Siavahda's Blog, page 20

10 Foodie Fantasies (and Sci Fi!)

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Check out upcoming Top Ten themes on Jana’s blog!

Today’s prompt is Books Involving Food – and you’re not allowed to use cookbooks! I’m absolutely one of those people who swoon for food in my fiction, so here are 10 of my faves that go decadent on the culinary description!

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Desi MC and cast, Native American love interest
Goodreads

Tilo, an immigrant from India, runs a spice shop in Oakland, California. While she supplies the ingredients for curries and kormas, she also dispenses wisdom and the appropriate spice: for Tilo is a Mistress of Spices, a priestess of the secret magical powers of spices.

To those who visit her shop, Tilo prescribes coriander for the restoration of sight, chili for the cleansing of evil, fenugreek for the pain of rejection. But when a lonely American ventures into the store, a troubled Tilo cannot find the correct spice, for he arouses in her a forbidden desire - which if she follows will destroy her magical powers.

Compelling and lyrical, full of heady scents and with more than a touch of humour, this novel explores the clash between East and West even as it unveils the universal mysteries of the human heart.

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If you want fantasy and food, the first book I think of will ALWAYS be Mistress of Spices! This is an absolutely gorgeous story following an Indian woman who uses spices to work magic for the Indian immigrants who visit her shop – but the spices aren’t just magical ingredients; they’re alive, and have Opinions on how they should be used. The prose is mouthwatering and I adored how Divakaruni delves into the mythological history and magical qualities of each spice.

The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, Indigenous MC, secondary asexual character, minor disabled Indigenous character
Goodreads

In Lambda Award finalist Chana Porter’s highly anticipated new novel, an aspiring chef, a cyberthief, and a kitchen maid each break free of a society that wants to constrain them.

In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.

But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.

Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.

With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.

A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.

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Now for a very different book! This is set in another world, where there’s two moons and the tech is more advanced, but it’s more speculative fiction than outright sci fi. Here, the dominant religion – and therefore the culture it’s influenced – sees eating as shameful; many people won’t eat in public, and one of the main characters is raised in a religious community that wants everyone to take pills instead of eating real food. So she runs away to become a chef! The process of coming up with recipes, cooking, and eating are all described so lovingly and lusciously; definitely don’t start eating while you’re hungry!

The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: (some) queer MCs, (some) ambiguous MCs
Goodreads

Amal El-Mohtar's The Honey Month, with an introduction by Danielle Sucher, ranks among the year’s most exquisite treasures. This beautiful volume of short fictions and poems takes as its inspiration the author's tasting of 28 different kinds of honey, one per day. Each tasting leads to a different literary creation, each entry beginning with a description of the honey in terms that will be familiar to wine connoisseurs: "Day 3--Sag Harbor, NY, Early Spring Honey," which has a color "pale and clear as snowmelt" and the smell "cool sugar crystals," but also brings to mind "a stingless jellyfish I once held in my hand in Oman." The taste? "...like the end of winter...[when] you can still see clumps of snow on the ground and the air is heavy with damp..." The differences between the types of honey allow El-Mohtar to move back and forth between the poetic and the more casually contemporary, with the experiment of the tasting as the unifying structure. A perfect gift, a hidden treasure, a delight for the senses.

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The Honey Month isn’t about food in the usual way; as the blurb says, this is a series of flash fictions and I think a poem or two inspired by different honeys – the taste, but also the colour and consistency and what flower/s they were primarily made of! Each story is like a dream; magical and hypnotic. I DEFY you to not carry this book around in your heart with you after you’ve read it.

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Queer (Chinese-American?) MC
Goodreads

The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.

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Including this one is probably cheating, because I haven’t finished it yet, but if you want All The Delicious descriptions of ridiculously fancy food, THIS IS THE BOOK! I suspect it will NOT have a happy ending, but there’s a little bit of wish fulfilment in giving a down-on-her-luck(-like,-really) chef access to ingredients that are all but mythical. (At one point, there are mammoth steaks. You didn’t read that wrong: MAMMOTH. STEAKS.)

Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Goodreads

A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella from the New York Times bestselling author.

Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…

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Listen. LISTEN. This is horror. It is. The ending gave me nightmares. BUT. Everything up till that point is so incredibly delicious and sensual that I think it’s worth it. Like. My GODS, those cupcakes!!!

The Velocity of Revolution by Marshall Ryan Maresca
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Cast of colour, oppressed minorities, bi/pansexual cast, secondary asexual character, secondary F/F relationship, polyamory
Goodreads

From the author of the Maradaine saga comes a new steampunk fantasy novel that explores a chaotic city on the verge of revolution.

Ziaparr: a city being rebuilt after years of mechanized and magical warfare, the capital of a ravaged nation on the verge of renewal and self-rule. But unrest foments as undercaste cycle gangs raid supply trucks, agitate the populace and vandalize the city. A revolution is brewing in the slums and shantytowns against the occupying government, led by a voice on the radio, connected through forbidden magic.

Wenthi Tungét, a talented cycle rider and a loyal officer in the city patrol, is assigned to infiltrate the cycle gangs. For his mission against the insurgents, Wenthi must use their magic, connecting his mind to Nália, a recently captured rebel, using her knowledge to find his way into the heart of the rebellion.

Wenthi's skill on a cycle makes him valuable to the resistance cell he joins, but he discovers that the magic enhances with speed. Every ride intensifies his connection, drawing him closer to the gang he must betray, and strengthens Nália's presence as she haunts his mind.

Wenthi is torn between justice and duty, and the wrong choice will light a spark in a city on the verge of combustion.

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Okay, not the point of the book at ALL, but Velocity of Revolution has the most DELICIOUS-sounding tacos EVER and three years after first reading this I’m still craving them!

(It’s also anti-colonial science fantasy with magic motorbikes and an immensely sex-positive culture that has space for asexuals in it, so, you know, all the stars from me!)

My review!

Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies (Pies Before Guys Mystery, #1) by Misha Popp
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, sapphic love interest
Goodreads

Daisy Ellery’s pies have a secret ingredient: The magical ability to avenge women done wrong by men. But Daisy finds herself on the receiving end in Misha Popp’s cozy series debut, a sweet-as-buttercream treat for fans of Ellery Adams and Mary Maxwell.

The first time Daisy Ellery killed a man with a pie, it was an accident. Now, it’s her calling. Daisy bakes sweet vengeance into her pastries, which she and her dog Zoe deliver to the men who’ve done dirty deeds to the town’s women. But if she can’t solve the one crime that’s not of her own baking, she’ll be out of the pie pan and into the oven.

Parking her Pies Before Guys mobile bakery van outside the local diner, Daisy is informed by Frank, the crusty diner owner, that someone’s been prowling around the van—and not just to inhale the delectable aroma. Already on thin icing with Frank, she finds a letter on her door, threatening to reveal her unsavory secret sideline of pie a la murder.

Blackmail? But who whipped up this half-baked plot to cut a slice out of Daisy’s business? Purple-haired campus do-gooder Melly? Noel, the tender—if flaky—farm boy? Or one of the abusive men who prefer their pie without a deadly scoop of payback?

The upcoming statewide pie contest could be Daisy’s big chance to help wronged women everywhere…if she doesn’t meet a sticky end first. Because Daisy knows the blackmailer won’t stop until her business is in crumbles.

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This is a super fun contemporary fantasy-romance-mystery-THING, about a woman who makes magic pies. And what does she do with them? USES THEM FOR MURDER. Specifically, murdering men who hurt women. Is this the best use of her talents? Eh. Ymmv, but if I could, I might do it too! And I’m in LOVE with the idea of a pie-van…

The Floating Islands (The Floating Islands #1) by Rachel Neumeier
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, YA
Representation: Brown cast, minor African-coded character
Goodreads

When Trei loses his family in a tragic disaster, he must search out distant relatives in a new land. The Floating Islands are unlike anything Trei has ever seen: stunning, majestic, and graced with kajurai, men who soar the skies with wings.

Trei is instantly sky-mad, and desperate to be a kajurai himself.  The only one who fully understands his passion is Araene, his newfound cousin.  Prickly, sarcastic, and gifted, Araene has a secret of her own . . . a dream a girl cannot attain.

Trei and Araene quickly become conspirators as they pursue their individual paths.  But neither suspects that their lives will be deeply entwined, and that the fate of the Floating Islands will lie in their hands.

Filled with rich language, and told in alternating voices, The Floating Islands is an all-encompassing young adult fantasy read.

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More food-magic, but different! Actually, quite a unique one: one of the main characters is (secretly!) studying to be a chef…but ends up learning magic instead. What’s especially cool is that, for her, magic is tastes – usually spices! And if I remember correctly (it’s been a while – I should really sit down and reread it!) she uses her chef’s skills to figure out how to make a spell ‘work’ – it needs to taste right, basically!

It’s not as much a focus of the book as I’d ideally like, but it’s in there and it’s VERY fun! (As is everything else about this one, honestly!)

A Slice of Mars by Guerric Haché
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Nonbinary MC, sapphic autistic MC, secondary Latino character
Goodreads

Mars is a strange place these days. Corporate overlords, capitalism, and even aging are things of the past on a planet increasingly brimming with biodiversity - yet pizzerias are in short supply!

Siblings Hett and San set out to change that. But a roboticist and a bureaucrat can't run a restaurant alone, so they bring on some help - a bioengineer, a communications scientist, and an unlikely grad student from Earth. Together, this gang of geeks will brave the fires of small business.

But work is just a small part of life. People are complicated. Different brains, different wounds, different values, and one questionably tame wildcat will all collide as they try to grow and succeed together. What comes out of the oven, in the end, is anyone's guess.

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Slice of Mars is about a lot more than just pizza…but it is, also, very much about pizza! You have a bunch of very different people working together to create a pizza parlour…on Mars…FAR in the future…and all of them are very unfamiliar with pizza. (I think only two of them have even tried it before? XD) They’re practically inventing it – or reinventing it? The sci-fi approach to pizza is fabulous, anyway, with ingredients grown in test-tubes and the parlour advertised by someone who’s profession is NARRATIVES (I officially want narrative science) – and oh, don’t forget the adorable doughbot!

The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis
Genres: Fantasy, MG
Representation: Secondary brown character
Goodreads

Aventurine is a brave young dragon ready to explore the world outside of her family's mountain cave . . . if only they'd let her leave it. Her family thinks she's too young to fly on her own, but she's determined to prove them wrong by capturing the most dangerous prey of all: a human.

But when that human tricks her into drinking enchanted hot chocolate, she's transformed into a puny human without any sharp teeth, fire breath, or claws. Still, she's the fiercest creature in these mountains--and now she's found her true passion: chocolate. All she has to do is get to the human city to find herself an apprenticeship (whatever that is) in a chocolate house (which sounds delicious), and she'll be conquering new territory in no time . . . won't she?

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I couldn’t leave out Dragon with a Chocolate Heart!!! In which a young, fierce dragon gets turned into a human, and decides her Passion is now chocolate. And WOE BETIDE anyone who gets in her way! This is so heart-warming, and surprisingly deep (surprisingly because before this book, I didn’t realise MG books could be LIKE this!), and I think I cried TWICE reading it (once was happy tears!), and also here, have the US/German/UK covers, because they’re all wonderful and I can’t pick a favourite!

That makes 10! What are some of your fave delicious reads?

The post 10 Foodie Fantasies (and Sci Fi!) appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #202

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.

TWELVE books this week!

(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)

Behind the Crimson Curtain by E.B. Golden
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World No Magic
Published on: 1st September 2024
Goodreads

A magical con artist and an actor turned revolutionary fight for freedom in an atmospheric fantasy debut where layered secrets and daring love clash on a stage of war.

On the coal-choked island of Luisonn, the tyrannical Stav Regime breeds rebellion among the working class. Firin, a face-changing con artist trained by her domineering father, dances between fake lives to escape punishment for her crimes—until armed rebels topple the regime. With freedom finally within her grasp, she discovers one of the heroes is her former lover, Bregan, who introduced her to her second the theater.

As the flames of revolt settle, Firin joins Bregan on the stage. She’s determined to create a life with the honorable man she never forgot. But like the past, love and truth are hard to hide—especially when one of Firin’s victims, now president, chooses Bregan as his right-hand man. Haunted by the sacrifices of revolution and devoted to the new government’s success, Bregan quickly rises in its ranks…

In a web of war and false identities, Firin must choose a side. But is the price of freedom her heart?

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This seems to be a love it or hate it book, with the most common critique being that the main characters are unlikeable. But unlikeable characters can be so interesting! Let’s see.

(And yep, this should have been in last week’s post, but I learned about it too late!)

Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Black cast
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister.

It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.

To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.

When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.

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Probably the book I’m most excited for this week! The snippets Girma’s posted on her social media have had me looking forward to Immortal Dark ALL YEAR, and I am very here for vampires originating in Africa! *grabby hands*

American Ghoul by Michelle McGill-Vargas
Genres: Adult, Historical Fantasy
Representation: Black MC
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

A wildly entertaining debut from Michelle McGill-Vargas, American Ghoul deftly combines horror and social commentary—with a dash of a buddy comedy—in an innovative twist on the vampire genre.

You can’t kill someone already dead.

That’s what Lavinia keeps telling her jailer after—allegedly—killing her mistress, Simone Arceaneau. But how could Simone be dead when she was taking callers just a few minutes before? And why was her house always so dark?

Lavinia, a recently freed slave, met Simone, a recently undead vampire, on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. With nothing remaining for either woman in the South, the two form a fast friendship and head north. However, Lavinia quickly learns that teaming up with this white woman may be more than she bargained for.

Simone is reckless and impulsive—which would’ve been bad enough on its own, but when combined with her particular diet Lavinia finds herself in way over her head. As she is forced to repeatedly compromise her morals and struggle to make lasting human connections, Lavinia begins to wonder if is she truly free or if has she merely exchanged one form of enslavement for another. As bodies pile up in the small Indiana town they’ve settled in, people start to take a second look at the two newcomers, and Simone and Lavinia’s relationship is stretched to its breaking point...

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That premise doesn’t sound funny to me – even though the blurb promises us buddy-comedy – but it’s definitely INTERESTING, and I’m looking forward to pouncing on this one! $10 says Arceaneau was also a vampire…

Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Nonbinary MC, MLM MC
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

In the distant future, when mortals mingle with the gods in deep space, an out-of-date automaton, a recovering addict, and an angel race to solve the Pope’s murder in an abandoned corner of the galaxy.

Scribe IV is an obsolete automaton, peacefully whiling away his years on the Bastion, a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy. But when the visiting Pope is found murdered, Scribe IV knows he has very little time before the terrifying Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up to punish the Bastion’s residents for their crime.

Quin, a recovering drug addict turned private investigator, picks up a scrambled signal from the Bastion and agrees to take the case. Traumatized by a bizarre experience in his childhood, Quin repeatedly feeds his memories to his lover, the angel Murmuration. But fragmented glimpses of an otherworldly horror he calls the crawling dark continue to haunt his dreams.

Meanwhile in Heaven, an angel named Angel hears Scribe IV’s prayer. Intrigued by the idea of solving a crime with mortals, xe descends to offer xer divine assistance (whether those mortals want it or not). With the Drowned Sisters closing in around the Bastion, Scribe IV, Quin, and Angel race to find out who really murdered the Pope, and why. Quin’s missing memories may hold the key to the case—but is remembering worth the price?

Haunting, dreamy and beautifully written, Out of the Drowning Deep is perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, and This Is How You Lose the Time War.

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I loved this one – it’s convinced me I need to go read everything else Wise has ever published! So many things going on that would turn into a mess in the hands of a lesser storyteller, but here they’re pretty perfect!

You can read an excerpt here, and my review here!

Keeper of Sorrows by Rachel Fikes
Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

Whoever rules the bees, rules the world. A dark fantasy adventure with a twist of Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

On a planet stripped of wind, entire ecosystems lie in ashes, leaving humans to the mercy of a sole surviving bee species on a remote isle. Whoever wins the Praxis to rule them as Keeper, rules the world.

When the next Keeper goes missing, her little sister must not only face her debilitating fear of bees, but compete in the Praxis to find her. As she braves the eerie fortress with sprawling wings of hives, murmuring murals, deceptive hedge mazes, and a host of leering gargoyles, she must also face the reigning Keeper, who’s guarding the darkest secret of all.

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This one didn’t quite work for me, but I really do think a lot of other readers will love it! The set-up and world Fikes has created is really unique.

City of Dancing Gargoyles by Tara Campbell
Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC, secondary queer character
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

Invisible Cities meets sentient gargoyles

In the parched, post-apocalyptic Western U.S. of the 22nd Century, wolves float, bonfires sing, and devils gather to pray. Water and safety are elusive in this chaotic world of alchemical transformations, where history books bleed, dragons kiss, and gun-toting trees keep their own kind of peace.

Among this menagerie of strange beasts, two sentient stone gargoyles, known only as “E” and “M,” flee the rubble of their Southwestern church in search of water. Along the way, they meet climate refugees Rose Baker and her mother Dolores, who’ve escaped the ravaged West Coast in search of a safer home. This quartet forms an uneasy alliance when they hear of a new hope: a mysterious city of dancing gargoyles. Or is it something more sinister? In this strange, terrible new world, their arrival at this elusive city could spark the destruction of everything they know.

Tara Campbell summons fantastical magic in this kaleidoscopic new speculative climate fiction.

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As you might guess from the blurb, this one is VERY weird, so if weird is your jam you might want to look this up!

My review!

The Monstrous Kind by Lydia Gregovic
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

An atmospheric, haunting, romantasy inspired by Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, set in a Regency England about two sisters fighting to hold on to their manor while deadly monsters prowl along its perimeters—perfect for fans of House of Salt and Sorrows and Anatomy: A Love Story.

Merrick Darling’s life as daughter of the Manor Lord of Sussex is better than most. Unlike the commoners, she is immune to the toxic fog that encroached on England generations earlier. She will never become a Phantom—one of the monstrous creatures that stalk her province’s borders—and as long as the fires burn to hold them back, her safety is ensured. She wants for nothing, yet she will never inherit her family’s Manor. She must marry smartly or live at the kindness of her elder sister, Essie.

Everything is turned on its head, though, when Merrick’s father dies suddenly. Torn from her New London society life of ball gowns and parties, Merrick must travel back to her childhood home, the Darling estate of Norland House, and what she finds there is bewildering. Once strong and capable, Essie is withdrawn and frightened—and with good cause. A recent string of attacks along the province’s borders has turned their formerly bucolic countryside into a terrifying and unpredictable landscape. The fog is closing in and the fires aren’t holding, which makes Merrick and Essie vulnerable in more ways than one. Because the Phantoms are far from the only monsters in Merrick’s world, and the other eleven Manor Lords are always watching for weakness.

Revealing her and her sister’s current state to the rest of the Manors is out of the question, but when Essie goes missing, it’s clear that Merrick needs help. Only, who can she trust when everyone seems to be scheming, and when all she holds true feels like it’s slipping right out of her grasp?

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Talk about a stunning cover! I wouldn’t mind having this one on my wall; WOW. I haven’t read Sense and Sensibility – I don’t usually get along with classics – so I won’t be catching easter eggs, but this sounds like it could be great even without them! Always excited to see sibling relationships featuring, instead of romances!

Songlight (The Torch Trilogy, #1) by Moira Buffini
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

Star-crossed lovers, against-all-odds friendship, and a brutally unforgiving world make this first in a trilogy utterly unforgettable.

We’re two songs joined. And there’s a word for that. A harmony.

Elsa is used to hiding the most important parts of herself—her feelings for Rye, her distaste for a world ruled by men, and, most crucially, her gift of songlight. She buries that secret deep inside. In Brightland, those with songlight are called Unhumans and are abhorred. Rye is the only other person Elsa has known with songlight, and their shared bond has brought them together.

Elsa’s world begins to fall apart one desperate, heart-wrenching day and she doesn’t know where to turn until a girl appears before her. But the girl isn’t really there—her songlight has been drawn to Elsa’s frantic grief.

Elsa lives in a remote seaside village; Nightingale, her new friend, lives in a city hundreds of miles away with her father, a government official responsible for rooting out Unhumans. The two never expected to connect via songlight. But when they do, and when they realize the extent of their power, they’ll be thrust in the middle of a war that threatens their very existence.

From an award-winning screenwriter making her novel debut comes this powerful, page-turning trilogy perfect for fans of Sabaa Tahir and Adrienne Young.

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I think this might have been released in the UK already, but the US gets it this week! I may be slightly hypnotised by that cover…

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Autistic trans MC
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

Bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Joseph White returns with a queer Appalachian thriller, that pulls no punches, for teens who see the failures in our world and are pushing for radical change.

A gut-wrenching story following a trans autistic teen who survives an attempted murder, only to be drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.

The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death.

In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidently kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?

A visceral, unabashedly political page-turner that won’t let you go until you’ve reached the end, Compound Fracture is not for the faint of heart, but it is for every reader who is ready to fight for a better world.

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New Andrew Joseph White book! I feel like we’re getting a lot more stories set in Appalachia lately, and I do not disapprove!

The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC
Published on: 6th September 2024
Goodreads

THE CHURCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF FLESH is a cosmic horror novel about mad artists, bodies spiralling out of control, and a trans man's merciless desperation.

Sole De Gasinis drowns his grief in wine and buries his hatred of his body in twisted sculptures. When, one drunken night on the beach, God orders him to rebuild his village's church, he knows he wasn't chosen for his piety.

Instead, he and God make a deal. If Sole rebuilds the church, God will give him the body of a man.

As Sole works in a frenzy for salvation, lifelong friendships decay, a village united to tear down its church fractures into pariahs and zealots, and power and grief reshape the prophet into a tyrant. Grief for a boy he fell in love with ten years ago, who claimed to be a virgin birth, who died in agony in the church crypt when the God inside him wanted out -- and whose monstrous remnant Sole must commune with for every piece of his prize.

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This sounds SO fucked up, and I am hyped for it! Will it be too much for me to handle??? GUESS WE’LL FIND OUT!

You can read an excerpt of the first chapter here!

Sunbathers by Lindz McLeod
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Horror
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 6th September 2024
Goodreads

Sin is hot but purity is blistering.

Hordes of cannibalistic sun-vampires rule the daylight hours, forcing the remaining humans to adapt to a grubby, nocturnal existence. When she sacrifices everything to become a Sunbather, queer Soph discovers that the heterosexual commune is not the glowing paradise she'd hoped for, and her new immortal body still yearns for womanflesh. After discovering that the Sunbathers are building a solar lamp that will enable them to walk in permanent light, Soph must decide if she's willing to doom what's left of humanity just to finally fit in.

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So many vampires this week! (I am not complaining at ALL.) These ones are – they don’t sound like simple daywalkers, it kinda sounds like they NEED sunlight??? Unsure, but I’ve loved what I’ve seen of the author’s social media, and I’ve been looking forward to this one since I heard about it!

Secrets of Stone (A Wolf in the Sun) by Coltrane Seesequasis
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Published on: 7th September 2024
Goodreads

Secrets of Stone is an exciting new fantasy adventure novel from debut author Coltrane Seesequasis!

Centuries have passed since the forces of nature won the war against humanity. Sentient animals now rule a healing world, and as the stain of mankind continues to dwindle, a young wolf called Silversong is determined to rise in the hierarchy of his pack. Strong at manipulating wind and air, all he needs is a way to prove himself to his Chief.

Before he can gain the respect he deserves, however, Silversong’s aspirations are cut short by the Heretic and his outcast wolves. Against all odds, the Heretic and his band of exiles escape their imprisonment far to the west and wreak havoc on Silversong’s pack. The exiles pose a threat unlike any other, and their enigmatic leader won’t stop his brutal conquest until all wolfkind submits to him.

Silversong can’t let a monstrous wolf like the Heretic roam free. With the wind at his back, he pursues the leader of the exiles into forests of shadow and into ancient places better left forgotten. But the further he strays from home, the more he comes to realize that maybe his enemies aren’t so evil after all. Maybe there’s a reason for the destruction they seek… and maybe there’s a far greater danger lying in wait.

Secrets of Stone is Book One of a four-part Young Adult fantasy series called A Wolf in the Sun!

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This one came to my attention because the author is Willow Cree, and I have a vague memory of someone somewhere saying that he drew on Cree inspiration for the story? I can’t find a source for that now, though, so I may have dreamed it up. Either way, worlds without humans in them often work well for me we’re not going to talk about what that says about me, thanks so I may try this out!

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 #202 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sunday Soupçons #32

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!

Two very difference science fantasies!

City of Dancing Gargoyles by Tara Campbell
Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC, secondary queer MC
PoV: First-person, present-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 3rd September 2024
ISBN: 1951631404
Goodreads

Invisible Cities meets sentient gargoyles

In the parched, post-apocalyptic Western U.S. of the 22nd Century, wolves float, bonfires sing, and devils gather to pray. Water and safety are elusive in this chaotic world of alchemical transformations, where history books bleed, dragons kiss, and gun-toting trees keep their own kind of peace.

Among this menagerie of strange beasts, two sentient stone gargoyles, known only as “E” and “M,” flee the rubble of their Southwestern church in search of water. Along the way, they meet climate refugees Rose Baker and her mother Dolores, who’ve escaped the ravaged West Coast in search of a safer home. This quartet forms an uneasy alliance when they hear of a new hope: a mysterious city of dancing gargoyles. Or is it something more sinister? In this strange, terrible new world, their arrival at this elusive city could spark the destruction of everything they know.

Tara Campbell summons fantastical magic in this kaleidoscopic new speculative climate fiction.

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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.

I was intrigued by the very weird premise, and City of Dancing Gargoyles definitely delivered on the weird!

Something Happened in the 22nd century, and now the North American continent is full of surreal, bizarre, and sometimes creepy Stuff, the vast majority of which is, thankfully, tied to specific locales. These areas are called Cities even when they’re more like towns or villages, size-wise. Are there any normal places left? Honestly, it doesn’t seem like it, but because the book is focused on the Cities, it’s possible there are normal areas that we just don’t see in Dancing.

Dancing is made up of alternating PoVs and storylines, which eventually intersect. E and M are sentient gargoyles, who strike out looking for a new home when their current one runs out of water (which they need to survive); Dolores is a teenager travelling with her spear-wielding mom looking for a safe place to live; and Meena and Joseph are travelling researchers, writing up reports on the different Cities they visit.

This isn’t a very plot-heavy book; it’s a lot of weirdness for the sake of weirdness, vibes, and an attempt at an Actual Plot stuffed in very unsatisfyingly at the last minute. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun; I just think it’s a good idea not to go in expecting plot, or a traditional story-structure. The reports on the Cities can almost be treated like flash fiction or short stories, and although I didn’t find every City interesting – especially in the second half of the book it felt like Campbell was running out of ideas – they were still…amusing? A nice break from the other PoVs? I looked forward to them.

Some of the Cities were disturbing or even stomach-churning, but a) I’m a wimp, and b) it was clearly deliberate on Campbell’s part. There’s the City of Glaring Chocolates, where the chocolates have Opinions on the fact that they’re made only to be consumed; the City of Bleeding Books, which is exactly what it sounds like; and the City of Cringing Blankets, where blankets react to human shame. Some were pretty ridiculous, like the City of Gun-Toting Trees, and some didn’t go into NEARLY enough detail, like the City of Feasting Banshees, which is a one-page poem instead of a mini-short story like most of the other reports.

But some were amazing; the City of Failing Knives, which has extremely unique marriage customs; the City of Sailing Statues, where what statue sails to shore determines what kind of year the City will have; and the City of Bingeing Bats, where the humans have finally beaten a retreat. And plenty of the others!

The book did kind of fail when it attempted plot: Joseph starts going off the rails, but how or why, and how it’s resolved, either wasn’t explained or made no sense at all; and the gargoyles start Doing A Thing that comes out of nowhere and is ‘solved’ in about two seconds. There’s quite a few things that some characters know that others don’t, which is one of the reasons I think this might be the start of a series – Rose needs to find out what M did at some point, right? And some kind of eldritch being talked to Meena in a way that DEFINITELY implied there would be more stories in this setting. It works as a standalone if you let it, but not perfectly.

If you’d like a shot of weirdness, check this out, but if you need things to make sense, I’d recommend skipping this one.

Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Nonbinary MC, MLM MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 3rd September 2024
ISBN: 1803369833
Goodreads

In the distant future, when mortals mingle with the gods in deep space, an out-of-date automaton, a recovering addict, and an angel race to solve the Pope’s murder in an abandoned corner of the galaxy.

Scribe IV is an obsolete automaton, peacefully whiling away his years on the Bastion, a secluded monastery in an abandoned corner of the galaxy. But when the visiting Pope is found murdered, Scribe IV knows he has very little time before the terrifying Sisters of the Drowned Deep rise up to punish the Bastion’s residents for their crime.

Quin, a recovering drug addict turned private investigator, picks up a scrambled signal from the Bastion and agrees to take the case. Traumatized by a bizarre experience in his childhood, Quin repeatedly feeds his memories to his lover, the angel Murmuration. But fragmented glimpses of an otherworldly horror he calls the crawling dark continue to haunt his dreams.

Meanwhile in Heaven, an angel named Angel hears Scribe IV’s prayer. Intrigued by the idea of solving a crime with mortals, xe descends to offer xer divine assistance (whether those mortals want it or not). With the Drowned Sisters closing in around the Bastion, Scribe IV, Quin, and Angel race to find out who really murdered the Pope, and why. Quin’s missing memories may hold the key to the case—but is remembering worth the price?

Haunting, dreamy and beautifully written, Out of the Drowning Deep is perfect for fans of Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, and This Is How You Lose the Time War.

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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I loved this, but to be clear, it is nothing like Martha Wells, Becky Chambers, or This Is How You Lose the Time War. Publicists, just stop, ffs.

What it is is a fabulous little gem of a science fantasy, weird and wonderful and fairly dark, but also hopeful. The murder really is the tiniest part of the book, more an excuse to throw the characters together than anything – but that’s fine, because there’s plenty of other plot to sink your teeth into. And the worldbuilding! This is a future where gods and saints and angels are all real, but it’s possible for humans to create new gods, too (which is very relevant); where we have nanites and space stations right alongside prayer-as-radio. I AM A FAN!

An angel could be a terrible thing, but so could a human, sometimes without even trying.

I admit to being confused about one small element of the ending – which I don’t think I can talk about without spoilers – but other than that? I loved everything. Wise’s prose is vivid and delicate, the imagery and turns of phrase fantastic (in all senses of the word), and wow did I enjoy the cast of deeply fucked-up people! Everyone here is so broken, in ways that are difficult and complicated and don’t have easy fixes, and not only did I eat it up with a spoon, I licked the plate when I was done!

Quin looked away, too late. What were eyes but a window to the soul? And apparently he was doing a shit job of keeping the blinds drawn.

Although I would have LOVED more of this world and these characters, Out of the Drowning Deep is exactly as long as it needs to be, fitting perfectly within its (160) pagecount. It didn’t feel rushed or squashed, and every aspect of the story had room to breathe (and be appreciated). Nor is the story streamlined; we got lots of little details tucked here and there that made me go starry-eyed with delight at the attention to detail! For example, we learn about the drug pixie dust, or pixie for short – and then we discover that it’s ‘dirtier cousin’ is called POOKAH! Aka, another kind of faerie! Specifically a faerie TRICKSTER, often, and that’s just so appropriate!

Or how about calling Quin’s dealer – of pixie dust, remember – his fairy godmother? I’m clearly going to have to check out Wise’s other books, because I just adored her – sense of humour? I’m not sure that’s the right term. Imagination? Approach? It really doesn’t hurt that Out of the Drowning Deep is pleasantly sweary, which made it feel weirdly approachable and homey to me (probably because I swear like a sailor).

Angel understood how some gods could grow addicted to prayer, how they could gorge themselves on human desire, and how, in the great turning of existence, many had gone mad with it.

EASILY one of my favourite takes on angels/gods, AND on science fantasy! Strongly recommended!

The post Sunday Soupçons #32 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

In Short: August

An up and down month – I read less, and definitely noticed issues with my concentration, but I also had the spoons to take on a new chore around the house (a big deal!) AND I was writing fiction! Which I haven’t done in…months, at best. Yay for that!

ARCs Received

For the first time in I don’t know HOW long, I had no outstanding arc requests!!! It didn’t last very long, but for maybe an hour, I HAD NO OUTSTANDING REQUESTS!!! Can’t remember the last time that happened! Should probably, you know. Try and attain that status more often! As in, stop requesting so many arcs, Sia!!!

I’m especially excited for Lotus Empire and Teeth of Dawn, both of them finales to incredible trilogies! And I have high hopes for Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (the last Emily Wilde book!), Home Grown Magic, and Fourth Consort!

Read

18 books read this month – quite a lot less than July’s 30! I was definitely struggling to read for the second half of the month, so here’s hoping that I’ll get more read in September.

I got to read some incredible books this month, though: Deep Black blew me away, as did Uses of Illicit Art, Metal From Heaven (my second time reading it!), and Yield Under Great Persuasion. A Sorceress Comes To Call surprised me by being incredibly moreish (a surprise because I really haven’t enjoyed Kingfisher’s last few trad-pubbed books) and I ended up massively enjoying Out of the Drowning Deep (though that one wasn’t a surprise!)

I can’t not mention The Merciful Crow, which was another reread and remains an all-time fave of mine. Same goes for Bright Steel!

I also read two VERY old (for me!) books in August: The Little Grey Men (published in 1942!) which I thought was a book I was in love with in primary school, but turned out to be the prequel to that book; and Hospital Station (1962) which promised me a space hospital that treats aliens! The former was quite lovely, bar a single back-handed misogynistic moment nobody needed; I had a lot of fun with the latter, too, but I’ve been told the lack of women characters becomes full-on misogyny going forward, so I’m probably not going to read more of the series. Sigh! If anyone knows any modern alien hospital stories, do drop me a rec!

…To the best of my knowledge, none of this month’s books had BIPOC authors. I honestly can’t remember ever hitting zero before… Fucking hells.

Reviewed

I wish I’d managed to review some not-arcs, but I can’t be displeased with NINE reviews! Especially since I was super pleased with what I wrote for Sunforge, Phoenix Keeper, and Asunder.

DNF-ed

I gave up on some long-term reads this month (I started Principle in January, for example) and had little patience for anything that I didn’t want to keep reading. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but eight DNFs sure feels like a lot.

ARCs Outstanding

32 arcs outstanding! I’m a bit anxious, because quite a lot of these are due in the next two months… I must read (and review!) faster!

Unmissable SFF Updates

So far I have 40 books on my 2025 Unmissable list, with lots more marked down as ‘maybes’! Truly, I have so much fun making lists!

How did my predictions/anticipated reads for August go? I declared nine books Unmissable for this month, and–

there were four five star reads (Deep Black, The Sunforge, The Phoenix Keeper, and Asunder)one was a four star read (Palace of Eros) although it was complicated to ratetwo were one and a half stars reads (The Dollmakers and Between Dragons and Their Wrath)two were DNFs (Mistress of Lies and Time’s Agent) though the latter wasn’t bad, just too depressing for me

5/10! Not bad at all!

Misc

Thing One: I finished my Goodreads challenge this month! Woo! I deliberately set it low because I ended up stressing out about it last year, and had no interest in going though that again. (It was set to 124, if anyone cares, and I’m currently sitting pretty at 140!)

Thing Two: Apparently at least one visitor to the blog this month came to me from some generative ai chatbot, which is mildly disturbing. While I’m a big fan of sentient, sapient AIs in sci fi, I am 500% against the not-intelligent-even-a-little-bit generative ai algorithm fuckwaste thing the jerk-offs are so into, and I will cheer when it dies.

I will also judge you, very hard, for using it. Even using the chatbot things is destroying the environment, so just fucking don’t!

Looking Forward

MANY amazing books to look forward to in September! We have the sequel to Space Opera, of course, and Naomi Novik’s collection of short stories (which promises us a glimpse at the world of her next series!) Alicia Jasinska is back with a new, polyamorous(!) fantasy, and I got to read an early copy of Yield Under Great Persuasion, but I can’t wait to read the finished version! From new-to-me authors we have IMMORTAL DARK, which I am FERAL for; Church of the Mountain of Flesh, which should be wonderfully horrifying; and We Kept Her in the Cellar, a retelling wherein Cinderella is some kind of eldritch monster. And Naming Song, which I’m reading at the moment, is one I can’t wait for other people to get to read!

May we all have a stupendous September!

The post In Short: August appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

August DNFs

Reading was a struggle this month, which is probably why the number of DNFs has spiked again…

The Saint of Heartbreak by Morgan Dante
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Minor trans character, M/M main
Published on: 1st September 2024
ISBN: B0D4JMRLSB
Goodreads

"Finally we have a lovely, melancholic, sensual romance between two of the Bible's greatest villains—Judas Iscariot and the Devil. Between lush, decadent prose, Morgan Dante weaves together a queer love story, a gorgeous homage to The Divine Comedy, and thoughts on finding love in the damned shadow of God. A hellish, sacrilegious must-read." — rafael nicolás, author of Angels Before Man

Two of the Bible's greatest villains...

After his betrayal with a kiss, Judas Iscariot dies in despair and goes to Hell. When Christ saves other souls during the Harrowing of Hell, he leaves Judas behind—but not alone in the ninth circle, where the most detestable traitors go. Callous, resigned, and abandoned by God long ago, the Devil sees Judas as a pathetic wretch, but he soon finds a kindred spirit. As the centuries pass, they struggle to find even a sliver of happiness in Hell.

Doomed by the narrative, will they find happiness, or will their story continue to be a tragedy?

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I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I knew this book was doomed the second it was revealed that Judas didn’t really betray Yeshua – he didn’t know the Romans would kill him! That wasn’t supposed to happen!

And like – no. That’s such a cowardly change to make. That immediately means you’re not committed to wrestling with the ‘reality’ of these characters, you don’t want to deal with the complicated messiness of them. What kind of Judas isn’t the betrayer? What’s the point of examining the figure/character at all if you’re going to make him a – a milksop, a patsy?

And my GODS, why does he consider himself so evil when it was a naïve mistake, not intentional? Pathetic. Whiny. NOPE.

The opening chapters from Yeshua’s PoV were sublime, but the moment we left that, the prose became very dull and stilted. What a boring Satan; what a boring Hell.

Keeper of Sorrows by Rachel Fikes
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Queer MC
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense; third-person, past tense
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads

Whoever rules the bees, rules the world. A dark fantasy adventure with a twist of Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

On a planet stripped of wind, entire ecosystems lie in ashes, leaving humans to the mercy of a sole surviving bee species on a remote isle. Whoever wins the Praxis to rule them as Keeper, rules the world.

When the next Keeper goes missing, her little sister must not only face her debilitating fear of bees, but compete in the Praxis to find her. As she braves the eerie fortress with sprawling wings of hives, murmuring murals, deceptive hedge mazes, and a host of leering gargoyles, she must also face the reigning Keeper, who’s guarding the darkest secret of all.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress

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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There’s something really great in here, but it’s lost under unpolished prose, which just got worse and worse until I couldn’t take it any more.

(It’s also exhausting to read. I was reading it this morning, as I write this, and my head got so sluggish and my eyes so heavy that I had to stop after a few chapters and go take a nap. NOT GREAT.)

To be clear, the prose isn’t constantly bad. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the ideas in this story are sumptuous, and often gorgeous; there’s something very luxurious about it, and very Gothic indeed. And that comes through for a page or two, in lovely, rich writing…up until I’m slapped with an unbearably awkward sentence that jerks me out of the story.

eyes greedily combing over her damp skin

You can’t comb damp skin???

only caved me in more

I get what you’re trying to say, but…

“Steady,” pressed a husky voice.

How does a voice ‘press’?

One of them had to know what happened to Lenita. Maybe more. Maybe helped vanish her too.

The hum deepened to a resounding growl, vibrating the stone

That use of ‘vibrating’ sounds awful, although I’m not sure whether it’s grammatically incorrect …

Thousands of bees collected on the Keeper’s long train. So thick, one couldn’t tell it was even red.

‘one couldn’t tell it was even red’? really?

The worldbuilding is really interesting – post climate-collapse, the world is now divided into just seven countries, and also the wind is gone, which as you might guess makes pollinators even more important. A crevasse has opened up in the ocean, and monsters come out of it sometimes. There seems to be a whole new religion, with new figures that don’t map onto any I’m familiar with. Flocks of birds are harnessed to pull ships now? Some bits weren’t clear, but I think that was because I DNFed it so soon; I’m not faulting Keeper for that.

There’s also, in the only first-person narration in the book, a gargoyle…or a being currently trapped inside a gargoyle?…who has lost their memory and is desperate to find out who and what they are, since they are not of the same kind as the other sentient gargoyles. I don’t know how this was going to fit together with everything else, but what I’m saying is, there’s plenty here to like, and lots of little details to catch your interest on.

Memories were a heap of stained glass, shattered and shapeless without time’s brace.

heads clacking, long, crimson train frothing over cobbles like rapids of blood

See? Beautiful!

Not that every writing decision makes sense: Naokah, the mc, is afraid of bees. Okay, that’s fine – she only takes part in the Praxis to find her sister, right? NOPE. Turns out she competed in the previous Praxis with her sister, specifically against her sister…despite being terrified of bees. She was that desperate to prove she could do something better than her sister! And was disappointed that her sister won instead! Even though it would have meant…living the next 50 years surrounded by bees??? I’m sorry, what? Do you really think you could have been a great Keeper while terrified of the beasties you’re keeping? That is the dumbest thing. And immediately turns me against our main character – not so much for wanting to prove she was as good or better than her universally-adored older sister, I can understand that. But this is the hill you decided to die on? When so much depends on the Keeper doing their duties WELL? It was irresponsible and selfish as well as fucking stupid.

I probably would have stuck with Keeper despite Naokah, just for the worldbuilding and mostly-lovely writing. But I just couldn’t deal with those verbal slaps, and the sentences that didn’t make sense, and why are you calling foxgloves ‘cones’ at every opportunity??? They’re not cone-shaped!

Is this horribly nit-picky of me? Yes, it is, and if the excerpts I quoted don’t bother you, then I encourage you to give this one a try, because if you don’t mind the writing (and can ignore Naokah being an idiot in this one respect) then you might like it. Keeper is very original, very different, and even in the tiny bit I read was already shaping up to be something noteworthy. I may even try it again in the future (although no promises). It’s not that it’s a bad book; it’s that I’m overly critical/sensitive when it comes to prose. People who are normal about writing will have a much more positive experience, I suspect.

The Nightward (The Waters of Lethe, #1) by R.S.A. Garcia
Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Published on: 15th October 2024
ISBN: 0063345765
Goodreads

Sturgeon, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte awards finalist R.S.A. Garcia’s scifantasy debut novel—the first in a duology—in which Caribbean mythology meets The Witcher, introduces a world where women warrior-magicians rule, and a child princess and her bodyguard must flee an attempted coup and evade the wave of darkness sent to kill her.

For 500 years Gaiea’s Hand has stood as a ward against the Dark. The Age of Chaos is a faded memory. The Goddess has left Gailand and given her Blessing to the Queens to rule in her stead.

Princess Viella of the court of Hamber is the Spirit of Gaiea, presumptive heir to the throne and budding wielder of magic. And yet she’s still a child—not yet ten years old—and a day spent evading her teachers and her dutiful bodyguard, Luka, is much more satisfying than learning about telepathy, illusions, and other spells, or obeying even her mother, the Queen.

There is time enough…until there isn’t.

For the night the Queen hosts the Ceremony to confirm Viella as the next Hand of Gaiea, everything changes for her—in the most horrific way the assassination of Viella’s mother.

Now Viella is Queen.

Luka, despite resenting his position as royal babysitter, does not hesitate. He rushes his charge from the Court and vows to keep her safe. Yet he is unsure how to help a burgeoning Hand of Gaiea, let alone contend with his place as a man in a matriarchal world and the secret that is burning inside him.

Together, they are on the run from darkness in a world where the lines between magic and technology are blurring and it’s up to a child and her protector to bring clarity and light back to the Queendom.

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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You know what? I just don’t want to read this any more. I’m a bit sad about it, because this was one of my most-anticipated books – I was RABID to read it! But. I’m bored, and I don’t care, and there are some objectively cool things going on that are just not grabbing me, for some reason. I made it to 38%; that’s a lot more than my usual cut-off point, at 20%. But the extra pages didn’t make a difference for me.

The writing is fine: very readable, very easy, but nothing special, and lacking the lushness I’m always hoping for. The magic is so simplistic. As is the matriarchy I was so excited about; women are warriors, men are oppressed (and also warriors), Oh No. (Not that we see said oppression? There’s some semi-nasty comments about men from literally one person, and it’s implied that men aren’t taught as much magic, but 38% of the way through this book I still didn’t know how men are oppressed – I was just told, not shown, that they were. Can they not inherit property? Are they banned from certain professions? Are they objectified, does the law not recognise that men can be raped by women, are they considered less intelligent, what???)(For that matter, I don’t get how this is a matriarchy; we have queens, and women warriors, but men are warriors too, and if you made all the women into men you’d never spot the difference from a generic Fantasy patriarchy, this is boring and also stupid.) Of course it’s an Evil Man who murders the queen and steals the throne (albeit not for himself); of course his partner is a woman who feels she was passed over as queen. And where is the Caribbean influence? So much of this set-up seems ripped directly from the (historically INaccurate) collective hallucination that is SFF’s idea of Medieval Europe. (Dressing characters in saris and having warrior women named after the Dahomey Amazons is just set-dressing, not fundamental worldbuilding.) And why do you even HAVE princesses/princes when the monarchy isn’t hereditary? Why is the Queen Mother a position of influence when she wasn’t chosen as queen, her daughter was? This whole set-up should be wildly different; the worldbuilding is so inconsistent, it doesn’t fit together, ARGH.

(And why Gaiea? Why? That’s such a fucking cliche. I disapprove of cringe culture immensely, but folx, anyone using Gaia/Gaiea as an All-Goddess figure in a secondary world setting makes me cringe so hard.)(I got excited for this book before there was a blurb, okay, I didn’t know.)

Bonus, stupid contradictory details, like someone moving ‘soundlessly’ despite being decked in anklets and bracelets. OKAY. Or – again, in a secondary world setting, where names I recognise SHOULD NOT EXIST – names like Sophia and Frances and Elise existing right alongside Viella and Valan. Or, supposedly experienced warriors thinking it’s better to remove an arrow still in the wound, when that is the thing you must absolutely not do until you’re with a doctor who can deal with it; and seriously suggesting that TWO PEOPLE are enough to get the queen where she needs to go while her queendom’s under threat

THAT BEING SAID.

It’s clear that there is a huge, world-changing mystery lying beneath Gailand’s history; the magical portals are actually teleportation technology, and the oraculars are something like mobile phones + holograms. ‘Property of Genetech’ is a gigantic clue that Something Is Up. Gailand’s legends have Gaiea overthrowing ‘the Masters’ – perhaps some corporation or other entity that set up Gailand as an experiment, or some kind of wildlife reserve, or something even stranger. And yet, the Dark is objectively real, so this IS a matter of demons and magic too. This should be SO INCREDIBLY INTERESTING, and for the right reader, it absolutely will be.

But not for me. The story moves quickly, but not in a direction I cared about; the clues for What Is Up were coming far too slowly to hold my interest. The worldbuilding does not hold up in my eyes, so I don’t really care about it for its own sake. And the characters are nice, sure, but bland. Nothing about them stands out: honourable warrior, honourable warrior, 9 year old whose maturity spikes and dips from moment to moment (although to be fair, she’s been through a lot recently, which would mess up most 9yos). I suspect Luka might not be cis, but it’s already clear that Gailand has no room for nonbinary people and I’m not interested in seeing Luka have to fight for acceptance on that front as well (he’s already lesser because, you know, man in a matriarchy).

It just…all fell so flat. Maybe Nightward becomes EPIC in the second half, maybe we would learn more about Genetech and the reveal will be SO COOL…but that’s just not enough of an incentive when the first half is so meh, when I don’t care about the cast, when the worldbuilding bores and annoys me.

Some readers will love this, undoubtedly. I’m sad I’m not one of them.

Ra by qntm, Sam Hughes
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
ISBN: B07L9KLYPK
Goodreads

Magic is real.

Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.

Student mage Laura Ferno has designs on the future: her mother died trying to reach space using magic, and Laura wants to succeed where she failed. But first, she has to work out what went wrong. And who her mother really was.

And whether, indeed, she's dead at all...

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This is a pretty great book with amazing worldbuilding, and a premise I really liked – magic being treated as/working like engineering! A world where magic is ‘just’ another science! Except for how it’s definitely not…

But I couldn’t keep up with the incredibly technical storytelling indefinitely, and unfortunately the character work seems to have been sacrificed in favour of the worldbuilding. Each character only had one or two personality traits, and there was nothing in any of them for me to connect to or care about. Even when the fate of the world was at stake, I felt very distanced from the characters, unable to experience any of the story emotionally.

And although the Things which were revealed were staggeringly cool… Out-of-nowhere reveals make me less interested in a story, regardless of what is being revealed. And we had those kind of reveals constantly. (It’s possible there were clues leading up to each reveal, but if there were, the clues were part of the super-technical stuff that I wasn’t smart enough to understand.) Eventually it didn’t matter how LE GASP was the Thing being revealed; I was just rolling my eyes because here we go again, another flip-the-table revelation… It loses impact after the fifth time, you know?

Called it quits around the 80% mark – reading it was just too much like work, instead of being fun. I still think it’s an incredible piece of writing, and I get why some people adore it – and I want to check out qntm’s other books, see if any of them might be more accessible for me, because the mind behind Ra is clearly…well, mind-blowing! But I doubt I’ll ever come back to Ra and try to finish it.

The Principle of Moments (Order of Legends, #1) by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Black MC, Black MLM MC, M/M
ISBN: 1473234220
Goodreads

Unmissable for fans of the spacefaring found family of Becky Chambers, the alternate London of V. E. Schwab, and the virtuosic climate-craft of N. K. Jemisin.

A century-spanning space fantasy novel that will take you on a whirlwind adventure, from a Regency Era love affair between a time-traveller and the prince waiting for him in the past, to a rescue mission in the 60th century, where a girl desperately races against time as she searches for the sister the emperor stole.

6066: In Emperor Thracin’s brave new galaxy, humans are not citizens. Instead, they are indentured labourers, working to repay the debt they unwittingly incurred when they settled on Gahraan - a desert planet already owned by the emperor himself. Asha Akindele knows she’s just another voiceless cog working the assembly lines that fuel his vast imperial war machine. Her only rebellion: studying stolen aeronautics manuals in the dead of night. But then a cloaked stranger arrives to deliver an impossible message, and her life changes in an instant.

1812: Obi Amadi is done with time-travelling. Never mind the fact he doesn’t know how to cure himself of the temporal sickness he caught whilst anchoring his soul to Regency London, the one that unmakes him further with every jump. Or if the prince he loves will ever love him back. Or why his father disappeared. He is done. Until he hears about the ghost of a girl in the British Museum. A girl from another time.

When Obi’s path tangles with Asha’s and a prophecy awakens in the cold darkness of space, they must voyage through the stars, racing against time, tyranny, and the legacy of three heroes from an ancient religion who may be awakening, reincarnated in ways beyond comprehension.

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I’ve been pining for this book since it won the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award back in 2020, but alas, it ended up being a flop for me. I loved some aspects of the worldbuilding, but mostly I found the prose really blunt and kind of choppy, and the story managed to be quite breakneck-paced without actually going anywhere. The main characters were great, but all of the other relationships – friendships, various love interests, etc – were told-not-shown, so they never felt very real or impactful (which is a big problem when important emotional moments depend on them).

There was also a FUCKTON of typos, which I should be used to by now because Gollancz (the publisher) packs EVERY book they publish with typos. Who the FUCK does the copy-editing over there, and why haven’t they hired someone better??? It’s MADDENING! Literally no other trad-publisher is this bad! I’ve gotten to the point where I get upset if I see a book I’m excited for is coming out from them…

Seriously, fuck Gollancz.

Anyway, back to Principle: this is science-fantasy, which is a kinda niche genre that I love, but I have to admit that I don’t think the fantasy and sci fi elements meshed very well here. Less because I was bothered by how the magic worked in this setting (I wasn’t, I could just roll with it) than because the jump from Georgian England to far-future aliens was really jarring – and we jumped back and forth between the two settings quite a bit. The Georgian stuff was clearly trying to give historical drama/regency romance vibes, which…it did not, and again, it clashed pretty badly with all the on-the-run-Chosen-Ones stuff in the future parts. Maybe the two halves would have come together better later in the book, but I have no reason to think so.

And don’t get me started on the dialogue, which was so forced and fake the entire time.

I desperately wanted to love this book. Desperately. But…I didn’t. I doubt I’ll give it a second try; I definitely won’t be picking up the sequels.

Sigh.

The Undead Complex (The Undetectables, #2) by Courtney Smyth
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC with fibromyalgia, brown sapphic MC, major bisexual character, major gay character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 24th September 2024
ISBN: B0CW1WJGFM
Goodreads

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 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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I had a lot of fun with the first book in this series, but Undead Complex…I’m just bored. Now that the characters have been established, I’m not that interested, and again, it was fun to see the Undetectables figuring out magical forensics in book one, but now they have that down, the process of their investigation held no appeal for me. And it felt like Undead was taking forever to get anywhere – although I’m not sure if it actually was, or it it just felt like that because I wasn’t enjoying myself. I recognise that the new case – a dead body showing up with the face of someone still very much alive – is objectively weirder than a serial killer case (which is what we had in the first book), but still, I was bored. I didn’t care AT ALL about what was going on or who the killer might be, or how everything would resolve – I couldn’t care less about the tv set and the drama among the crew and cast. I just wanted it to be over – and then realised I could make that happen! So.

The fibro rep continues to be excellent, but I just don’t care about the story said rep is in, unfortunately.

A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic Jewish-coded MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 17th September 2024
ISBN: 9780593722350
Goodreads

A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic.

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 true: 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 dark: 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.

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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I suspect I might have a better time will this if I tried it again later; I’m struggling to read anything right now, so I’m not convinced that my ambivalence is all the book’s fault.

On the other hand, I really hate the German-inspired setting. It’s completely petty, but all the German terms a) sound very ugly to me, and b) give me flashbacks to high school German lessons, which were hands-down the most awful of any classes I’ve ever had. (It’s possible a and b are related.) The magic system disappointed me – it seems really simple, and I don’t have any interest in water magic for its own sake. And the magical quest object…it all felt really basic and obvious – which isn’t very like Saft, so again, I’m wondering if the problem is more my headspace than the book. Maybe it wouldn’t feel as meh if I wasn’t feeling meh…?

I love that Saft has given us fantasy!Judaism again, but nothing else about our MC Lorelei interested me – her passion for natural history was told to us, but I wasn’t seeing it on the page, which is a shame because characters with passions are one of my favourite things. There’s also the problem of ‘wow, EVERYONE here is terrible!’ – and not in interesting ways, either. The ‘eccentric nobles’ are just privileged assholes, which is definitely realistic, but doesn’t get me invested in them.

I want to try this again sometime – maybe when it’s published – but right now I have no desire to keep reading, so I’m not going to.

From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads

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.

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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I would quite like to try this one again eventually – the prose is gorgeous! But it – the prose, I mean – is also…sort of jangly? What I mean is, the word choices are exquisite, but the rhythm of the writing has me constantly twitching. I don’t know why – I can’t put my finger on it, even after going over the chapters I read with a magnifying glass. Which is why I think I might have a better time with this book if I tried it again later…

It’s dark, it’s creepy, there are indeed many mysteries that desperately need solving… It didn’t really read like horror to me – it wasn’t frightening – but I think it hit the note it was going for. The characters… I didn’t really connect with them, and I wish the one hadn’t been named Petunia, because the only time I’ve ever come across that is in The Series That Must Not Be Named, which is an unfortunate connection to make in my head and definitely didn’t help.

(Sometimes I think storytellers forget/don’t realise how important character names are. Or do most readers NOT think of other, more famous characters with the same name, when they meet new characters? Maybe it’s just me being weird.)

Definitely one I’d recommend to anyone intrigued by the blurb, though. If you DON’T have my weird ear for prose rhythm (and I’ve only ever met one other person who does) then you’ll probably enjoy this one.

Here’s hoping for fewer DNFs next month!

The post August DNFs appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. 

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield!

The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: MLM trans MC
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense
Published on: 6th September 2024
Goodreads

THE CHURCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF FLESH is a cosmic horror novel about mad artists, bodies spiralling out of control, and a trans man's merciless desperation.

Sole De Gasinis drowns his grief in wine and buries his hatred of his body in twisted sculptures. When, one drunken night on the beach, God orders him to rebuild his village's church, he knows he wasn't chosen for his piety.

Instead, he and God make a deal. If Sole rebuilds the church, God will give him the body of a man.

As Sole works in a frenzy for salvation, lifelong friendships decay, a village united to tear down its church fractures into pariahs and zealots, and power and grief reshape the prophet into a tyrant. Grief for a boy he fell in love with ten years ago, who claimed to be a virgin birth, who died in agony in the church crypt when the God inside him wanted out -- and whose monstrous remnant Sole must commune with for every piece of his prize.

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Come on, exactly WHICH part of this am I not supposed to be rabid for??? Queer religious fuckery! Eldritch horror! Arcane deals for the transition you want! The dead virgin-birthed boy you loved, now a monster!

I believe the word I want for this is…GIMME!

‘when the God inside him wanted out’ gives me the BEST kind of chills, honestly, and I am HEART EYES thinking about how a virgin-birthed miracle boy turns into a monster. What kind of monster? Why did God allow that? And WHAT is with this village, that they’re turning on the church but God is very invested, apparently, in getting them back in his flock??? Why this particular village?

And there are TENTACLES and COSMIC HORROR and I spot an ANGEL WING on the cover! *FLAILS*

I feel very bad for Sole, but wow do I want his story!

If you have yet to be convinced, you can read the first chapter here!

It’s out NEXT WEEK, so there’s still time to get your preorders in!

The post I Can’t Wait For…The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #201

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.

FIVE books this week!

(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)

Long Live Evil (Time of Iron, #1) by Sarah Rees Brennan
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Portal Fantasy
Representation: Sapphic POV character, secondary brown character, secondary F/F
Published on: 27th August 2024
Goodreads

A TALE FOR EVERYONE WHO’S EVER FALLEN FOR THE VILLAIN…

When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of her favourite fantasy series.

She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.

So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.

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Long Live Evil was out in the British Isles at the start of the month, and this week it’s releasing in the US! It’s absolutely marvellous; this is one that made me ache, laugh my head off, AND ship the straight pairing!!! Can’t remember the last time THAT happened!

My review!

Embodied Exegesis by Ann Leblanc
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Trans and nonbinary MCs
Published on: 27th August 2024
Goodreads

Embodied Exegesis is an anthology of cyberpunk and posthuman stories written by transfem authors. The included stories explore the limits of the genre: gender-affirming cybernetics, the literary surveillance state, transcendent hive-minds, a transgender coffee machine, and weaponized shitposts. The future of cyberpunk is trans, so stay tuned for an anthology of wild and weird stories exploring the limits of technological transformations of our bodies and minds.

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I’m VERY excited for this collection, but it’s being published by Neon Hemlock, so I can’t swear it’ll actually be available on the 27th. If you’re interested, you can preorder a paper copy here!

Come Out, Come Out by Natalie C. Parker
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Nonbinary bisexual MC, lesbian MC
Published on: 27th August 2024
Goodreads

A spine-tingling LGBTQIA+ YA horror about queer teens who accidentally invoke a twisted spirit who promises help but delivers something sinister. Perfect for fans of Kayla Cottingham, Andrew Joseph Smith, and Aiden Thomas.

It's never been safe for Fern, Jaq, or Mallory to come out to their families. As kids their emerging identities drove them into friendship but also forced them into the woods to hide in an old, abandoned house when they needed safety. But one night when the girls sought refuge, Mallory never made it back home. Fern and Jaq did, but neither survivor remembered what happened or the secrets they were so desperate to keep.

Five years later, Fern and Jaq are seniors on the verge of graduation, seemingly happy in their straight, cisgender lives—until a spirit who looks like Mallory begins to appear, seeking revenge for her death, and the part Fern and Jaq played in it. As they’re haunted, something begins to shift inside them. 

They remember who they are. 
Who they want to love. 
And the truth about the vicious secrets hiding in their woods.

This delightfully dark and pointed novel calls out the systems that erase gay and queer and trans identity, giving space to embrace queerness and to unleash the power of friendship and found family against the real monsters in the world.

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The blurb has me thinking that our MCs have their memories suppressed or wiped – it seems like they lost more than just the one night. It feels like a while since I’ve read something with memory fuckery, and the reviews are very positive. I’ll be checking this one out!

Island of Whispers by Frances Hardinge, Emily Gravett
Genres: Fantasy, MG
Published on: 27th August 2024
Goodreads

Part gothic thriller and part coming-of-age story, Island of Whispers is an original illustrated middle-grade fantasy from award-winning author Frances Hardinge and acclaimed illustrator Emily Gravett about a strange island filled with ghosts and long-buried secrets

On the misty island of Merlank, the lingering dead can cause unspeakable harm if they’re not safely carried to the Island of the Broken Tower, where they can move on. Milo’s father always told him that he wasn’t suited for dealing with the dead and could never become the Ferryman—but one day, he’s unexpectedly thrust into the role. And his father is his first passenger . . .

Milo’s father was killed by the Lord of Merlank, in pursuit of his dead daughter who he’s unwilling to give up. It’s a race to the island as Milo must face swarms of sinister moths, strange headless birds, and dangerous storms to carry his ghostly passengers across the secret seas.

Filled with suspense and Frances Hardinge’s signature sparkling prose, this story—accompanied throughout by striking illustrations by award-winning illustrator Emily Gravett—will keep you on the edge of your seat in this remarkable and ultimately heartwarming story of grief, family, kindness, and being true to yourself.

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Frances Hardinge is a wonder – I’ve been trying to figure out how to review her incredible Unraveller all year – and a new book from her is always cause to celebrate! I think this is the first time one of her books will be illustrated like this!

Point of Knives by Melissa Scott
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay MC, bisexual MC, M/M, queernorm world
Published on: 29th August 2024
Goodreads

Nicolas Rathe and Philip Eslingen are back, drawn together from opposite sides of the law to investigate a series of murders whose impact stretches deep into Astreiant’s underworld. Eslingen is now a professional knife working for a prominent crimelord while Rathe is an Adjunct Point, sworn to uphold the city’s laws. By rights, they should be wary foes, but instead they find themselves sharing an investigation as well as a bed as their search takes them into the heart of Point of Knives and at its center, the Court of Thirty-two Knives, the hub of Astreiant’s underworld. A single misstep could mean disaster, a single doubt could be the end of all their hopes.

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Queen of Swords is rereleasing the Asteiant series – one of my all-time faves – and this is book two! The covers don’t do this series justice, but it’s REALLY wonderful to have an edition with lovely modern typesetting!

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 #201 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Pew-Pew On an Epic Scale: Deep Black by Miles Cameron

Deep Black by Miles Cameron
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Representation: Black MC, austistic-coded love interest, secondary nonbinary characters
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 1st August 2024
ISBN: 1399615068
Goodreads

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.

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I received this book for free from the author. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~the aliens will surprise you
~being a hero is very odd, actually
~neural lace = superpowered brain
~do we trust the AIs?
~everything you think you know is about to go bye-bye

My review of book one, Artifact Space

:this review contains spoilers for Artifact Space!:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Listen. LISTEN. I reread Cameron’s books every year, at this point. At the time of writing, I just finished rereading his Masters & Mages trilogy for the fourth time. The first book in this series, Artifact Space, made my Best of 2021 list and was the only book I read twice that year. I’ve finished reading it twice more since, and read bits of it many more times than that, when I felt the need to reread particular scenes or chapters without reading the whole book.

To say I’m obsessed is putting it mildly.

I had no idea what was going to happen in Deep Black, but I was pretty sure it was going to be fantastic – AND I WAS CORRECT!

We left Nbaro and co having run off the ‘bad’ aliens and made contact with the Starfish at last. Deep Black opens what feels like minutes later, with the Greatship Athens still at Tradespoint – which is now in the process of being rebuilt, since the Bubbles (our bad aliens) did, you know, blow it up. Cue an exhilarating frenzy of construction, with the Athens making Tradespoint 2.0 much more sophisticated (and comfortable) than it was before. Cameron is especially good at this kind of thing; what would be extremely boring in the hands of another author is somehow (I genuinely can’t figure out how) escapist and delightful and soothing, even when it’s paragraphs of Nbaro welding things together. It doesn’t hurt that Nbaro is one of the very privileged few now allowed to trade with the Starfish directly, and worldbuilding fanatics like myself will swoon at all that we learn about Starfish physiology and…can you call it linguistics when no words are used??? Well, Starfish communication, anyway. Dorcas is doing his best to infer as much as he can about Starfish culture, with sometimes hilarious, often insightful interjections from everyone else, and it’s so freaking fascinating. I am constantly being hit with non-humans in SFF who are just humans in fancy dress, but Cameron’s aliens feel alien, my friends! How they’re built, how they think, how they structure their society… C’EST MAGNIFIQUE! *chef’s kiss*

Readers less interested in worldbuilding don’t have to be alarmed: you will not be drowning in info-dumps, I promise. I genuinely think that the worldbuilding is spread out enough throughout the book – instead of coming all in one or two reveals – that it won’t be overwhelming for anyone. And it’s all so freaking COOL!

Ahem.

So Tradespoint goes fairly well. It’s when the Athens is on the way home that things get…complicated. Again!

I loved Artifact Space, and I still do, but I am in awe of Deep Black. The grasp of tactics and strategy that is Cameron’s signature in his fantasy books is on full display here, but arguably even more impressive because now we’re in space. We saw some of this in Artifact, and it was extremely epic then, but it feels like Cameron’s playing on a whole nother level here. Which is partly because, yes, there are more space battles in this book! And the way that the fighting feels so believable, and so unfamiliar – because of course, you can’t fight a space battle the way you would on land or even water – the way Cameron makes it all make sense, and never, ever forgets that his characters are fighting in three dimensions and specifically, three dimensions in space, where refuelling is a huge concern and astronomical bodies shape the ‘terrain’ and the enemy don’t have to be close to take out your ship – all of it is just so freaking excellent.

The story, also, feels like it’s been levelled up. If Artifact Space was a story zoomed in on the little picture, intimate and almost homey at times, then Deep Space is Cameron zooming out to show us the big picture – and holy gods, it is not what you think it is! The twists and reveals keep coming, but beautifully, elegantly, each building on the last – and the sheer scope of it all! Bit by bit, we’re guided to an understanding of the full picture, not just with regards the conspiracy that’s been taking out Greatships, but also the different factions and philosophies within human space, and humanity’s place in the wider universe; one by one, all our expectations and assumptions are subverted, and it’s done so gracefully, with such brilliant precision. And as for what is revealed? When we learned who are pulling most of the strings, my jaw DROPPED. And yet, it made so much sense, and was just objectively brilliant both in terms of worldbuilding and wow factor!

What I mean is, it’s not just that there are plenty of twists, and it’s not just the technique and skill that went into the reveals. What is revealed is also just – brilliant. There are so many cool ideas here, so many details that made the happy parts of my brain light up. I was shocked and impressed and awed and delighted, over and over – and this is all managed without sacrificing the inexplicable cosiness that made Artifact Space so addictive. (Well. It’s one of the things that made it so addictive!) We still get to see Nbaro’s work and training as one of the rank-and-file; we’re still deeply involved with the found-family that’s coalesced around her; cake and pie and cookies are still being traded back and forth between the different ranks within the Athens. The – what I’ll call mundanity, for lack of a better word, although none of it is boring – the mundanity of Nbaro’s everyday life doesn’t just contrast interestingly against those times when she’s being accidentally heroic; it anchors those times, those more dramatic and exciting parts of the book. If we had just one or the other – the everyday stuff OR the exciting, fate-of-the-species-determining stuff – Deep Black would be a very different book; and, I think, a lesser one. We need both, and we get both, and it’s part of what makes this book rock so much!

One of the things that bridged these two halves of Nbaro’s life is the neural lace she discovered had been implanted in/on her brain in Artifact Space. It was a fairly small (albeit very plot-relevant) part of the first book; in Deep Black, she actually starts learning how to use it, and it changes quite a lot of her work dramatically. We all like it when sci fi authors give us cool tech to ooh and ahh over, but – like the uterine replicators of Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga – it’s elevated to something really fascinating when a storyteller explores the ramifications of that tech, and that’s what Cameron does here. The neural lace allows Nbaro to multi-task in ways her unaugmented peers (and superiors!) can’t, and gives her an enormous amount of access to the ship (although that’s not a given with a neural lace; if the AI of the Athens, Morosini, didn’t give her that access, she wouldn’t have it, lace or not) – and not everyone is happy about that, for very good reasons. In a similar way to how our eyes are gradually opened to the full scope of the plot, Nbaro’s neural lace helps us understand the direction humanity is going in, in this series – and it’s both exciting and frightening. Cameron never tries to pretend that forward motion (it seems too complicated to be called simply progress, as if it’s uncomplicatedly a positive thing) comes without consequences or harm, which I really appreciated; but equally, it’s clear that forward motion also can’t be stopped. What that’s going to mean for humanity and human space, I have no idea, but I am, again, very excited about it!

And though it’s a little subtle, Nbaro’s growing grasp of her neural lace – and what the technology is going to mean for humanity as a whole going forward – is contrasted really well against the two alien species we know of. Both the Starfish and the Bubbles have been around far longer than humans have – so why are they lacking some of the things humans take for granted, like AIs? Is it possible that they did have these technologies some time in the past, but got rid of them? And if so, why, and should humans get rid of them too? It’s usually a good idea to learn from other people’s mistakes so you don’t have to make them yourself – but some of these things give the Greatships, and the rest of human space, some advantages over the aliens. So should we keep them, and keep those advantages? Or sacrifice them before we go through whatever the aliens went through? I don’t know if Cameron intended for this to be a kind of exploration of the pros and cons, or risks of, technological advancement, but it does kind of end up being one – albeit not a lecture-y one, thank the gods! And not a moralising one, either; we’re not left with the clear conclusion that technological advancement is good OR that it’s bad – just that it is, and it’s smart to be careful about it. At the very least, we should ask questions when we get new tech – and I did love the questions Nbaro started to ask herself when she worked out a lot of this on her own.

Everything to do with the aliens is excellent – I really cannot emphasise that enough. The issue of anthromorphising an alien species, in particular, and how that affects individual humans and humanity in general, is a fairly Big Thing, and the way that plays out is just FANTASTIC. But I can’t really tell you anything about the alien stuff without spoilering you, so just trust me when I say that I can’t imagine ANYONE is going to be unhappy with it.

I don’t know what to say about the romance, other than I enjoyed it; it’s not really a major component of the book, especially since Nbaro and Dorcas don’t really have…a traditional relationship? I love their dynamic; I love the mutual respect, and how well they brainstorm together and inspire each other; I love that they both very clearly have their own areas of expertise and neither of them thinks the other is lesser for that; I love that they’re so good at communicating with each other, even as they slip up sometimes, just like everyone else. But they don’t date as such, they’re not very sappy or swoony, and it would be quite easy to ignore the romantic angle, I think, if you wanted to do that. But it’s there for readers who will enjoy it, and I’m not going to lie, after everything Nbaro’s been through, it’s still really wonderful to see her happy, and continuing to learn how to trust people, how to be open. And seriously: YAY FOR COUPLES COMMUNICATING! More of that, please!

All that being said, I do think it’s a good idea to read the short story collection Beyond the Fringe before diving into Deep Black, because two stories in particular give you context that makes this book hit even harder. It’s not mandatory; you won’t miss anything plot-relevant if you skip Fringe. But it definitely adds to the reading experience.

In conclusion: the writing is just as brilliant as it always is with Cameron; the plot is perfect; there is plenty of pew-pewing; the worldbuilding is EPIC; it’s still bizarrely cosy; and there is plenty of thinky-stuff for you to sink your teeth into. There is so much more awesomeness that I can’t share because SPOILERS, but genuinely, I think Deep Space must be one of the best book’s Cameron’s ever written. And I say that as someone who did not think I could possibly love a sequel more than I loved Artifact Space!

I cannot say how many times I will reread this before we get book 3, except that it will be many!

The post Pew-Pew On an Epic Scale: Deep Black by Miles Cameron appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Queer as Folklore by Sacha Coward

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 Queer as Folklore by Sacha Coward!

Queer as Folklore: The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward
Published on: 22nd August 2024
Goodreads

'One delight after another. Told with an open heart, a questing curiosity, and a healthy sense of mischief, Queer as Folklore is essential for every seeker of hidden histories' Patrick Ness, author of the 'Chaos Walking' series

Queer as Folklore takes readers across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Join any Pride march and you are likely to see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads trailing sequins, drag queens wearing mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. But these are not just they are queer symbols with historic roots.

To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past and Queer as Folklore is a celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.

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I am a queer myth-geek, and I am particularly geeky about queer myths, and it’s quite hard to find good books on the subject (especially ones that are still in print). I mean, I adore my copy of Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit, but it’s the only really excellent one I know, and it’s hard to rec to people, having been out of print FOREVER.

So LE DUH I pounced on Queer as Folklore the moment I heard about it! I backed it on Unbound, even, and I’ve been waiting several years for it, and AHHHH IT’S FINALLY ALMOST HERE!

(Only the ebook – I think the hardcover is out in November. BUT STILL!)

I actually got my copy a little while ago – perk of backing on Unbound! – and I can assure anyone sceptical that it is, actually, EPIC. Super readable, pulling from cultural history/historical pop culture as well as actual history and myth, and willing to go FAR beyond the Ancient Greek stuff. I’ve only read the first two parts so far, but it opens with ‘Queer Be Dragons’, and honestly, that should be all you need to hear!

It’s out TOMORROW! Make sure to grab a copy!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Queer as Folklore by Sacha Coward appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #200

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.

EIGHT books this week, for the 200th Must-Have Monday!

(Can you believe we’ve had 200 of these already?! I feel the need to celebrate!)

(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)

Asunder by Kerstin Hall
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
Representation: Secondary F/F
Protagonist Age: 29
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

We choose our own gods here.

Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.

Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.

And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.

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I’ve loved Hall’s previous books, but Asunder is officially one of my forever-faves – mesmerising, breathtaking, and darkly wondrous. I need everyone to read it!

My review!

Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Caribbean-coded setting, queernorm setting, polyamorous MC, nonbinary rep
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

The magical island of Chynchin is facing conquerors from abroad and something sinister from within in this entrancing fantasy from the Grand Master Award–winning author Nalo Hopkinson.

Veycosi, in training as a griot (an historian and musician), hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light and thus secure a spot for himself on Chynchin’s Colloquium of scholars. However, unexpected events prevent that from happening. Fifteen Ymisen galleons arrive in the harbor to force a trade agreement on Chynchin. Veycosi tries to help, hoping to prove himself with a bold move, but quickly finds himself in way over his head.

Bad turns to worse when malign forces start stirring. Pickens (children) are disappearing and an ancient invading army, long frozen into piche (tar) statues by island witches is stirring to life—led by the fearsome demon known as the Blackheart Man. Veycosi has problems in his polyamorous personal life, too. How much trouble can a poor student take? Or cause all by himself as the line between myth and history blends in this delightfully sly tale by one of greatest novelists.

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Everything I’ve heard about Blackheart Man has me WILDLY excited for it – Caribbean influences on the worldbuilding, marriage is between three people, a non-capitalist society that takes being paid for work as an insult–!!! And of course, it’s Nalo Hopkinson, so it’s pretty much GUARANTEED to be epic!!!

Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans Jewish MLM MC, brown MLM love interest, MLM love interest
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

Rule #1: They can't speak. Rule #2: They can't move. Rule #3: They can't hurt you.

Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home a bit complicated. It might have been easier if his grandfather’s ghost didn’t give him such scathing looks of disapproval as he went through a second, HRT-induced puberty, or if he didn't have the pressure of all those relatives—living and dead—judging every choice he makes. It’s no wonder that Ezra runs as far away from the family business as humanly possible.

But when the floor of his dream job drops out from under him and his mother uses the family Passover seder to tell everyone that she’s running away with the rabbi’s wife, Ezra finds himself back in the thick of it. With his parents’ marriage imploding and the Friedman Family Memorial Chapel on the brink of financial ruin, Ezra agrees to step into his mother's shoes and help out . . . which means long days surrounded by ghosts that no one else can see.

And then there's his unfortunate crush on Jonathan, the handsome funeral home volunteer who just happens to live downstairs from Ezra's new apartment . . . and the appearance of the ghost of Jonathan's gone-too-soon husband, Ben, who is breaking every spectral rule Ezra knows.

Because Ben can speak. He can move. And as Ezra tries to keep his family together and his heart from getting broken, he quickly realizes that there's more than one way to be haunted—and more than one way to become a ghost.

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Well this sounds adorable and very sweet! Definitely lining this up as my next romance read!

She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor
Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Representation: West African-coded cast and setting
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, Firespitter is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy

When there is a call, there is often a response.

Najeeba knows.

She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.

Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

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I’m willing to bet a novella from Okorafor can hit at least as hard as a novel from anyone else! I don’t usually want to read about women having to fight for their places among men, but none of the reviews I’ve seen have said anything about Najeeba having to struggle against misogyny, so I’m tentatively hopeful. She Who Knows apparently covers the backstory of a character who appears in Okorafor’s Who Fears Death, which I admit I haven’t read – early readers seem to be divided on which is best to read first, but in agreement re She Who Knows working perfectly as a standalone. I’ll probably end up flipping a coin to decide what order to read them in!

Rise and Divine (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #5) by Lana Harper
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

A magical romantic comedy sparkling with spells and witchcraft.To save both her town and the woman who loves her against all odds, a witch haunted by loss must reckon with her turbulent past.

Even in a family of chaotic necromancers, Daria 'Dasha' Avramov has always been an outlier. An event planner at the Arcane Emporium occult megastore, Dasha is also a devil eater: a rare witch with a natural affinity for banishing demons and traversing the veil. Still grieving the loss of her parents and plagued by a dangerous obsession with what lies beyond the other side of the veil, Dasha is both fiery and guarded, an expert at dodging commitment. Her one real regret is a devastating breakup with Ivy Thorn.

When they are forced to work together to plan a festival, Dasha hopes that sparks might fly once again. But as they confront the fault lines and passion lingering between them, Dasha and Ivy must also stand against an otherworldly threat unlike anything Thistle Grove has faced before.

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The Witches of Thistle Grove series is always fun, although I didn’t love book 4 – I’m hoping this one will be better, especially since we’re going to be back with the Avramovs again!

The Wind that Sweeps the Stars by Greg Keyes
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

A taut high fantasy as an assassin must destroy an empire from within, eliminating wizards, their demons, and even the emperor. For the lives—for the very souls—of her people, she must succeed within a single day, or her homeland will be destroyed.

ALONE AGAINST AN EMPIRE.

When Yash of Zeltah arrives in the fortress city of Honaq she is greeted as a barbarian, a simple pawn. Her marriage to prince Chej has been arranged, they say, to avert war. Yet she knows the truth, for the armies already ravage the land. A skilled and deadly assassin, there is more to Yash than any might suspect. Before another day can pass, she must defeat the masters of the nine towers—the plagues, magics, and monsters they control, the soldiers they command. Without raising an alarm, she must kill all who oppose her—even the immortal emperor. The lives and souls of Zeltah, the people and the land upon which they live, all depend on it.

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Grey Keyes is not an author I’m very familiar with, but I found myself intrigued when several reviews mention that the main character in Wind changes sex via shapeshifting? Or something like that? Plus, it allegedly goes very heavy on the worldbuilding, and if you’ve hung around here at all, you know that’s my jam!

The Phoenix and the Firebird by Alexis Kossiakoff, Scott Forbes Crawford
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, YA
Representation: Major Chinese character
Published on: 20th August 2024
Goodreads

A bullet-riddled train staggers into a Chinese station in 1920, and Lucy discovers that her father, a Russian officer, has been kidnapped. A mysterious feather guides her into a dangerous realm of magic and monsters to rescue him. But she knows she can’t take on the quest alone. With her friend Su, a girl as quick with words as with her fists, the two uncover the terrifying truth: a notorious warlord has seized Lucy’s father. Worse, he is about to invade their city. The friends confront the criminal underworld, cross a haunted forest, and outsmart creatures they thought lived only in fairytales. But will their wits and bravery be enough to beat the warlord’s army of human soldiers and magical beasts?

Soar into a grand adventure, a world of Chinese and Slavic myths … into the world of The Phoenix and the Firebird.

"With cinematographic crispness, this romantic vision of a distant time and culture conjures up a tale of friendship, family, and magic. Stay up all night to read it, and you’ll freshly understand the old Russian adage, 'The morning is wiser than the night.' I was enchanted."
- Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

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I’m always excited when different mythologies get to interact, and this sounds wonderful – I’m excited to see what the authors have done with this premise! And crossing my fingers that the phoenix and firebird both show up on-page! The early reviews have all been very impressed; apparently we’re going to have real-world history all mixed in to the mythology…!

Queer as Folklore: The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters by Sacha Coward
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists
Published on: 22nd August 2024
Goodreads

'One delight after another. Told with an open heart, a questing curiosity, and a healthy sense of mischief, Queer as Folklore is essential for every seeker of hidden histories' Patrick Ness, author of the 'Chaos Walking' series

Queer as Folklore takes readers across centuries and continents to reveal the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Join any Pride march and you are likely to see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads trailing sequins, drag queens wearing mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. But these are not just they are queer symbols with historic roots.

To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past and Queer as Folklore is a celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.

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!!! I backed this on Unbound way back – and got my copy a little bit ago – but this week the ebook edition goes on sale for non-backers! I’m a complete nerd for myths and folklore, and someone diving into all the queerness in them that’s been buried over the centuries?! Um, yes PLEASE! There’ll also be a hardcover edition coming in November, if you want to wait for that.

Will you be reading any of these? Did I miss any releases you think I should know about? Let me know!

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