Siavahda's Blog, page 19
September 25, 2024
I Can’t Wait For…Of Knives and Night-Blooms by Tansy Rayner Roberts
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 Of Knives and Night-Blooms by Tansy Rayner Roberts!
Of Knives and Night-blooms (The River Divine) by Tansy Rayner Roberts Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 7th October 2024
Goodreads
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“Never speak the name of the Black Raven aloud. Never fail your sacred duty. Never trust magic. And never travel on the River Divine…”
CALYX: Didn’t mean to bind 3 assassins to her eternal magical servitude, but leaning into it. Has places to be, and a daughter to protect.
IKAROS: Priest of death. Hates this river. Hates boats. Hates that Calyx’s magic means he can’t kill her. Abandoned by his god. Having a bad week.
DIO: Not even supposed to be here, but kind of into it. Surrounded by hot assassins. Having a great week.
VALERIA: Priest of death. Ageless, deadly, better than all of you. Can kill with a shoe but it probably won’t come to that because she is carrying all the knives.
MARDI: Priest of death. Pregnant. Dangerous. Too good for this. One day away from retirement.
REYNARD KALDORAN: Going to kill every last one of you.
THE RIVER DIVINE: Hold my beer.
An action-packed adventure tale of unreliable gods and burnt-out assassins, from the award-winning author of The Creature Court.
I had no idea this book existed until about ten minutes ago, and now I am BUZZING with excitement!!!
Tansy Rayner Roberts has written a lot of things, but the Creature Court trilogy is like nothing else that exists – think Ancient Rome crossed with 1920s America, where the sky tries to eat the world every night and only a collection of feral little shapeshifting mages can prevent it from doing so. It is a MAGNIFICENT series, take that as read. (And if you haven’t read it, then by the gods, go do that!!!)
Of Knives and Night-Blooms does not sound much like the Creature Court, BUT, it does sound like it might be more in line with the Court than with the light, fluffy books Roberts has been writing lately. Maybe? Hopefully? No shade to light fluffy fantasy, that is a most excellent genre-vibe, but I’m crossing my fingers that Roberts is going to give us rich-and-strange again in this new story! (Especially since she’s being described as author of the Creature Court in the book description, rather than author of the Teacup Magic series…)
Either way, the tongue-in-cheek humour Roberts is also great at seems guaranteed by that blurb! Burnt out assassins? A pregnant priest of death? ‘Didn’t mean to bind 3 assassins to her eternal magical servitude, but leaning into it.’ ?
Um, yes PLEASE??? *grabby hands* This sounds hilarious, is clearly packed full of amazing characters, and it’s from one of my favourite authors. GIMME!
The post I Can’t Wait For…Of Knives and Night-Blooms by Tansy Rayner Roberts appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 23, 2024
Must-Have Monday #205
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.
THIRTEEN books this week!
(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)
Space Oddity (Space Opera, #2) by Catherynne M. Valente Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Pansexual nonbinary brown MC
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Return to the greatest contest in the galaxy in the sequel to the hilarious USA TODAY bestseller Space Opera from New York Times bestselling author and finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Ursula K. Le Guin awards.
The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened. The civilizations opposed to humanity have been plotting and want to take down the upstarts. Can humanity rise again in this sequel to the beloved Hugo Award–nominated national bestselling Space Opera by New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente?
ONLY A NEW BOOK BY ONE OF THE GREATEST ENGLISH-WRITING STORYTELLERS OF ALL TIME.
NO BIG DEAL.
Suffice to say, I am ALL THE EXITCEMENT for this one, the sequel to the incredible, and incredibly FUN, Space Opera! I don’t expect to get any sleep tonight; I will be too busy fizzing with anticipation!!!
You can read my review of book one here!
Failure to Comply by Cavar Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Disabled trans MC
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Every story has its fugitives. I, a deviant self-hacker with three arms, two stomachs, and no name, is on the run from RSCH, an high-tech, authoritarian government that mandates wellness and carves the contours of truth itself. When I is kidnapped at axe-point to be mined for forbidden memories, they must struggle against RSCH’s medical abuse to recapture their history, reunite with their lover, and rewrite their future –– or risk remaining Patient forever.
Set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future, this literary sci-fi novel presents a world where humans have been unshackled from disease and their basest desires thanks to the genetic engineering and societal supervision of RSCH—an inscrutable entity with unimaginable power (including the ability to literally shape reality). In RSCH's march toward perfecting the species, however, there are "deviants" (including LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities) who are fighting for a different vision of humanity. But where can they find hope when horror abounds, projected into their own bodies and minds by RSCH?
I crosses an epistolary, time-flipped dreamscape as they recollect their memories from RSCH’s hungry archive, and, in the process, write the story of their liberation.
By all accounts this does very unconventional things with its page layouts, using text placement to indicate mood and things like that. I hope the ebook edition gets to have that! Also, Failure To Comply apparently needs you to concentrate while reading, so maybe don’t pick this one up when you’re in the mood for something breezy? Not that anything in that blurb sounds very breezy…
Necrology by Meg Ripley Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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“It’s amazing what the spirit can cope with to preserve the body. My spirit is a mighty oak that just won’t fall.”
In a fantastical aftermath of the Salem witch trials, magical women known as the Dirty have signed a contract swearing off their innate magic in exchange for freedom from violence by non-magical Freemen. Two hundred years later, in a Catskills orphanage, headmistress Whitetail has sprouted antlers—proof of a violated contract. When her wealthy benefactor visits, proposing marriage, her appearance sparks abuse. Rushing to her teacher’s defense, eight-year-old Rabbit curses the Beard dead, and Whitetail’s arrested on trumped-up charges.
As Whitetail awaits her trial and execution, Rabbit is groomed as the Freemen’s star witness and learns of the terrifying reality to which they aspire. With her magic at stake and a loose tooth in her mouth, Rabbit has little left to lose. And a revolution to gain.
Necrology is one of those books that capture my imagination even though I know almost nothing about them. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I’ve become obsessed with getting my hands on it…but I’ve become obsessed with getting my hands on it! It’s the start of a series, if that makes a difference to you, but either way I can’t WAIT to start reading it!
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery.
Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. But when someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon. This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers.
Never mess with a librarian.
Waggoner’s previous two novels – Unnatural Magic and The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry – both became instant faves for me, so I’m obviously Extremely Interested in her third book! Unlike the previous two (which share a setting) I think this one’s set in our world, and this one’s written in first-person.
You can read an excerpt here!
The Last of the Dark Lords: An MM Fantasy Romance by K.L. Larsen Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 23d September 2024
Goodreads
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Skye
My whole life, I’ve heard stories of the Dark Lord of Ashfuror, horrifying tales of torture and death that gave me nightmares as a child. When I turned eighteen, I committed myself to defending my home city of Greatfalls against the threat, and in six short years I rose to the rank of Commander of the Archers. All I want to do is keep my city safe.
But when war finally comes, I find myself not on the front lines, but engaged to be married to the Dark Lord as part of a fragile treaty. I arrive for the wedding intent on destroying the source of the Dark Lord’s power and preserving my home’s security and autonomy forever.
But soon I find that all is not as it seems. The Dark Lord is not a monster, but a handsome, infuriating man. And my home city of Greatfalls is not the innocent sanctuary I always thought it was.
The Last of the Dark Lords is a 49,000-word MM fantasy romance with a guaranteed HEA and no cliffhanger. It contains a snarky dark lord and the too-noble-for-his-own-good military commander that falls fast for him. It also contains steamy scenes between two men and moderate violence. Not suitable for readers under 18.
I’m a bit wary, because first-person blurbs always rub me the wrong way for some reason – but I’m intrigued by the idea of a ‘last’ Dark Lord. Why the last??? Is it a good or bad thing that there’s only one left? You’d think it would be a good thing, but I am suspicious…
We Kept Her in the Cellar by W.R. Gorman Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Horror
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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There are always two sides to a story. This dark and twisted reimagining of Cinderella, told from her stepsister's POV, is perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher and Naomi Novik.
Eunice lives her life by three simple rules: One, always refer to Cinderella as family. Two, never let Cinderella gain access to rats or mice. Three, never look upon Cinderella between the hours of twelve and three a.m.
Cinderella has dark and terrifying powers. As her stepsister, Eunice is expected to care for her and keep the family’s secret. For years, Eunice has faithfully done so. Her childhood flew by in a blur of nightmares, tears, and near-misses with the monster living in the cellar. But when she befriends the handsome Prince Credence and secures an invitation to the ball, Eunice is determined to break free.
When her younger sister, Hortense, steps up to care for Cinderella, Eunice grabs her chance to dance the night away—until Cinderella escapes. With her eldritch powers, Cinderella attends the ball and sweeps Prince Credence off his feet, leaving behind a trail of carnage and destruction as well as a single green glass slipper.
With Cinderella unleashed, Eunice must determine how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice in order to stop Cinderella. Unsettling and macabre at every turn, this page-turning horror will bewitch horror fans and leave its readers anxiously checking the locks on their cellar doors.
This is the kind of bonkers premise I cannot resist; eldritch Cinderella ftw!
First On Scene: A Howling Sirens Novel (Book 1) by Selina Rossman Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MCs
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Book 1
In a small town shattered by violent animal attacks, four first responders must confront their pasts and embrace their destinies as they become humanity's last line of defense against a supernatural threat.
In the quiet, quintessential small town of Hudson, Massachusetts, a dedicated group of first responders—Kitty, Zuri, Angell, and Eric—commit themselves to the safety of their community. Kitty, a Southern transplant and new medic, is eager to prove her worth and find her place, not knowing that the woman of her dreams, Zuri, is more than just an EMT. Eric, who struggles in his role as a paramedic, learns to lean on his partner, Angell, a skilled medic with a mysterious, bewitched past.
When a series of violent animal attacks shatters the town's tranquility, it unearths hidden secrets and thrusts these healers onto a warrior's path. As they rush from one medical emergency to another, each pulse-pounding call brings them closer to each other and their destiny. The perils of the paranormal threaten to destroy everything they hold dear, forcing them to confront their pasts to save their future.
In this adrenaline-fueled world of EMS, the lives of Kitty, Zuri, Angell, and Eric intertwine in ways they never expected. Their call to duty transcends the ordinary as they become humanity's last line of defense against a supernatural threat. Every siren heralds a potential showdown, challenging them to redefine what it means to be 'of service.' Follow these warriors on a gripping journey where every heartbeat could signal a supernatural confrontation.
I’ve seen some ex-EMTs be effusive about this one, which is promising! I’m actually not sure I’ve ever seen EMTs in fantasy before, but I love the premise already!
The Undead Complex (The Undetectables, #2) by Courtney Smyth Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC with fibromyalgia, major brown sapphic character, major bisexual character, major gay character
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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A witty, witchy fantasy murder mystery packed with ancient magic and fiendish puzzles. Mallory, Diana, Cornelia and Theodore are hired to solve a murder on a TV shoot by the victim herself. Perfect for fans of supernatural mysteries and cosy crime by authors such as Ben Aaronovitch, Josiah Bancroft and Tammie Painter.
Five months after the events of The Undetectables, business is booming – but finding cases that call for magical forensic investigators is not. So when Diana’s ex, Taylor, asks them to solve a murder – her own – Diana, Mallory and Cornelia can’t say no.
Called to investigate the set of Undead Complex, Diana re-enters the world of TV-show prop making – even in death, the show must go on. Even the appearance of a genuine-article Francine Leon dollhouse can't make up for the fact she's being pulled down a path of crime-solving she maybe doesn't want to walk forever.
Meanwhile, Theodore's coming apart at the seams – literally – in the aftermath of their last case, and Mallory is running out of ways to help him. Especially as he seems to be keeping secrets from her.
As the clues – and the bodies – keep piling up, each one making less and less sense, The Undetectables find themselves in a new race against the clock to find out what, exactly, the killer is up to – before they strike again...
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but didn’t quite get on with this one. I’m hoping I was just in the wrong headspace for it, though; definitely want to give it another chance!
You can read my review of book one here!
Devils Kill Devils by Johnny Compton Genres: Adult, Horror
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Devils Kill Devils is perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Certain Dark Things and Southern gothic horror. Johnny Compton brings his trademark terror and dread that readers fell in love with in The Spite House to a new roster of monsters—angels, devils, vampires—and a heart-pounding race to save the world.
When all hell breaks loose, you need a devil on your side
Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t stay buried forever… When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive.
Johnny Compton, critically acclaimed author of The Spite House and master of dread, takes you on a terrifying race of one woman against the hordes of hell.
Protective – or not-so-protective – monsters? Um, yes PLEASE? Plus, I’m always interested in seeing how dark/serious SFF does angels.
The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball Genres: Adult, Speculative Fiction
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers
In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes.
The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy’s broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception.
Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball’s absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
WELL. This sounds fascinating – although I’m immediately wondering why only one juror goes through the repeat room; why not all of them??? Regardless, very cool concept, and I can’t wait to see what Ball does with it!
The Sapling Cage (Daughters of the Empty Throne, #1) by Margaret Killjoy Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Bisexual trans MC, sapphic love interest
Protagonist Age: 16
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft.
Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.
When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.
Sapling Cage is Crossover, which means it that if you drew a Venn diagram of YA and Adult, Sapling Cage would be in the middle, overlapping part. It infuses the traditional Medieval-esque setting with anarchist thought and philosophy, putting a trans girl front and centre without making it a story about being trans. I’m so happy it exists!
You can read an excerpt here!
This Fatal Kiss by Alicia Jasinska Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Polyamory
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Spirit away with a whimsical fantasy filled with dark magic and flirty, polyamorous romance.
Cursed to haunt the river running through the magical spa town where she drowned, Gisela is a water nymph who dreams of returning to the living world and the family she left behind. All it takes to regain her humanity is a kiss from a mortal...but everyone sees her as a monster.
And then there’s Kazik, the brooding, interfering, spirit-hunting grandson of a local witch. He's determined to rid the world of unholy creatures like Gisela. After Kazik botches Gisela’s exorcism, she strikes up a deal. She won’t tell the other spirits that he’s losing his magic, if he agrees to play matchmaker and helps her get a kiss. But Gisela’s plan goes awry when Kazik also falls for the devilishly handsome young man that she sets her heart on—someone who could be linked to Gisela’s troubled past.
Finely crafted with a magical setting, this delectable quest through the spirit world is an enchanting read for fans of queer romantasy.
Another author releasing her third novel after I adored her first two! Jasinska’s prose is, frankly, sinfully gorgeous, and I am SO HERE for her take on fantasy polyamory!
You can read an excerpt here!
At the End of the River Styx by Michelle Kulwicki Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: M/M
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Before he can be reborn, Zan has spent 499 years bound in a 500-year curse to process souls for the monstrous Ferryman―and if he fails he dies.
In Portland, Bastian is grieving. He survived a car accident that took his mother and impulse-purchased a crumbling bookstore with the life insurance money.
But in sleep, death’s mark keeps dragging Bastian into Zan’s office. It shouldn’t be a problem to log his soul and forget he ever existed. But when Zan follows Bastian through his memories of grief and hope, Zan realizes that he is not ready for Bastian to die.
The boys borrow time hiding in the memories of the dead while the Ferryman hunts them, and Zan must decide if he’s willing to give up his chance at life to save Bastian―and Bastian must decide if he’s willing to keep living if it means losing Zan.
Calling it now: this is going to put my heart through the ringer. Meep!
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 #205 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 19, 2024
Mini-Review: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy
The Sapling Cage: A Novel (Daughters of the Empty Throne Book 1) by Margaret Killjoy Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Trans bisexual MC, sapphic love interest, minor ace-coded character
Protagonist Age: 16
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense
Published on: 24th September 2024
ISBN: 1558613331
Goodreads
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In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft.
Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one all witches are women, and she was born a boy.
When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights~only wild meat for witches
~Chaotic Good (or just chaotic) knights
~five and thirteen are the best numbers
~anarchist witches
~in a fight with two sides, trust neither
This is one of those times where I don’t think you should pay much attention to me.
Mostly because this book isn’t for me. Literally, not intended for me. This is a fantasy novel that is noteworthy in the ways that it depicts being trans, and groundbreaking in its explorations of non-capitalist forms of society and power.
The problem is that it’s a bit of an introductory class to these things – gender/being trans and capitalist alternatives. It doesn’t really dig into them, and its depiction isn’t very complicated. And I, personally, am a while past the need for a Trans/Anarchy 101 course, so none of it felt noteworthy or groundbreaking to me – this is all stuff I take for granted.
But it will be noteworthy and groundbreaking for a lot of other readers.
(See why my opinion isn’t super relevant to this one?)
It doesn’t matter what’s in your heart. It doesn’t matter your intentions. It matters what you do.
Overall I was pretty disappointed with Sapling Cage; I’ve adored Killjoy’s novellas and short stories, and I was so excited to see her taking on (what she called) epic fantasy. But this fell pretty flat for me; not just because the meant-to-be-groundbreaking bits were all very obvious to me – I take it for granted at this point that gender is complicated, and that nobody should have power over anybody else – but because I didn’t find the story very interesting. Trans girl swaps places with her bestie so she can train to be a witch (only women can be witches), but there is no studying magic because baby witches don’t learn magic for their first year. Something bad is happening to the trees; bad guys are uncovered; bad guys are dealt with. The prose is very straightforward, with very little description, and while Lorel is a very convincing, realistic teenager, I didn’t find her an interesting character at all.
The worldbuilding has some great details – like the various, and very different, Orders of knights, and that magic is wildly different depending on which school of thought you train with. Other than that…it’s a Medieval-esque setting? Lorel mentions that her home functions as a collective but that doesn’t seem to be the default and we don’t get to see it in action; her mother has two husbands, but we don’t see any other more-than-two marriages (or the husbands, who are off-page travelling).
The world wasn’t fair, to be sure, but believing the world wasn’t fair always seemed like a terrible excuse for never trying to make anything better.
I finished the whole thing, rather than DNFing it, because it’s Killjoy. But I can’t say I really enjoyed myself; it was kind of a slog for me.
But I’d still recommend it to many readers – Killjoy deliberately subverts a fair few genre expectations, and if you like Medieval-esque settings, then Sapling Cage might feel like a fresh take on it. I think Lorel’s uncertainty about her gender – about what she wants to be called, how she wants to be perceived, whether she wants any kind of bodily transition – is important to have on-page and is executed really well.
Was it easier to change my body or change how the world viewed it? Did I want to transform my body because I wanted people to see me as a girl? Or did I want to transform my body because I wanted a different body?
We have teenagers actually acting like teenagers, which, we’ve all read stories where adult authors have clearly forgotten what puberty was like. There’s a good amount of nuance, and the book is clearly meant to introduce radical topics to readers unfamiliar with them, to get people thinking and asking questions. I’m not really clear on whether this is meant to be YA or Adult, but it’s a fair bit more nuanced than most YA Fantasy I come across.
If that sounds good to you, then you should DEFINITELY take a look at Sapling Cage. I will be showing up for the sequel – and that should say a lot.
You can read an excerpt of The Sapling Cage here!
The post Mini-Review: The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 18, 2024
I Can’t Wait For…Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh
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 Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh!
Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Horror
Representation: Nigerian cast and setting
Published on: 22nd October 2024
Goodreads
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A powerful Nigeria-set horror tale of possession, malevolent ghosts, family tensions, secrets and murder from the recipient of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement and ‘Queen of African Horror’. For readers of Tananarive Due, Chikodili Emelumadu and Paul Tremblay.
Bata, an 11-year-old girl tormented by nightmares, wakes up one night to find herself standing sentinel before her cousin’s door. Her cousin is to get married the next morning, but only if she can escape the murderous attack of a ghost-bride, who used to be engaged to her groom.
A supernatural possession helps Bata battle and vanquish the vengeful ghost bride, and following a botched exorcism, she is transported to Ibaja-La, the realm of dead brides. There, she receives secret powers to fight malevolent ghost-brides before being sent back to the human realm, where she must learn to harness her new abilities as she strives to protect those whom she loves.
By turns touching and terrifying, this is vivid supernatural horror story of family drama, long-held secrets, possession, death - and what lies beyond.
I’m always looking for stories that draw on or use folklore and mythology I’m not familiar with, and this sounds like a great example! All the early reviews are full of love for Onoh’s take on Nigerian ghost brides and Ibaja-La, neither of which I’ve ever come across before.
T. L. Huchu’s Edinburgh Nights series convinced me that you can absolutely have Adult books with young protagonists, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for more of them. Bata, the main character of Where the Dead Brides Gather, is only eleven! And yet this isn’t a Middle Grade book. Given how beautifully complex and deep the best MG is, I don’t know how to define what the difference between MG and Adult is, but I’m very hopeful that Onoh nails it here.
I mean, the blurb sounds a little MG, doesn’t it? Young girl having adventures and saving her family? But this is Horror/Dark Fantasy and Adult, so presumably it’s going to look and feel quite different to something like Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky. And that’s inherently interesting to me, how similar ideas can be wildly different when written for different age groups!
Early readers have also talked about how Where the Dead Brides Gather has quite a bit to say on the rights and roles of women in modern Nigeria, that it’s looking at ancient beliefs through a feminist lens. That would be a red flag for me if the author were white, but when it’s #ownvoices? Oh HELLS yes!
Very ready to become a convert of the Queen of African Horror!
The post I Can’t Wait For…Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 16, 2024
Must-Have Monday #204
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.
THIRTEEN books this week!
(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)
Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant.
When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven the bastard. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of small disappointments and misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don’t care and won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab.
And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good.
But the journey doesn’t take him far, and Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is—and always has.
A NEW ALEXANDRA ROWLAND BOOK!!! I got to read an early version of this, and it is, as you should expect by now, UTTERLY EXCELLENT!!! So many giggles, so much heartache (both the tragic and the warm glowy kind), magically enormous veggies, marvellous theology, very sexy sex, and the prickliest grumpy MC you WILL fall in love with!!!
Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Sci Fi
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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A thrilling collection of thirteen short stories that span the worlds of the New York Times bestselling author of the Scholomance Trilogy, including a sneak peek at the land where her next novel will be set.
From the dragon-filled Temeraire series and the gothic, magical halls of the Scholomance trilogy to the fairy tale worlds of Spinning Silver and Uprooted, this stunning collection takes us from fairy tale to fantasy, myth to history, and mystery to science fiction as we travel through Naomi Novik’s most beloved stories.
In Buried Deep, we move from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages and the Black Death, and into the modern era. We meet Mark Antony, Sherlock Holmes, and Elizabeth Bennet, in ways we have never seen them before. We visit exotic fantasy cities and alien civilizations among the stars.
Though the stories are vastly different, there is a unifying theme: the act of finding and seizing one’s destiny, and the lengths one will go to achieve that—be it turning pirate, captaining a fighting dragon, or shifting from marriage to seek your destiny with a sword.
And in the two tales original to this collection, we first reenter the remade Scholomance in the wake of El’s revolution and see what life is like for the new crop of students. Then, we get a glimpse at the world of Novik’s upcoming series, a deserted land, populated only by silent and enigmatic architectural behemoths whose secrets are yet to be unlocked.
Vibrating with excitement for this! I adore Novik’s novels and am VERY EAGER to dive into her short stories! Especially the glimpse of the Scholomance and the world of her next series!!!
From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MCs
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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St. Edah’s, a house without exit: Lethe and Petunia are mortal prisoners, servants to immortal creatures who unzip from their skin each night and party as skeletons.
Lethe has no memory of how she came to be trapped in this nightmare, only that despite the tenderness she feels for Petunia, she must escape. Together, they traverse the infinite house, searching for passage while finding evidence of their former lives—lives that are not what they believed them to be.
Lethe must decide: join the immortals in their revelry or escape St. Edah’s once and for all.
Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in The Deadlands, Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and other publications. Born and raised across the Midwest, she now lives in Indianapolis with her family, works as a part-time indie bookseller, and writes for Book Riot. From These Dark Abodes is her first book.
Psychopomp is a Vermont-based small press that publishes otherworldly fiction and rad, gothy essays, as well as a little magazine about death called The Deadlands.
Didn’t quite click with this one, but it’s dark and delicious and I suspect will be a hit with most people intrigued by that blurb!
A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Jewish-coded sapphic MC
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness to secure his reign of the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only ever read about.
The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader—Lorelei’s beloved mentor—is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again—and a coup begins in earnest.
But there are other dangers lurking in the forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons waiting beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.
As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth—and resist their growing feelings for one another—they discover that their professor had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, or if this kingdom is worth saving at all.
Saft is giving us another fantasy-Jewish MC in Tide! I approve. The sort-of-regency fantasy-Germany was not to my overly picky taste, but I think it’s objectively good and Saft fans will love it.
Nightstrider (Nightstrider, #1) by Sophia Slade Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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To stop a vicious demon’s conquest, nightmares and humans will band together in book one of a heart-stopping new dark fantasy series.
Wren is a a deadly manifestation of the frightening dreams of humans. She is forever bound to the insidious Para Warwick, the only night creature who can cross the boundary between the dream and waking realms. When she fails to retrieve information on a weapon that could finally end Warwick’s reign and is severely punished, she makes a snap decision to aid the growing rebellion in finding it. Here, she meets Alaric, another nightmare hell-bent on atoning for his sins. Though wildly suspicious of one another, they form a tentative pact to take down Warwick once and for all.
The waking world is no better off. Prince Caine Fallon, Warwick's ignorant human son, prepares to wed Ila Enevoldson, the young queen from a neighboring kingdom. But Ila is more than she She is a weaver, a protector of the ancient Boundary that separates the realms, and she has lost a precious weapon entrusted to her. She will do anything to retrieve it, including agreeing to an engagement with the son of her sworn enemy.
When Caine catches Ila opening a portal to the dream realm and follows her through, he finds himself in a universe stranger than he could have imagined, where his father is more monstrous than he could have fathomed. Their destinies collide with those of the two lethal nightmares, and they are forced to band together to stop the vicious dictator—and prevent the very fabric of reality from unravelling.
From TikTok sensation Sophia Slade (@theneonvulture), a stunning new voice in epic fantasy, comes this dark, romantic tale about a world split in two and the four misguided souls who must come together save it, for fans of Holly Black and Hannah Whitten.
Nightstrider was initially self-published, and now it’s making its trad debut! (If you’re the kind of twit who thinks it’s not a bisexual book because the girl ends up with the guy this is NOT for you, but the most pressing question is: what are you even doing on this blog, we don’t accept that kind of bi-erasure here!) I’ve seen a LOT of love for this, and I can see why: morally grey bi MC, dreams and nightmares come to life, epic fantasy plot, and apparently a very cool magic system!
The Vampire of Kings Street by Asha Greyling Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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In this gothic debut novel, perfect for fans of Tread of Angels and Gail Carriger’s Soulless, Miss Radhika Dhingra, a newly minted lawyer in 19th century New York, never expected that her first client would be a vampire accused of murder.
Having a resident vampire is just the thing for upper-class New Yorkers–besides being a status symbol, they make excellent butlers or housekeepers. The only thing they require in return is a drop or two of blood and a casket to shut out the dawn’s early light.
Tolerated by society only if they follow a strict set of rules, vampires are seen as “less than”–and as the daughter of immigrants, Radhika knows firsthand how this feels. Accused of murder, her undead client Mr. Evelyn More, knows that the cards are stacked against him.
With the help of a journalist friend and a diminutive detective inspector, Miss Dhingra sets out to prove her client’s innocence and win his freedom. Failure will mean Mr. More’s death, the end of her dreams of becoming a successful attorney, and the loss of the vampire Miss Dhingra has begun to call her friend.
Offering an alternative paranormal history, delightful characters, and insightful social commentary, The Vampire of Kings Street will thrill readers of Deanna Rayburn and Rebecca Roanhorse.
I can’t put my finger on what about this has caught my attention, but it has and I want to read it! Maybe it’s the rarity of seeing vampires as an underclass???
Hampton Heights: One Harrowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by Dan Kois Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black MC, gay MC
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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"Marvelous, tender, and unpredictable, Hampton Heights captures the uncanniness and discomfort of early adolescence. There’s a pinch of Ray Bradbury, a soupçon of Stephen King, a dash of fairy tale logic, but Dan Kois makes something entirely his own out of this familiar and always pleasurable territory."—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
From the author of the Washington Post notable novel Vintage Contemporaries, something completely a hair-raising and rollicking adventure set on one night in 1987, when six paperboys must confront a slew of monsters as well as their own personal demons in a haunted Midwestern neighborhood.
On a cold winter’s evening in 1987, six middle-school paperboys wander an unfamiliar Milwaukee neighborhood, selling newspaper subscriptions, fueled by their manager Kevin’s promises of cash bonuses and dinner at Burger King. But the freaks come out at night in Hampton Heights. Sent out into the neighborhood in pairs, the boys will encounter a host of primordial monsters—and triumph over them.
Sigmone, who is bussed to a white school, is stuck with Joel, a white kid who idolizes Black culture. Mark, who's wrestling with his sexuality, joins his secret crush, Ryan. Nishu and Al are outsiders; one is a second-generation immigrant, the other a poor kid in a rich school. Over the course of one eventful evening, the three pairs will encounter the wild things of Hampton Heights—werewolves, witches with a centuries-old story to tell, and a creepy, ancient monster who feeds on memories. Meanwhile, Kevin is having an adventure of his own, seducing a beautiful woman in the neighborhood’s tavern . . . but who is actually in control? As the night nears its end, everyone will reunite for a cataclysmic finale.
Funny, thrilling, outrageous, and sneakily beautiful, Dan Kois’s Hampton Heights captures without sentimentality the dreams and fears of teenage boys in a tender horror-comedy about camaraderie, bravery, vulnerability, and the terrifying prospect of growing up.
I’ve seen this tagged horror, but it…doesn’t really…sound like it? It DOES sound like fun; monsters and witches and paperboys! Looking forward to getting to this one!
Spells to Forget Us by Aislinn Brophy Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Black sapphic MCs, F/F or wlw
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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A witch and a non-magical girl get stuck in a cycle of meet-cutes and breakups in this dazzling, romantic young adult fantasy.
Fate brought them together. Magic made them strangers.
Luna is a powerful witch. Known for her skills and feared for her temper, she’s set to preserve her family’s legacy by becoming the head of Boston’s Witch Council—a job she does not want.
Aoife is a non-magical girl. Raised under the lens of her influencer family, she’s grown up in the public eye. Now she yearns for privacy—but knows her parents won’t oblige.
Just when they are at their lowest, Aoife and Luna find each other and start dating. As decreed by magic law, Luna casts a spell that will erase Aoife’s memories of their history together if they ever break up. But when Aoife and Luna end things, it’s both of them who forget . . . that is, until they meet again, fall for each other, and recover all the memories of their last attempt at dating.
So begins the story of two star-crossed lovers who keep finding their way into each other’s orbits, even as the universe pulls them apart. When they set out to break the cycle, will they be strangers forever or together at last?
Tell me this doesn’t sound super sweet? (And WAY less creepy than when just one person in a romance loses their memory. Fifty First Dates, I’m looking at you!)
Night Owls by A.R. Vishny Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Jewish cast, sapphic MC, MC of Middle Eastern descent
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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In this thrilling paranormal YA romance debut steeped in folklore, two estries—owl-shifting female vampires from Jewish tradition—face New York's monstrous underworld to save the girl one of them loves with help from the boy one of them fears before they are, all of them, lost forever.
Clara loves rules. Rules are what have kept her and her sister, Molly, alive—or, rather, undead—for over a century. Work their historic movie theater by day. Shift into an owl under the cover of night. Feed on men in secret. And never fall in love.
Molly is in love. And she’s tired of keeping her girlfriend, Anat, a secret. If Clara won’t agree to bend their rules a little, then she will bend them herself.
Boaz is cursed. He can’t walk two city blocks without being cornered by something undead. At least at work at the theater, he gets to flirt with Clara, wishing she would like him back.
When Anat vanishes and New York’s monstrous underworld emerges from the shadows, Clara suspects Boaz, their annoyingly cute box office attendant, might be behind it all.
But if they are to find Anat, they will need to work together to face demons and the hungers they would sooner bury. Clara will have to break all her rules—of love, of life, and of death itself—before her rules break everyone she loves.
In this stand-alone debut, A. R. Vishny interweaves mystery, romance, and lore to create an unputdownable story about those who have kept to the shadows for far too long.
I’m reading an arc of this at the moment and can confirm that it is GREAT and you should for sure be reading it too asap!
Accidental Demons by Clare Edge Genres: Fantasy, MG
Representation: Diabetic MC
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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Conjuring demons seems like something you should totally not be able to do by accident, right? Well, normally it isn’t. But Bernadette Crowley is the perfect storm of magical accidents.
For the youngest in a long line of witches, demons used to be no big deal. A spell and a quick prick of the finger, and a witch like Ber could summon a demon to do anything she needed—clean a mess, send a message, you name it.
But that was before Ber was diagnosed with diabetes. Now each time she tests her blood sugar, accidental demons are slipping into the human dimension…and causing absolute chaos.
Good thing Ber and her older sister, Maeve, know that every magical problem has a magical solution. They’ll just conjure a low-order demon to monitor her blood sugar! Bonus: they only have to bend one or two teeny, tiny rules. But before they know it, they’ve stumbled into deeper, more mysterious magic than they ever could have predicted. And soon it’s not just Ber’s magic but her entire coven that’s in danger.
I discovered Accidental Demons via the author’s social media, and was instantly sold! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a diabetic MC in a fantasy story before. Hoping this is the start of a series!
The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 19th September 2024
Goodreads
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Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky romcom 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 commanded 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.
This isn’t out in the US until next month, but the UK gets it this week! (The ebook, anyway; I think the paper edition will be out a little later.) I have a copy of the US arc and have been enjoying it IMMENSELY – very adorable and silly and fun!
The Forest of a Thousand Eyes by Frances Hardinge, Emily Gravett Genres: Fantasy, MG
Published on: 19th September 2024
Goodreads
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Costa Award-winning Frances Hardinge's gripping story of a young girl's daring mission through a natural world intent on her destruction.
With stunning two-colour illustrations by superstar illustrator Emily Gravett on every page, this richly atmospheric book is perfect for fans of David Almond and Kiran Millwood Hargrave.
The hungry Forest is moving forward like an army, a green and constant threat to the humans living in and on an increasingly crumbling Wall. Feather, accompanied only by her scaled ferret, Sleek, must avoid the Forest's tentacles, and the many dangerous creatures it shelters, to return the community's precious spyglass to its rightful place. Along the way, she develops her resilience, and meets other people living on the Wall, whose stories and experiences open her mind, and those of her community, to new horizons.
A compelling story filled with adventure, emotional intensity and the rawness of nature.
The day I’m not excited for a Hardinge book, you should assume the Sia you’re talking to is an imposter! This is the second illustrated book we’re getting from Hardinge this year; we are being SPOILED!
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
Representation: Minor nonbinary character
Published on: 20th September 2024
Goodreads
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The delicious bodyguard romance of From Blood and Ash meets the delightful charm of The Princess Bride in this cozy fantasy romance from New York Times bestselling author T. Kingfisher
Halla has unexpectedly inherited the estate of the wealthy distant uncle she's been caring for for the past decade. Unfortunately, she is also saddled with money-hungry relatives full of devious plans for how to wrest the inheritance away from her.
While hiding in her bedroom to escape her family, Halla inspects the ancient sword that's been collecting dust on the wall since before she moved in. On a whim, she pulls it down and unsheaths it—and suddenly a man appears in her bedroom. His name is Sarkis, he tells her, and he is an immortal warrior trapped in a prison of enchanted steel.
Sarkis is sworn to protect whoever wields the sword, and for Halla—a most unusual wielder—he finds himself not fending off grand armies and deadly assassins but instead everything from kindly-seeming bandits to roving inquisitors to her own in-laws. But as Halla and Sarkis become closer, they overlook the biggest threat of all—the sword itself.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
I’m a little puzzled by this one – I’m not 100% sure I have the details correct – but I THINK a new ebook edition of Swordheart is being released by Bramble, the romance/romantasy imprint of Tor? With a hardcover edition coming next year? Yay! Swordheart is part of Kingfisher’s World of the White Rat, and imo the best place to start diving into this setting! Until now it’s been self-published, but hopefully this will be the beginning of all the fans who love Kingfisher’s trad-pubbed stuff discovering the White Rat verse!!! The White Rat setting is HYSTERICALLY funny – think Terry Pratchett, really; humour mixed in with DEEP Feels and social commentary, but quite a bit more romantically inclined than Pratchett was.
You can read my sorta-mini-review of it here!
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 #204 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 15, 2024
Glitter is Punk, Actually: Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente
Space Opera (Space Opera, #1) by Catherynne M. Valente Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Goodreads
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A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented—something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.
Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.
This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick, and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny—they must sing.
Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes, a washed-up glam-rock band, have been chosen to represent humanity on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.
~everyone hates Clippy
~take me to your lead singer
~the best aliens
~brace for Feels and galaxy-brain
~EUROVISION IN SPACE
My brain revolts when I try to review anything of Catherynne Valente’s. I’m actually, genuinely, scared to try, because I don’t have a hope of doing justice to anything she’s written.
And Space Opera isn’t the Valente book I wanted to review first! I wanted to write inadequate hymns to Orphan Tales or Radiance or Palimpsest or Prester John, the weirdest of her books, which are my best-beloved and deserve to be everyone else’s too. Space Opera is possibly Valente’s most well-known work, definitely her most accessible and mass-appeal, and that is not any kind of bad thing, but it does make me feel a little guilty for harping on about this one when Radiance is right there.
But then something occurred to me: It is because it’s so accessible that we must start here, with Space Opera. If you’ve never read a book of hers before, you must ease into the Valexcellence. You must acclimatise. If you dove directly into Radiance, you might get the bends.
But Space Opera will convince you that the process – of acclimatising – is worth it. And wow you as it does so.
*
A teeny-tiny bit in the future, aliens show up. They want humanity to prove our sentience by competing in their Eurovision-in-space competition. If we come in last-place, they’ll destroy us and let Earth try again with a new species. If we come in second-last or better, we get to live.
This sounds bonkers, I know. Humanity, understandably, reacts with confusion and outrage. Especially when our ‘buddy’ species – the last one before us to be recognised as sentient – helpfully give us a list of those of our bands and musicians they think have a chance. Because most people cannot BELIEVE their taste. They don’t want Mozart or the Beatles or whoever else the critics might pick as the Best Human Musicians Ever.
They want, you know. Eurovision music. Bold and bright and camp. Catchy like an STI. The kind of music few people would be happy sending out to represent THE WHOLE ENTIRE SPECIES!
They want…Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes.
Decibel Jones is what I imagine you’d get if you took Freddie Mercury and David Bowie, made them disasters, and mixed them together with a metric ton of edible glitter. He is flamboyant and over-the-top and not interested in being conventional or respectable. He’s a bit of a prat, sometimes. He is fiercely, desperately earnest – and also just desperate, since the band broke up and the spotlight moved on.
He is utterly convinced the aliens are taking the piss.
But they’re not, so the aliens scoop up Decibel and the only other surviving member of the Absolute Zeroes, and off they go across the galaxy.
*
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? And it IS. It’s supposed to be. Before it is anything else, Space Opera is fundamentally FUN. It is giggles and glitter. It promises – and delivers! – one HELL of a good time. As a piece of entertainment, it sparkles like a disco ball, absolutely dazzling.
But – though it is unashamedly ridiculous in many bonkers ways – Space Opera is not a joke. It’s not a suger pastry shell with no filling, all shallow style and zero substance. It has PLENTY of substance under the glitter – glittery substance, because it is in fact glitter all the way down, folx, but that in no way diminishes it. You might think it does diminish it, at first, but you’d be wrong, and Space Opera is here to show you why.
In-between picture-books that zap you (gently) with venom to help you memorise them, and spaceships like jewelled coral reefs, and time-travelling red pandas, Space Opera is less an exploration of and more a manifesto on the value of ‘ridiculous’ art. All art, really, but ridiculous art in particular. In fact, ridiculous art is not ridiculous. Ridiculous art is the most important art of all.
Valente makes a most excellent case for this.
Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other reason than it rocks?
The explanation, when it comes, of why the galactic community uses Eurovision of all things to determine sentience…actually makes a whole lot of sense, when we get it.
In order to create a pop band, the whole apparatus of civilization must be up and running and tapping its toe to the beat. Electricity, poetry, mathematics, sound amplification, textiles, arena architecture, efficient mimetic exchange, dramaturgy, industry, marketing, the bureaucratic classes, cultural critics, audiovisual transmission, special effects, music theory, symbology, metaphor, transportation, banking, enough leisure and excess calories to do anything beyond hunt, all of it, everything.
But that doesn’t have to be a pop band, does it? All of that previous quote applies equally well to any time of music, you would think! Right?
Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it’s monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play?
…OH.
Oh.
oh.
When I tell you I had an entirely thematically appropriate galaxy-brain moment after reading that passage… I really am not kidding even a little bit.
In Which Sia Gets PersonalSee, Space Opera is a revelation. Was one for me, when I first read it and every time I’ve reread it since. Because I used to think Eurovision and pop and camp and everything else big and glittery was stupid. I loved those things, but I was embarrassed about it. I felt like I wasn’t Doing Life Right, because I loved unicorns and rainbow hair colours and dressing up in top hats, and those things weren’t Correct. I had absorbed the idiocy that is the belief that art must be serious to be Real Art.
And Valente showed me, convinced me, how unutterably wrong I was.
It’s one thing to understand how fucking important it is to allow others to be silly. That’s what that last quote is talking about – do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play? – and that hit me so hard. But it is another thing to viscerally get how not-silly silliness/camp/glitter is. And that is one of the major triumphs of Space Opera.
But just as this book will prove to you that glitter is punk, it will also show you how being ridiculous is – something powerful. Something to respect, actually. Instead of rolling your eyes at the singer draped in a flock of feather boas, Space Opera points out how fucking BRAVE you have to be to get up on a stage, in front of other people, and sing and dance while decked in neon-bright feathers. It’s a shift in perspective, an all-too-needed change in gears. The people who are able to embrace what the rest of us call silly are among the bravest of us, not (just) because they’ve conquered stage-fright, but because they overcome, every day, the fear-of-being-judged that holds almost everyone alive prisoner, in one way or another.
The world had gotten gritty enough. The only thing left to do in all that dirt was to shine.
Which is to say: although other Valente books helped make me weird, Space Opera is the book that taught me to embrace it and flaunt it and be proud of it. That insisted I be weird – silly, ridiculous, over-the-top, myself – on the outside too. That convinced me that I wasn’t a strange little loser, but a freaking glitterpunk, actually. That there was so much power and courage in joy. That empathy is a superpower, and also mandatory.
And that life is beautiful and life is stupid, as the great Goguenar Gorecannon said.
Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays.
So I’ve explained, rather long-windedly, that this book changed my life. How about I get back to telling you about the book itself?
In Which Sia Belatedly Returns to The PointI don’t think I can possibly introduce you to the Absolute Zeroes better than Valente does here;
Decibel Jones always lived in the moment; Omar Calisșkan always lived in an uncertain future. Mira, he supposed, had always lived in her own head and allowed others to visit once in a while. With advance notice. And extensive decontamination protocols.
Decibel is, as you know, our lead. Oort St. Ultraviolet, otherwise known as Omar, is Englishblokeman, so completely and purposefully average that it becomes a superpower. Mira is…Mira. You’re going to love all three of them.
But we also have ‘the roadrunner’, aka Altonaut Who Runs Faster Than Wisdom Along the Milk Road – a representative of the last species to be verified sentient via the Grand Prix (the Eurovision-in-space competition), come to help guide humanity through the process. And Öö, the time-travelling red panda mentioned earlier. In fact, ALL the aliens are indescribably epic – you can feel the sheer FUN Valente must have had inventing all the species (and their homeworlds and histories!) just beaming off the page! Really, the aliens are the most obvious example of the sheer – the sheer EXUBERANCE of this book; Space Opera reads like it was a blast to write, and that helps make it a blast to read.
The universe is a very large and very complicated demonstration of having one’s cake and eating it too.
If you’re familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’ll probably see something of it in Space Opera; the flavour of humour, for one, and Valente’s prose is somewhat reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ here, especially when introducing us to the aliens or some foundational precept of galactic culture.
The life cycle of a Quantum-Tufted Domesticated Wormhole (Lacuna vermis familiaris) takes place on a scale that beggars the imagination, kicks it while it’s down, and lights it on fire.
But having read both, I find Space Opera infinitely funnier, more hopeful, and more heartfelt than Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s more wryly critical of British racism and colonialism; it’s extravagantly queer; it does not let humanity off the hook for our various failures and evils, but it is passionately, profoundly hopepunk. It is effervescently glorious, raw, aching; it is a scream into the void in four-part harmony, pure emotion and connection and vulnerability. It is starlight shaken till it fizzes, a rhinestone that is secretly a real gem, the distillation of every song that sends goosebumps racing down your arms and over the back of your neck.
It’s about how unbelievably awe-inspiring it is that we have a sense of beauty. About how beautiful beauty is. It’s about inventing beauty and joy and meaning when the world won’t give them to you, and the inspiring hope of that. The point-blank rejection of cynicism and pessimism. The refusal to give up on life, and people, and the future.
It’s about Eurovision in space, where the stakes are the highest they can possibly be and a whole lot of aliens are VERY invested in the possible outcomes. It’s about getting the literal band back together. It’s about Unkillable Facts.
It’s about how glitter is punk, actually.
And it will convince you.
This review doesn’t come close to expressing how unfathomably FLAWLESS Space Opera is. So I hope you read it. I really, REALLY do. It’s one of the best books of its decade and I will love it FOREVER.
If you still need convincing, you can read an excerpt of Space Opera here!
The post Glitter is Punk, Actually: Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 11, 2024
I Can’t Wait For…Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland
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 Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland!
Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
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"Alongside the sexiness and absurdity (and the sexy absurdity) in Yield Under Great Persuasion is a tender, resonant story of second and third chances and being loved when we need it most and feel we deserve it least. Evocative, emotional, and endlessly entertaining." —Jules Arbeaux, author of Lord of the Empty Isles
Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant.
When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven him. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of disappointments and small misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don’t care and won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab.
And then, the very last Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good.
Did you enjoy A Taste of Gold and Iron? Or maybe Running With the Wind? Maybe BOTH? Because this is by the same author AND YOU SHOULD BE ON TOP OF IT!
I got to read an early version of this (there are so many benefits to being one of Rowland’s patreons), and I ADORED it. Enemies-to-lovers but the enemy-ship is one-sided! Pining! Cinnamon rolls too good for this world! Grumpy grumps who clearly need hugs! Extremely large vegetables! DEITIES WHO ROCK! There’s even a quest!!!
There are so many layers to this book: it’s a learning-to-let-go-of-pain story, it’s about forgiveness and (the good kind of) selfishness. It’s about the very painful moment you realise that a lot of your suffering is your own fault, and the struggle to fix things and be better, do better. Which means it’s also about free will and healing. It’s about saints and gods and miracles, in ways I can confidently say you will NOT expect.
But if any of that sounds Very Serious to you… It’s also ASTOUNDINGLY funny. I lost count of how many times I burst out laughing, how many times I had to read a line aloud to the hubby to explain why I was in hysterics.
It is delicious and joy-bringing and heart-full. It will make you ache and make you giggle.
And I for one can’t WAIT to read the finished version next week!!!
The post I Can’t Wait For…Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 9, 2024
Must-Have Monday #203
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.
FIFTEEN books this week!
(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)
Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures (Beyond and Within) by Francesco Verso Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Published on: 9th September 2024
Goodreads
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A new, collectable anthology of futurist reads, featuring solarpunk stories to give a hope that empowers individuals and communities to work together for a better future.
In this near future anthology, Solarpunk explores the many ways individuals and resilient groups can fight gentrification, expropriation, abuse and loss of identity, starting within local communities, ultimately to embrace the whole world.
Solarpunk traces a path, rough and tortuous, towards a change now perceived by many as a necessity. “Nobody will give us the future” – seem to say these short stories edited by Future Fiction's Francesco Verso. Solarpunk brings stories without borders, from across the Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the UK and USA. Authors are Jerri Jerreat, Ken Liu, Thomas Badlan, Ciro Faienza, Brenda Cooper, Renan Bernardo, Jennifer L. Rossman, Sarena Ulibarri, Gustavo Bondoni, Lucie Lukacovicova, Ingrid Garcia, Andrew Dana Hudson and D.K. Mok.
The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative. The books themselves are gorgeous, with foiled covers, printed edges and published only in hardcover editions, offering a lifetime of reading pleasure.
Solarpunk is one of my favourite genres, but also one I hardly ever find! Hoping to find some new auto-buy authors in this collection.
The Age of Larkspur by Aleighsha Parke Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Bisexual MC with anxiety
Published on: 9th September 2024
Goodreads
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Flora has spent her entire life hiding in the trees and ignoring the cursed, poisonous larkspur growing from her ankle and eating away at her life. She lets her anxiety and fear control her, but fate forces her hand when her adopted mother is kidnapped by a cruel witch. The only way to save her is to find the magic shards of her family’s amulet scattered throughout her land.
With no time to waste, Flora sets out with her best friend, and along the way they meet a darkly intriguing stranger. But Flora is running out of time and can’t succumb to distractions. If she trusts the wrong person or lets her anxiety win, Flora risks losing more than just her mother …
Apparently the magic in this is inspired by Icelandic traditions??? Which I know almost nothing about, so this should be fun!
Countess by Suzan Palumbo Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Brown sapphic MC
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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A queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella, inspired by the Count of Monte Cristo, in which a betrayed captain seeks revenge on the interplanetary empire that subjugated her people for generations.
Virika Sameroo lives in colonized space under the Æerbot Empire, much like her ancestors before her in the British West Indies. After years of working hard to rise through the ranks of the empire’s merchant marine, she’s finally become first lieutenant on an interstellar cargo vessel.
When her captain dies under suspicious circumstances, Virika is arrested for murder and charged with treason despite her lifelong loyalty to the empire. Her conviction and subsequent imprisonment set her on a path to justice, determined to take down the evil empire that wronged her, all while the fate of her people hangs in the balance.
Labour solidarity ftw! That’s apparently a big part of the conflict in this novella, which I think is a good sign. I know next to nothing about Monte Cristo, but anti-imperialism/colonialism in space?! Yes please!
The Scarlet Throne (False Goddess, #1) by Amy Leow Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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A dark, heart-thumping political epic fantasy by debut author Amy Leow—full of scheming demons, morally grey heroines, talking cats, and cut-throat priests, this delicious tale of power and corruption will captivate from beginning to end.
Binsa is a “living goddess,” chosen by the gods to dispense both mercy and punishment from her place on the Scarlet Throne. But her reign hides a deadly secret. Rather than channeling the wisdom of an immortal deity, she harbors a demon.
But now her priests are growing suspicious. When a new girl, Medha, is selected to take over her position, Binsa and her demon strike a deal: To magnify his power and help her wrest control from the priests, she will sacrifice human lives. She’ll do anything not to end up back on the streets, forgotten and alone. But how much of her humanity is she willing to trade in her quest for power? Deals with demons are rarely so simple.
I’ve been looking forward to this one for AGES, and I’m hoping so hard that it’s as excellent as it sounds!
You can read an excerpt here!
Shadow Rider by Gina L. Dartt Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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The world of the Five Nations is ruled by Elementals, those chosen few capable of controlling earth, air, fire, and water, but it is the Paths of the Shadow Realm that link the nations, navigated by the mysterious Shadow Riders.
Courier Shay Kendrith carries precious goods and crucial documents for the Crown, a solitary and dangerous life that takes her from one end of the world to the other. The last thing she ever expected to discover while traveling the Realm is an Elemental fighting for her life against the deadly wraiths inhabiting the Shadows.
As an Undine, Marshal Keagan Riley wields water, using her abilities to protect and serve the Crown. Being drawn into the Shadow Realm with Shay begins a harrowing journey that will lead them to the Elemental Stones, previously lost to history, but uncovered by unknown forces that may destroy everything they’ve sworn to protect.
In the Shadows, one can easily find death, but can Shay and Keagan find love as they fight to save the Five Nations?
I usually don’t find four-element magics very interesting (A:TLA being one obvious exception!) but couriers fascinate me, so I’m willing to give this a try. Let’s cross our fingers for some interesting worldbuilding!
This World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Polyamory
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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This World is Not Yours by USA Today bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the perfect blend of S.A. Barnes' space horror and Cassandra Khaw's beautiful but macabre worlds. An action-packed, inventive novella about a toxic polycule consumed by jealousy and their attempts to survive on a hostile planet.
After fleeing her controlling and murderous family with her fiancée Vinh, Amara embarks on a colonization project, New Belaforme, along with her childhood friend, Jesse.
The planet, beautiful and lethal, produces the Gray, a “self-cleaning” mechanism that New Belaforme’s scientists are certain only attacks invasive organisms, consuming them. Humans have been careful to do nothing to call attention to themselves until a rival colony wakes the Gray.
As Amara, Vinh, and Jesse work to carve out a new life together, each is haunted by past betrayals that surface, expounded by the need to survive the rival colony and the planet itself.
There’s more than one way to be eaten alive.
WELP, that cover’s already giving me nightmares! This World Is Not Yours caught my attention when Ashing-Giwa promised us polyamorous horror – specifically a toxic polycule facing off against horrors. Which sounds like SO MUCH fun. Definitely checking it out, definitely not promising I can handle it!
You can read an excerpt here!
Under Her Spell by K.L. Cerra Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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A woman who returns to her hometown to investigate her childhood friend’s disappearance soon finds herself embroiled in a deadly web of half truths, cover-ups, and dark magic.
On the surface, Liv Edwards has a near-perfect life—a handsome new fiancé, an apartment in Boston, and plans to launch a career in law. No one would suspect how hard she’s worked to conceal the strange darkness that often bubbles up inside her. But Liv’s polished façade threatens to crack with the arrival of a letter from her childhood best friend, Sam. The chilling message is folded into the shape of a heart like the notes they passed in high school: I need help.
Liv is still haunted by what she did to destroy her friendship with Sam. High school was hard enough without having to start over in a new town, but with Sam, Liv grew into herself like never before. Now Liv resolves to do right by Sam—except when she returns to her small New England hometown, she is too late.
Sam has disappeared and clues suggest foul play. To add to the mystery, Sam has transformed over the years, living with the odd girls from high school, Eden and Cora, and working at their esteemed bridal boutique. Liv reconnects with them in search of answers. With couture gowns, exquisite cakes, and a glittering display room, these women make fairy tales come to life, and Liv, too, can be a part of it all. But as Eden and Cora teach her to harness the qualities that have always made her feel different, Liv discovers that a much darker reality may be lurking beneath the satin and pearls—and within herself.
I didn’t note down why, but this one’s been on my ‘books to wash out for’ list since Cerra’s previous book was announced – and I don’t ignore past!Sia’s advice on books! So on the tbr it goes…
Deep Black by Miles Cameron Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Representation: Black MC, autistic-coded love interest, minor nonbinary characters
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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Marca Nbaro had always dreamed of serving aboard the Greatships, with their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city.
They are the lifeblood of human-occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume - and value - of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.
And now, out in the darkness of space, something is targeting them.
Nbaro and her friends are close to locating their enemy, in this gripping sequel to the award-nominated Artifact Space, but they are running out of time - and their allies are running out of patience . . .
Written by one of the most exciting new voices in SF, this space thriller will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
I think this might be my favourite ongoing sci fi series right now! Deep Black is the phenomenal sequel to the amazing Artifact Space, upping the stakes immensely and blowing me away with the worldbuilding. Love love LOVE!
Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell Genres: Adult, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Black MC
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.
Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
I think this is more spec fic than anything else, which is why I’m listing after the (Adult) fantasy and sci fi…but it sounds very interesting! A USA without white people??? PLEASE let us see some worldbuilding, and not just be all lit-fic style…
Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Trans MCs
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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Erin and Max are two trans kids who are just trying to get to California. Max is desperate to finally be able to transition, and Erin is longing to understand why she’s on this trip to begin with, after Max suddenly broke up with her two years earlier.
But when they find themselves stranded - and eventually separated - in the creepy woods of rural middle-America, they suddenly have much bigger problems.
First, there’s the creature that, according to legend, feeds on girls, hunting them through the shadows. And then there are the locals, who are searching for a female sacrifice. If either of them hope to survive to see the sunrise, Erin and Max will have to come together and stop running: from their attackers, from each other, and, ultimately, from themselves.
It’s about TIME someone gave us a victims-of-a-specific-gender monster faced with trans people! THANK YOU KISNER! Now to find out if the monster is a bigot or an ally… What even is that sentence XD
You can read an excerpt at the publisher’s page!
Lucy Undying by Kiersten White Genres: Queer Protagonists, YA, Historical Fantasy
Representation: F/F
Published on: 10th September 2024
Goodreads
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In this epic and seductive gothic fantasy, a vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love.
Her name was written in the pages of someone else's story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula's first victims.
But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire, and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula's clutches--and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.
Her undead life takes an unexpected turn when, in twenty-first-century London, she meets another woman who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power.
Lucy has long believed she would never love again. But she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris, while Iris is mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by forces from without. Iris's mother won't let go of her without a fight, and Lucy's past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl again.
Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?
Listen, all you need to know about this book is that it contains the line ‘Dracula usually kept three brides, but they lost one in transit.’ YES, I’m sold, gimme!
You can read one excerpt here and another here!
Impossible Creatures (Impossible Creatures, #1) by Katherine Rundell Genres: Fantasy, Portal Fantasy, MG
Published on: 14th September 2023
Goodreads
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The day Christopher saved a drowning baby griffin from a hidden lake would change his life forever. It’s the day he learned about the Archipelago, a cluster of unmapped islands where magical creatures of every kind have thrived for thousands of years—until now. And it’s the day he met Mal, a girl on the run who desperately needs his help.
Mal and Christopher embark on a wild adventure, racing from island to island, searching for someone who can explain why the magic is fading and why magical creatures are suddenly dying. They consult sphinxes, battle kraken, and negotiate with dragons. But the closer they get to the dark truth of what’s happening, the clearer it becomes: No one else can fix this. If the Archipelago is to be saved, Mal and Christopher will have to do it themselves.
I’ve been buddy-reading the UK edition of this with one of my little sisters, and we both love it! Beautiful illustrations (I think the American edition will have even more) and a really wonderful setting. Rundell’s invented a bunch of magical beasties to go with the ones you’ll recognise, and she’s great at making the magic feel unique – like Mal’s flying coat!
More importantly, it doesn’t talk down to its audience. Sad, scary things happen in this one alongside the adventure, and there’s lots of deep, poignant Stuff woven in very subtly. I approve immensely.
The Republic of Salt by Ariel Kaplan Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Portal Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sephardic Jewish cast, MLM MC, disabled queer MC, elderly MCs
Published on: 12th September 2024
Goodreads
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Peace in one world always comes at a cost to the other.
Toba and Naftaly’s lives changed forever when Toba discovered the mirrored world of the Maziks beyond the Pomegranate Gate. In their search for answers, they must find their own ways to the wonderous and powerful neighbouring republic of Zayit. A magnificent city overflowing with olives, spices and salt—but not the safe haven they need. The republic has turned its back on fleeing Jewish and Mazik refugees, and is closing its ears to warnings of war.
Meanwhile, the tyrannical Mazik King Tarses is building his army to cross the sea to Zayit. With time running out, and his visions growing worse, Naftaly must convince his beloved Barsilay to rally the armies of the world and accept his role as the true heir to the throne. But Barsilay resents the fate that’s been thrust upon him.
Toba knows that Zayit's fate is only the beginning: she must discover her own destiny to defeat Tarses by restoring the balance between worlds.
Unlikely alliances must be forged, impossible myths must be made real, and the city of Luz must be brought back from the depths of the sea.
I confess, I didn’t enjoy Republic, which is a shame because the first book in this trilogy was sublime. But it’s possible that my own bad headspace coloured my reading experience – I’m hoping it was just that, and I’ll enjoy this more when I reread it. At worst, most other readers seem to love it, so just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean you won’t!
Gorse by Sam K. Horton Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Published on: 12th September 2024
Goodreads
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The Bear and the Nightingale meets Poldark in this stunning historical fantasy debut where folklore battles faith in 18th century Cornwall.
Cornwall, 1786.
For years, the villagers of Mirecoombe have turned to their Keeper, the old and battle-scarred Lord Pelagius Hunt, mediator between the worlds of men and fey, for help. But this is a time of change. Belief in the old ways, in the piskies and spriggans, has dimmed, kindled instead in the Reverend Cleaver's fiery pulpit. His church stands proud above the mire; God's name is whispered, hushed, loved. And now, death stalks Mirecoombe on the moor. There are corpses in the heather. There is blood in the gorse.
Nancy Bligh is determined to do what Pel will not: maintain the balance between the fey and the human world, be the Keeper that he refuses to be. Blessed with natural sight, friend to spriggans, piskies and human locals of Mirecoombe, Nancy has power that Pel never had and never lets her use. But as Mirecoombe falls into darkness, perhaps her time has come.
A poignant and lyrical examination of faith, love and grief, Gorse asks: what do we choose to believe in, and how does that shape who we are?
Cornish folklore reimagined in a unique prose style. Got to read this one early and I’m already looking forward to the sequel!
Darkome by Hannu Rajaniemi Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Published on: 12th September 2024
Goodreads
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During the Decade of Plagues, pandemics brought civilization to a standstill. The only way out was the Aspis chip: a wearable mRNA vaccine factory, able to immunize you against new viruses on the fly. But not everyone wanted it. They created an open alternative: Darkome, an underground community of biohackers modifying their own genes and bodies.
Inara came of age in a Darkome village - but only an Aspis could keep her rare cancer in check, updating her immune system at a pace with her cancer's evolution. Accepting it went against everything Darkome stood for. She had to choose between her community and her life.
Now Inara's Aspis appears to have malfunctioned. She can edit her own DNA to be stronger, faster, smarter. It could be the genetic breakthrough of the millennium, but only if she can figure out how it works . . . and to stay ahead of those who will stop at nothing to possess her secret. Pursued by Aspis, Darkome radicals and the government, her new abilities may be the only way for Inara to survive. But they may cost her everything, including her humanity.
From another author this premise probably wouldn’t interest me much, but Rajaniemi’s Summerland is one of my all time faves, and I’ve been waiting for his next novel! Here’s hoping he knocks this one out of the park, too.
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 #203 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 8, 2024
Sunday Soupçons #33
soupçon/ˈsuːpsɒn,ˈsuːpsɒ̃/ noun
1. a very small quantity of something; a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavor
Sunday Soupçons is where I scribble mini-reviews for books I don’t have the brainspace/eloquence/smarts to write about in depth – or if I just don’t have anything interesting to say beyond I LIKED IT AND YOU SHOULD READ IT TOO!
One letdown, one imperfect book I still enjoyed.
The Republic of Salt (The Mirror Realm Cycle, #2) by Ariel Kaplan Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Portal Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sephardic Jewish cast, major queer disabled character, MLM MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 22nd October 2024
ISBN: 1645660966
Goodreads
In this riveting sequel to The Pomegranate Gate, Toba, Naftaly, and their allies must defend a city under siege—while the desperate deals they’ve made begin to unravel around them.
After a near-disastrous confrontation with La Caceria, Toba and Asmel are trapped on the human side of the gate, pursued by the Courser and a possessed Inquisitor. In the Mazik world, Naftaly’s visions are getting worse, predicting the prosperous gate city of Zayit in flames and overrun by La Caceria. Zayit is notorious for its trade in salt, a substance toxic to the near-immortal Maziks; if the Cacador can control the salt, he will be nearly unstoppable. But the stolen killstone, the key to the Cacador’s destruction, could eliminate the threat—if only Barsilay could find and use it.
Deadly allies and even more dangerous bargains might be the only path to resist La Caceria’s ruthless conquest of both the mortal world and the Maziks’, but the cost is steep and the threat is near. A twisty, clever entry in The Mirror Realm Cycle, The Republic of Salt asks what personal morals weigh in the face of widespread danger and how best to care for one another.
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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The Republic of Salt was one of my most-anticipated sequels for this year, after I fell hard for the first book in the trilogy, The Pomegranate Gate.
Alas, middle-book syndrome definitely got this one.
Very little really happened in Republic until the last quarter or so – up until that point, most of the story just involves setting up pieces for that last quarter. And yes, that’s often how climaxes work, but I think the difference is that, in a good story, the setting up is interesting for its own sake as well. Whereas here, we were just passionlessly moving pieces around to get them into position for the finale.
The finale itself? Pretty great. Not perfect, not stunning, but great.
But this book is just under 600 pages long. Meaning I had to slog through a whole novel’s worth of pages to get to the pretty great stuff. It was exhausting and very, very boring. Certainly the sense of wonder that infused Pomegranate Gate is completely lacking here – it was all very pedantic, practical, trotting from one place to another, doing things that had to get done like ticking tasks off a check-list.
And there was so much telling-not-showing. As an example, from a worldbuilding perspective, learning that the Mazik have very few soldiers because they don’t like to fight (because they’re immortal) was really interesting, but I wish it had been conveyed to us in a more organic way rather than in an exposition-dump.
The lack of explanation around Mazik magic worked beautifully in Pomegranate Gate, where it contributed to the sense of wonder that I loved so much. But here, with a much more mundane-feeling story, it seemed misaligned; the wonder was gone, so an explanation felt needed. Which meant that having no grasp of how this magic worked or what its limits were felt hand-wavey at best. Why can Maziks create any food they please out of lentils, but not spices? In our world, hand-made items are of higher quality in terms of craft, and usually of materials too; Maziks prefer hand-made stuff to magic-made stuff, but there doesn’t seem to be any difference in quality, so why does the difference matter? And the whole thing with the Mirror – the idea that the two worlds copy or echo each other – felt very vague to me. That the characters didn’t really understand it either didn’t help – I kind of wondered why we needed the Mirror at all. It might have been better to pull the whole concept from the story; I’m pretty sure that even without the Mirror, everyone would still be doing things. There are enough other reasons to stop Tarses and so on that the Mirror felt very tacked-on.
I have no idea why the Ziz is important, and the urgency around rescuing it seemed to come out of nowhere, appearing really abruptly without explanation. Prior to that point, the Ziz was barely mentioned! Turn the page, and suddenly Toba’s obsessed with it. Was the arc missing some text?
Both the romances feel so tacked-on, as if even Kaplan doesn’t ship the characters. Yes, Toba started to feel some attraction Asmel in the previous book, but I thought it was mostly just physical, and I wasn’t expecting it to go anywhere, because what on earth (or off it) do they have in common? But nope, here, have a romance, and both they and Barsilay and Naftaly just…have zero chemistry. I didn’t feel their attraction, never mind romantic love. I wouldn’t be surprised if Barsilay and Naftaly, at least, break up by the end of the trilogy, because seriously, there’s nothing holding them together.
Tsfira was great, and I wish this book had been more focused on her – I think she and the Peregrine had the most interesting arcs in this book, which, while not a high bar, were still the only ones I was interested in. The Peregrine especially got almost no page-time, despite everything that was going on with her – really weird narrative choices were made here, I’ve no idea why you would focus on Naftaly and everyone instead of, you know, zooming in on the characters things are actually happening to.
And please don’t get me started on the whole time-loop-vision-thing that shaped the whole climax. Convoluted and pretty dumb, imo. No thank you.
I’m still going to read book three, because, you know, presumably it will have Many Exciting Things Happening as everything comes together. But I think Republic was way too long, focused on the wrong characters, and was so dull. There were some great ideas – the demon/s, the killstone, the Peregrine switching sides – but they were stretched to cover far more pages than they needed, and bogged down in endless zig-zagging as the characters went from point a to b to c with nothing happening.
It’s hard to believe that the person who wrote this also wrote Pomegranate Gate.
Gorse (The Eythin Legacy Book 1) by Sam K. Horton Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 12th September 2024
ISBN: 183786070X
Goodreads
Cornwall, 1786.
For years, the villagers of Mirecoombe have turned to their Keeper, the old and battle-scarred Lord Pelagius Hunt, mediator between the worlds of men and fey, for help. But this is a time of change. Belief in the old ways, in the piskies and spriggans, has dimmed, kindled instead in the Reverend Cleaver’s fiery pulpit. His church stands proud above the mire; God’s name is whispered, hushed, loved. And now, death stalks Mirecoombe on the moor. There are corpses in the heather. There is blood in the gorse.
Nancy Bligh is determined to do what Pel will maintain the balance between the fey and the human world, be the Keeper that he refuses to be. Blessed with natural sight, friend to spriggans, piskies and human locals of Mirecoombe, Nancy has power that Pel never had and never lets her use. But as Mirecoombe falls into darkness, perhaps her time has come.
A poignant and lyrical examination of faith, love and grief, Gorse asks what do we choose to believe, and how does that shape who we are?
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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On the one hand, the set-up/worldbuilding is great, pulling from old-school British folklore but with a lot I’ve never heard of before – like the fact that a lot of the fae creatures were human once upon a time, before they were remade by the God Under the Moor. THAT IS SUCH A COOL DETAIL. Did Horton invent it, or is he just way more informed about this stuff than me? Either is possible! Whichever, I loved all the details like that and am really glad they were included. The magic here feels magical, and old, and often eerie; I’m too much of a wimp to enjoy the occasional gory moment that we get, but the horror-y bits do help drive home that these are not Tinkerbell fairies – not even a little. And when we learn more about the god, and his opinion/response to his worship fading??? Also seriously excellent. There’s a lot of surprises in Gorse, little things that run counter to our genre-trained expectations, and I’m especially admiring of the fact that Horton GOES THERE repeatedly – presents us with a threat, which I at least brushed off because ‘that kind of thing NEVER happens outside of horror’…but then it does! I approve.
On the other hand…most of the plot was eventually revealed to hinge on one of the main characters not telling the other MC things ‘for her own good’, and I hate that. Pel, the Keeper of the moor, just… keeps secrets for no good reason, doesn’t share suspicions that he knows he ought to, LIES about stuff – and the lies don’t make sense. His refusal to teach Nancy everything she needs to know also makes no sense, and though both Nancy and the narrative call him on it, it left a bad waste in my mouth.
There are a lot of mini time-skips, the kind of thing where someone changes their mind between one sentence and the next, but we don’t know or see why; or someone is abruptly on the other side of the room, things like that. I’m hoping these will all be polished out in the final version, but I suspect they won’t be.
‘Cleaver, if you won’t help then get out of the way. Now.’ The priest stayed kneeled.
‘O Lord. I beseech thee. Deliver my soul.’ His heart turning slowly, Cleaver nods, hesitantly, then runs out through the back of the chapel.
??? Why did Cleaver suddenly agree to get out of the way? Is my arc missing a few sentences? NO IDEA.
Worse, there’s way too many WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THAT EARLIER moments, where someone reveals a magic or power that could have resolved everything months ago if they’d just, you know, used it sooner.
The prose is…coarse? Jerky? It’s clearly deliberate, because the whole book is written in that style, and that helps. But it’s not pretty, and the lack of description is frustrating, especially when it comes to the fae and the like. It feels like a missed opportunity to be writing about nature, the natural world, the moor, without the kind of loving description we get in Hild and Menewood by Nicola Griffith. The plainness of the prose might be intended as a reflection on the hard, simple lives the people in this setting live, but even if that’s so I’d say it’s the wrong call.
Coarse or not, there are some great lines nonetheless:
Their heads are heavy with teeth
She has a lot to learn before he’s ready to pass the torch. He won’t let her get burnt.
The best stones have gone, taken to form the cornerstones of farmhouses, the foundation of a church. Old pagan rocks holding the new world on their shoulders.
So it’s definitely not unreadable; Gorse splashes along at a good pace, with plenty of Easter eggs for those who know their folklore (like Pat and Eponina, Pel’s dog and horse, both being white with red ears, Eponina at least confirmed to have otherworldly origins). Some details are amazing, like the magical tattoos, and Horton is excellent at creating the sense that there’s a much bigger picture we’re not seeing quite yet. The fact that Gorse is the first book in the Eythin Legacy, and we learn next to nothing about Eythin here, suggests we have QUITE a way to go.
I’m sure I’ll be picking up the sequel – I really want to see more of the world Horton’s created.
The post Sunday Soupçons #33 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
September 4, 2024
I Can’t Wait For…Space Oddity by Catherynne Valente
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 Space Oddity by Catherynne Valente!
Space Oddity (Space Opera, #2) by Catherynne M. Valente Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Brown nonbinary pansexual MC
Published on: 24th September 2024
Goodreads
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Return to the greatest contest in the galaxy in the sequel to the hilarious USA TODAY bestseller Space Opera from New York Times bestselling author and finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Ursula K. Le Guin awards.
The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened. The civilizations opposed to humanity have been plotting and want to take down the upstarts. Can humanity rise again in this sequel to the beloved Hugo Award–nominated national bestselling Space Opera by New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente?
Do you remember, back in 2018, the sci fi that everyone was calling ‘Eurovision in space’? That made the awards list of all the SFF awards? That was a bestseller? That was repeatedly called the best thing since Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? That I put on my Best SFF of the Decade list?
THERE’S A SEQUEL, AND IT’S ALMOST HERE!
(If you haven’t read the first book, Space Opera: good news, there’s time! It’s about what happens when humans have to not-lose space Eurovision in order to be considered sapient; if they come last place, the whole species will be wiped off the galactic map. It’s huge on Feels and glitter and hope and defiant joy, the power of art, what makes people PEOPLE, British-style humour, queerness, telling fascists and cynics to fuck right off… It’s one of those rare books that will genuinely change your worldview, and for the better! Plus, a GAZILLION ridiculously cool and fun aliens and their planets! What’s not to love??? Nothing, is what: ALL OF IT is to love!!! Go love it, you’ll love it!!!)
(And you can read an except here!)
If you’ve spent ANY time on this blog, you know that Valente can do no wrong with me, and she’s the author I most recommend to other people. Space Opera was probably her most mass-appeal, accessible book (neither of those are insults!) to date, and is thus one of the best places to start if you haven’t read her stuff yet – but it was also completely and utterly GLORIOUS and GLITTERY and GIGGLY in its own right! And although it works perfectly as a standalone…
…I’ll be sunburnt on Pluto before I skip a sequel!!!
Space Opera is one of the books that made me me – I’m one of the people who had their worldview changed, VERY much for the better, re the value of art and also of being publicly, unapologetically weird; I was ashamed or embarrassed of so many parts of myself before Valente, via Space Opera, made me see sense! And even without all that…my gods, the JOY! The hilarity! The incredible imagination and whimsy and HEART that went into that book!!!
SO YES, I’M HYPED AS HELLS FOR SPACE ODDITY!
It doesn’t hurt that everyone’s been so sneaky about the story – look at that blurb!!! We get NO details! Why does humanity have to compete for its fate again? What’s happened on Earth since aliens were revealed? WHICH SPECIES ARE ANTI-HUMAN AND HOW COME? No clue, zilch, nada.
WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO READ TO FIND OUT!!!
The post I Can’t Wait For…Space Oddity by Catherynne Valente appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
