Siavahda's Blog, page 18
October 17, 2024
The Opposite of a Lobotomy: Metal From Heaven by august clarke
Metal from Heaven by August Clarke Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, multiple lesbian secondary characters
PoV: First-person, past-tense
Published on: 22nd October 2024
ISBN: 1645660990
Goodreads
For fans of The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth: a bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change – and simmering class warfare.
He who controls ichorite controls the world.
A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.
One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.
Only Marney survives.
A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger—or save her from it.
H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal from Heaven is a punk-rock murder ballad tackling labor issues and radical empowerment against the relentless grind of capitalism.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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~unexpected otters
~the life of a highwaywoman is the life
~service-top MC ftw
~I’m an anarchist now and I’m not sorry
:I also reviewed Metal From Heaven over on Ancillary Review of Books. That review is more spoilery than this one!:
Metal From Heaven grabs you by the throat with the very first line, and doesn’t let go until long after the last.
I still have bruises. I am scarred where this book touched me; I am branded.
And I am so, so good with that.
Metal From Heaven is a feral, phantasmagoric fantasy with bloody knuckles and otherworldly oil between its teeth, an anarchist bacchanal as sharp as it is gorgeous, hot pink and vicious. It’s almost impossibly vivid, every detail jewelled and gleaming, every line a decadent feast, electric and crackling. It’s an iridescent lightning strike, and you’ll find clarke’s prose seared like Lichtenberg figures across your skin before it’s done.
My blood was thick and vibrant. Cut me and find grenadine. Cut me and find white hot light.
The blurb has the plot covered pretty well: Marney’s family and community are all murdered for a peaceful work strike by Chauncey, the man who discovered and discovered how to utilise ichorite, a weird metal that can be used for almost anything. He didn’t care about his workers; they protested; he had them killed. Marney falls in with bandits; grows up; and eventually masquerades as a noble to get close to Chauncey’s daughter, with the goal of killing Chauncey. And – because where would the story be if they didn’t? – things get complicated.
I understood that we had a future of incomprehensible beauty. I just lacked the words for it then.
But even before we get to the plot, the structure of Metal From Heaven is already unusual. The opening lines are spoken from the end of the story;
Know I adore you. Look out over the glow. The cities sundered, their machines inverted, mountains split and prairies blazing, that long foreseen Hereafter crowning fast.
What’s a Hereafter? Who is adored? What’s happening?
What’s happening is Marney telling her story. To us, but not really us. To one person in particular.
Marney survives her family’s massacre, and a single moment of careless, casual kindness – a stranger, not just feeding her, but feeding her the kind of dessert she’s never beheld before – hooks her fate in with that of the Choir: anarchist communists who steal from the rich to support their own hidden community in the far-off Fingerbluffs. They are Hereafterists (does that ring a bell?), working towards paradise on earth (the Hereafter) with every breath, defiantly discarding the constrictions of religion, gender, sexuality, and anything else that seeks to restrain them.
And it’s absolutely beautiful.
We leaned off our lurchers and gave luxurious silks and fine jewels to everyone who gathered to watch us pass, and the crooked teeth they showed us were beautiful, and the air was perfumed with marmalade and tobacco flowers, and Harlow and Sisphe and I reclined on the cliffs like natural princes, eating fruit and sunning ourselves, adorned with scrapes and bruises.
We’re supposed to be hypnotised by the Fingerbluffs, and I don’t know how anyone could fail to be: it’s a dream, a Kubla Khan of a place where everyone is free to be who they want; where children wear jewels and buying-and-selling is just for fun. But like Kubla Khan, it dissolves like candyfloss when you try to hold it. clarke never zooms in to show us the complicated, messy bits that come with giving society the finger – and this doesn’t feel like clarke being forgetful; it reads as very deliberate. We’re supposed to raise our eyebrows at Marney’s blithe assurance that the Hereafter will be perfect, even though she can’t articulate what that means, never mind how it could be manifested. I’m pretty confident that we’re meant to give a head-tilt at the fact that the Fingerbluffs couldn’t exist without capitalism living next door to steal from – how are the Fingerbluffs going to support themselves in a world with no more rich?
Unclear.
But I can be sure that it’s deliberate because clarke never drops the ball with his worldbuilding. In Metal From Heaven, they’ve created a rich world so fully-realised you’ll forget it’s fictional, dazzlingly embroidered with history, competing religions, fashions, gender roles, political structures – nothing has been forgotten, and yet the worldbuilding is never overwhelming. The placement of small, unique details – prayer-pearls, the Bleed, lip-rings, tattoos – infuses the book with the vivid impression of a vast and complicated world, without having to show us every bit of it. Things are close enough to be familiar, with factories and motorcycles and trains, but the tiny elements that remind you that we’re not in our world are like pop rocks candy: glittering and sharp in your mouth, sweet and vital. Battered bread, domesticated otters, blue fruit – dazzling, viscerally convincing, and completely side-stepping any need for info-dumps.
Two hundred years ago Ignavian revolutionaries had decided it was unjust to have a class-based truth tense and hearsay tense, that is, it was a moral injury for the poor not to be taught truth’s grammar, for everything a working man said to be assumed to be half figment, for the privileged to be the authority on all things.
Marney herself is a feral tangle of desire and trauma, sharp as broken glass and soft as fur. She’s the kind of fearless whose courage comes from having already written herself off, and good gods she is fucked-up. The biggest critique I have of the Hereafterists is that none of them saw baby!Marney desperately needed healing – but then, just about everyone else among the Hereafterists is broken, too, so maybe there was no one whole enough to help her. Either way, Marney is a fascinating main character; oddly passive in some ways, fervent in her beliefs but uninterested in the nitty-gritty of them, quick to self-sacrifice, uneasy with her body and gender, vicious, rabid. She’s only a few steps above illiterate, which is interesting in a genre where leads are usually supernaturally special; she’s a wild thing who loves softness and luxury and femininity; who wants to make people happy as much as she wants to murder her family’s murderer; who has no pride at all. I adore her.
It was a disjuncture in the meat of me. A bone-deep fear. That fear was hungry, it wanted, I wanted, I lusted and was satisfied. Just not with hands on me. It sometimes seemed to me I had a cuntless cockless body. I was nothing but output and appetite, I gave, my pleasure lived in my knuckles and my nail beds and the leather belts around my hips. My clit was my tongue. My slit was my throat.
So what’s this book about? Yes, we know the plot, the plot is in the blurb, but what is it about?
Metal From Heaven is gender-fuckery and untamed queerness, labour politics and workers’ rights, anti-capitalist and gloriously anarchist. What the fuck is femininity weaves through the story, a bright, hot pink ribbon with razored edges. Pink, pink is everywhere: pink is the colour of gender-fuckery, as we see when Amon paints his face not blue for men or black for women, but pink; pink is what Marney sees when she uses her magic, the world smearing and shining around her. This is political fantasy – fiercely, unabashedly political – where there’s nothing on the menu but the rich, the rich and those who’ll betray everyone else to serve them.
Our fight was with the above and those below who’d betray their comrades to get higher.
clarke is writing about violence and freedom and sex and kink, the unceasing fight to make the world better, the belief that it can be better. Hope, and what hope costs. It’s gritty and gorgeous in equal measure, deliriously sensual, sexual; it has no interest in genre conventions at all, doesn’t ignore your expectations so much as never recognises that they’re there in the first place. It’s intoxicating and addictive – I have read my advanced reading copy THREE TIMES now, and I will read it many more times, I don’t see how I could ever be done.
And the prose? I highlighted so many lines and passages that I broke my ereader, and I have a long, long list of sentences I need tattooed on me. I have FEASTED on the prose here and I am FED, my word-hunger has never been so satisfied in my LIFE. I already adored clarke’s writing – hells yes I did, and if you haven’t read the Scapegracers trilogy, you bloody well ought to – but my siblings in Satan, the only way I can put this is, Metal From Heaven is the opposite of a lobotomy.
In more ways than one: yes, I galaxy-brained at the painfully exquisite language, but also: this book radicalised me. I’ve been anti-capitalist for a while now, but hi, yes, I’m convinced, anarchist communism is the way to go. Not because the Hereafterists are perfect, but because clarke fucking convinced me that too many of the tenets I’ve taken for granted are an outrage, an unforgivable violence. And I’m eager to see what other readers think, if anyone else has been convinced, and if so, where do we go from here?
When few rule the many, they must use force to take what they want, and demonstrate force not just to keep it, but to snuff the fires of contradiction from the collective. People above must do this. This is a quality of being above. Someone must be below, and to be below is to be bereft and suffer.
How often does a book really blow your mind? Really teach you something new, really make you see the world in a different way? NOT OFTEN. Mostly the books we love already align with our own beliefs and views – yes they do, don’t deny it – but every now and then, one comes along like a taser, and it’s going to hurt but the shock jolts you wide awake.
This book is a taser.
It was not intuition, it was insanity and faith.
When you put everything together, plot and worldbuilding and stunning main character and themes and prose–! This BOOK, this book is a nonpareil, a crown jewel, a comet that sears through the skies once in a generation. It is an Event and a miracle and a war-cry, ornate and bloody, decadent and distilled, a glamour bomb reshaping the world. It’s like nothing else you’ve ever read in so many different ways.
I bear my scars from reading it proudly.
Keep me and save us. Keep me or I’ll kill you. Say you’ll keep me.”
“I’ll keep you.”
Metal From Heaven doesn’t play nice and doesn’t play fair; this is a book that challenges you, bites you, wants you awake and wild and bleeding light. No review can do it justice; this is one you have to experience.
If you read only one book this year, let it be this one. You will not regret it.
The post The Opposite of a Lobotomy: Metal From Heaven by august clarke appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
October 16, 2024
I Can’t Wait For…The Moonstone Covenant by Jill Hammer
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Moonstone Covenant by Jill Hammer!
The Moonstone Covenant by Jill Hammer Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F/F/F polyamory/group marriage
Published on: 5th November 2024
Goodreads
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The story of four women who set out to uncover the secret origins of an intricate, magical city—and to change its fate.
Istehar Sha'an, whose unique powers allow her to communicate with trees and books, has led her community of refugee forest people to a remarkable place. In the archipelago-city of Moonstone, the Sha'an people find themselves in an extraordinary, multicultural metropolis that houses the the world's all-encompassing repository of wisdom. But in their search for a new home, the refugees soon garner the suspicion of Moonstone's locals, who forbid their magical practices. And when a hostile prince makes a bid to inherit the city's rule from his father, Istehar and her people realize they may be faced with exile—or worse. Meanwhile, Istehar has married three wives of Moonstone—a brave warrior librarian, a subtle-minded former concubine, and a tenacious apothecary who has spent years trying to solve her parents' murder. Driven by magical intuition and guided by a mysterious book, Istehar and her wives embark on a journey that will transform not only their lives, but the city of Moonstone itself.
Readers of Ursula K. LeGuin and Guy Gavriel Kay will delight in The Moonstone Covenant's richly imagined world of mysterious archives, bookboats, and divinations—and its tales of both betrayal and healing.
I have been SO excited for this one since I first learned about it, and can you blame me??? A magical archipelago-city! (I love archipelagos in fantasy, no please don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t.) A four-women group marriage! (Made up of SERIOUSLY AWESOME-SOUNDING ladies!) An all-encompassing library! And, although it’s not mentioned in this blurb, Istehar’s magic allows her to talk to trees – which also means with books! Because books are made of trees!!!
I’m sorry, I HAVE NEVER WANTED A MAGIC POWER SO BADLY!!!
To be clear, the books don’t seem to be alive and they don’t talk back with words. But still! Being able to know what a book says just by touching the cover? That would be so wonderful. (I wonder if the book has to be written in a language you know?)
The praise I’ve seen compares Hammer to Le Guin, which is actually not a plus for me – I love her nonfiction, but I’ve never gotten along with Le Guin’s stories for some reason – but I’ve read the excerpt and loved it. Just a few more weeks until we can read the whole thing!
You can read an excerpt here, and learn more about the worldbuilding of Moonstone here!
The post I Can’t Wait For…The Moonstone Covenant by Jill Hammer appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
October 14, 2024
Must-Have Monday #208
Must-Have Monday is a feature highlighting which of the coming week’s new releases I’m excited for. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all books being published that week; only those I’m interested in out of those I’m aware of! The focus is diverse SFF, but other genres sneak in occasionally too.
FOURTEEN books this week!
(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)
The Nightward (The Waters of Lethe, #1) by R.S.A. Garcia Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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Nebula and MIFRE award-winning author R.S.A. Garcia’s scifantasy debut novel—the first in a duology—in which Caribbean mythology meets The Witcher, introduces a world where women warrior-magicians rule, and a child princess and her bodyguard must flee an attempted coup and evade the wave of darkness sent to kill her.
For 500 years Gaiea’s Hand has stood as a ward against the Dark. The Age of Chaos is a faded memory. The Goddess has left Gailand and given her Blessing to the Queens to rule in her stead.
Princess Viella of the court of Hamber is the Spirit of Gaiea, presumptive heir to the throne and budding wielder of magic. And yet she’s still a child—not yet ten years old—and a day spent evading her teachers and her dutiful bodyguard, Luka, is much more satisfying than learning about telepathy, illusions, and other spells, or obeying even her mother, the Queen.
There is time enough…until there isn’t.
For the night the Queen hosts the Ceremony to confirm Viella as the next Hand of Gaiea, everything changes for her—in the most horrific way the assassination of Viella’s mother.
Now Viella is Queen.
Luka, despite resenting his position as royal babysitter, does not hesitate. He rushes his charge from the Court and vows to keep her safe. Yet he is unsure how to help a burgeoning Hand of Gaiea, let alone contend with his place as a man in a matriarchal world and the secret that is burning inside him.
Together, they are on the run from darkness in a world where the lines between magic and technology are blurring and it’s up to a child and her protector to bring clarity and light back to the Queendom.
This turned out to not be what I hoped it was, but I think a lot of other readers are going to enjoy it plenty – and I still wanted to feature it!
Sorcery and Small Magics (The Wildersongs Trilogy, #1) by Maiga Doocy Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: MLM MC
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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Desperate to undo the curse binding them to each other, an impulsive sorcerer and his curmudgeonly rival venture deep into a magical forest in search of a counterspell—only to discover that magic might not be the only thing pulling them together.
Leovander Loveage is a master of small magics.
He can summon butterflies with a song, or turn someone’s hair pink by snapping his fingers. Such minor charms don’t earn him much admiration from other sorcerers (or his father), but anything more elaborate always blows up in his face. Which is why Leo vowed years ago to never again write powerful magic.
That is, until a mix-up involving a forbidden spell binds Leo to obey the commands of his longtime nemesis, Sebastian Grimm. Grimm is Leo’s complete opposite—respected, exceptionally talented, and an absolutely insufferable curmudgeon. The only thing they agree on is that getting caught using forbidden magic would mean the end of their careers. They need a counterspell, and fast. But Grimm casts spells, he doesn’t undo them, and Leo doesn’t mess with powerful magic.
Chasing rumors of a powerful sorcerer with a knack for undoing curses, Leo and Grimm enter the Unquiet Wood, a forest infested with murderous monsters and dangerous outlaws alike. To dissolve the curse, they’ll have to uncover the true depths of Leo’s magic, set aside their long-standing rivalry, and—much to their horror—work together.
Even as an odd spark of attraction flares between them.
This is a DELIGHT, kind of reminiscent of Freya Marske, vibes-wise, but in first-person and with a secondary-world setting. The romance is slow-burn, the worldbuilding is relatively simple but wonderful, and I absolutely adored our MC, who is a brat with a big heart. Highly recommended!
Empress of Dust (Bastion Cycle #1) by Alex Kingsley Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: MLM MC, major nonbinary character
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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There are monsters outside the city walls.
Harvard is small, anxious, and plagued by a constant tremor, which is not an ideal combination for a desert scavenger. He and his crew are under constant threat of desertwalker attacks, and Harvard is nearly useless against them.
When the biggest mistake of Harvard’s life separates him from his crew, he must learn the secrets of the desert beasts in order to survive the dangers of the dusts. Returning to Bastion with a surprising ally, Harvard is forced to choose between saving his crew or allying with the “monsters” who rescued him.
Harvard never saw himself as a hero, but when the beasts of the dusts implore him to aid their rescue mission, he holds the lives of crabs and humans alike in his trembling hands.
For awesome post-apocalyptic action, where Earth is ruled by gargantuan crab beasts, get your copy of Empress of Dust today!
Post-Apocalyptic / Sci Fi / Trans / LGBT / Sapphic
New Adult and Adult
I’ve heard so much praise for this that I’m going to have to pick it up, even with a giant crab on the cover! The worldbuilding is supposed to be especially excellent, and you know great worldbuilding is my catnip!
Solid Metal Nightmares by Devyn Kennedy Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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Mercy is a mech pilot filled with survivor's guilt and a burning desire to shatter the Coalition for what it did to her and her comrades. Yet, despite her skill as a pilot and the power of her mech, the Heaven Breaker Noxus, Mercy will need allies.
So she does the unthinkable. She begins to work covertly with the enemy of the human race, the strange and reality-warping Shimmer. If that wasn't enough, Mercy decides to take a position as a Professor at the prestigious Crown Gall where she will instruct the next generation of pilots.
Mercy's goal is to foster strong and intelligent allies and rest the world, or else be consumed by the fiery rage that propels her.
Solid Metal Nightmares is a queer sci-fi novel with elements of body horror. It explores grief and rage, how love can heal us as well as fuel our darker impulses, and the ways that violence changes us.
I can’t remember why (I really need to start taking notes) but I remember I saw the author talking about this one on social media and was hooked immediately. And I trust past!Sia’s judgement, so I’m excited to pounce on this one!
And the Sky Bled by S. Hati Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: South Asian-coded setting and cast
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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Amid the chaos of a dying city ruled by colonizers, three rivals—a thief, a slumlord, and an heiress—race to find a hidden cache of magic that will decide the city’s fate.
In the occupied city of Tejomaya, calor—a magical fossil fuel—is found only in the blood rains that fall from the sky. While a six-month drought has brought Tejomaya to a desperate standstill, rumors of a secret stash of magic propel three unlikely treasure seekers to risk everything.
Tenacious and street-smart Zain Jatav has been forced to steal calor for her slumlord bosses for years. Finding the magic reserve might be her only key to freedom. But she’ll have to contend with Iravan Khotar, a slumlord himself and an ambitious revolutionary hoping to use the same magic to save his people from the mysterious illness devastating the slums—and to bolster a fight against their oppressors. Meanwhile, heiress Anastasia Drakos leads the ruling council of Tejomaya from the safety of a nearby island. With the hidden magic, she could finally take full control of the city and crush the slums beneath her unyielding fist.
As Zain, Iravan, and Anastasia draw closer to finding the treasure, their paths tangle, and not for the first time—they met before, a decade ago, in a fire that destroyed each of their lives in different ways. Their reunion might bring the already-weakened city to its knees.
Exploring the devastating mechanisms of power, this searing climate fantasy breathes life into a crumbling world hovering on the brink of total destruction.
I think we’re calling this kind of thing cli-fantasy now, and I approve! Even if I’m going to have to wait until I’m in the right headspace before picking this one up, I think. But it sounds great, and I’ve seen a lot of love for it!
Strange Beasts by Susan J. Morris Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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"Such an absolute joy to read. Highly recommended."–TJ Klune, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Cerulean Sea
In this fresh-yet-familiar gothic tale—part historical fantasy, part puzzle-box mystery—the worlds of Dracula and Sherlock Holmes collide in a thrilling exploration of feminine power.
At the dawn of the twentieth century in Paris, Samantha Harker, daughter of Dracula’s killer, works as a researcher for the Royal Society for the Study of Abnormal Phenomena. But no one realizes how abnormal she is. Sam is a channel into the minds of a power that could help her solve the gruesome deaths plaguing turn-of-the-century Paris—or have her thrown into an asylum.
Sam finds herself assigned to a case with Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter of the criminal mastermind and famed nemesis of Sherlock Holmes and a notorious detective whom no one wants to work with on account of her previous partners’ mysterious murders. Ranging from the elite clubs of Paris to the dark underbelly of the catacombs, their investigation sweeps them into a race to stop a beast from its killing rampage, as Hel and Sam are pitted against men, monsters, and even each other. But beneath their tenuous trust, an unmistakable attraction brews. Is trusting Hel the key to solving the murder, or is Sam yet another pawn in Hel’s game?
Okay, firstly, that is one of the best covers I’ve ever seen, 500 gold stars to the artist and designer! I’m actually about halfway through reading this one, and I can’t decide whether I like it or not, but it is objectively great and I’m delighted with the breadth of the folklore/mythology Morris is using!
A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe, #1) by Alistair Reeves Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: MLM MC
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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In this charming MM romantic fantasy, cursed witch Briar Wyngrave has a date with destiny―but isn’t totally sure which man that date is with.
Witch Briar Wyngrave’s time is limited. The wasting curse that killed his mother is coming for him too, consuming his magic bit by bit. At least he’ll have the chance to make his name as a magical fashion designer with an elite placement in Pentawynn, the country’s glittering capital, after graduation. Until, that is, a prophecy sends him to the remote island of Coill Darragh instead, in search of a predestined lover with a mysterious mask.
When Briar arrives with his grumpy magpie familiar, Vatii, he finds an unwelcoming town, a murdered poltergeist named Gretchen in his apartment, and a handsome alderman named Rowan with a haunting scar. He also gets pulled into the mysterious magic of the darkly enchanted forest that surrounds the town and seems to have something to do with his curse . . . As if all that weren’t enough, famous witch Linden Fairchild has come to town, complete with a charismatic smile, an unreadable aura, and a surefire plan to cure curses.
How’s a cursed witch to know which enchanting man is his destiny? And can Briar possibly make an impact as a magical fashion designer in this tiny town? One thing is certain: a witch’s magic requires a tithe―a berry, a feather, a cut into flesh―and Coill Darragh may take tithes Briar isn’t ready to give . . .
Honestly the bit I care about is that our MC wants to be a fashion designer – that delights me, and delights me even more in a fantasy setting! Way more invested in him getting his own boutique or whatever than in the romance!
American Rapture by C.J. Leede Genres: Adult, Horror, Sci Fi
Representation: Bi/queer rep, Black, Indigenous, and Latino rep
Protagonist Age: 16 years old
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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I don’t even know, but I’ve seen so much adoration for this book, AND the sample pages you can read on the book’s Big River page hooked me immediately, so??? GUESS I’LL BE READING IT!
Rogue Community College (Liberty House #1) by David R. Slayton Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay MC
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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From the author of White Trash Warlock and Dark Moon Shallow Sea, Rogue Community College is a delightful fantasy full of magic and mayhem …
Isaac Frost is an assassin. Raised in the Graveyard of the cruel and mysterious Undertaker, he has mastered the deadly art of the knife and the skill of survival, together with scores of others just like him—young men taken from their families to become the most infamous killers throughout the realms of elves and humans. But Isaac is a single drop of another’s blood can confer upon him the knowledge and power of friend and foe alike.
After crossing paths with the elf queen Argent, Isaac is sent to a strange magical school for wayward practitioners in the hopes that he can learn where he—and his unusual talent—fit in the world. Isaac is charmed by the school’s chaotic nature and finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Vran, a Sea Elf haunted by secret knowledge.
But Vran isn’t the only one with secrets, and Isaac’s arrival is no accident. The Undertaker has charged him with infiltrating the school for the purpose of destroying it utterly, and his future rests on completing his mission—before the Undertaker takes matters into his own hands.
A new novel set in the world of the Adam Binder series!
‘Chosen ones go to elite schools of magic. This one is for everyone else.’ is an INSTANT hook! Also, did you see the dinosaurs on the cover?!
Legend of the White Snake by Sher Lee Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: M/M
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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A snake spirit transforms into a boy and must hide his true identity after falling for a headstrong prince in this lush, romantic retelling of the traditional Chinese folktale.
When Prince Xian was a boy, a white snake bit his mother and condemned her to a slow, painful death. The only known cure is an elusive spirit pearl—or an antidote created from the rare white snake itself. Desperate and determined, Xian travels to the city of Changle, where an oracle predicted he would find and capture a white snake.
Seven years ago, Zhen, a white snake in the West Lake, consumed a coveted spirit pearl, which gave him special powers—including the ability to change into human form.
In Changle, Xian encounters an enigmatic but beautiful stable boy named Zhen. The two are immediately drawn to each other, but Zhen soon realizes that he is the white snake Xian is hunting. As their feelings grow deeper, will the truth about Zhen’s identity tear them apart?
Interestingly, this is the first of two queer retellings of this myth I know about this year – the other is Sister Snake in December – and I’m excited for both takes!
Whispers Most Foul (Dunhollow Academy, 1) by Emma MacDonald Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Sapphic MC
Published on: 15th October 2024
Goodreads
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Rose Thenlif, the only student unable to cast spells at the elite Dunhollow Academy of Witchcraft, prefers keeping her nose in books and away from the sneers of her classmates, or the critical eyes of her headmistress mother. But when her fellow classmates begin to go missing, she finds that she alone can see their ghosts.
Worse yet, Rose’s latest ghostly vision is her greatest academic rival, her talented and recently vanished classmate Sylvie. Now the reluctant pair must team up to uncover the deadly secret at the heart of Dunhollow. But neither of them are prepared to uncover their feelings for one another, a love that will take them to the edge of life and death . . .
A queer magic school story??? I will ALWAYS show up for those!
The Daughter of Danray (Flowers of Prophecy, #3) by Natalia Hernandez Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Latine-coded setting and cast, brown sapphic MC
Published on: 17th October 2024
Goodreads
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The Name-Bearer has never wavered from her mission.
Find the Unnamed Prince.
Deliver him to the Flowers of Prophecy.
Bring peace to the kingdom.
For years she trained in the safety of the Danrayan Temple until she was ready to face her destiny. Then, with the help of her friends, she scoured the continent and found the prince that was promised. And yet, despite finally having the key to her people’s fate in her grasp, the Name-Bearer’s journey is far from over.
The capital is overrun with monstros. Her greatest champion is out of her reach. And every ally she thought she could rely on is losing faith in her and her mission. If Tierramadri is going to be saved, the Name Bearer will have to face her most impossible task proving to everyone that the Flower’s Prophecy is not only true - but worth risking everything for.
This is the latest in the Flowers of Prophecy series, which I need to catch up on! But no way was I going to miss featuring it!
Until We Shatter by Kate Dylan Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, past F/F
Published on: 17th October 2024
Goodreads
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An action-packed, epic heist fantasy from the author of Mindwalker, perfect for fans of Six of Crows and A Darker Shade of Magic.
A desperate thief. An impossible heist. Survive . . . or shatter.
No matter where she goes, Cemmy's life is under threat.The Church would see her killed for having any magic.The Council of Shades wants her dead for not having enough.
So when her mother falls ill, Cemmy has no choice but to turn thief. And when she's offered a job that could solve all their problems, it's impossible to resist.
The catch? Cemmy will have to work with Chase - beautiful, dangerous, and full of secrets - to steal a powerful relic the Church has hidden within a deadly realm of shadows.
If she succeeds, Cemmy will finally be safe. But if she's caught, she risks igniting a spark that could destroy the city - and everyone inside . . .
This is supposed to have a very interesting magic system? Other than that I don’t know too much about it, but I’ve heard enough praise that I’m looking forward to finding out!
The Envoys of War (The Envoys of Chaos #1) by Dave Lawson Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Aroace MC
Published on: 19th October 2024
Goodreads
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Don’t kill the messengers.
As a bodyguard for the King’s Envoys, Gen is content with her life of traveling, drinking wine, and hitting things with her sword. It’s the perfect job. Until the King sends her and her friend Cordyn into war-torn enemy territory on a mission to deliver vital military intelligence to an allied nation.
The problem? The mission is a sham.
Gen is tasked with determining if Cordyn is a spy who is selling information to the enemy. Cordyn is the worst kind of libertine: brash, arrogant, and on the run from half the husbands in the kingdom, but Gen can’t imagine him betraying her or their nation.
With obtuse bandits, vengeful mages, and a resolute lutist, they embark on a daring rescue mission, complicated by Cordyn’s increasingly complex schemes. As ominous enemy plots surface, Gen and Cordyn must decide what matters most. Their nation or their friends.
A rollicking fantasy adventure for fans of Dungeons and Dragons, Nicholas Eames, and Michael J. Sullivan.
Another I don’t know much about – it popped up on my social media feed somewhere, and I was intrigued because we don’t see aroace MCs in fantasy very often! (Or in any other genre, as far as I know.)
Will you be reading any of these? Did I miss any releases you think I should know about? Let me know!
The post Must-Have Monday #208 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
October 11, 2024
Should Have Been a Short Story: The Summer Queen by Rochelle Hassan
Highlights~fantasy terms that don’t mean what they usually mean
~uh oh, new witches!
~the Folk are here
~gotta wake the sleeper
~a truly adorable animal companion
:this review contains spoilers for The Buried and The Bound!:
I really enjoyed the first book in this trilogy, The Buried and The Bound, but I think this sequel succumbed to Middle Book Syndrome.
The thing is, it’s still a very easy, enjoyable read that doesn’t flinch away from interesting, sometimes darker themes. The prose that elevated Buried & Boundruns like cool, clear water through Summer Queen, smooth and silken. And the characters continue to be fabulous; they all get to develop in Summer Queen, moving a few steps along in their evolution. For Aziza, it’s the beginning of learning what her hedewitchery can do and how it can be used to greatest effect; Tristan is becoming more confident and whole within himself, finding a home and accepting that he’s not the person Leo fell in love with before; and Leo wrestles with being the lone ‘normal human’ in the coven and finding ways to carry his own weight (even though Aziza and Tristan don’t see things that way at ALL).
But most of the plot of Summer Queen was – I don’t want to call it a waste of time…except that it kind of was? Everything the coven went through was for nothing in the end – it allowed each of them to learn more about their abilities, but it was pretty literally one lesson for each character. If the whole point of the book was to make sure the teens got these lessons, then…surely that could have been arranged WITHOUT the whole Hunt quest? Which was one of those travelling from here to there and back again OOPS other events made our quest invalid, actually things. Which I am not at all fond of.
And quite a lot of the plot hinged on a few leaps of logic that didn’t make sense to me. For instance, Leo becomes convinced that his lost true love was taken as a servant by the Folk – but he has absolutely no evidence of that! The curse was that his true love would be ‘taken’ from him, but how he goes from that to ‘the Summer Court has my true love!’ I have no clue. (To say nothing of: even if we accept the Folk might have taken this person…the Summer Court is far from the only court! Why do you think your person would be here specifically?)
There was a frustrating amount of things going unexplained – for example, the big quest Leo and the others have to go on? There’s a sort of superficial reason for it – the sleeping king needs a potion – but I didn’t understand at all why it had to be this water, why the whole court didn’t just move next to the lake, why there had to be a Hunt at all. And the creature they were hunting what IS it, really? They called it a undine, sure, but that clearly doesn’t mean what it usually means, and we never got Hassan’s take on it. The coven reaches it, scoops up some of its water, and leaves, and the whole thing was very…underwhelming and hand-wavey?
We got to see a bit more of this world, and I appreciated meeting and learning about more witches, since Aziza has been very isolated from the human magical community, which means Tristan and Leo are as well. But those new characters, that sense of the worldbuilding expanding, was all unimportant to the story of this book, and was clearly just laying groundwork for Events in book three.
I really feel like we could have skipped this book entirely; kept a few pieces here and there, but scrapped about 95% of the story. We didn’t need the quest. We barely needed the Folk. This whole book could have been reduced down to a couple of chapters in a book full of actual plot-moving stuff, and I wish it had been.
So…in a weird way, a lovely read, because of the wonderful writing. But also a frustrating read. I loved seeing the three MCs learning more about their abilities, and about themselves; I loved the new ‘animal companion’ we’ve gained and hope it sticks around for the next book. But virtually none of the story was necessary, and what wasn’t necessary wasn’t really that fun or interesting.
I’m not sure whether I’ll read the next, and final, book. Maybe? Trilogies with Middle Book Syndrome usually pull it back together for book three, right?
The post Should Have Been a Short Story: The Summer Queen by Rochelle Hassan appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
October 9, 2024
I Can’t Wait For…I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call by Jamison Shea
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call by Jamison Shea!
I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call (I Feed Her to the Beast Book 2) by Jamison Shea Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Black bisexual MC
Published on: 12th November 2024
Goodreads
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Monsters and mortals, rejoice! Acheron is back . . .
Though Laure has tried to close the lid on her ballet shoes and the feelings she once held for dance since the Palais Garnier incident two months ago, Laure is spinning out. Between partying, drinking, and avoiding anything and, well, everyone, she has no time to be anything but a monster. But when Laure stumbles across a mysterious dead body during one of her nights out, she’s forced to notice the cracks stretching beyond herself.
Below the streets of Paris, Elysium is dying, and Acheron and Lethe’s influence is spilling into the streets like a blight. Laure isn’t the only of Elysium’s beasts to rise from the ruins of Palais Garnier, and someone is mobilizing an army of monsters with plans greater than Laure, Andor, and Keturah could have ever guessed. While Laure is warring between her wants and Acheron’s ever-demanding appetite, she and her circle of monsters are left to reckon with a not-so-simple question: how do you save yourself from oblivion?
Jamison Shea's sharp and unflinching voice will bring readers to terrifying new heights in this vicious sequel to the "relentlessly gory and almost euphoric in its embrace of the horrific" (NPR) I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me.
This is the sequel to last year’s I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me, which I adored! I wasn’t expecting a sequel at all – I Feed Her to the Beast worked perfectly as a standalone – but I’m definitely not complaining!
I didn’t think Laure was very monstrous in the first book – more not-nice, which isn’t the same thing at all – so I’m curious about whether she might be more monstrous in this one. It definitely sounds like she still needs time to heal and recover from the events of I Feed Her to the Beast, so I’m pretty sorry for her that this book is only set two months later!
It would be great if we got to learn more about the rivers and magic this time around, but honestly, I’m really just interested in spending time with Laure again. Genuinely one of my favourite MCs – and I badly want her to get her happy ending! SHE DESERVES IT, FIGHT ME.
If you’ve not heard of this series before, you’ve got until next month to get through the first book! I STRONGLY recommend it.
The post I Can’t Wait For…I Am the Dark That Answers When You Call by Jamison Shea appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
October 4, 2024
Legendary: Swordcrossed by Freya Marske
Swordcrossed by Freya Marske Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World No Magic, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown bi/pansexual MC, gay MC with ADHD, M/M
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 1035039311
Goodreads
Mattinesh Jay, dutiful heir to his struggling family business, needs to hire an experienced swordsman to serve as best man for his arranged marriage. Sword-challenge at the ceremony could destroy all hope of restoring his family's wealth, something that Matti has been trying—and failing—to do for the past ten years.
What he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.
Luca, for his part, is trying to reinvent himself in a new city. All he wants to do is make some easy money and try to forget the crime he committed in his hometown. He didn't plan on being blackmailed into giving sword lessons to a chronically responsible—and inconveniently handsome—wool merchant like Matti.
However, neither Matti's business troubles nor Luca himself are quite what they seem. As the days count down to Matti's wedding, the two of them become entangled in the intrigue and sabotage that have brought Matti's house to the brink of ruin. And when Luca's secrets threaten to drive a blade through their growing alliance, both Matti and Luca will have to answer the how many lies are you prepared to strip away, when the truth could mean losing everything you want?
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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~trade intrigue
~meet-cute < meet-CON
~wonderfully elegant worldbuilding
~thermonuclear levels of heat
Look: Marske has always been a good writer. A great one. A marvellous one, even!
But not until Swordcrossed has she written lines that engraved themselves on my heart in molten gold. Not until this book has she struck me breathless and aching and hurting from how beautiful her story is. Swordscrossed is the first time she’s made me honest-to-gods-WEEP from the sheer tender intensity of the emotions she’s magicked up.
I’m not even exaggerating: I had to put the down and just cry for almost an hour. Not sad tears! Happy tears! And kind of overwhelmed tears, too, because I was just So Full of emotions and had no idea what to do with them. I was shaking!
I’M NOT USED TO FEELING THINGS THIS STRONGLY, OKAY? IT WAS ALMOST SCARY.
Matti didn’t know what to say. There was a bubble of something in his throat, like blown glass or hot chocolate, a tenderness that threatened to sear itself into Matti on a fundamental level.
If I described the plot to you, it would sound like any other fantasy romance. Any other low-magic romantasy. There’s no story-element that makes Swordcrossed unique, exactly. Don’t get me wrong: the plot is INCREDIBLY compelling, there is so much tension-dread-hope keeping the pages turning, and even the most minor characters are vividly alive in a way only the best authors can manage. I was biting my lips and perched on the edge of my seat and frantic to make sure everything would turn out okay – and that is in and of itself an incredible accomplishment when we’re talking about a book where the happy ending is implicitly guaranteed. Books like this often can’t quite manage to sustain any tension, because you know it’s all going to be fine – but I was so nervous! I was so invested! I was genuinely anxious for everyone! Marske made me completely forget that all would be well, so, you know, ALL THE KUDOS FOR THAT!
But the plot’s not – the plot’s not the point. It doesn’t matter, at all, that you’ve heard or read similar stories before.
Because the way it’s written. That. That is what makes Swordcrossed something truly special, something breathtaking.
“I thought I had simple tastes. I don’t care about pearls or silver. I don’t need silk. I can live without cherries and bottles of Diamond Blend.” … “But you,” Matti breathed. “You are the most exquisite thing in this city, and I want you, and I’m going to have you.”
I don’t know if it’s the freedom of not having to fit a story inside real-world history, as the Last Binding books were, or simply growing confidence as a writer, or if it’s something else entirely, but Swordcrossed reads like the work of someone who has cast off all restraint and is exulting in their love of words and storytelling. There are so many more similes and metaphors in Swordcrossed than in any of the Last Binding books, and the effect is extravagant, decadent. You won’t need a dictionary to keep up – the language is every bit as accessible and beautifully easy as it was in Last Binding – but it adds a richness, a lushness, to the prose that makes it obvious how much Marske enjoyed writing this. And that joy definitely comes through to the reader!
Or he could invent a vast family of siblings of all ages for {spoiler}. He could embroider each one lavishly with imaginary traits, and sprinkle them with freckles.
The indulgence – the sense that Marske is writing this book for herself and nobody else – is present in the worldbuilding too. It’s obvious how much pleasure she took in creating this original setting, in being able to invent whatever she liked instead of being limited by writing a story set in a real historical period. There’s a breathless delicacy to every perfectly-placed detail; never so many of them as to become overwhelming, or distract from the plot, but more than enough to elevate the story she’s telling, bring it to life. It’s there in the sensory description, in the figureheads of ships, in all the little moments of plot-irrelevant beauty.
The lascari balls were delicious. Luca licked the last of the sugar off oily fingertips as he walked across a crowded bridge, keeping close to the wrought iron railing, around which was tied a series of ribbons in varying states from fresh to rotting. It was an exam-time tradition common to students destined for the more academic Guilds. Perhaps there was a law school nearby.
And as a self-professed worldbuilding critic/expert, I am so impressed with the worldbuilding here. My preference is for deeply weird and extensive worldbuilding – think Locked Tomb or Teixcalaan – but the elegant simplicity of Swordcrossed wowed me. Marske uses just a few powerful details to convince the reader on a visceral level that this isn’t our world, and languidly explores the ripple effects these additions/changes would make to a society. Case in point, every guild serves/belongs to a specific god, which means members of every trade have different prayers, curses, and holy days/inauspicious days. That’s not an obviously dramatic thing like, say, putting dragons in your fictional world, but it does shape every aspect of the worldbuilding and story, from fashion to business meetings to how the characters speak. It’s subtle, but far-reaching and foundational. And all of the worldbuilding is like that; simple, but just complicated enough to be striking, to turn Glassport into a place so real you could almost believe it really exists just a few countries over.
It’s just a really smart approach to worldbuilding – creating a setting familiar enough to any fantasy reader to feel inviting and comfortable, but unique enough to be interesting and lovely, without so much lore that you might trip up and accidentally contradict it or leave worldbuilding-holes for the obsessives like myself to agonise over.
10/10, stamp of approval, this delights me!
He passed ship after ship and craned his neck to see if there were sailors working in the rigging, or to watch furled sails sway gently against the clouds. He noted which figureheads needed a fresh coat of paint, or had lost some detail of their design through either skirmish or decay. Many of these figureheads were clutching the reef-knotted rope and had the seaweed crown of Itsa, patron goddess of the Guild of Sailors and Shipbuilders. Other deities appeared as well; these ships were likely owned outright, or exclusively contracted to, grand Houses dedicated to some trade or another.
What can I say about the romance, which is, after all, the heart of this book? Dear gods, I cannot even. What can I say, except that I’m not sure I’ve ever believed in a fictional romance this much before? Matti and Luca meet like blades clashing in a duel, and from that complicated first encounter Marske spins first desire – which, please do yourself a favour and make sure you have a spray bottle handy while you’re reading, because you WILL need to spritz yourself regularly to deal with the heat sizzling off the pages! – which then, gradually, so believably, turns to love like straw being spun into gold. And it is – I was going to say ‘very nearly’ unbearable but you know what, no, it is unbearable, I couldn’t bear it, I already told you I had to put the book down and weep because I couldn’t stand it, couldn’t hold all that intensity inside me without breaking open.
He could imagine kissing her, but the thought didn’t turn like a key in the lock of his jaw, leaving his lips parted and famished.
It’s so BIG.
It’s so beautiful.
It’s not the kind of love story that changes the world – they’re not enemy princes of warring nations or something – except for how it is, because it completely upends their worlds. It’s this reminder, which I think I forgot for a while, that all love is world-upending, in one way or another. Sometimes those worlds are more private than others, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You know?
Luca felt like a route being memorised; an artwork being considered one last time by its creator before it was sent for framing. It made him want to make huge, impossible, unwise promises.
Seriously, the intensity!!! *FLAILS* Passion thrums through every line of Swordcrossed like music through a harp-string; the words sear like fire, shine like glass. I want them tattooed all over me. This story sears where you touch it.
It’s not that this is an Epic Fantasy story – as it says on the (stunning) cover, the stakes here are relatively low. It’s not epic in that sense.
But the love feels legendary. Is legendary.
I just. Wow.
“I wasn’t looking,” he said simply.
Greedy: “I made you look at me.”
“I could have been halfway down the aisle, and I would have looked at you,” Matti said. “I could have been halfway across the world.”
Reading Swordcrossed is like rolling rich, velvety chocolate over your tongue, letting it melt in your mouth and flood your senses with intense sweetness. It’s luxurious: you are enveloped in the sensation of being spoiled, and the enjoyment never plateaus; only grows and grows, coiling tighter and brighter until your heart comes apart like a firework in a burst of light and colour and beauty.
I didn’t know romance could be like this. I think I might be ruined for romance by anybody else.
I can’t recommend it enough.
The post Legendary: Swordcrossed by Freya Marske appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
October 1, 2024
An Absolute Dream I Want to Dream Again: The Nightmare Before Kissmass by Sara Raasch
The Nightmare Before Kissmas (Royals and Romance, #1) by Sara Raasch Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, New Adult, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi MC, M/M
PoV: First-person, present-tense
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 1250333202
Goodreads
Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky rom-com where the golden-hearted Prince of Christmas falls for the totally off-limits Prince of Halloween.
Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.
But the heir to Christmas is soon to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.
Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand…and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.
It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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~don’t trust Santa
~PEEP
~what happens when a Hex curses
~this book sparks SO MUCH joy!
It has been a WHILE since reading a book made me this freaking happy!
The Nightmare Before Kissmass is what I’m delighted to call a squee-book: one that makes you grin, makes you sparkle, that fills you up with fizzy, vivid delight. The kind of book you want to hug to your chest and kiss in the rain and gift to absolutely everyone. I have not read anything of Raasch’s before, but I will be preordering the next book in the Royals and Romance series and COUNTING THE DAYS until it gets here!
This book, though. This book is silly, and knows it, and owns it. I approve immensely.
what’s a Halloween drink? Apple cider? Goat blood?
In a world that is almost ours, the holidays are magical kingdoms ruled by magic-wielding royals. The normal world does not realise that there is a real kingdom of Christmas, or Halloween, or Easter. That’s a secret. But the Holidays wield real power, which is partly why it matters so much that out main character Coal – aka, Prince Nicholas of Christmas – is a well-intentioned fuck-up. His one attempt at Being A Prince backfired massively and got so many people hurt, so he’s primed to do whatever his dad – the reigning Santa – tells him to, for fear of making another terrible mistake.
Except Santa announces that Coal and his best friend Iris – princess of Easter – are to be married. Without consulting either Coal or Iris about it. Inter-Holiday politicking drags the crown prince of Halloween, Hex, into the mess, and events spiral from there.
I have just two sort-of-critiques, and I say ‘sort of’ because neither of them actually bothered me; the romance is kind of insta-love-y, and the worldbuilding is bonkers and nonsensical. I have no problem with insta-love – it’s only lust masquerading as insta-love that annoys me – and as for the worldbuilding?
Yes, it’s ridiculous. It makes no real sense. I could poke endless holes in it.
And folx, I did not care.
If you’ve followed my reviews a while, you might get how big a deal that is: I am unhealthily obsessed with worldbuilding. The tiniest detail can jolt me completely out of a book if it doesn’t fit into the worldbuilding; and worldbuilding that doesn’t make sense to me is often a quick DNF. I’ve put aside books after TWO PAGES because of worldbuilding that immediately doesn’t work for me!
But I was having so much fun with Kissmass that I couldn’t care less. Raasch made me laugh so much that I was able to embrace this adorable, cheeky, absolutely ridiculous premise. I was full of so much fizzy delightedness that I forgot to nitpick. I fell so hard for these characters that it didn’t bother me that their powers were nonsensical.
I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT.
So no, Raasch does not address the fact that these holidays are all religious ones, nor how Christmas’ influence going global is tied to and has echoes of Christian colonialism. Nor is there any explanation for how exactly these kingdoms came to be or if they came before or after humans started celebrating these holidays. (Did the kingdom of Christmas use to be called Yule and changed as the celebration did? Or did they come into existence only when Christmas in its Christian form was invented? Who knows! Who cares? Not me, for once!)
It’s just not that kind of book, folx. If you’re taking it seriously, you’re doing it wrong. You’re not meant to think about the set-up very hard. It’s utterly escapist, sugar-plum-fairy-sweet nonsense, and it’s excellent.
Now I’ve told you a bit about what the book ISN’T, let’s get on to what it IS.
Back to the Point!I realise that it’s wildly overused as a comp, but Nightmare Before Kissmass really did give me fantasy!Red, White and Royal Blue vibes throughout. I can make a good argument for the similarities between the two stories, but what really matters is that they have the same FEEL to them; the same sort of wish-fulfilment, the same kind of giggly heart-eyes, the same undercurrent of hope and optimism and joy.
In both books, that’s in big part down to the characters, and I have to say, I LOVED the cast here. Coal is Just Trying His Best – he has such a huge heart, but doesn’t believe in himself at all; not to the degree that it becomes annoying, but definitely enough to make you want to hug him. He’s much braver than he thinks, and you can feel how badly he wants to do right by everyone. It doesn’t hurt that he is well aware of how ridiculous his own existence is, and is willing to laugh at it – but he also genuinely loves Christmas, both the kingdom and the holiday as you and I understand it, and somehow Raasch managed to capture a lot of the childhood wonder and delight in the holiday without making the grown-up part of me cringe. I think that was partly due to Coal’s unselfconsciousness about his own love for Christmas, and making him the first-person narrator meant that came through to the reader as well.
And while I adored the romance – more on that in a bit – it made me SO HAPPY that Coal’s relationship with his younger brother, Kris, and his best friend (and Kris’s secret crush) Iris, was so foundational to the story. The in-jokes and whatsapp groupchats and how they had each other’s backs 500%… It was a rollercoaster ride between laughing my head off at their antics and snark, and feeling my heart ache for how much they loved each other and were ready to fight for each other. Coal and Kris, especially, have the kind of relationship that people without siblings DREAM of (with very good reason!)
I really had started to think I’d made him up, a fever dream brought on by vodka and regret.
But he’s here, he’s real, and he’s disastrously hot, wearing a goddamn corset vest.
Which brings us to Hex, crown prince of Halloween and Coal’s not-so-eventual love interest. My perfectly poised, prim-and-proper goth child who looks illegally good in corset vests (it is a CRIME that they didn’t put him in one for the cover, imo!) and brings a dash of socialism to all this monarchy stuff. *Chef’s kiss* So much appreciation for Raasch refusing to utilise BORING bad-boy tropes and cliches for Hex, that would have been too easy and predictable; instead Hex gets to be someone much more complicated than he would have been in the hands of a lesser writer, with a lot of guilt and grief and a heart easily as big as Coal’s. It was fascinating how what he brought from the Autumn Holidays was so different from the political (and kinda-financial?) set-up of the Winter Holidays, and introducing Coal to Other Ways Of Doing Things was both plot-critical and necessary for growth for both boys. Yes yes yes, APPROVED!
every second of a life spent being the comedic relief has been saving up sincerity for him.
The romance? Delicious. Sweet, spiky, hilarious, both Coal and Hex inspiring each other (possibly my favourite element of a good romance) in a bunch of different ways, complicated by political shenanigans (some of which I saw coming, some of which I REALLY DID NOT: THE FUCK, SANTA?!) and the need to Be A Secret (because Coal’s meant to be marrying Iris, remember?) Also, plenty sexy, for readers who like that sort of thing. Me, I just flailed a lot because SO MANY FEEEEELS!
I SHIP ITDraw me that map again. Take me beyond the edges. And then, and then, and then–
Like all the best romances (in my extremely limited experience) Kissmass delves into some surprisingly deep topics alongside its love story. I’ve already mentioned that Hex is dealing with guilt and grief, and Coal too, for that time he Massively Fucked Up. But Coal and Kris’ MIA mom – who left the family when they were kids and hasn’t been part of their lives since – is another brick in the foundation of this story, and the entire book revolves around their dad’s increasing and insidious awfulness. Santa’s not a moustache-twirling villain, but he’s the kind of parent who’ll make most of us feel cold and sick, especially if you have any experience with psychologically/verbally abusive authority figures – and that’s without even starting in on who he’s become as a monarch. How do you stand up to a parent like that? To a king like that? Can he be reasoned with? If he can’t, what other options are there? Coal and Hex are both crown princes, heirs to their respective thrones; what kind of monarchs do they want to be? What’s the role of the media in politics, how does it work as a filter between the ruling class and the public, how do the former use it to manipulate the latter?
It was thorny and crunchy and I was Most Extremely Pleased with it all.
I always joke that I’m going to dedicate my books to you, the reader.
But this one? I mean it. This book is for you.
I just want it to make you smile.
Raasch’s dedication at the beginning of the book is Kissmass in a nutshell: this one is going to make you grin. I cannot over-emphasise how much sheer FUN it is, how much it made some very grey days SPARKLE. This is the book I’m going to reread when I’m feeling low, and I WILL be giving it as Yule gift to all the readers in my life. For the pure enjoyment factor, it’s going on my Best of the Year list, and it is definitely a new favourite.
I can’t wait for book two, featuring Kris and *checks notes* the prince of Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m already crying with laughter just thinking about it!
If you have even the SLIGHTEST interest in ridiculous, escapist, just-a-little-magical romance, you need to read Nightmare Before Kissmass.
Then hit me up, and we’ll squee together about it!
The post An Absolute Dream I Want to Dream Again: The Nightmare Before Kissmass by Sara Raasch appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 30, 2024
In Short: September
A very brain-foggy, exhausting month, for no particular reason – just random brain-weather, as best I can tell. So it goes!
ARCs Received
I HAVE NO MORE PENDING REQUESTS! :D Let’s see if I can keep it that way, gods. Very excited for all of these – almost all of these authors are new to me! Which is nerve-wracking, sure, but what if one of them turns out to be an auto-buy author for me? WHAT THEN?
Read
I was really struggling to read this month, as is obvious – only 16 books read in August. Sigh.
The Fortunate Fall, Nightmare Before Kissmass and Mountain Crown were all instant new faves (and seriously, how has it taken me this long to read Karin Lowachee?!) Starfall is a fantastic novella that incorporates a protagonist’s deafness really well into a sci fi jailbreak story, and Calculating Stars was very addictive, despite having a plot I really didn’t care about. (And I remain confused about how that much sexism is anything but enraging.) Liar City was also amazingly addictive, but I did then spend the next WEEK ranting about how stupid the worldbuilding was, so I wouldn’t put it on the same level as Calculating!
Wonderful rereads included Honey Month, Floating Islands, and the last three books of the month, all deeply beloved.
To the best of my knowledge, three of this month’s books had BIPOC authors. Better than last month, which was NONE, but not exactly great.
Reviewed
I wasn’t happy with ANY of my reviews this month – Space Opera and Mountain Crown in particular deserved so much better. (You won’t see the Summer Queen review until near the end of next month, and Nightmare Before Kissmass goes live tomorrow, but they’re both written!)
DNF-ed
Did the quickly-approaching release dates of several arcs make me realise I didn’t care how they ended? Yes, yes they did. It was such a relief to strike these off my reading lists!
ARCs Outstanding
I’ve resigned myself to not meeting every ‘deadline’ for October’s arcs; I wanted to get so much more reading and writing done this month in preparation, and it just didn’t happen. Ah well.
Unmissable SFF UpdatesMy Unmissable SFF of 2024 list is always getting updated, what with cover reveals and new books being announced – or discovering books long-since announced, but which I didn’t hear about until just lately! With two new additions, the end of September brings us to a total of 107 Unmissable books!
My 2025 Unmissable list continues to grow too, and I am, of course, constantly on the lookout for titles to add to it… I’m not ready for 2024 to be over yet, but I’m very excited to publish next year’s list.
How did my predictions/anticipated reads for September go? I declared twelve books Unmissable for this month, and–
one was five star read (Yield Under Great Persuasion)one was a four and a half star read (Out of the Drowning Deep) one was a three and a half star read (The Sapling Cage)one was a three star read (City of Dancing Gargoyles)one was a two and a half star read (The Republic of Salt)three were DNFs (Immortal Dark, A Dark and Drowning Tide, and The Naming Song)two were soft-DNFs that I don’t want to try properly (The Scarlet Throne and The Village Librarian Demon-Hunting Society)two I haven’t finished yet but predict five stars (Buried Deep and Space Oddity)Even counting Buried Deep and Space Oddity, that only makes four great reads out of eleven – not particularly successful! Ah well. Hopefully October will go better!
MiscFor bisexuality visibility day, I made a quick rec list of M/F bi books on twitter – all SFF, of course! I do want to write it up as a proper post, but no promises as to how fast I’ll be at it.
Looking Forward
The Colour of Revenge, the newest book in the series that started with Inkheart, is out in the UK next month! (The US has to wait until November, which is practically criminal.) We’re also getting the last book in Rachel Manija Brown & Sherwood Smith’s Change series, which I am VIBRATING with excitement over, and Sacha Lamb’s sophomore novel Forbidden Book. Tansy Rayner Roberts is starting a new series, and Leede’s American Rapture hooked me hard when I read a sample. AND OF COURSE, we’re getting new standalones from Freya Marske, Nghi Vo, and august clarke!!! It’s a little hard to breathe every time I think about them!!!
May we all have a truly outstanding October together!
The post In Short: September appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 29, 2024
September DNFs
Most of this month’s (six) DNFs ended up being books that couldn’t get me in my Feels – that didn’t keep me engaged. But I can never be sure if the book is actually flat, or if I’m just reading it at the wrong time…so take a pinch of salt with these!
Immortal Dark (Immortal Dark, #1) by Tigest Girma Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, YA
Representation: Black MC
Protagonist Age: 19
ISBN: 1444974378
Goodreads
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The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister.
It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.
Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.
To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.
When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.
:edited to add: I have since learned that the author is Ethiopian and her prose style might be due to her speaking/being influenced by other languages, which, you know, fair. I still didn’t enjoy it, but that’s probably an issue of my taste/unfamiliarity with this style, rather than the prose actually being objectively bad. Do with that what you will. I wrote this review before I knew that.
I made it through the prologue and two chapters before I wanted to throw it across the room.
Well, no – I wanted to throw it across the room after the second paragraph of the prologue. But I stuck it out until I couldn’t.
I can’t make any conclusions about the characters or plot etc after reading so little – but I couldn’t stand the prose.
This map was one of the dean’s most favorite treasures
‘most favorite’? This was the second paragraph, and I stopped dead, because it just sounds wrong. There’s actually quite a bit of debate over whether or not it’s grammatically correct – some people say yes, some say no – but I couldn’t care less about grammar, I care about the sound of it, the rhythm you’re making with your prose. And this is not great.
She never could forgive such a loss.
…seriously, why not just say ‘she could never forgive’? What is the purpose of flipping the words around like that? Is it deliberate, and if so, what’s the goal? Is this like Apple, doing stuff to Be Different rather than because it’s actually good?
she disliked this most about him.
Again, I’m not sure this is grammatically incorrect, but no one speaks like this. ‘This was the thing she disliked most about him.’ See how much better that sounds?
he simply said.
he said simply.
He moved with the quickness of a shadow caught in light,
Hi, a shadow caught in light doesn’t move, it’s destroyed. And ‘quickness’ sounds awful.
hell was not dissimilar to this.
Just say it’s like hell, ffs.
But just like that fiery night, she failed to cry.
You mean ‘just like on that fiery night’.
your blood tastes like poison to them.
So at this point, we’re learning about the vampires, and this is apparently why they don’t feed off anyone except the human bloodlines they’re bound to. But this is a MADDENING sentence. If non-special blood tastes like poison to them, does that mean it tastes bad but they can drink it if they have to? Or are you trying to say it is actually toxic to them? That’s a very important distinction!
the Three Binds placed on vampires.
Bindings. You mean bindings. Or rules or laws or SOME OTHER WORD. ‘The First Bind’ ‘the Second Bind’ NO.
(I’m aware that ‘bind’ is a noun as well as a verb. I don’t care. It sounds TERRIBLE.)
The Grand Ellipse by Paula Volsky Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 0307784274
Goodreads
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Paula Volsky, author of The White Tribunal, returns with a spectacular saga of adventure and intrigue, romance and rebellion — beginning with a wondrous discovery that could forever alter the fate of the free world....
In the modern, civilized republic of Vonahr, the need for magic seems a thing of the past. But soon the Vonahrish will find that magic is their only hope — for an imperialistic race of fanatics, intent on conquering the world, now masses on Vonahr’s borders.
Vonahr’s slim chance for salvation lies in a nearby neutral kingdom, where a brilliant savant has conjured up the ultimate weapon: Sentient Fire, a miraculous flame that responds to the command of its maker.
Low Hetz’s mad, flamboyant king refuses to relinquish the secret — so the desperate government of Vonahr sends the exquisitely beautiful adventurer Luzelle Devaire to turn his head and change his mind. But to gain an audience, Luzelle must win the Grand Ellipse, a test of endurance, ingenuity, and valor....
I tagged this as ‘racist-trainwreck’ on my goodreads and I stand by it. The moment the MC has to deal with foreigners who don’t look like her, Grand Ellipse got fucking ugly – even as Volsky tried so hard to make her seem like an Enlightened White Woman. But that doesn’t work when all your ‘natives’ are thieves, violent, abusive, or out to kidnap and rape your MC.
So much ick.
I picked this up to read to my husband at bedtime, because long-winded and uninteresting is what I want in a book meant to send us both to sleep. But it took both those qualities to, frankly, excessive extremes, and then the blatant racism smacked me across the face, and NO THANK YOU.
(Plus, not over presenting the FANTASY NAZI as a love-interest, even if it’s pretty clear he’s not going to win the love triangle.)
The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1250908019
Goodreads
There's nothing more dangerous than an unnamed thing
When the words went away, the world changed.
All meaning was lost, and every border fell. Monsters slipped from dreams to haunt the waking while ghosts wandered the land in futile reveries. Only with the rise of the committees of the named--Maps, Ghosts, Dreams, and Names--could the people stand against the terrors of the nameless wilds. They built borders around their world and within their minds, shackled ghosts and hunted monsters, and went to war against the unknown.
For one unnamed courier of the Names Committee, the task of delivering new words preserves her place in a world that fears her. But after a series of monstrous attacks on the named, she is forced to flee her committee and seek her long-lost sister. Accompanied by a patchwork ghost, a fretful monster, and a nameless animal who prowls the shadows, her search for the truth of her past opens the door to a revolutionary future--for the words she carries will reshape the world.
The Naming Song is a book of deep secrets and marvelous discoveries, strange adventures and dangerous truths. It's the story of a world locked in a battle over meaning. Most of all, it's the perfect fantasy for anyone who's ever dreamed of a stranger, freer, more magical world.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
{ "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "datePublished": "2024-09-29T18:45:22+00:00", "description": "Immortal Dark; The Grand Ellipse; The Naming Song; Blood of the Old Kings; Sargassa; The Black Hunger.", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Every Book a Doorway" }, "url": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/september-dnfs-2\/", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Book", "name": "The Naming Song", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jedediah Berry", "sameAs": "" }, "isbn": "1250908019" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sia", "sameAs": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 2.5, "bestRating": "5" }}I tried and tried and tried, but this is mind-numbing.
The premise is amazing, and the beginning was strong; I loved learning about the courier’s work, taking words and ‘delivering’ them by experiencing their definitions. The idea of monsters coming from peoples’ dreams was great, and so was using ghosts as both labour force and fuel source.
But for a fantasy about the power of language, Berry’s prose isn’t powerful, and it’s definitely not my flavour of beautiful. I never felt wonder or awe, I never felt the magic. Reading this was like trudging through thick, heavy mud: exhausting. It wasn’t long after the opening before every reading session became a struggle to keep my eyes open. If I described the plot to you, it would absolutely sound like Things Were Happening – but somehow it felt like nothing was happening, like a story was being stretched so much longer than it should have been. Naming Song would have made a great short story, maybe a novella; it should never have been the almost 400 pages it is in hardback.
The rule is, if I don’t care how a book will end by 20%, I DNF. Well, I broke the rule again; I made it to 60% of Naming Song, and I deeply regret all the time and spoons I wasted getting that far. This was plodding, boring, passionless despite having so many reasons to be burning with emotion; it ignored the various bits and pieces and ideas that had the potential to be genuinely interesting, and instead obsessed itself with a council I was supposed to believe were villains even though I was never shown any actual villainy. (Them chasing the courier does not make them evil: they think she’s a murderer! With really good reason, actually! I would also believe she was the murderer if we hadn’t had her POV!)
And my gods, the Le Gasp reveal about the origins of the Sayers (the aforementioned council): the first Sayers used to be waste pickers. Um, okay? Why does that matter? Why would I give a fuck? Why is everyone acting like this is some Terrible Scandalous thing??? A) being a waste picker isn’t evil, it’s not like they were slavers or something, so why would I judge them for that? and B) that was generations ago, why should it affect my opinion of the current Sayers? It was utterly bizarre, and not in a fun way.
The characters all seemed so…muted. The whole book did, actually. As if someone had washed out all the colours. I guess that’s what I meant by ‘passionless’. It was impossible to care about any of it, because none of it felt real, none of it mattered. Even the things that were definitely supposed to matter.
Honestly I wish we’d just gotten a story about the courier delivering words. I would have been happy with just that. But the attempt at More Important Plot was just embarrassing.
Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim, Anton Hur Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 1250895340
Goodreads
Blood of the Old Kings begins an epic adventure in which three strangers journey through a vast Empire that uses the power of dead wizards to conquer and subdue, from award-winning author Sung-il Kim and translated by the highly-acclaimed Anton Hur.
Powered by the corpses of sorcerers, the Empire has conquered the world. It claims to have brought peace and stability to its conquered lands, but some see that peace for what it is—a lie—and will give everything in the fight against it.
Loran is desperate for revenge after the Empire killed her family, so much so that the swordswoman climbs the volcano where the legends say an ancient dragon slumbers and leaps in. She finds that the legends are true, and Loran leaves the mountain with a sword made of dragon’s fang and a great purpose before her.
Cain arrived in the Imperial Capital lost and orphaned, and it’s only thanks to the kindness of a stranger-turned-mentor that he survived on the city’s streets. When his friend is found murdered, he will leave no stone unturned to find those responsible, even if it means starting a war.
Arienne’s future has never been in question—born a sorcerer, she’ll be a Power Generator for the Empire upon her death. But when she starts to hear the voice of a powerful necromancer in her head, she realizes the only thing more terrifying than dying for the Empire is never getting to truly live in the first place.
When peace is a lie, there is power in truth—and as Loran, Cain, and Arienne hunt for answers in their own lives, any one of their small rebellions could be the stone that brings the Empire toppling down.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
{ "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "datePublished": "2024-09-29T18:45:22+00:00", "description": "Immortal Dark; The Grand Ellipse; The Naming Song; Blood of the Old Kings; Sargassa; The Black Hunger.", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Every Book a Doorway" }, "url": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/september-dnfs-2\/", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Book", "name": "Blood of the Old Kings", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sung-Il Kim, Anton Hur", "sameAs": "" }, "isbn": "1250895340" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sia", "sameAs": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 3, "bestRating": "5" }}I don’t think this is a bad book at all, but it’s just not gripping me. The opening was amazing, and there are one or two details that are really interesting – I love how each nation had completely different magics before the empire came! We don’t see that often at ALL – usually magic is magic, more or less the same for everyone, but here the sorcerers of each country had wildly different abilities; in one place they were shapeshifters, in another they had magic words… It’s the one thing about this world that I really wanted to know more about.
But it wasn’t the focus at all, and the rest of the book just…felt very okay? I think if you like High Fantasy, you’ll probably enjoy this, but I was hoping that Blood would be bringing influences I haven’t seen before – the author is South Korean and this was written in his native language before it was translated – but I wasn’t getting any of that. Blood just doesn’t strike me as substantially different from the American/British High Fantasy of the 90s, which was never my thing.
There are a few hints here and there that this book might eventually reveal itself to be more unique…but I wasn’t willing to keep reading to find out if that was actually the case. If I find other reviews saying that’s so, I might be willing to try this again, but the fact remains that I have zero interest in where most of the plotlines are going. Nothing about Cain’s story grabbed me; Loran, the woman on the cover, seemed to have the most promising arc but wow did I hate the allies she fell in with; and while Arienne’s plotline rapidly became the most interesting to me (she’s the runaway sorcerer) I didn’t care about what might happen to her. I didn’t care about any of the characters for their own sake, found them pretty dull and normal individuals. Nothing about any of them stood out after reading the first third of the book…so why keep going?
Like I said: if you do routinely enjoy High Fantasy, you have a much better chance of enjoying this than I did. It just doesn’t seem to be for me.
Sargassa (Ex Romana #1) by Sophie Burnham Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Bi/pan MC, sapphic MCs, nonbinary MC
PoV: Third-person, present-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 0756419379
Goodreads
An unlikely group of rebels are ready to burn down the empire in the first book in a new speculative trilogy that explores gender, sexuality, and oppression within an empire teetering on the brink of rebellion
Told from multiple POVs: a young heiress, an undercover spy, a bastard brother and a fugitive who has history with all three, Sargassa equal parts political intrigue, queer romance, and revolution
Selah Kleios is twenty-two years old and suddenly one of the most important women in the empires. The role of Imperial Historian is her birthright, something she’s been preparing for since birth—but she was supposed to have more time to learn the role from her father, the previous Historian. In the wake of her father’s sudden and shocking assassination, Selah finds herself custodian of more than just the Imperial Archives, the towering central library that safeguards all collective knowledge of the Roman Imperium and its client empires. There’s also the question of the two puzzling classified items her father left in her care—an ancient atlas filled with landscapes that don’t exist, and a carved piece of stone that seems to do nothing at all.
Soon, though, it becomes clear that the Iveroa Stone is more than just a slab of rock. With the reappearance of an old lost love who’s been blackmailed into stealing it for an unknown entity, Selah finds herself in a race to uncover the mysteries the Stone holds. But she isn’t the only one with an interest in it—she’ll have to contend with the deputy chief of police, an undercover spy, and her own beloved half brother along the way. What begins as an act of atonement and devotion ultimately pulls her into the crosshairs of deep state conspiracy, the stirrings of an underground independence movement, and questions that threaten to shake the foundational legitimacy of Roma Sargassa’s past, present, and future.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
{ "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "datePublished": "2024-09-29T18:45:22+00:00", "description": "Immortal Dark; The Grand Ellipse; The Naming Song; Blood of the Old Kings; Sargassa; The Black Hunger.", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Every Book a Doorway" }, "url": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/september-dnfs-2\/", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Book", "name": "Sargassa (Ex Romana #1)", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sophie Burnham", "sameAs": "" }, "isbn": "0756419379" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sia", "sameAs": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 3, "bestRating": "5" }}I kept dutifully reading Sargassa because the prose is perfectly good and the worldbuilding is excellent, and it was exploring themes I care about – but recently I hit 68% and woke up to the fact that I didn’t know where this was going and did not care.
Like Blood of the Old Kings, I don’t think it’s bad. But besides all the MCs being some flavour of queer, Sargassa doesn’t seem to be doing or saying anything new – empire is bad, institutionalised oppression is EXTREMELY bad, cops are the fists of the ruling class, privilege is a thing which exists and we can do a lot of harm with it. I think Sargassa could be a helpful wake-up call for readers who’ve never thought about these things before, but there wasn’t much for me to sink my teeth into. The characters and their storylines weren’t interesting to me; the various injustices they face were rage-inducing because those things are inherently rage-inducing, not because I cared that they were happening to these characters in particular.
And I can’t put my finger on why, but wow this book felt slow. I think it might be that so many little (or relatively little) things were happening, they slowed down any progress on the bigger plot, bogged us down in stuff I didn’t care about. At 68% no progress at all had been made on who murdered the previous Historian, for example; the characters were all distracted by other things. Some of which mattered to the development of those characters, sure, but didn’t matter to me.
From what I’ve seen of other early reviews, if you’re into Ancient Rome you’ll be delighted by the detailed worldbuilding and how well-thought-out the timeline of this alternate history is. Or if you’re here for examinations of class privilege and seeing oppressed people slow-burn turn on the system out to keep them down, you might have a good time with Sargassa.
If neither of those things interests you, I’m not sure you should bother. It’s not bad; it’s fine. But why waste your time reading a book that’s just fine, when there are so many greats out there?
The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists, Historical Fantasy
Representation: M/M, Northern Indian secondary cast
PoV: First-person, past-tense
Published on: 8th October 2024
Goodreads
A spine-tingling, queer gothic horror debut where two men are drawn into an otherworldly spiral, and a journey that will only end when they reach the darkest part of the human soul.
“The Black Hunger is a bleak, gothic masterpiece. A devastating exploration of humanity's capacity for evil." – Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters
John Sackville will soon be dead. Shadows writhe in the corners of his cell as he mourns the death of his secret lover and the gnawing hunger inside him grows impossible to ignore.
He must write his last testament before it is too late.
It is a story steeped in history and myth - a journey from stone circles in Scotland, to the barren wilderness of Ukraine where otherworldly creatures stalk the night, ending in the icy peaks of Tibet and Mongolia, where an ancient evil stirs.
Praise for The Black Hunger: "A terrifying gothic journey to the place where the very cruellest, hungriest creatures hide in the snow, and wear our faces. This is a magisterial debut." - Michael Rowe, author of Wild Fell
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
{ "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "datePublished": "2024-09-29T18:45:22+00:00", "description": "Immortal Dark; The Grand Ellipse; The Naming Song; Blood of the Old Kings; Sargassa; The Black Hunger.", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Every Book a Doorway" }, "url": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/september-dnfs-2\/", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Book", "name": "The Black Hunger", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Nicholas Pullen", "sameAs": "" }, "isbn": "" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sia", "sameAs": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 3, "bestRating": "5" }}I want to try Black Hunger again at a later date, because it’s very well-written, and it’s utilizing Buddhist…folklore? Not sure if that’s the right term. My point is, I don’t read books featuring Buddhism very often at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything set in Sikkim, aka northern India. That’s infinitely more interesting to me than another rehash of Medieval Europe!
Black Hunger is very polished, and reads like many of the best historical fiction novels – the attention to detail is fabulous, and I was amused at how Pullen managed to justify having a main character with closer-to-modern sensibilities than most people of the time period (particularly most Brits of the time period) ever would have had. Unfortunately, I found that main character – John – extremely bland. His one defining trait – his passion for ‘the Orient’ – doesn’t really come through; I never felt it, and even though we’re reading his first-person narration, I didn’t see any actual appreciation of the culture or peoples or landscapes, once he was sent to Sikkim. I adore passionate characters, especially if they’re passionate about something I’m not; passions make you inherently interesting, and the best characters all have them. But John’s felt – like it was just told to us, not shown. And some of that might be the framework – John is writing all this while he waits to die, so no, he probably wouldn’t write pages and pages of why he loves this country, this spirituality, this language so much. He doesn’t have time. But that doesn’t change the fact that it makes for a very meh reading experience.
The Big Bad (at least, so I gather from the first 20% of the book; no telling what might be revealed later on) is a sect of heretical Buddhists called the Dhaumri Karoti. This group is supposed to be extinct by the early 1900s in which Black Hunger is set, but the reader is definitely meant to be suspicious that they have in fact managed to survive. How do you be a heretical Buddhist? Well, these ones want to bring about the end of all life on earth, which, yep, I’m good with calling that a heresy (even if I can kind of follow their reasoning – it’s always a nice surprise when you can understand the villains, even when you disagree!) As far as I can tell, the Dhaumri Karoti are entirely fictional, and I admit that I feel a little weird about that; is it okay to invent a heresy, and thus villains, in a religion/spirituality that’s so poorly understood in the West? I’m not claiming it’s wrong, I just don’t know if it’s a great move. And it left me pretty uncertain about whether I could trust Pullen’s depictions of anything outside historical Britain. Has all of this been done respectfully? Are the depictions of actual places and people at all accurate? I’m not qualified to say.
Between a kind of meh MC, and not feeling the love for the setting through said MC, there wasn’t really much for me to enjoy here. Objectively, I think a lot of it is great, on a technical craft level – but after the first little bit (I can’t say ‘first few chapters’, because there aren’t any) I lost interest. It just…doesn’t have any heart to it? If that makes sense? And while I don’t read Horror often, I do think Black Hunger was taking forever to get to the scary parts.
Bonus: telling us in the first pages that the love interest is dead at the time of writing is not going to make me invested in the ship, actually? Which made the love story part another thing that didn’t engage me.
…Maybe I won’t try it again. I’m mildly curious about the Dhaumri Karoti, but nothing was happening plot-wise a full fifth of the way through the book, I was very bored of the ‘here is the munitae of how I did my dull government job for years and years’, and I felt cast adrift with nothing – not the characters, not the passions, nothing – to anchor me to the story.
I have too many things to read to keep pushing through with something I don’t care about.
If slow-burn historical Horror is your thing, Pullen can at least guarantee you a setting you probably haven’t seen before?
Perhaps next month will have fewer DNFs!
The post September DNFs appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 28, 2024
Psychic Empathy and Dragons: The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee
The Mountain Crown (The Crowns of Ishia, #1) by Karin Lowachee Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
Representation: Major disabled MLM character, secondary MLM character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 1837862400
Goodreads
Méka must capture a king dragon, or die trying.
War between the island states of Kattaka and Mazemoor has left no one unscathed. Méka’s nomadic people, the Ba’Suon, were driven from their homeland by the Kattakans. Those who remained were forced to live under the Kattakan yoke, to serve their greed for gold alongside the dragons with whom the Ba’Suon share an empathic connection.
A decade later and under a fragile truce, Méka returns home from her exile for an ancient, necessary gathering a king dragon of the Crown Mountains to maintain balance in the wild country. But Méka’s act of compassion toward an imprisoned dragon and Lilley, a Kattakan veteran of the war, soon draws the ire of the imperialistic authorities. They order the unwelcome addition of an enigmatic Ba’Suon traitor named Raka to accompany Méka and Lilley to the mountains.
The journey is filled with dangers both within and without. As conflict threatens to reignite, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself will depend on the decisions – defiant or compliant – that Méka and her companions choose to make. But not even Méka, kin to the great dragons of the North, can anticipate the depth of the consequences to her world.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
{ "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "datePublished": "2024-09-28T19:23:10+00:00", "description": "SURPRISE, instant new fave!", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Every Book a Doorway" }, "url": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/psychic-empathy-and-dragons-the-mountain-crown-by-karin-lowachee\/", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Book", "name": "The Mountain Crown (The Crowns of Ishia, #1)", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Karin Lowachee", "sameAs": "" }, "isbn": "1837862400" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sia", "sameAs": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 5, "bestRating": "5" }} Highlights~dragon cubs!
~don’t touch the swords
~maintaining eco-balance
~unexpected queerness
~the cosmos is definitely listening
I’ve been hearing Lowachee’s name for a long time, but never managed to read any of her books until Mountain Crown showed up on Netgalley. I figured a relatively short book + dragons would be a good introduction for an author I hadn’t tried before.
SUFFICE TO SAY, AFTER THIS NOVELLA I WILL BE DEVOURING LOWACHEE’S ENTIRE BACKLIST!
The plot is pretty well covered by the blurb, so I won’t go over that much, but the WORLD! Please picture me swooning. Lowachee wastes no time establishing her setting; the sense-of-place is so strong and clear, and rings unique, like not quite like anything I’ve seen before. Mostly in terms of the Ba’suon, the people Méka, our MC, belongs to: we learn about Méka’s – let’s call it psychic empathy, for lack of a better term – on the very first page, and it’s rapidly confirmed that this is an ability all Ba’suon have. It’s absolutely fascinating to see how this is clearly Méka’s primary sense – think of how humans are intensely visual creatures, and now imagine all that weight placed on a kind of psychic ability. Lowachee’s worldbuilding is phenomenal on every level, but I especially loved how this one detail – the Ba’suon’s empathy – informs and influences absolutely everything about Méka and her culture.
His energetic presence was a hollow clang to her, an empty bucket struck by the hammer of the cosmos.
But in a way, Méka’s empathy – magic? – is almost defined by absence, in Mountain Crown. Because non-Ba’suon don’t have this ability, and weirder and worse is the way that they feel dead to this sense. Ba’suon can sense each other, and animals and birds and so on…but not humans who are not Ba’suon. This is a direct reversal from the other times I’ve seen fictional cultures with this kind of magic – think the Lakewalkers from Bujold’s Sharing Knife quartet, where non-Lakewalkers don’t have this magic, but Lakewalkers can still see/sense them just fine. So I wonder what it was like, when the Ba’suon encountered other peoples for the first time? Like the Kattakans – imagine being invaded by people who look human, but ‘register’ as completely dead? That must have been horrifying, and it says a lot about the Ba’suon that they haven’t demonised outsiders because of that. It would have been very believable for a people in that situation to become intensely xenophobic…but they’re not.
(I mean, they’re not pro-Kattakan, with really good reason. But there’s no sense of only Ba’suon people are real people, you know?)
That’s important. What we can infer about the Ba’suon from that…almost, I think, gives us the heart of who they are. What defines them as a people.
That, and the dragons, of course. Which the Ba’suon call suon (and the way I flailed when I realised the Ba’suon named themselves after dragons! Or named the dragons after themselves! Again, tiny details which imply SO MUCH!)
larger adults flit back and forth like jeweled bats upon stalactites.
The characters are amazing. I loved Méka; I loved getting to know her, learning who she was. She’s so different from most of the main characters I see; practical but unyielding on the things that matter to her, with a pride that almost doesn’t seem like pride, compassionate without necessarily being forgiving, an unfamiliar kind of optimistic. Her…reverence is almost the right word, but not quite…for the natural world is a beautiful thing to witness, to be inside of for a while. She has a very non-individualistic outlook and attitude that is – pretty foreign to Western culture, really!
I don’t mean to suggest that she’s some perfect Enlightened being: far from it! In her POV the Kattakans are an ‘infestation’, and while she doesn’t offer violence to insults, she definitely invites idiots to Fuck Around And Find Out, with a mien of such steady, implacable surety in her ability to wipe the floor with anyone who tangles with her, that I had to go find a fan.
The two major secondary characters – Lilley, a disabled Kattakan Méka rescues from slavery, and Raka, a Ba’suon with that all-important empathy closed-off – are also fantastic. Just Lilley’s name helps drive home that we are Not Anywhere Familiar (‘Lily’ as a man’s name is not something you generally come across in the English-speaking world!), and both Lilley and Raka’s backstories have the same effect, giving us a glimpse into a history that feels subtly alien (mostly in its approach to queer love and fantasy gender roles). The two characters added a lot to the book; it would have been wildly different, and lesser, without them.
The dawn eked from the night in silver and rose with the sun pinned like a brooch on the hilly breast of the eastern horizon.
Lowachee manages to very quickly convey the ‘sense’ of the world she’s created in the opening pages, while still having plenty of surprises for you tucked into the worldbuilding. The tiniest details are hidden gems, and each one impressed me more than the last, had me falling more and more with this world – and mourning it, because Mountain Crown is set in the (not immediate) aftermath of a war that drove most of the Ba’suon, Méka’s people, from their homeland. We don’t get to see it unmarred, and the contrast between Méka’s inner reality and her outer one – her sense of self, her memories, and what the Kattakans have made of her home – is enraging and heartbreaking. There’s a streak of…not exactly environmentalism…that’s fundamental to the Ba’suon and also the plot, in that it drives the entire ‘rite’ that is Méka coming to collect a dragon/suon; and it hurts, because we see how connected the Ba’suon are to the natural world, and I can’t help wondering how different our world would be if we had the same kind of empathy/sensing-of-life that they do.
It’s things like calling baby dragons ‘cubs’ that reinforces, over and over, that we are Somewhere Else, that this isn’t our world, that the cultures we see are radically different from our own in some pretty intrinsic ways. I’ve never seen anyone call baby dragons cubs before! It’s a quick, easy way to divorce us from the genre expectations we bring with us from book to book, a way to bypass our thinking minds and get us right in the guts with the fact that we’re not in Kansas anymore. I realise I keep making this point, but it’s because I just can’t get over how effectively it’s done, and how efficiently! And how this alien-ness, this unfamiliarity, allows Lowachee to…take a not-quite-standard approach to the storytelling. Present us with some concepts and ideas that we don’t see that often, that challenge some of The Way Things Are in SFF. The approach to forgiveness; the strangely fluid pride; the resistance to violence which is not pacifism.
that fear and suspicion imbalanced the world into chaos, and they couldn’t be ignored or controlled by avoidance. That even the ones who betrayed you in love deserved a reckoning with love.
It delights me, and I hope we see more of that in the next book. Which, yes, I’m going straight off to pre-order, because gods DAMN do I need more of this world, this series, and Lowachee’s writing. HELLS TO THE YES!
The Mountain Crown is breathtaking, a book I wanted to reread the moment I finished it. It feels new, without being so challenging as to become off-putting or difficult. I loved the world, the dragons, the characters, and the prose; there’s nothing at all that I want to change or critique.
Instead, I’d like to push a copy into your hands and insist that you READ IT ASAP!
The post Psychic Empathy and Dragons: The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
