had it sacrificed some of its readability (it is a quick read) for some heavier writing. More detail and clear indication of how things looked like would have made the whole story feel much more claustrophobic. You can't feel trapped in a manor if the book doesn't even really bother telling you how it looks like.
I still have a lot of respect for how casually messed up this book gets, and Evelyn is a fascinating if somewhat static (that's kind of the point! She is rooted) character to follow, but I don't know how much it will stay with me....more
One of the best things about A Song of Wraiths and Ruin is how it makes its world come alive. It takes place during a festival that only happens once One of the best things about A Song of Wraiths and Ruin is how it makes its world come alive. It takes place during a festival that only happens once in decades, Solstasia, and it felt magical in a way I hadn't experienced in a long time. Between the Patron Deities (who doesn't love a good faction-like system?), all the mythical creatures (talking hyenas? chipekwes? serpopards? yes), and the challenges we get to witness both inside the actual Solstasia competition and outside of it (...the wakama match is one of the best scenes), this world was so interesting to read about, and just fun. It also felt grounded. One has to see a city's worst sides to fall in love with it, and this book never shies away from Ziran's issues - the xenophobia, the corruption, the opulence existing side by side with poverty; the way the city's history might be darker than anyone imagines, with real repercussions on the present.
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin is narrated in dual PoV, and while I liked both protagonists, I was surprised the most by Malik. Boys in YA often seem to come from the same mold, especially if they have a "love interest" role. They react to traumatic events and other difficulties in almost always the same ways, the designated Acceptable Manly Ways™, which are to use sarcasm to cover wounds or become closed-off and brooding, which ~enhances their mysteriousness~. Malik has anxiety. Malik has anxiety and several panic attacks on the page. Some very realistically portrayed ones, by which I mean uncool and embarrassing and weird and oh no now you're going to cry again; and this book gets it. It gets how panic attacks lower your self-esteem and feed off your low self-esteem; it gets what it means to grow up knowing that everyone kind of sees you as the village freak; it gets how they make living (and taking part in an important competition) in a place that discriminates against Malik's people even more difficult. This books gets it, and that's why this first chapter of Malik's story ends up being about self-acceptance. (This book also has content warnings in the beginning, which is kind and also shouldn't be rare.)
Karina couldn't be more different from Malik, being the daughter of Ziran's Sultana, and yet the two have a lot in common - in the end, they just want to be accepted as they are. Karina wants people to appreciate who she is, but also knows she doesn't really want to rule. She's an impulsive mess, which made for a lot of really interesting developments, some of which involving necromancy! I love her. Her story also involved learning to see the people around her more clearly instead of taking them for granted, and the way it ended was just... perfect. (The female friendships...) And since I forgot to mention that before: this book is casually queer-inclusive. When Karina decides that the Solstasia competition reward will be her hand in marriage - she needs the heart of a prince: an important ingredient to perform a certain necromantic ritual - the competition isn't closed to women, because law says she can have a wife. Now she just has to make sure that a woman won't win, because that's someone she can't use the corpse of!
Please don't let the marketing mislead you. Before I actually tried this book, all I knew about it was that it had the enemies-to-lovers trope and that someone needed to save a younger sibling, which didn't make it sound interesting at all - I don't even like these tropes. Especially the sibling one. And I still loved this, because it's that good. It helps that Malik has more than one sister, so you get to see that he cares about his siblings, instead of being told about it for all the book and shown the contrary. It helps, more than anything, that this book puts thought into things as it builds over its premise - so it doesn't even matter that I wasn't so drawn to the premise. Also, publishing should stop being so attached to comp titles, because the way the marketing (nonsensically) pushed the comparison with Children of Blood and Bone almost made me not read this. Just because it's West African fantasy it doesn't mean that they're alike.
I listened to the audiobook, which I liked: in this novel storytelling is a form of magic, so it's great to have someone tell it to you....more
One of the things I love most about reading queer SFF is the new perspective it brings, and Beyond the Dragon's Gate is a short story that talks aboutOne of the things I love most about reading queer SFF is the new perspective it brings, and Beyond the Dragon's Gate is a short story that talks about AIs and their relationship with their hardware in a trans perspective - while also having human trans characters. By the way, no wonder the non-binary marshal manages to feel fascinating despite the very little space they have to shine, it's a Lee story with a lot of typical Lee elements, like Extremely Unfriendly Architecture (love it). I liked the way AIs crossing the Turing Threshold was likened to a carp turning into a dragon, it reminded me of one of my favorite short stories (If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again by Zen Cho, which I think is inspired by tales with similar elements - turning into a dragon is ascending to a higher level). This does kind of feel like something that is a part of a bigger story (which I'd love to read, of course), but I also think it worked really well the way it is....more
Queer, fucked up twist on Alice in Wonderland with lots of murder and various other questionable things, because what's morality in such a place? I coQueer, fucked up twist on Alice in Wonderland with lots of murder and various other questionable things, because what's morality in such a place? I couldn't have asked for a better ending, but I have to say that, as with all books that try to make Alice in Wonderland darker, a lot of whimsy is lost in the process, and I miss it. Still here for the unapologetically toxic stories about loyalty, especially since I don't often get a sapphic version!...more
I almost didn't read this, but then it was a Hugo Award finalist, and I'm so glad I changed my mind. The City in thThe layers. Oh the layers.
4.5 stars
I almost didn't read this, but then it was a Hugo Award finalist, and I'm so glad I changed my mind. The City in the Middle of the Night has some of the most interesting worldbuilding I've read in a while, character dynamics that deeply appeal to me, and writing so beautiful I could cry.
At its heart, this is a story about a toxic relationship between two women, the kind of toxic relationship queer women in a heteronormative society are intimately familiar with: the love for the popular, Straight best friend who claims to love you (though how is always left to interpretation, deliberately) but actually sees you as a pawn, as means to an end more than anything. It's not a case that this book ended where it did, and the final confrontation wasn't about the revolution or what will happen to Xiosphant. The City in the Middle of the Night is about Sophie and Bianca, what they feel for each other, why they are drawn to each other and why they chafe, always chafe in the end. It's a story about the importance of open-mindedness and acceptance, about how for some fighting for change is a way to help people thrive, while for others is only important as far as it gives them privilege, attention, power over others. It's the negative of a love story, and yet there's so much love in its pages, in the questions it raises, in the ending it chose.
Sophie and Bianca aren't the only main characters. Half of this book is told in Mouth's PoV, and I found those parts to be less compelling for a variety of reasons, the main one being how the supporting characters in it weren't as well-drawn. Mouth's and Alyssa's relationship was an interesting foil to Sophie and Bianca's, strained for different reasons but born from similarities between the two characters (though again, I didn't feel it was as well-developed), and Mouth's arc was a foil to Sophie's. Sophie's story is about knowledge as a bridge over misunderstanding, the importance of learning about the past, while Mouth's was about knowledge as something that drags you down, and the need to let go of the past. I live for foils, and I thought this was really clever, because it's true that a core part of being human is wondering how much of the past one can forgive or understand or let go. It's often not easy to understand which between forgetting or deepening one's understanding would help. And, of course, Gelet society is a foil to humanity in that! It only makes sense for a book set on a tidally locked planet, half day and half night, to exist in mirrors and explore the gray between the ends of binaries, after all.
Now, let's talk about the worldbuilding. Setting a book on a tidally locked planet is an incredibly cool concept to begin with, and the details made it even better, made it feel real, while never making anything difficult to grasp. We start the story in Xiosphant, the city in which Time has become a way to control the people through the idea of Circadianism: everyone has to do the same things at the same time. Everything is designed to make you feel like you're running out of time, to make not wonder about the past so that you can't talk about privilege and power being concentrated in certain groups, to make you not talk about what's outside because the solutions that work for other countries could never work for Xiosphant, Xiosphant is special (this has a quote that is basically a parody American exceptionalism and that was my favorite moment). This book isn't exactly subtle, but sometimes one needs to go for the throat. And this might be a horrible place, but the details about the many different kinds of currency, the shutters and the farmwheels... it was so fascinating to read.
Xiosphant's foil is Argelo, the city that never sleeps, in which there's always some kind of party going on, some kind of battle, sometimes both things at the same time, and everything is based on "freedom", the freedom to do as one pleases, which usually includes trampling others and forming gangs to survive. The descriptions of the parties and locals in Argelo were breathtaking in all their extravagant details, and yet there was always that atmosphere of emptiness to it. Both cities are dying, and have a lot in common - the violence, the lack of care and sense of community, the aversion to meaningful change - and the climate is going to destroy them in not much time, if everyone on the planet doesn't start cooperating in some way. While reading this, especially the Argelo part, I kept thinking about how in a book that doesn't grasp the dynamics of privilege, what privilege does to people (like, uh, most YA dystopians) Bianca would have been the heroine. I'm glad this is not that kind of book.
Argelo, Xiosphant and the City in the Middle of the Night (where the alien Gelet live) aren't the only societies explored. We also get to know about the people in Mouth's past, the Nomads, and their storyline had some really interesting parts, but again, like everything in Mouth's storyline, I didn't feel like the full implications of them were explored - that's the main reason this isn't going to be a full five star read for me. When we have a storyline as well-rounded as Sophie's, with a in-depth exploration of PTSD, of a toxic relationship and of an entire alien society, Mouth's story just feels faded, even though I get why it was there.
I couldn't end this review without talking about the writing, which I loved. For the descriptions, for how effective it was, for how much of this I highlighted. I understand why it's polarizing, it keeps you at arm's length from the characters. But, once you settle into it, it carries you in its flow like the visions of the Gilet, and it's breathtaking....more
This isn't really a review, because I don't know how to review nonfiction made up of essays* and poetry, but this was definitely a worthwhile read. ItThis isn't really a review, because I don't know how to review nonfiction made up of essays* and poetry, but this was definitely a worthwhile read. It's an attempt to reframe how we think about justice and the meaning itself of healing in marginalized communities - where so many of us are traumatized, and it talks both about the concept of safety in the context of trauma and about the commodification of trauma in the Discourse™.
As there is a lot in here about how queer communities fail their members that uncannily (or maybe not, all things considered) mirrors queer book twitter's most dysfunctional behavior patterns, I think many of my friends and followers could get something out of it as well.
* I think? I don't really even know the right name for them in English....more
Reading Soft Science felt like trying to grasp onto something as it disintegrates in your hands and falls through your fingers, which I guess is what Reading Soft Science felt like trying to grasp onto something as it disintegrates in your hands and falls through your fingers, which I guess is what the author was going for.
I didn't get a lot of this. It's probably not the right collection to start with if you - like me - aren't used to reading poetry at all, but it was still a really interesting experience. Taken literally, there's often not a lot to get, because everything in this collection is an exercise in breaking apart, shattering and mixing words, playing with format and the many ways English can be broken and still carry so much meaning if only you look at it sideways.
A lot of this is also talking about perspective and its consequence, othering. No wonder a lot of its imagery relies on cyborgs and AIs. It's about living as a woman in our world, in which being hammered into a shape made to please others is just a day like another and sex is a no-win situation; it's about living as a queer Asian-American woman in America, in which racism and xenophobia are everyday occurrences and the internet highlights the worst of it.
It made me think about language barriers, and how there was yet another, unexpected one because of my first language, and try as I might holding onto English will always be more difficult to me. So, no, I didn't understand a lot of this. It might have been the point. I might be missing the point entirely. That still doesn't mean this has no value, even when so much of our ways to measure worth and consciousness rely on something as self-centered as understanding and "relatability". It made me think about many things in a more indirect way, so I guess it worked....more
There's nothing as powerful as reading books involving Pride in June.
Felix Ever After is a story about love. It's a love story just as much as it is oThere's nothing as powerful as reading books involving Pride in June.
Felix Ever After is a story about love. It's a love story just as much as it is one about how love can be difficult to accept, especially when you're a Black trans person and so much of the world seems to want to tear you down. Felix's arc in regard to recognizing and accepting love instead of chasing the approval of people who hate him was wonderful to read.
Felix Ever After is also about questioning. There isn't much questioning representation out there that isn't specifically about a character first discovering they're queer, but like coming out, questioning is usually a process. I loved how both the internet and the people at the LGBT discussion group were important to Felix's journey - who at the beginning of the book identifies as a trans boy (and has already transitioned) and then discovers that demiboy fits him better. By the way, it's great to read an all-queer friend group in which various people have different opinions on labels, parades and LGBT spaces (many love them! Many find them overwhelming, in different ways.)
Like many other queer YA books, this has a plotline involving outing, and yet it's handled in a way I hadn't seen before, one that felt completely different. From the beginning, the emotional impact of it is never brushed off. Other characters, the ones portrayed as supportive, don't make it about themselves. And, most importantly, the question hanging in the air isn't whether people will accept Felix, this story grapples with outsider approval in a completely different way. What matters to this book is that the main character gets to reclaim what was taken from him - in this case, with his art (Felix is a painter). It doesn't just feel different, it is different, which is why ownvoices reinterpretations of "tired tropes" are vital. While we're on this topic: this book has a love triangle, as the main character is in love with and loved by two boys. One of the two relationships works out, the other doesn't; I still really appreciated how this book talked about loving multiple people at the same time, true love doesn't need to be one.
Let's get to the... not exactly complaints, let's say complicated points. I'm in awe of how much this book is doing, and not only in the sense of representation - so many things are discussed: the many forms privilege can take & their consequences, marginalized people's relationship with outsider approval, queer intra-community dynamics, unsupportive parents, labels and their limits, the role of morality in art (and many others I would tell you about if not for the fact that I can't highlight an audiobook). And here's the thing: this is very unsubtle and sometimes its dialogue and introspection sound like a repurposed twitter thread, disclaimers included. However, I don't think that lack of subtlety is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to difficult topics in YA, and we've seen that being subtler and allowing teens to be messier on-page can have consequences, especially for queer authors of color, so let's move on.
Overall, I loved this and think this is how quality YA contemporary looks like. There's a mystery aspect that isn't obvious and yet isn't exactly the center of the story, there are not one but two romance dynamics to explore (one friends to lovers, one enemies to lovers), supportive friendships and friendships that have to end, all inside an queer friend group (glad this book knows that's realistic)... and I'm just realizing now that this is shorter than 400 pages. How....more
Raybearer is a YA fantasy novel following Tarisai, a girl born in the Swana region of the Arit Empire, as she is sent to court by her secretive, powerRaybearer is a YA fantasy novel following Tarisai, a girl born in the Swana region of the Arit Empire, as she is sent to court by her secretive, powerful mother to become one of the prince’s closest advisors… and maybe also kill him. If you’ve read a lot of YA fantasy, you’ve already read or heard of many stories with the same hook, and you might think you know where this is going. But do you?Raybearer is never quite what it seems at first sight.
This is a difficult book to talk about without spoilers. We first follow Tarisai when she’s just a child who is starved for affection, then we see her grow into her role at court and outside of it, always ready to question the rules and what she has been sold as the truth. At the beginning of the story, she knows nothing – not about how the world works, not about the costs of an empire, not even about herself. Between discoveries, developments, and actual plot twists, I feel like I’ve read a trilogy’s worth of material – and yet I never felt like I was being taken through things too quickly. Because of this, this novel may take a little to grow on readers, but among the many reasons I think you should keep reading, it’s worth it just to witness Tarisai’s growth. So much her early decisions are shaped by wanting to be loved, and I deeply appreciated how this book flipped a common YA trope on its head – it has a realistic portrayal of the long-term repercussions of isolation and parental neglect while also not having the parental figure be completely absent. [If you don’t read a lot of YA: parents are often noticeably absent and that’s just not dealt with, which is… unrealistic and unoriginal.]
Raybearer is a very unusual book. I don’t mean that in the sense of “strange” (you know I love those, but I wouldn’t say this one is), more for how it frames its own story. It spans years, when most YA doesn’t; it draws inspiration from many different places, folktales and traditions while centering West African culture; it’s a story about an empire that doesn’t shy away from talking about the inherent violence of imperial assimilation and the differences between justice and order. And while Raybearer is not lacking in romantic elements, friendship is even more of a driving force for Tarisai, and the prince’s council was the most intriguing part of the book for me. A group of kids who grow up extremely close and then have their minds linked together by their love for each other and for the prince? That was a lot.
Another thing about Raybearer I loved was how alive it felt – and the audiobook really helped with that, Joniece Abbott-Pratt is an amazing narrator and made the story come to life. Even the rhymes! (This book has many of them – there’s so much attention to developing the cultures here.) Unlike most audiobooks I’ve listened to so far, this one doesn’t just read them to you in a dull tone. Then there are the descriptions, that are as vivid and colorful and unforgettable as the cover of this book would make you think.
All Boys Aren't Blue is a memoir aimed at a young adult audience that talks about growing up as a Black and queer in America. It's a powerful book andAll Boys Aren't Blue is a memoir aimed at a young adult audience that talks about growing up as a Black and queer in America. It's a powerful book and accessible for those who need it most, including teens who aren't used to reading nonfiction, while dealing with difficult topics. It's the kind of book that makes me glad I finally decided to start reading nonfiction in my free time this year.
It's a necessary reminder that we can't sort people into boxes and we should push back against the societal tendency to do so; a reminder that we can't talk about different kinds of marginalization without considering the way they influence each other.
What more can I say? I flew through this while highlighting every chapter in multiple places. I know I was wary of nonfiction as a teen, but there are certain things that fiction doesn't get, at least not right now, like how coming out can be like outside of the two extremes fictional coming out stories keep pushing at queer people, and so many other things. Highly recommended to pretty much everyone....more
If there's one book I'd recommend all sapphic women to at least consider, it's this one. Especially if one's interaction with the rest of the queer coIf there's one book I'd recommend all sapphic women to at least consider, it's this one. Especially if one's interaction with the rest of the queer community mostly happen online and one doesn't have the chance to hear about these stories in real life. In the Dream House is a memoir about domestic abuse in a same-sex relationship, and it talks about how homophobia, sexism and the all-around toxic ideas we have about romantic relationships make it difficult for us to even talk about it.
We see domestic abuse as something gendered. And it's not that it isn't; it's not a case that most dynamics do include an abusive man and an abused woman, and that it's easier for heterosexual men, especially if wealthy and white, to abuse; as this book says, it takes less effort. But in an online culture where this discussion mostly stops to the concept that men are trash (at the same time an accusation and an excuse; we always make excuses for men - they're trash! it's their nature! they can't help but abuse!), it's difficult for us to conceptualize that no, relationships in absence of men won't mean there won't be abuse. If anything, the way queer people are statistically more estranged from traditional support networks (like their own family) makes them vulnerable.
There's a part of this that hit me more than the others - which is saying a lot, because after the first fifty pages, I was more or less annotating every other page - the author chose to relegate to a footnote. She says that, if in many cases heterosexual abuse is basically misogyny and enabled by misogyny (a concept I was already familiar from Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That, which while dated and very gender essentialist, was a worthwhile read), queer abuse is homophobia and enabled by homophobia. It's about control, and it uses the same means society tries to use to control queer people.
Another part I highlighted almost entirely was the one about queer villainy. This is a topic that is really important to me; like this book, I strongly believe that one of the most vital parts of being recognized as human is being recognized as someone who is capable of evil like everyone else. Queer villains written by queer authors are some of the most important characters to me, and yet I get why so many of us are afraid of those portrayals. But it's not like trying to paint ourselves in the image of saints will do anything to stop the people who hate us.
And yet, In the Dream House is all but a traditional memoir: Carmen Maria Machado looks at her own experiences through archetypes. We're used to see abuse as gendered, if we ever talk about it; we're not used to talk about queer people and society isn't invested in us understanding ourselves (erasure is a form of violence); we're used to see the house as safety and women as hysterical and lesbians as Schrödinger's women, only true women when it's convenient to the person speaking. Archetypes can blind us, and the author uses them to start these conversations; she uses fairytale tropes to explore what happened to her, she uses a choose-your-own-adventure structure to talk about the helpless cycle the domestic abuse victim is caught in (featuring pages in which she tells you you're cheating and couldn't possibly have gotten to that page). Every chapter is short, between one and five pages, and plays with different genre tropes and expectations. It's one of the most ingenious things I've ever read.
There would be so much more to say, but if I tried to dissect everything and mention every part I felt the need to highlight and annotate, this review would be as long as the book and completely incoherent, so I'm just going to end this. Read it....more
Queenie is an adult contemporary novel following a Jamaican-British woman navigating mental illness, trauma, and a breakup.
Queenie is one of the most Queenie is an adult contemporary novel following a Jamaican-British woman navigating mental illness, trauma, and a breakup.
Queenie is one of the most developed characters I've read so far this year. She's full of contradictions, humor, denial and confusion, obviously dealing with a lot while doing her best to ignore that there's even a problem (and isn't that just the anxious person's experience). Her coping mechanisms and self-esteem issues put her in degrading and sometimes dangerous situations involving men, which lead her to spiral.
Stories that manage to portray what is like to be mentally ill and the recovery progress while being completely honest about all the contradictions mental illness is made of aren't common, especially ones that are as effortless as Queenie. I flied through it - and don't get me wrong, for the most part, it's all but a happy story. Queenie has to deal with a lot of racist aggressions, in many different contexts, and there are several instances of men pursuing her as a fetish instead of as a person they could date, often while dating or being married to non-Black women. And the only man she's shown dating - the one she's breaking up with - was just racist enough to think that the overt racism coming from his family wasn't a problem.
Queenie spends a lot of time being gaslit, being told that she was overreacting, that everything is her fault. It's upsetting and infuriating to read, and yet this book doesn't feel like a chore, because it feels so real and earnest. And it's not only a story about men being horrible, it's also about the importance of supportive friendships, and navigating difficult family relationships. I loved reading about Queenie's family. It's clear that they love her, and want the best for her, but can't always communicate or understand what would actually be best for Queenie. They eventually support her in her journey of dealing with her childhood trauma and mental illness, and I'm always glad to see both that and stories about adult characters in which grandparents have an important role.
What I liked the most about this, though, was the portrayal of therapy. I don't think I've ever read a book that quite gets how it feels be told to do breathing exercises while your life is falling apart, or having your therapist truly help you but sometimes say the wrong thing when you're in a vulnerable state.
There are a few things about Queenie that I feel iffy about - most of which revolving around the character of Cassandra. There's a specific coincidence that kind of broke my suspension of disbelief ((view spoiler)[in a city as big as London, what are the chances of Cassandra and Queenie sleeping with the same Guy, and also those of Guy being the guy's name, creating the whole miscommunication... eh (hide spoiler)]), and I'm also wondering why money-lending was a relevant part of the only Jewish character's plotline.
Overall, I really liked this, and I'm so glad that Queenie got the ending she deserved. I'm hoping to get more into adult contemporary fiction now - there's a lot this did that a YA contemporary could have never done in terms of portrayal of mental illness, and I definitely feel like I'm ready to read more stories about adults in the real world....more
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