Siavahda's Blog, page 25

Genre-Defying, Genre-Defining: Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Science Fantasy
Representation: QBIPOC cast
Published on: 18th June 2024
ISBN: 1250847699
Goodreads

Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met after the war, but before the peace. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind. But their journey will not be easy. In every lifetime, oppressors narrow the walls of possibility, shaping reality to fit their own needs. And behind the walls of history, the witches of the red web swear that every throne will fall.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.

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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~a handful of minutes
~hunt treasure, find demons
~time ain’t what it oughtta be
~the things one will do to get a son-in-law
~grandparents made of abnormal atoms

I’ll be honest: I don’t think I understood most of what was going on in Rakesfall.

But I loved every second of it.

In the simplest possible terms, it is, as the blurb claims, the…story…of two (at least two) souls as they reincarnate again and again. But describing it that way doesn’t even BEGIN to give you an idea of what Rakesfall is, or is like.

enormity cannot truly, fully be spoken of without recourse to fable. There is a dread scale at which only myth works; only nightmare has the technology. Worlds must be broken to convey that attempts to depict a multidimensionally unspeakable reality in fiction, including this one, are but contemptible in the final reading.

Part of it seems to take place in the past of our world, and some in our present or near-present – but the vast majority of it, all the stories that are really one story, are taking part in a world that isn’t ours, and then in a future that could be, but could just as easily be the future of this world that isn’t ours. (Readers familiar with Chandrasekera’s debut, The Saint of Bright Doors, will recognise the city of Luriat, which we visit again this book – albeit relatively briefly.

Does that make Rakesfall the/a sequel to The Saint of Bright Doors? I don’t think so, but some of the terms used in TSoBD come up again in Rakesfall, so it is helpful to have read TSoBD first. Very not-mandatory, though.)

Possibly this is the meaning of the title – The Rakesfall, if I understood it correctly, was an event that…‘broke’ isn’t the right term…changed the timeline, and thus the world, into…not what it ‘shouldn’t’ be, but what it wasn’t before. So I think the setting(s are) meant to be…a world our world could have been, or might have been, or would be, if time hadn’t gone the way it did. And/or will be, re the future parts, if we don’t hurry up and eat the rich already.

I’M TRYING MY BEST, OKAY?

Georges does not ask himself why the Christian devil has hooves and horns, which is of course that they are satyrical.

There is wordplay and mindplay and a rapid cycling through perspectives, sometimes several perspectives of the same event or events. We jump from the colonialisation of Sri Lanka to the far-future when humanity has left Earth behind entirely, and a whole bunch of places – some real, some meant-to-be-real, some meant-to-not-be – in-between (and before, and after). I don’t think it’s accurate to say that there is one clear, linear story being played out over all these lifetimes and timelines (if there is, I missed it) but it would be equally untrue to claim that Rakesfall has no plot; each section of the book – most of which cover one lifetime or time-period – covers a series of events that I was very invested in, even when I knew I was missing some nuance or only comprehending a piece of the whole. There is a murder-mystery; there are many attempts to ‘regreen’ the Earth after climate collapse; there is identity-theft with souls; there are quests, kind of; there is subtle and unsubtle resistance to political oppression; there are ghosts being taken to court to stop their hauntings. There is a LOT.

It is difficult to stay in any one place, one world, one life. Each life is hard time, requiring painful incarnation, carceral enfleshment, the performativity of renaming and reliving, learning new histories, wilful forgettings and distancings, whatever is needed to maintain narrative continuity and protect genre boundaries.

But it is not a collection of short stories – not even a collection of interconnected short stories – nor is it a mess. Rakesfall is cohesive, though I’d forgive anyone for not seeing how it COULD be, after the description above. I said I didn’t see one obvious story that these smaller stories are all a part of, and that’s true, but they still share something fundamental; they still form a whole, even if the whole isn’t anything as simple as what (white, Western) readers are used to thinking of as a story. Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends; Rakesfall doesn’t, really, because for all its fantastical elements it is mimicking (echoing? copying? replicating? recreating?) reality, which is also made up of stories but does not form one big easy-to-read here’s-the-climax there’s-the-moral Story.

And for all that the individual stories don’t click together like puzzle pieces to make another, bigger story, the various parts – facets – incarnations of Rakesfall do fit together. Rakesfall is eat-the-rich anarchist, anti-facist, anti-capitalist, deeply concerned with the idea of the visible and invisible worlds, the latter of which is by turns a place of spirits and one of digitally uploaded personalities (and really, when you think about it, what’s the difference?) Exorcisms, conceptually, come up again and again, as does the theme of losing your skin, casting it off, getting it back, it being stolen, reclaiming it, the raw-red-primality that lies beneath it and must sometimes be bared (defiantly, joyfully, wrathfully). Quantum physics melts gleefully and purposefully with history, folklore, philosophy, religion without the religion.

Objects are not discrete. The perception of time is an illusion. Seeming biological realities are socially constructed: gender is only genre, race is a race to the bottom, species as arbitrary as specie. Seeming social realities are machinations of power hiding their inverse: slavery is called freedom to disguise its exploitation; ignorance is called strength, to champion political illiteracy; and most of all, most of all, war is called peace, the peace bought by murder, the peace of the unmarked grave.

I also think…possibly…that the reason all these parts, all these smaller stories, work together is because it’s like…it’s like watching two people go through life. Even though they are actually going through lives, it somehow doesn’t feel too different from watching how a person – ‘develops’ is the wrong word, it implies a set end-point that doesn’t exist when you’re talking about people/souls – throughout their life. You watch a single life for a lifetime, you see the person go forward, stumble, go forward, two steps back, now take a step to the right, forwards again, stumble again, always themselves but always changing, always different, too (unless they stagnate, and we all hope we never get caught in that trap). The two souls we follow through Rakesfall are like that – even if I wasn’t always sure which character in Part III or Part VI etc was which soul (because, of course, they change names and genders and their personalities are not identical in every life, why would they be, they are not replicas of their past-selves, they are them-selves) – even so, I think there’s a quiet, subtle sense that you are still following the same people, lifetime after lifetime. We’re seeing them in different contexts, different times, seeing them as they grow, as they stumble, as they take a step to the right…but they’re the same two souls. There’s something, something I can’t articulate, something that proves Chandrasekera is a genius (as if his debut didn’t prove that, as if every other aspect of Rakesfall doesn’t prove it), that makes me feel, ‘ah yes, it’s these two again’.

EVEN WHEN I DON’T KNOW WHICH IS WHICH.

WHAT CAN ONE CALL THAT BUT GENIUS???

Reincarnation is horizontal, and always plural: no person survives death, but all worlds live and die together, and lives echo like waves upon waves in the great akashic ocean because we choose to work together across time. We choose!

I can’t narrow down Rakesfall to just one thing; I can’t sum it up in a nice, pithy little quote with a bow on top. There are layers and layers of meaning here, a serpent with endless skins where each shed skin becomes a new snake that is itself but is the old snake too, repeating on and on in an infinite, dizzying, constantly-creating ouroboros. Except it’s not an ouroboros, because in an ouroboros the snake is eating its own tail and that’s not what’s happening here, the snake is not devouring itself, the snake is holding hands with all the other snakes born from its shed skins and that is how they form a circle, an endless chain across eternity all holding hands, all of them unique and all of them the same.

(Yes I said hands, I meant hands, don’t you see the impossibility is the point.)

The snake isn’t trying to eat itself; there are other people trying to eat the snake. And maybe the only black-and-white thing Chandrasekera has to say is that those people are bad.

Everything else is complicated as fuck. But the people trying to eat other people – that’s simple. That’s easy. They are the only ones who are truly monstrous, and the only ones who cannot be forgiven, and the only ones who must, must, be completely and utterly destroyed.

you speak of our innocence and ignorance, and you weren’t wrong about that. We have forgotten so much from the human eon. But we remember the parts that matter.

(The people trying to eat the snake are the CEOs and presidents and dictators and war-mongerers and I think you get the demographic I’m describing here.)

It’s funny; I have to reach for poetry and metaphor to describe Rakesfall, and one of Chandrasekera’s (many) points in it is how some concepts/truths/stories are too big, too much, too true for us mortals to begin to grasp without poetry and metaphor. (‘enormity cannot truly, fully be spoken of without recourse to fable’ is the first quote I quoted.) Which, following that reasoning, makes Rakesfall, too, something too big, too much, too true to comprehend fully without the…the protection, which is also the filter, of poetry.

Which. Yes. Yes it is.

Family legend had it that when Vidyucchika’s father was born, her nonbaryonic grandfather sighed to see the child’s traitor penis.

So one of my favourite things about reading with an e-reader is the built in dictionary. (I’m going somewhere with this, bear with me.) But because I read SFF, it’s not unheard of for a book to present me with a word my dictionary doesn’t know. Sometimes it’s a very specific niche thing, like a minor part of a ship built in the 1600s, or a very archaic term for a colour, something like that. And because this book is by Chandrasekera, I wasn’t surprised when it happened in Rakesfall.

Nonbaryonic, I said to myself. What does that mean??? To a search engine!

As you might guess, it means ‘not baryonic’. Okay, so what does baryonic mean?

I DON’T KNOW.

I MEAN, I KNOW THE DEFINITION

baryonic
adjective

all objects made of normal atomic matter

BUT IN NO WAY DOES THAT HELP ME. Vidyucchika has a baryonic set of grandparents and a nonbaryonic set of grandparents and I don’t understand

But I fucking LOVE IT

Because seriously, how cool is that concept? GRANDPARENTS…NOT MADE OF NORMAL ATOMIC MATTER??? SO WHAT ARE THEY??? I don’t know! I have pieced together some things that happen so I kind of understand, or think I do, some of the practical effects of having nonbaryonic grandparents, what having them allows to happen in the story – but I don’t really understand what the grandparents are.

And I don’t feel patronized, I don’t feel like Chandrasekera is showing off or trying to make me feel stupid or anything of the kind. For one thing, I feel honoured that Chandrasekera thinks I have a chance of keeping up with him as he tells this story, and that makes me work harder, focus harder, trying to understand as much of it as I can. But ultimately, I think Chandrasekera is just light-years ahead of the rest of us; he is on another level so far from mine, from anyone else’s, that my elevator doesn’t even have a button for it. I don’t know what is going on in his head, but I am mesmerised, I am entranced, I am loving every second of it.

I understand enough to appreciate what I don’t understand.

Time elapses, or does not lapse. Time elongates; time elopes; time lopes like a leopard that is not a leopard.

Obviously, this is not a book I’d recommend for readers who need to understand everything, who must have all the answers by the final page. There’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever, it just means that Rakesfall isn’t for you. (Although who knows; maybe if you give it a try, you’ll get a taste for books that leave you flailing in bedazzled bewilderment. Weirder things have happened.

Weirder things have happened IN THIS BOOK.)

Who is it for? Anyone who wants to be challenged. Anyone who likes the sensation of their mind stretching to accommodate new knowledge, new ways of thinking, just newness. Anyone whose heart beats faster when you come across a SFF story that really is like nothing else you’ve ever read (or watched, or heard) before. Anyone who craves layers and layers of thought and myth and meaning in their fiction, who wants to sink their teeth into a Rôti sans pareil of a book and feel it bite back.

Anyone who is happy to be light-years behind, and wants to chase the comet anyway, even if you might not ever catch it.

Rakesfall is phenomenal. It’s a masterpiece of mindfuckery and spirituality, a manifestation of exquisitely incomprehensible imagination and undiluted emotion, a manifesto of anarchism and akashic freedoms and the wryly joyful impossibility of writing the mythic, at which one can never truly succeed but where the meaning lies in the trying. It’s a thought experiment and an argument and a case study, a high-speed race through the spheres, a merciless dissection of the laws and powers mundane and metaphysical, and all of it brutal and beautiful and breathtaking.

It is, in a word, unmissable.

The post Genre-Defying, Genre-Defining: Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Under the Dragon Moon by Mawce Hanlin

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 Under the Dragon Moon by Mawce Hanlin!

Under the Dragon Moon (The Belamour Archives Book 1) by Mawce Hanlin
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC, M/M
Published on: 20th June 2024
Goodreads

To break the thread of weaver’s fate, those who witness must weave anew…

Mael Nguyen doesn’t believe in fate, but he does believe in magic. His entire life revolves around the study of the arcane—spells and rituals, potions and illusions. As far as Mael is concerned, all he needs is a book in one hand and magic in the other. Anything outside of his bookshop, hidden away in the streets of New Orleans, isn’t worth his attention. But when a strange human stumbles into his life and hires him for a job, bringing along his blinding smile and curious magic, Mael finds that Fate is just as dangerous as Magic.

Leo Greyson refuses to believe in fate, but he desperately wishes to believe in magic. As a small time rockstar, full time radio host, Leo has never been one to shy away from experience and adventure. He’s always lived his life on the edge—always moving, never standing still. But when his twin sister is murdered, and he gains custody of her strangely magical daughter, that constant motion comes to a screeching halt. Instead, he is launched into an entirely new world hidden right beneath his nose, and Leo finds himself wondering if Fate really does exist, and if she’s led him right where he needs to be.

A queer take on magic, murder, and romance, fans of The Dresden Files, Howl's Moving Castle, and A Marvelous Light will find family, acceptance, and a fantastical new world to get lost in within the pages of Under the Dragon Moon, the first book in the Belamour Archives.

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As well as that stunning cover (by artist Anniris), Under the Dragon Moon ticks a bunch of my boxes. For example, I have a truly stupid soft spot for magical kids with helplessly flailing guardians – no idea why, but I very much do! And I suspect a whole bunch of us can appreciate the idea of a life of ‘a book in one hand and magic in the other’, no? Living in a MAGIC BOOKSHOP??? #LifeGoals much???

I already love Mael and I kinda want to be him.

The blurb says ‘when a strange human stumbles into his life’ so is Mael not human? We know the world of magic is hidden – Leo enters ‘an entirely new world hidden right beneath his nose’, which heavily suggests not everyone in the Belamour Archives world knows about magic. It’s a secret. So who, or what, populates the magical world? If Mael doesn’t consider himself human???

HMMMMMMM.

This sounds fun, and sweet, and possibly hilarious – there’s so much potential for shenanigans! – and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

What are you looking forward to reading atm?

The post I Can’t Wait For…Under the Dragon Moon by Mawce Hanlin appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #190

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.)

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World No Magic, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown queer MC, brown nonbinary love interest with one eye, bi/pansexual love interest
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Arasti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world―and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea.

To find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Haffar. They are far from happy to see him, but together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, profit. The only things in their way? A calculating new Arasti ambassador to the Isles of Lost Souls who's got his eyes on Avra's every move; Brother Julian, a beautiful, mysterious new member of the crew with secrets of his own and a frankly inconvenient vow of celibacy; the fact that they're sailing straight into sea serpent breeding season and almost certain doom.

But if they can find a way to survive and sell the secret on the black market, they’ll all be as wealthy as kings―and, more importantly, they'll be legends.

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Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read, perfectly calibrated to me personally! I laughed SO MUCH, but it’s not ‘just’ a funny book; it’s also wicked smart and insightful and ANGRY, the Terry Pratchett kind of angry, which is wrapped up in comedy but hits all the harder because of it.

Containing: shenanigans on top of wardrobes, a nonbinary pirate captain love-hate interest, sea serpents, haunted giant turtles (like, GIANT), a plot-relevant cake competition, blue dogs (actually blue, not fancy grey!), and a blasphemous coat! Among many other awesome things.

Seriously, PERF IN EVERY WAY!

My review!

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Korean trans MC, sapphic MCs, Black gay MC, fat/plus-sized gay MC, non-binary MC, assorted queer secondary cast
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Cuckoo is a searing new novel from Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin, where a motley crew of kidnapped kids try to stay true to themselves while serving time in a conversion camp from hell.

In the late 90s, five queer kids, whose parents want them “fixed,” find themselves thrown together at a secretive "tough love" camp deep in the scorching Utah desert.

Tormented and worked to the point of collapse by hardline religious zealots intent on straightening them out, they slowly become aware that something in the mountains north of the camp is speaking to them in their dreams, and that the children who return home to their families have...changed.

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This was so scary I couldn’t finish it – but it’s undeniably amazing. If you can handle conversion camps and queer kids being tortured and killed you’ll, um, love this???

No, really, it is seriously good. I don’t think Felker-Martin is capable of writing anything that isn’t!

My review!

The Fire Within Them (The Soulfire Saga, #2) by Matthew Ward
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

The second book in Matthew Ward's action-packed trilogy, the Soulfire Saga, The Fire Within Them is set in a world ruled by an immortal king, where souls fuel magic and a supernatural mist known as the Veil threatens to engulf the land. Perfect for fans of John Gwynne and Anthony Ryan.

For the first time in a millennium, the kingdom of Khalad is divided. The Battle of Athenoch has fanned the spark of Bashar Vallant’s rebellion to a raging flame. Tyzanta, jewel of the east, has declared for his cause, and other cities have followed. Vallant, the people’s hero, may soon be powerful enough to challenge Caradan Diar, Khalad’s immortal king.

But such power demands great personal sacrifice.

Afflicted with omen rot after channeling the Deadwinds to save Athenoch from the koilos army, Kat searches for a means to stop the disease killing her as it did her mother. Her journey will uncover secrets long since buried–secrets concerning her past, her family and the kingdom itself. Eventually she’ll learn that the past never stays buried in Khalad–and that the truth can cut deeper than any blade.

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I loved the first book in this series, The Darkness Before Them, and I’ve been so excited for The Fire Within Them! All the revelations that came near the end of Darkness!!! I neeeeeeeed to know what happens next!

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Sapphic MC, Black trans secondary character, Chinese American secondary character, nonbinary secondary character, F/F
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

In her breathtaking debut—part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com—Emily Hamilton tells a tale of galaxy-spanning friendship, improbable love, and found family.

So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace, but then the stupid dark-matter engine started on its own. Now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri and unable to turn around while being harangued by a hologram that has the face and snide attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.

Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship travels deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting; old mysteries come crawling back to life; and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.

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I should have loved this, and have no idea why I didn’t – I think it’s objectively good! Maybe I’ll love it when I give it another try? Either way I strongly encourage anyone who likes the sound of the blurb to give it a go! I really do think Hamilton is one to watch.

The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Representation: Biracial American-Japanese MC
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Save one world. Doom her own.

From the acclaimed author of The Deep Sky comes a thrilling anti-colonial space heist to save an alien civilization.

Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future.

Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.

Maya sets out on a breakneck quest through a universe teeming with strange life and ancient ruins. But the farther she goes, the more her visions cast a dark shadow over her team of friends new and old. Someone will betray her along the way. Worse yet, in choosing to save one species, she may condemn humanity and Earth itself.
--
CW: violence and gore, xenophobia, xenocide, colonization, vomit, torture, war, infertility, chronic illness, confinement, suicidal thoughts (minor), pandemic, migraines

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Um, anyone who steals artifacts from thieving museums and collectors and so on and returns them to the cultures they belonging to is IMMEDIATELY someone I want to read about!!! EVEN MORE SO when we’re talking alien artifacts and civilisations!!! I am so pouncing on this one the moment it’s on my ereader!!!

The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual latina MC
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Mal's life is over. Her afterlife is only just beginning…

By turns irreverently funny and deeply moving, this debut contemporary fantasy is perfect for fans of They Both Die at the End and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Mal Caldera—former rockstar, retired wild-child and excommunicated black sheep of her Catholic family—is dead. Not that she cares. She only feels bad that her younger sister, Cris, has been left alone with their religious zealot of a mother, picking up the pieces Mal has left behind. While her fellow ghosts party their afterlives away at an abandoned mansion they call the Haunt, Mal is determined to make contact with Cris from beyond the grave.

She manages to enlist the help of reluctant local medium Ren, and together, they concoct a plan to pass on a message to Cris. But the more time they spend together, the more both begin to wonder what might have been if they'd met before Mal died.

Mal knows it's wrong to hold on so tightly to her old life. Bad things happen to ghosts who interfere with the living, and Mal can't help wondering if she's hurting the people she loves by hanging around, haunting their lives. But Mal has always been selfish, and letting go might just be the hardest thing she's ever had to do…

Funny, emotional and life-affirming, The Afterlife of Mal Caldera will have readers laughing one minute and sobbing the next.

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I’ve been seeing so much praise for this one, along with promises/warnings that it will make is feel All The Things, so brace yourself for that!

You can read an excerpt here!

Lovely Creatures by K.T. Bryski
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Doomsday Dot will wake the day the world ends.

That’s what everyone says, yours truly included.

Bryony’s been searching for her big sister for ten years and change, and the trail finally leads her to Mr. Once-Upon-a-Time’s traveling show. There’s a wolf who’ll serve you tea, a lady who’s sometimes a swan, and Bryony’s sister sound asleep in a glass casket. All of them, rolling through the wasteland in a giant wooden Whale.

The Whale’s important, you’ll see.

But Bryony’s not the only one on the hunt. Everyone on the Whale is running from something. And whether Bryony can wake her sister before they’re caught, well, only the Devil herself knows.

The Devil’s important as well. You’ll see that, too.

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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This sounds like a gorgeous mix of whimsical and weird and maybe even dark; the Devil? Yes PLEASE!

Moonbound by Robin Sloan
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Sci Fi
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure.

In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.

It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.

Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.

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I enjoyed Sloan’s Sourdough (right up until the very end, anyway) so I’m willing to check out Moonbound – even if I’m not super clear on exactly what genre it is, or if (and if so, how) it connects to Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore? (Which I haven’t read…) I think it’s post-apocalyptic sci fi masquerading as fantasy? Either way, a world ruled by dragons? I’m at least going to check it out!

The Wilderness of Girls by Madeline Claire Franklin
Genres: Speculative Fiction, YA
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

An unflinching YA debut about a troubled teen who discovers a pack of feral girls in the woods and is swept up in the ensuing mystery: Are the Wild Girls of Happy Valley lost princesses from a faraway land, as they believe, or are they brainwashed victims of a deranged kidnapper?

In her ambitious debut perfect for fans of Sadie and The Hazel Wood, Madeline Claire Franklin crafts a gripping exploration of how the world teaches young girls to cage their wildness―and what happens when they claw themselves free.

After being placed in foster care, Rhi is hungry for a fresh start and begins working at the Happy Valley Wildlife Preserve. While in the woods, she stumbles upon a surreal sight: a pack of wolves guarding four feral and majestic girls. After Rhi gains their trust, they reveal that they’re princesses from another land, raised by a magical prophet they call Mother―and they're convinced Rhi is their lost fifth sister.

Unsure what to believe, Rhi ushers the girls to civilization, where they’re met with societal uproar and scrutiny, dubbed by the ravenous media and true crime junkies as “The Wild Girls of Happy Valley.” Desperate to return to their kingdom, the girls look to Rhi for help. Rhi knows the girls are deluded, but at the same time she’s drawn in by their boldness and authenticity―traits she is afraid she has lost within herself. And when Rhi witnesses strange phenomena she can’t quite explain, the line between fantasy and reality grows blurry.

As the hunt for answers intensifies, Rhi must make a decision that will change the course of her life and the lives of her Wild Girls forever.

Content Warnings — This book portrays, describes, or discusses in detail: Complex-PTSD, suicide and suicidal ideation, disordered eating, body shaming, family and domestic violence, emotional abuse, cannibalism, and sexual assault.

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This is one of those books that MIGHT be fantasy…but might not be. This is usually not my cup of tea, so I hope Franklin doesn’t leave it too ambiguous – and that the magic is real, preferably! But even if it’s not, Wilderness of Girls sounds far too interesting to not give a try! (Even with those content warnings!)

Trailer Park Prince by Andre L. Bradley
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy, YA
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

A decade ago, a rift tore open the Kaydan sky, pulling twin princes, Noan and Jormon, plus thousands of their people, from their home world and dumping them in the American South. In the years since, they've grown used to the drones policing their every move and to hiding the magic-like abilities that set them apart. But they'll never get used to the crosses burning outside their trailer-an occasional reminder that Kaydans don't belong.

Forced to attend a human high school in the name of integration, a band-aid on an increasingly fraught diplomatic situation, the brothers are hesitant but hopeful. Jormon is excited about pursuing the feelings he has for Dirk, a human-raised Kaydan, away from his traditional father's watchful eye. And Noan, blamed for the Kaydans' displacement, is looking for somewhere-anywhere-to fit in.

But the halls of Toombs County High are as inhospitable as the rest of the country, and Jormon and Noan quickly find they're as unwanted in class as they are on this planet. When tragedy strikes and violence breaks out, Jormon and Noan find themselves at the forefront of a battle for the existence of their people. Their bonds tested, the twins face gut-wrenching choices, forcing them to confront who they really are, what they truly want, and what it takes to survive.

When asked to lead in the face of oppression, will they walk away or fight fire with fire?

A thought provoking and unflinching depiction of prejudice, racial oppression, and the need to define oneself in the face of adversary, Trailer Park Prince is a timely allegory unafraid of addressing the divides facing our society. Full of magic, queer identities, action, and social commentary in an urgent and biting contemporary sci-fi fantasy.

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Shouldn’t it really be Trailer Park Princes…? Hm. Maybe one gives up their royalty. I guess we’ll see!

Stone Feather Fang by A.G. Rodriguez
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Representation: Brown MC, queer MC(?)
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

The gods--the cemi--have left the world of Ke', and their lush and verdant Andolin Islands are now inhabited by impious followers.

Teenage priestess Hildy Rios is tasked with saving her religion. In a special ritual called the Telling, she must somehow reawaken her people's love of the gods. Her effort is the last hope of her people: after this Telling, there will be no more chances, as the cemi will vanish into the past, their power forever lost to the world of Ke'.

The weight of her world on her shoulders, Hildy rewrites the Telling's story--and her own. She weaves a tale of her distant ancestor, a boy named Jenaro, blessed with the ability to see and speak to the cemi; a boy who, though long past, becomes as much a part of the present by way of the Telling's power.

For three days, Hildy brings to life the tale of Jenaro and his yearning for adventure, how he is haunted by the cemi of death, and who--like her--is fighting against the shackles of his family and society. For three days, Jenaro becomes real, and the power of the cemi to reach across time should be enough to convince Ke's people, but their impiety runs so deep...

Hildy and Jenaro. Two people joined by cursed blood, but separated by centuries of time. Only the cemi know how their tales will end.

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The premise is a little confusing to me, but also MASSIVELY intriguing – she has to make her people believe in their gods again? With a sort of living story? That’s such a unique idea! And apparently Stone Feather Fang is inspired by Puerto Rican mythology (the author is Puerto Rican American), and I know NOTHING about Puerto Rican mythology, so I’m excited for that!

The Black Between The Stars by Fallon Dewynter
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Published on: 14th June 2024
Goodreads

A CHILD SHUNNED BY THE STARS . . .

Raised in the mountains amongst a fierce sisterhood of elite warriors, Sinadine longs to prove her worth to her people, and dreams of glory at the edge of a sword she has yet to earn. But when the emperor dies and an imperial escort is sent to collect its customary tribute of three girls to serve the new heir, to be free of her curse, Sinadine is given an ultimatum: offer herself in service, or face banishment from her clan, if she refuses.

Furious that she must sacrifice her dreams of glory for chains to the empire that enslaved them, Sinadine is thrust into a dangerous web of imperial politics, where she conspires to assassinate the emperling before the crown can touch his head.

Easy enough for A GIRL TOUCHED BY DARKNESS . . .

The emperling is the last son of a dying line. If she succeeds, her clan and all future generations will be free from tyranny but it she fails, Sinadine will be executed for treason--and her entire clan along with her. Failure is not an option, and while threats lurk in every corner of the palace, the biggest one that stands between her path to victory is Navarre: the emperling's bastard brother--and loyal Second Commander of the Imperial Army.

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Always here for warrior sisterhoods! I’ve heard almost nothing about this one, but I’m willing to give it a try based on that cover alone!

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 #190 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sea Serpents, Cake, and the Power of Laughter: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown bi/pansexual MC, brown non-binary love interest with one eye, bi/pansexual love interest
Protagonist Age: 30s?
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 11th June 2024
ISBN: B0CGRYKH6G
Goodreads

A queer pirate fantasy standalone adventure by Alexandra Rowland, the author of A Taste of Gold and Iron

"Come for the irrepressible gremlin of a narrator, stay for the plot-relevant cake competitions! A whip-smart, hilarious and exuberant high seas romp."—Freya Marske, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Marvellous Light

A LitHub most anticipated book of 2024

Avra Helvaçi, former field agent of the Araşti Ministry of Intelligence, has accidentally stolen the single most expensive secret in the world—and the only place to flee with a secret that big is the open sea.

To find a buyer with deep enough pockets, Avra must ask for help from his on-again, off-again ex, the pirate Captain Teveri az-Ḥaffār. They are far from happy to see him, but together, they hatch a plan: take the information to the isolated pirate republic of the Isles of Lost Souls, fence it, profit. The only things in their way? A calculating new Araşti ambassador to the Isles of Lost Souls who’s got his eyes on Avra’s every move; Brother Julian, a beautiful, mysterious new member of the crew with secrets of his own and a frankly inconvenient vow of celibacy; the fact that they’re sailing straight into sea serpent breeding season and almost certain doom.

But if they can find a way to survive and sell the secret on the black market, they’ll all be as wealthy as kings—and, more important, they’ll be legends.

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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~blue dogs
~spooky dildos
~cruel, cruel possums
~laughing till it hurts, then laughing some more
~comedy that will convert you to anarchism

Every time I think Rowland can’t possibly get any better, they go ahead and OUTDO THEMSELF AGAIN!

(A brief note: if you fell in love with A Taste of Gold and Iron, then a) you have great taste and b) you need to know that Running Close to the Wind is a very different kind of book. It is equally (if not, dare I say, EVEN MORE) excellent! But where AToGaI is very sensual and luxurious and full of yearning, Running Close to the Wind is cheeky and exciting and utterly shameless, and I think it’s best to know that going in. I adore both, and I think many others will too, but you do have to shift gears and appreciate Running Close to the Wind for what it is, not go comparing it to AToGaI. That way lies only disappointment, and that would be a tragedy, because if you embrace Running Close to the Wind and judge it only on its own merits, it will light you up with so much joy that you will shine like a STAR.)

Running Close to the Wind is fundamentally FUN. It is essentially fun, and I do not mean that in the sense of, when you boil it down RCttW is nothing but fun – because it is not, there’s a whole lot of other really great stuff in there, rage and philosophy and critiquing power structures and a beautifully blasphemous coat. What I mean is, fun is essential to the make-up of RCttW.

RCttW is a vessel helmed by hilarity. It sails upon a sea of silliness. It is packed to the absolute gills with glee. When I said it’s a fundamentally fun book, I was being wholly literal: fun is fundamental to the structure, plot, tone, characters, messaging and execution of RCttW.

THIS IS AN INEXPRESSIBLY FUN BOOK, MY FRIENDS. INEXPRESSIBLY.

“Listen, though, I can’t decide–do you think Tev would like it if you delivered me to them hogtied?”

*

“Hello, incandescent one,” Avra said adoringly, lying hogtied at Teveri’s feet on the deck of their ship.

I giggled so much reading this book. When I talked about it with the hubby, I only managed to get through a description of the first chapter before we were both laughing too hard for me to continue. IF YOU WANT A SMASHING, SPARKLING, SIDE-SPLITTING GOOD TIME, THEN MY DEARS, I REALLY CANNOT RECOMMEND RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND STRONGLY ENOUGH!

What is it that makes it so funny??? The main character, Avra, is definitely a huge part of it; he is a chaotic trash-goblin with no shame whatsoever, a scrawny, self-professed trollop who is absolutely willing to Cause Problems to get his way (or get some attention)(or when he’s bored).

“You want me to not cause problems. But you see, Markefa, I have decided to cause problems.”

He is ridiculous and over-the-top and semi-manic all the time, and I love him with my whole entire heart.

“So now they’re expecting you to cause problems.”

Avra mulled on this.

“Think of how irritated they would be if you did such a good job that everyone was really nice to you. They’d hate that, no?”

“They would hate that,” Avra agreed, still transfixed in her gaze. “Yes. Yes. I will cause…different problems.”

There’s also the fact that he maybe-probably-definitely has been blessed by a goddess of luck after beating one of her priests at cards, allowing Rowland to arrange the most brilliant and impossible coincidences around him. (Nothing that affects the free will of others, which is a detail I noticed and appreciated a lot, but distractions happening at just the right moment to allow him to sneak past a guard, that kind of thing.) I wouldn’t say the plot relies on these coincidences – coincidence-driven plot might be annoying after a while – but they do add to the plot marvellously, in the same way that sprinkles are not strictly speaking necessary on ice-cream, but do make it indisputably better.

And the fact that Avra himself is extremely sceptical of his so called ‘witchy-luck’??? Honestly makes it even funnier.

“I have a sparkling personality,” Avra said. “I have bags of charisma.”

“Bags of it,” Markefa said, because she was arguably Avra’s best friend on the whole crew. “Bags and bags of charisma you scrounged out of a rubbish heap and carry around with you in damp burlap bags.”

This man gets into arguments with his not-tarot deck, okay, I love him.

“You made a suspicious face when you drew the first card,” Teveri said. “And you drew three.”

“You don’t need to know what the first one was, it’s not relevant. Don’t change the subject! He’s definitely guilty of something–”

“Thought the first card is usually the most relevant one.”

“The deck was being bitchy! It was a fun little joke!”

What else? There’s Avra’s very non-traditional dynamic with Taveri, the non-binary pirate captain; their relationship may be on-and-off-again, but their dynamic remains, regardless of context, annoyed-but-aroused dominant and the brattiest bratty submissive you could possibly imagine. Avra worships the ground Taveri walks on, needs (and demands) their constant attention (what kind of attention doesn’t matter in the slightest), and wants nothing more than to be allowed to sleep on the floor next to Taveri’s bed after sex. Taveri finds Avra infuriating, impossible to predict, and is slightly disgusted with their own taste re finding Avra attractive at all.

Drop into the mix one Julian–

“Does anyone know who or what a Julian is? Teveri asked me to bring one to them.”

–an impossibly sexy monk who is very much aware of his sex appeal and is so very ready to use it to manipulate others or just to wind up Avra, regardless of his vow of chastity (which he is very unfairly sticking to despite, you know, wielding his sex appeal like a weapon). Both Taveri and Avra are attracted to him – hells, everyone with any attraction to men is attracted to Julian – but where Taveri wants the sexy (and very educated) monk to make sense of the expensive secret Avra (very accidentally) stole, Avra does not trust Julian as far as he could throw him.

“He will betray us all. He will decode the science into small words that you and I can understand, Tev, and then he will do something shocking with it. We cannot predict what someone that pretty is going to do. We don’t know how the minds of pretty people work, Tev. He could decide to do anything and we would never see it coming.”

(Which would not be far, what with Avra being a scrawny ‘rat-faced’ little thing and Julian being something of a Viking.)

Honestly, any one of these characters – Avra, Teveri, and Julian – would be enough to carry a normal book all by themselves. The three of them together??? Is the literary equivalent of the philosopher’s stone, turning everything they touch into gold and granting their names (and Rowland’s) immortality. No one in their world will forget them, and I seriously doubt any reader ever will either!

And there’s yet more to wax poetic (jester-ic?) about: the setting. All but two of Rowland’s books so far have been set in the same world, so if you’ve read other novels of Rowland’s you may pick up on some Easter eggs, but Running Close to the Wind is tied particularly closely to A Taste of Gold and Iron – in some ways you could argue that RCttW is a sequel of sorts. It’s definitely a companion. Avra is from the kingdom featured in AToGaI, and the secret he stole is the one (one of the ones) the characters of AToGaI are concerned about.

But we are not in the kingdom of AToGaI; we are in the Isles of Lost Souls, which is the closest thing pirates as a demographic have to a town or communal home base. And the Isles are a freaking delight. To reach them, a ship must navigate around the giant (and I mean GIANT) turtles that surround the Isles, and the various (human) ghosts who haunt said turtles! There is a Street of Flowers, populated by sex workers who all adore Avra; there is a tavern inside what ought to be the holiest site of a major religion; there is a retired pirate slowly carving a cliff into a giant skull just because. Rowland’s approach has clearly been of the bigger, better, bolder, MORE variety, loudly asking why not??? when creating their pirates and their society. Yes, haunted giant turtles! Yes, blasphemous taverns! Yes, skull-cliffs!

And the BAKING COMPETITION. The importance of the baking competition to everyone on the Isles! Yes, it’s inherently funny to imagine a bunch of pirates engaged in a baking competition, obviously, that is objectively a whimsical flavour of hilarious. But it’s the fact that the competition MATTERS! It isn’t a joke! It’s deadly serious, and not in the way that invites the reader to poke fun at how seriously someone is taking a stupid thing. Because the competition is not a stupid thing. It’s a Cultural Event. It matters. And that is so very marvellous; that is so much better than it being a stupid thing for us to laugh at. I mean, I did laugh, and you will too, but not mockingly. I laughed out of delight, and I loved that the baking competition, its existence and the fact that it matters, the fact that it is not a stupid thing, makes the pirates people. Up until the competition, it is so clear that Avra and Teveri and Julian are people; the crew of Teveri’s ship are people; the not-exactly-pirates we interact with are all people.

But the baking competition says that all the pirates are people. Because they have culture. They have an art form that is unique to them, that their entire community is deeply invested in. They’re not just background characters. See, ‘pirate’ is a cool fantasy template that many, many people enjoy immensely. We have so many movies about them, we dress up as them for Halloween, we have pirate-themed weddings! We love pirates. But pirates are (usually) just pirates. They do not exist outside of traditional pirate-related activities. They vanish from our minds when the adventuring is over. We do not ponder what they do on their months off, and we certainly don’t imagine that there’s any universal pirate culture beyond eye patches and cool hats. But the baking competition examines pirates outside of the template, the stereotype. It says, there is a universal pirate culture, and it involves cake. And if they have culture, then pirates are no longer ‘just’ pirates, only existing while the adventure is ongoing, caring only about plunder. If they have culture, they are people.

Do you see?

“I am building so much character. I am developing a sense of personal dignity, Tev.”

“You are hiding under the bed and chattering.”

“It’s a work in progress.”

Speaking of pirates-as-people – in a lot of ways, I think RCttW is Rowland’s most relatable book yet. Which is an odd thing to say, because: pirates! Sea serpents! Being on the run with the world’s most expensive secret! How relatable can that really be, Sia??? And, like: yeah, true. But.

It’s in how the pirates are, fundamentally, normal people. And I don’t mean normal as in mundane, necessarily – many of them are anything but! – but in how they react to things, the things that they want, the choices they make in situations both fantastical and less so. And the comedy. It isn’t true that humans can always laugh, but we almost always can; under intense stress or in truly horrific situations or in the midst of great tragedy, there will almost always be someone who makes a terrible joke and almost always someone else who laughs far too loudly at it. I am not as funny as Rowland, but I would be laughing when their characters are laughing, were I in the shoes of those characters; I would be cracking jokes (or at least trying to) right alongside Avra, I would be unable not to be sarcastic as fuck about the ridiculous situations Tev’s crew find themselves in, I would be rolling my eyes right alongside Markefa, all gods give her strength. Give me enough M&Ms and I will be almost as much of a ridiculous gremlin as Avra trying to pose alluringly atop a wardrobe!

I’m not a world-travelling storyteller, like the Chants in A Conspiracy of Truths and A Choir of Lies; I’m not a prince or a superhumanly perfect bodyguard-bureaucrat like the main characters of A Taste of Gold and Iron; I don’t have the devotion to the divine required to join the cast of The Lights of Ystrac’s Wood; I certainly can’t write or memorise entire plays like the incredible players and playwrights of Some by Virtue Fall. All of those characters are wonderful, and Rowland is far too good a writer to have made any of them feel distant and strange to me, to not have humanised them and given them plenty for me to empathise with and connect to and adore – and yet.

These pirates, folx. They are my people.

(I should probably find that worrying, but I do not. I am simply charmed.)

“Stupid fucking pond, fuck that pond, I don’t even need to know what it did, all ponds are layabouts and ne’er-do-wells and should have rocks thrown at them.

If this was the entirety of Running Close to the Wind, it would be more than enough. It would still be excellent. It would already be one of my favourite books of the year! Because there is nothing ‘just’ about entertainment, about a book that makes you laugh; you cannot say something is ‘only’ funny, as if being funny is somehow less than. Anything that brings you delight is priceless.

That would be more than enough.

But Running Close to the Wind is more than a bundle of giggles. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say that it is comedic, yes, but the type of comedic it is is not fluff, is not forgettable. It is humour that has a lot to say; it is a great deal of meaningful philosophy and political critique and fury at the ways the powerful treat the rest of us, all conveyed through laughter. Running Close to the Wind is a comedy in the style of Terry Pratchett; undeniably, hysterically funny, and utterly enraged at the manifold injustices of the world.

And the effect is startlingly subtle – or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Rowland’s righteous anger slips under your skin and is absorbed without your even noticing. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, as Mary Poppins tells us, and even if you do not consciously notice the incisive dissection of too many injustices going on in RCttW – even if the sugar of humour covers the taste of systemic anger that has grown in response to systemic wrongs – you are absolutely still getting your daily dose of anarchism. No matter how much you loved Kadou and his sister – the royal family in A Taste of Gold and Iron – you will not, cannot walk away from Running Close to the Wind without being firmly convinced that hoarding knowledge is wrong, that killing people for sharing knowledge is wrong, that having so much – maybe any? – power over other people is wrong.

“Town full of outlaws and rebels. Of course we have a newspaper.”

Rowland is punching up with this one. And this is far from the first time these kind of themes have appeared in their work – but I think the punch lands harder when the power behind it is laughter.

There’s something very magical, very important, about that. I don’t know how to articulate it; I’m not sure I’m smart enough to work it out properly. But Running Close to the Wind is not only a manifesto wrapped up in whimsy and wisecracks; it is a case study in the power of comedy – not just the power to land those punches, but also the power to spread or teach different ways of thinking, the power to make a reader receive the message beaming out of the pages. Because a lot of the time, that sort of thing fails! Many, MANY storytellers don’t manage to get their message through to the people who come to their stories, and many of those who do do so clumsily, heavy-handedly, drowning us in the dreaded info-dump. And I can’t be the only person who has previously dismissed comedy as a genre – there are exceptions, there are individual storytellers and individual comedians and so on, but as a genre, I am used to passing on stories that try to be funny, because (and I am speaking only from personal experience here, I have no proper data on this) most of the time, funny is fluff. Most of the time, funny is forgettable.

But not when it’s done right. Not when it’s done GREAT. Great comedy stays with you; who can forget the moments when they laughed so hard they cried? I remember every stand-up comedian who’s managed to make me do that, and I remember what they said, and because they were truly great they were not talking fluff. They talked about deeply important things and they made me laugh while they did it, and because they made me laugh I went home with their takes engraved on my funny bone.

(So to speak. The funny bone isn’t actually a bone, it’s – you know what? Another time. Or you can look it up!)

There’s nothing wrong with fluff comedy. Giving someone joy, even if just for a moment, even if ‘just’ about something ‘silly’, is something we will always need in the world. We don’t value it like we should. But I think it is true that comedy which is not fluff can be even more powerful than a moment of joy, and I don’t think I realised that until I read this book and thought about how and why I’d laughed, and at what, and then started thinking about all the other comedy that has really and truly stuck with me, and what effect it (both book and other not-fluff comedy) has had on me.

“Speaking as one man to another: Ugh. Men.”

And because Rowland does nothing by halves when they can instead do 150% of everything (which they do EVERY TIME, how, I don’t even, HOW) there is, amidst all the laughter, so many moments that will make you ache. Tev’s backstory, and their yearning to make a name for themself, to create a legacy. Avra’s very real fear of his own people, now that he’s stolen what he stole (by accident!!!) Julian’s long, hard look at his religion and its human-made structure. The very real emotions, especially the tenderness, that grows between them; and the salt-in-the-raw-wound pain when they try and fail at something desperately important. The scene with the stolen sausage, and what we learn about Avra thereby.

So yes, I laughed until I cried, many, MANY times – but sometimes I had to put the book down and just breathe because my heart ached, or my stomach was knotted up with anxiety for these ridiculous characters I’d fallen so hard for, or I was so fucking MAD at the stupidity and arrogance and sheer undeserved power of the powerful.

None of that was made lesser by the fundamental fun of the story. It did not undercut the emotion; if anything, the laughter anchored it, made it feel so much more real, almost – no, no almost, simply made all the ache-hurt-love-rage-gasp painfully human.

Not almost painfully. Painfully. But the good kind of pain. The kind you cherish, because how many books can wring your heart like that?

“Is it more delicious because it’s stolen?”

Teveri chewed in contemplation. “My tongue only tastes olive. But there is a more spiritual flavor to it.”

Running Close to the Wind is fundamentally fun. It is a fucking delight. It is shameless and delicious and revels in its flamboyant disregard for Serious FantasyTM. It is extravagantly and ostentatiously hilarious, but do not be fooled into thinking that means it is shallow; it has as many layers as all the cakes of its incredible, and incredibly plot-relevant, cake competition put together. It is a showstopper, and a show-starter, and a whole entire Broadway-headlining show that will have you leaping from your seat to give a standing ovation, applauding till your hands burn.

You’ll love it. How could you not?

There’s still time to preorder you copy before Running Close to the Wind sails onto shelves this Tuesday. So go! Go now!! Hurry!!! Missing out would be treason worse than Avra could ever manage!

The post Sea Serpents, Cake, and the Power of Laughter: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Lovely Creatures by K.T. Bryski

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 Lovely Creatures by K.T. Bryski!

Lovely Creatures by K.T. Bryski
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Doomsday Dot will wake the day the world ends.

That’s what everyone says, yours truly included.

Bryony’s been searching for her big sister for ten years and change, and the trail finally leads her to Mr. Once-Upon-a-Time’s traveling show. There’s a wolf who’ll serve you tea, a lady who’s sometimes a swan, and Bryony’s sister sound asleep in a glass casket. All of them, rolling through the wasteland in a giant wooden Whale.

The Whale’s important, you’ll see.

But Bryony’s not the only one on the hunt. Everyone on the Whale is running from something. And whether Bryony can wake her sister before they’re caught, well, only the Devil herself knows.

The Devil’s important as well. You’ll see that, too.

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Listen, it’s not complicated: I am here for Weird Whales. Space whales? Gimme. Sky whales? Watch me go heart-eyes. Whales that are living universes? Be still my beating heart!

So a wooden whale? Or, excuse me, a wooden capital-w Whale? One with a surreally weird and magical travelling show inside it?? One which is ON THE RUN from something???

HI, SIGN ME THE HELL UP!!!

(Speaking of Hell – the Devil is a character in this too?!)

It’s really that simple, my friends. Weird Whales. Surefire way to snag a Sia to read your book!

What are you looking forward to reading rn?

The post I Can’t Wait For…Lovely Creatures by K.T. Bryski appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Seek Revenge, Dig (At Least) Two Graves: Lord of the Empty Isles by Jules Arbeaux

Lord of the Empty Isles by Jules Arbeaux
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Aroace MC, secondary nonbinary character, queerplatonic relationships
PoV: Third-person, present-tense
Published on: 6th June 2024
ISBN: 1399724967
Goodreads

Interstellar fugitive Idrian Delaciel will die by inches, and Remy Canta will laugh as he goes.

Five years ago, Idrian ordered a withering—a death curse—cast on Remy's brother that cost him his life, and Remy hasn't been the same since. Now Remy finally has the materials he needs to return the favour, but he has one major problem. When he casts the withering, it rebounds onto him.

The implications are unthinkable: Remy is fatebound to his brother's killer.

Even worse, the only way to slow the curse for long enough to find a cure is to join forces with Idrian and his criminal crew. But when he gets there, Remy discovers there are more than just their lives at stake.

Idrian is the sole provider of life-saving supplies to tens of thousands of innocents, and when he dies, they'll die with him. Caught up in perilous heists and a race against time, Remy finds himself truly living for the first time since his brother died.

Too bad for Remy—the only way to stop a withering is to kill the witherer.

Winter's Orbit meets The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet in this story of loss, power, and privilege with a queerplatonic hate to love story at its heart.

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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~comfy clothes > sexy clothes
~revenge gets ComplicatedTM
~hoverboard!!!
~platonic soulmates ftw
~on your own head be it if you fuck with the doctor

Lord of the Empty Isles is a book that completely defies expectations in some ways, while making use of well-worn – and well-loved – tropes in others. I mean, just mixing fantasy and sci fi in the same setting is still a rare thing (which it shouldn’t be: PUBLISH MORE SCIENCE FANTASY, PUBLISHERS!), and Arbeaux does so deftly, but Arbeaux has also written a story that elevates and celebrates non-romantic relationships – which might be even rarer than science fantasy.

And I loved it!

Aroace Remy is a citizen on the planet Verdine – a planet that, in the past, suffered complete climate collapse. But a lot of hard work has seen it recover, and now in the present day, people are not so much environmentally friendly so much as they are environmentally vigilant. Breaking any of the strict environmental laws – or the population laws that restrict each family to one child only – gets the convicted sent to the Empty Isles: Alta, Fluora, or Toxys. They’re not actually islands; they’re man-made moons, and way back when they held Verdine’s survivors while the planet healed enough to be able to support life again. But these days the moons (or Isles) are inescapable prisons, and the people who get sent there never come back.

This is very important.

Idrian Delaciel is a famous criminal who runs his operations out of the Isles. Five years before the book starts, he had Remy’s brother, Cam, killed. And in the opening pages, Remy finally gets what he needs to return the favour.

Here’s where the magic comes in: in this world, there are those who can see the bonds tying people together, and those who can, to a limited extent, manipulate them. The lore Arbeaux poured into this set-up is fascinating without being overwhelming; most of our information on the different kinds of bonds comes from the excerpts of an in-world text called On the Manipulation of Tethers, excerpts that kick off most chapters. To be honest, I would happily read On the Manipulation of Tethers in its entirety, if Arbeaux decided to actually write it, because it really was SO COOL. (As an example, what kind of bond it is you have with this other person determines where on your body it is anchored – it could be your hands, your head, your FEET… I mean. FEET!!! I loved all of this SO MUCH.)

Remy, as the blurb says, is a witherer – someone who can cut bonds (with the consent of those involved), or, with the right materials, place a death-curse on a person.

Which he does. On Idrian. Because fair’s fair, right? Idrian had Cam killed; now Remy’s going to kill Idrian.

…Small problem: turns out Remy has a fatebond with Idrian – which means he, Remy, is now under the curse too.

In all fairness, HOW WAS HE SUPPOSED TO GUESS HE WAS FATEBOUND TO THAT GUY? OUT OF ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE UNIVERSE? I wouldn’t have seen it coming either!

Of course, we know all this going in – it’s there in the blurb. And Arbeaux does not dilly-daddle; Remy casts the withering in the first couple of chapters.

From there, things take off.

She makes work of anger, and silence of sadness.

I think the reasons Lord of the Empty Isles is getting compared to Winter’s Orbit and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet are: space; queerness between two guys (although there is no romance here); being flung together and making connections/found family under pressure; and, most conclusively, Arbeaux’ prose is compulsively readable. (I may not have 5-starred Winter’s Orbit, but you can’t say Everina Maxwell’s writing isn’t wonderfully easy to read.) Case in point: I don’t think many authors can hold your attention when the blurb has already given you the whole story. But Arbeaux had me hooked; by the just-enough worldbuilding; by Remy’s intense, visceral emotions; by the laugh-or-you’ll-cry mix-ups; by the utter refusal to give us an easy answer to some of the thorniest, and most painful, questions humans can ask ourselves.

That’s what lingers with me, now that I’ve read the book: the ugly ethical tangles Remy and Idrian – and everyone counting on Idrian – are in. Arbeaux makes no effort to simplify things for us or give us easy answers – or any answers at all; if anything, I think Lord of the Empty Isles implies that there are no correct answers. The problem – Idrian doing terrible things in order to safeguard thousands of other people – is unsolvable. You can’t truly say he’s wrong for doing what he needs to do to save so many – but you can’t say he’s ‘right’ either. Doing terrible things for good reasons doesn’t make the things not-terrible any more. And I was quietly pleased that Arbeaux didn’t try to convince us otherwise – didn’t try to influence the reader’s opinion one way or the other. Arbeaux just – presents the problem, if that makes sense. Shows us all sides of it, in what I thought was a very unbiased manner.

And then lets us work out what we think and feel for ourselves.

It’s kind of impossible not to think of Palestine while reading Lord of the Empty Isles – the situation of those in the prison-moons is in many ways analogous to that of Palestinians, and I doubt Arbeaux meant for that comparison to be made, but what with the book being published when it is, it’s inevitably going to be made. And so the issue of Idrian – or rather, the issue of the impossibly cruel living conditions on Alta, Fluora, and Toxys – packs a lot more punch than it might otherwise. (And it packs a huge punch all by itself – this is not a book that relies on the echoes of real-world events to reach its readers.)

Ultimately, the question is not really is Idrian right or good? because – that’s unanswerable, and really, it’s a distraction from the real question. The real question being: can we allow people to suffer like this? Any people, no matter who they are or what they’ve done or not done? Is it ever acceptable?

And the answer to that is no. Of course it’s no. It should and will always be no.

Which begs the next question: what on Earth (or Verdine, rather) is Remy supposed to do? Because the only way to end the curse he placed on Idrian – and everyone fatebound to Idrian, including Remy – is for Remy to die.

Can he do that? Is he brave enough to do that? Yes, the curse will kill him anyway if it isn’t lifted, so really, he’s going to die no matter WHAT he does. But still: stepping forward and volunteering to be killed is…almost impossibly difficult, even if you’re already under a death sentence.

I think I’ve only ever read one book where the main character died. It’s not something storytellers do often. To be honest, it’s become very hard for me to really believe that a main character is in any real danger, because the main character always survives. There’s always a loophole, a way out, a deus ex machina. And I will say that Arbeaux did not manage to convince me that Remy was doomed; I was waiting for the last-second save, and I even thought I’d worked out how Remy could be saved while also ending the withering.

Well. I was wrong about how the withering situation was…resolved. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

For Cam, the answer to the question of attraction was all of the above. For Remy, it’s always been none, and his life has been no less rich for it. He’s never longed to be desired–not how people like Fluora expect him to–so it seems useless to choke himself with clothes other people might like to see him in. Wearing what he loves and having someone who understands him at his side is enough.

Lord of the Empty Isles starts with a bloody knife and doesn’t slow down for a moment – but it’s never too fast, never too quick to allow us to process the horrors we’re shown, the secrets revealed, or the poignant emotional moments that give it all meaning. And it’s not just emotional ‘moments’; this book is defined by emotion, runs on it, is emotion made manifest. The live-wire intensity of absolutely every possible feeling runs through every scene, every sentence, every word. This book WILL make you feel; it will make you feel ALL the things.

Admittedly, one of those things…might be disappointment. I think Lord of the Empty Isles stumbled massively in its ending; not with the withering and how that went down, but with the, uh…in how the day was saved. I was (and remain) really confused about how simple and easy it all turned out to be, when the rest of the book was so unafraid of facing complicated questions without nice neat answers. It rang false, and too convenient, and just – absolutely impossible to believe. I would happily have given the book five stars, if not for that.

Some discussion under the spoiler tag;

[View post to see spoiler]

I also think Lord of the Empty Isles didn’t quite accomplish the found family trope it was clearly going for – the cast was a little too big, with most of Idrian’s crew – these people who are also fatebound to him, like Remy – remaining very washed-out. But I didn’t mind that so much when we had Remy’s amazing friendship with Tirani, his bestie who is very much along for the ride because CLEARLY Remy cannot be allowed to zoom around unsupervised – and Remy’s gradually-growing relationship with Idrian. Which, again, is not romantic. The author has called it queerplatonic, and I think the term fits perfectly; if you’re not familiar with it, then think of Remy and Idrian as falling in love, but platonically, not romantically. The development of that relationship was really well done and beautiful to watch – not to mention hugely validating and generally joy-making, as an ace reader who would really love to see more stories valuing other relationships over sex and/or romance!

In fact, this whole book is about the importance of non-romantic love. (There is one romance we’re aware of, but it’s very much in the background, taking place between a secondary and tertiary character.) And I think this is one of the areas in which Lord of the Empty Isles really shines; I felt so much like this book was talking about – among other kinds of love – the love we’re supposed to feel for all other human beings. I think the closest term for this might be agape – which in Christianity refers to the love God feels for humans and humans for god, but is also sometimes used to mean love for your fellow humans; the love you’re supposed to feel for them BECAUSE they are human too. The hardest kind of love, because you’re meant to also feel it for people you hate, for monsters, for people who’ve hurt you.

And it’s not – I don’t think – that Arbeaux is telling us we have to love everyone everywhere all at once. It’s just that – that’s what Idrian’s motivation is. The whole network of people breaking the law, doing sometimes terrible things – they’re doing it because how can you NOT, how can you not see/know other humans are suffering and not help? Would it not break your heart, as surely as any romantic break-up, to not-help when you could have? We are supposed to, we need to, feel enough love for our fellow humans that we draw lines we will not cross even with people we despise, even with criminals, even with people who have done worse evils to us or others. That’s why criminals are (supposed to be) treated humanely; it’s why we don’t, Remy, murder the people who’ve wronged us; it’s why we have the whole concept of human rights.

Remy is wonderful. I adored him, and I adored Tirani and I adored Idrian. I adored how much Lord of the Empty Isles values and highlights non-romantic love, gives it pride of place in a world where that throne almost always belongs to romance.

But my biggest take-away from this book is how, when push comes to absolute shove, the love we’re supposed to feel for all other people is the most important. Is the one worth sacrificing anything for. Is the one we can never, ever give up on, no matter how hard it is.

Even if it means we have to die.

(I’m not saying I could do that, could die for a cause or sacrifice myself for the greater good. But I am saying that I would like to be the kind of person who could.)

Lord of the Empty Isles is a compulsively readable science fantasy that wrestles with some of the biggest and most painful questions we have. Although the execution is a touch uneven in places, it wins major points from me for a story I couldn’t put down, Feels that had me almost vibrating out of my skin, and the sense that I just brushed against something like grace.

The post Seek Revenge, Dig (At Least) Two Graves: Lord of the Empty Isles by Jules Arbeaux appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #189

Must-Have Monday is a feature highlighting which of the coming week’s new releases I’m excited for. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all books being published that week; only those I’m interested in out of those I’m aware of! The focus is diverse SFF, but other genres sneak in occasionally too.

THIRTEEN books for the first full week of Pride!

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

Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Representation: Black cast
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

A woman journeys into a submerged world of gods and myth to save her home in this powerful historical fantasy that shines a light on the drowned Black towns of the American South.

“Our home began, as all things do, with a wish.”

Jane Edwards hasn’t spoken since she was eleven years old, when armed riders expelled her family from their hometown along with every other Black resident. Now, twelve years later, she’s found a haven in the all-Black town of Awenasa. But the construction of a dam promises to wash her home under the waters of the new lake.

Jane will do anything to save the community that sheltered her. So, when a man with uncanny abilities arrives in town asking strange questions, she wonders if he's might be the key. But as the stranger hints at gods and ancestral magic, Jane is captivated by a bigger mystery. She knows this man. Only the last time she saw him, he was dead. His body laid to rest in a rushing river.

Who is the stranger and what is he really doing in Awenasa? To find those answers, Jane will journey into a sunken world, a land of capricious gods and unsung myths, of salvation and dreams made real. But the flood waters are rising. To gain the miracle she desires, Jane will have to find her voice again and finally face the trauma of the past.

For more from Leslye Penelope, check out The Monsters We Defy.

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Much mystery, much beauty, much magic! This sounds like it’s going to be utterly gorgeous, and I have so many questions that need answering!

The God and the Gumiho (Fate's Thread, #1) by Sophie Kim
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Korean MCs
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

They'll do anything to outsmart each other. Anything, except fall in love.

In this delightful Korean contemporary fantasy, a fallen trickster god must pair up with a coffee-slinging, shapeshifting fox to track down a demon of darkness before it devours the mortal world.

Kim Hani - the once-terrible gumiho known as the Scarlet Fox - spends her days working at a café and trying not to let a certain customer irk her.

Seokga - a trickster god thrown from the heavens for his attempt at a coup - spends his days hunting demons and irking a particular gumiho.

When a demon of darkness escapes the underworld, and the Scarlet Fox emerges from hiding before quickly vanishing, Seokga is offered a chance at redemption: kill them both, and his sins will be forgiven.

But Hani is prepared to do anything to prevent Seokga from bringing her to justice, even trick her way into his investigation. Anything, that is - except fall in love . . .

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I have a soft spot for ancient magical beings working in coffee shops, I don’t know why. I’m not usually into romance, which is clearly going to be a major part of the book, but this sounds kinda cute and very fun, and I’m going to cross my fingers for some interesting worldbuilding!

Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth and Sky, #3) by Rebecca Roanhorse
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Mesoamerican-coded setting and cast, blind MC, bisexual MC
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

The interwoven destinies of the people of Meridian will finally be determined in this stunning conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

Even the sea cannot stay calm before the storm. —Teek saying

Serapio, avatar of the Crow God Reborn and the newly crowned Carrion King, rules Tova. But his enemies gather both on distant shores and within his own city as the matrons of the clans scheme to destroy him. And deep in the alleys of the Maw, a new prophecy is whispered, this one from the Coyote God. It promises Serapio certain doom if its terrible dictates are not fulfilled.

Meanwhile, Xiala is thrust back amongst her people as war comes first to the island of Teek. With their way of life and their magic under threat, she is their last best hope. But the sea won’t talk to her the way it used to, and doubts riddle her mind. She will have to sacrifice the things that matter most to unleash her powers and become the queen they were promised.

And in the far northern wastelands, Naranpa, avatar of the Sun God, seeks a way to save Tova from the visions of fire that engulf her dreams. But another presence has begun stalking her nightmares, and the Jaguar God is on the hunt.

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I definitely need to reread the previous books before diving into the finale, but IT’S THE FINALE OF BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY, LET’S BE EXCITED!!!

Tidal Creatures (Alchemical Journeys, #3) by Seanan McGuire
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

Every night, a Moon shines down on the Impossible City…

New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire takes us back to the world of the award-winning Alchemical Journeys series in this action-packed follow-up to Middlegame and Seasonal Fears .

All across the world, people look up at the moon and dream of gods. Gods of knowledge and wisdom, gods of tides and longevity. Over time, some of these moon gods incarnated into the human world alongside the other manifest natural concepts. Their job is to cross the sky above the Impossible City―the heart of all creation―to keep it connected to reality.

And someone is killing them.

There are so many of them that it's easy for a few disappearances to slip through the cracks. But they aren't limitless.

In the name of the moon, the lunar divinities must uncover the roots of the plot and thwart the true goal of those behind these attacks―control of the Impossible City itself.

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I am behind on this series, but clearly I need to hurry up and finish book two beacuse I’ve been hearing AMAZING things about Tidal Creatures!!!

Hell For Hire (Tear Down Heaven #1) by Rachel Aaron
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

The Crew
A hulked-out wrath demon who eats gamer rage and loves cats, a shapeshifting lust demon who enjoys their food a bit too much, and a void demon who doesn’t see the point of any of this. They’re not the sort of mercenaries you'd hire on purpose, but Bex wouldn’t trust her life to anyone else.

Ever since the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh decided death wasn’t for him, killed the gods, and conquered the afterlife, times have been rough for a free demon. But the denizens of the Nine Hells aren’t the quitting sort, and Bex and her team have been choking a living out of the Eternal King’s lackeys for years. It’s not honest work, but when Heaven itself declares you a non-person, you smash-and-grab what you can get.

This next gig looks like more of the same…until Bex meets the client.

The Job
Adrian Blackwood is a witch with a problem. His family has skirted the edges of King Gilgamesh’s ire for centuries, but thanks to a decision he made as a child, Adrian is personally responsible for putting his entire coven in Heaven’s crosshairs.

Determined to set things right, Adrian drags his broom, caldron, and talking cat thousands of miles across the country to Seattle where he can fight the Eternal King’s warlocks without bringing the rest of his family into the fray. But witchcraft--like all crafts--takes time, and if the warlocks catch him before his spells are ready, he’s dead. So Adrian does what any professional witch would do and hires a team of mercenaries to keep the warlocks off his back. He didn’t expect to get demons, but when you’re already on the killing-edge of Heaven’s bad side, what’s a bit more fuel on the fire?

Sometimes you get more than you paid for.
Neither Adrian nor Bex knew what to expect when they signed their contract, but witch-plus-demon turns out to be a match made in the Hells. With this much chaos at their fingertips, even impossible dreams can come back into reach, because Bex wasn’t always a mercenary. She used to be the Eternal King's biggest nightmare, and now that she’s got a witch in her corner, it’s time to put the old magics back on the field and show Adrian Blackwood just how much Hell he’s hired.

A new, action-packed Urban Fantasy from the author of NICE DRAGONS FINISH LAST and MINIMUM-WAGE MAGIC!

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A new series from Rachel Aaron! I an enough of a nerd to be delighted by the whole Gilgamesh thing, and I’ve read enough of Aaron’s books to be sure this will be a VERY good time! (Also I have been promised a sentient witch’s broomstick, and honestly that’s all I need to hear!)

Sea of Broken Glass by Jenna Pine
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MCs
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

Banished from their small, floating village for forbidden magic, can two sisters work together before the harsh crystalline wilderness kills them—or they kill each other?

Elodie—desperate to become the village’s next priestess—hopes to atone for their mother’s magical destruction, still haunting her family after twenty years. Loxy, her younger sister, wants nothing more than to find their mother, banished long ago for the same magic Loxy now hides. Though they are bound by blood, the sisters live in constant contention, always arguing about Loxy’s magic and the danger it poses to their lives in the village.

But when a meteor shower full of divine power grants Elodie magic of her own and gives Loxy new power, the two are cast out of their isolated, floating village, just like their mother before them, and into the crystalline wilderness full of dangerous beasts, deadly landscapes, and vicious people. They are destitute and alone when a voice calls to them, one steeped in the very source of their magic… along with a mysterious person who claims they know how to fix everything. With nowhere else to go, Loxy embraces the help and sets out to find the mother she’s certain still lives, and Elodie reluctantly follows.

But with every step, each sister’s hopes for the future deepen the rift between them. When they are finally confronted with the answers to all their questions, the sisters must learn to work together or lose each other—and perhaps their very humanity—forever.

Sea of Broken Glass is an adult fantasy starring two LGBT+ sisters and is filled with an exploration of family dynamics, deconstruction, and the restoration of things that are broken.

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Okay, I genuinely can’t wait to see what a crystalline wilderness looks like! And queer sisters off on a quest that might cost them their humanity??? I massively want to see where this goes!

The Pull of the Tide by Evelyn Shine, S.D. Simper, Erin Branch
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MCs
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

Mermaids, sea witches, selkies, ahoy! Dive into ten tales of sapphic romantasy.

Separated by land and sea, two lovers ache with yearning. Can a human and a mermaid really make a life together? Elsewhere, a selkie despairs, trapped in an arranged marriage, only for her fated heart mate to pull her in with a sweet song. Across the sea, two pirate lovers-turned-sworn-enemies must work together against a foe trying to steal a goddess's power. On a seductive island, a swordfish shifter and a human crash together and come apart. Can they piece together their shattered supernatural connection?

This gender and identity-inclusive sapphic collection features ten pearl-sized ocean-themed stories of love and adventure on the high seas.

Stories by SD Simper, Elliot Ason, Erin Branch, Ali Williams, Aoibh Wood, Theresa Tyree, Rosemarie Dillon, Erin Casey, Julie Brydon, and Evelyn Shine

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Pirates and selkies and a SWORDFISH SHAPESHIFTER?! SIA NEEDS!

The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black sapphic MC
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

This epic, dazzling tale based on true events illuminates a woman of color’s rise to power as one of the few purported female pirate captains to sail the Caribbean, and the forbidden love story that will shape the course of history.

In the tumultuous town of Yáquimo, Santo Domingo, Jacquotte Delahaye is an unknown but up-and-coming shipwright. Her dreams are bold but her ambitions are bound by the confines of her life with her self-seeking French father. When her way of life and the delicate balance of power in the town are threatened, she is forced to flee her home and become a woman on the run along with a motley crew of refugees, including a mysterious young woman named Teresa.

Jacquotte and her band become indentured servants to the infamous Blackhand, a ruthless pirate captain who rules his ship with an iron fist. As they struggle to survive his brutality, Jacquotte finds herself unable to resist Teresa despite their differences. When Blackhand hatches a dangerous scheme to steal a Portuguese shipment of jewels, Jacquotte must rely on her wits, resourcefulness, and friends to survive. But she discovers there is a grander, darker scheme of treachery at play, and she ultimately must decide what price she is willing to pay to secure a better future for them all.

An unforgettable tale told in three parts, The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye is a thrilling, buccaneering escapade filled with siege and battle, and is also a tender exploration of friendship, love, and the search for freedom and home.

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How come I never learned THIS kind of history in school??? Nevermind, I’ll just have to DEVOUR THE NOVELIZATION instead!

Now, Conjurers by Freddie Kölsch
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Queer MCs
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

November 1999. North Dana, Massachusetts.

Nesbit Nuñez discovers the partially devoured body of Bastion Attia: star quarterback, secret witch, and Nesbit’s even-more-secret boyfriend.No one knew why brilliant, gentle Bastion lived his life by a seemingly arcane set of rules, including a strange manner of speech and an inability to say his own name.

Now the remaining members of North Coven—Nesbit, Dove, Drea, and Brandy—vow to get answers. Nothing can prepare them for what they uncover: Bastion had been locked in a terrifying battle of wits and wills with something living deep beneath an ancient mausoleum in the localcemetery.

North Coven must confront the red-gloved monster that took piece after piece of Bastion, that he fought until his last breath. Not knowing that Bastion left behind the key to its destruction . . .

Now, Conjurers is a wildly original, spine-chilling YA debut about queer found family and a love that outlasts death.

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I’ve heard only great things about this, and I’m intrigued. Apparently there’ll be queer found family and properly scary monsters, so I very much plan on taking a peek!

Lockjaw by Matteo L. Cerilli
Genres: Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Trans MC (of colour?)
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

"Cerilli delivers a stunning debut in this gripping paranormal horror novel about queer teens growing up in a community that doesn’t accept them and the insidious danger of apathy."—STARRED REVIEW, Publishers Weekly

"A horrifyingly honest tale, Lockjaw will keep you guessing with its creative storytelling, while its full-bodied characters will keep you reading as they band together to kill the monster haunting their town." —STARRED REVIEW, BookPage

"Experimental, metaphorical, and poetic, this quiet novel is for thoughtful readers not averse to horror themes." —Booklist

"Cerilli does a masterful job of creating a memorable setting. . . . It is hard to believe that Lockjaw is Matteo L. Cerilli’s debut novel. Readers will look forward to many more to come! Highly recommended." —CM: Canadian Review of Materials

Death is neither the beginning nor the end for the children of Bridlington in this debut trans YA horror book for fans of Rory Power and Danielle Vega.

Chuck Warren died tragically at the old abandoned mill, but Paz Espino knows it was no accident — there's a monster under the town, and she's determined to kill it before anyone else gets hurt. She'll need the help of her crew — inseparable friends, bound by a childhood pact stronger than diamonds, distance or death — to hunt it down. But she's up against a greater force of evil than she ever could have imagined.

With shifting timeframes and multiple perspectives, Lockjaw is a small-town ghost story, where monsters living and dead haunt the streets, the homes and the minds of the inhabitants. For readers of Wilder Girls and The Haunted, this trans YA horror book by an incredible debut author will grab you and never let you go.

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I’ve been seeing so much love for this, and lots of praise for its take on small-town horror particularly. But the selling point for me is definitely a girl who refuses to let things go and/or politely pretend there isn’t a problem when there is one. Give me all the confrontational girls!

Malicia by Steven dos Santos
Genres: Horror, YA
Representation: Latine/Latinx MC/s, queer MC/s
Published on: 4th June 2024
Goodreads

Four friends, three days, two lovers, and one very haunted theme park

On a stormy Halloween weekend, Ray enlists his best friends Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella to help him make a documentary of Malicia, the abandoned theme park off the coast of the Dominican Republic where his mother and brother died in a mass killing thirteen years ago.

But what should be an easy weekend trip quickly turns into something darker because all four friends have come to Malicia for their own reasons:

Ray has come to Malicia to find out the truth of the massacre that destroyed his family. Isabella has come to make art out of Ray’s tragedy for her own personal gain. Sofia has come to support her friends in one last adventure before she goes to med school. Joaquin already knows the truth of the Malicia Massacre and he has come to betray his crush Ray to the evil that made the park possible.

With an impending hurricane and horrors around every corner, they all struggle to face the deadly storm and their own inner demons. But the deadliest evil of all is the ancient malignant presence on the island.

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Plenty of queer YA horror this week! Most of the reviews I saw were very positive of Santos’ latest, and apparently it’s going to feature Dominican mythology, which, yes PLEASE!

Lord of the Empty Isles by Jules Arbeaux
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Aroace MC, queerplatonic relationships, major nonbinary character
Published on: 6th June 2024
Goodreads

Interstellar fugitive Idrian Delaciel will die by inches, and Remy Canta will laugh as he goes.

Five years ago, Idrian ordered a withering—a death curse—cast on Remy's brother that cost him his life, and Remy hasn't been the same since. Now Remy finally has the materials he needs to return the favour, but he has one major problem. When he casts the withering, it rebounds onto him.

The implications are unthinkable: Remy is fatebound to his brother's killer.

Even worse, the only way to slow the curse for long enough to find a cure is to join forces with Idrian and his criminal crew. But when he gets there, Remy discovers there are more than just their lives at stake.

Idrian is the sole provider of life-saving supplies to tens of thousands of innocents, and when he dies, they'll die with him. Caught up in perilous heists and a race against time, Remy finds himself truly living for the first time since his brother died.

Too bad for Remy—the only way to stop a withering is to kill the witherer.

Winter's Orbit meets The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet in this story of loss, power, and privilege with a queerplatonic hate to love story at its heart.

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I got to read this one early, and I loved it; platonic soulmates, messy ethical questions, and fabulous characters! Expect my review shortly, but seriously, consider this one strongly recommended!

Dancers of the Dawn by Zulekhá Afzal
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Representation: South Asian-inspired setting
Published on: 6th June 2024
Goodreads

Dancer. Warrior. Executioner.

Deep in the desert a storm is brewing.

Under the blazing sun, an elite troupe of dancers are trained to harness their magic. They are the queen’s most formidable assassins. Aasira has one of the rarest talents – for she is a flame-wielder. Feared by all and envied by some, she uses her power to execute enemies of the crown.

Aasira’s greatest wish is to serve her queen. But on the eve of her graduation, with tensions rising among the dancers and secrets stirring in the shifting sand dunes, she begins to question whether she was truly born to kill…

An epic story about truth, loyalty and betrayal.

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The ebook of this is out this week in the US (with the paper edition next week) but the UK gets paper and digital this Thursday! I’ve heard mixed opinions on this one, but dance-magic is always going to be a sure way to get me to check out your book.

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 #189 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

5 Years and Counting = Pride Flag Recs!

It is officially Every Book a Doorway’s FIFTH birthday today!!!

TIME SURE FLIES WHEN YOU’RE HAVING FUN!

I really can’t believe I’ve managed to keep blogging this long, that I somehow built my own little niche of the internet into something I’m this proud of. I love knowing that I’ve made a space for other readers with my wildly weird Venn diagram of interests and preferences to come and find out about books they might like. I remain astonished that I now have a network of other bloggers, readers, and even publicists and authors who know who I am and are interested in my opinions. I’ve seen myself quoted on author websites, publisher pages, and even inside a few books!

NOT 100% SURE HOW I GOT HERE, BUT YOU’RE STUCK WITH ME NOW, FOLX!

As is OFFICIALLY tradition, I am celebrating my blogiversary with Pride Flag recs. Rainbow Reads came up with the original tag, and it is exactly what you’d expect; a recommendation for every stripe in the (original) Gilbert Baker pride flag themed around what those colours represented, plus the new brown+black stripes for QBIPOC.

I actually went a little bit further, and added the stripes from the Daniel Quasar flag shown below – so, not just brown+black, but the trans colours as well!

And because I’m me and this is Every Book a Doorway, each book will also be SFF.

(I mean – obviously.)

Thus – to celebrate 5 WHOLE YEARS OF BLOGGING, what even – the books!!!

PINK – SEXUALITYThe Fall That Saved Us by Tamara Jerée
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black sapphic MC and love interest, Latina secondary character
Goodreads

Cassiel has given up the family tradition of demon hunting, leaving behind her sacred angelic duty and fated sword. What she can’t leave behind are the scars. To cope, she spends her days immersed in work, pouring all her attention into New Haven Books, her small bookstore and anchor in the new world she’s carved for herself.

But the past hasn’t let go of Cassiel yet. When a succubus named Avitue arrives to claim her angel-touched soul, Cassiel’s old hunter instincts flare, forcing her to choose between old knowledge and her truth. What should be a fatal seduction becomes a bargain neither woman expects. As they grow closer, Avitue is surprised to find her own pain reflected in Cassiel, a nephilim deemed fallen by her own family’s standards.

By choosing trust, they reveal the lies that bind them. Falling for each other begins a path towards healing. But exorcising the effects of trauma is harder than naming it, and to explore the unfettered possibility Avitue represents, Cassiel must find a way to reclaim and redefine her angelic heritage.

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The Fall That Saved Us is a beautiful standalone love story between a Nephilim – a descendant of angels – and a succubus. But it would also be fair to call it a love story between Cassiel and her own body; she’s been raised to take better care of her weapons than her body, with any hint of sensuality or sexuality to be stamped out immediately. Bodies are not for pleasure, according to the Nephilim mindset, and even as someone who doesn’t love sex scenes, it was deeply moving to watch Cassiel unlearn her repression and shame, and learn instead to revel in all the ways having a body can be a joy. (Which is not only about sex; I loved the entire Thing with the truffles!)

Granted, having a succubus along to help you unlearn all that nonsense is probably a BIG help.

Some elements of this book are really cosy – like Cassiel’s new life in the human world, running a bookstore – while the fantasy worldbuilding is simple, but very, very cool. (I remain massively impressed by Jerée’s take on angels, Nephilim, and the relationship between the two!) If you enjoy your fantasy wrapped around a romance, you’ll love this one.

RED – LIFEThe Gilded Crown (The Raven's Trade, #1) by Marianne Gordon
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, secondary M/M
Goodreads

The Witch’s Heart meets The Foxglove King in this debut novel about a woman who can bring people back from the dead, and the princess — and only heir to the throne — that she must protect, no matter the cost.

The first time Hellevir visited Death, she was ten years old…

Since she was a little girl, Hellevir has been able to raise the dead. Every creature can be saved for a price, a price demanded by the shrouded figure who rules the afterlife, who takes a little more from Hellevir with each soul she resurrects.

Such a gift can rarely remain a secret. When Princess Sullivain, sole heir to the kingdom’s throne, is assassinated, the Queen summons Hellevir to demand she bring her granddaughter back to life. But once is not enough; the killers might strike again. The Princess’ death would cause a civil war, so the Queen commands that Hellevir remain by her side.

But Sullivain is no easy woman to be bound to, even as Hellevir begins to fall in love with her. With the threat of war looming, Hellevir must trade more and more of herself to keep the princess alive.

But Death will always take what he is owed.

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A book about bringing people back from the dead has to be about Life, right? (And yes, I’m using the original US cover, BECAUSE THE UK-AND-NOW-US-COVER IS HIDEOUS AND ALSO MISLEADING.) I wasn’t expecting to be hooked by Gilded Crown, but Gordon’s elegant prose and delicate worldbuilding swept me away, and I ended up loving this series-starter DEARLY. The magic in this world – not just Hellevir’s, but the magical beings hiding just under the surface of human society – was enchanting, and there’s just so many things going on simultaneously, keeping things continuously complicated in the best of ways; friction between faiths, nobles politicking, Hellevir’s mother hating her, legends that might be history, mini quests, and whoever That Dude hanging out in Death is…

(And I was pleasantly surprised that this is not, in fact, a romance; although there’s clearly some attraction between Hellevir and the princess, they’re far too much at odds over too many fundamentals to make a good couple.)

I’m so looking forward to the sequel!!!

ORANGE – HEALINGEverything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 by M.E. O'Brien, Eman Abdelhadi
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: QBIPOC cast
Goodreads

By the middle of the twenty-first century, war, famine, economic collapse, and climate catastrophe had toppled the world's governments. In the 2050s, the insurrections reached the nerve center of global capitalism—New York City. This book, a collection of interviews with the people who made the revolution, was published to mark the twentieth anniversary of the New York Commune, a radically new social order forged in the ashes of capitalist collapse.

Here is the insurrection in the words of the people who made it, a cast as diverse as the city itself. Nurses, sex workers, antifascist militants, and survivors of all stripes recall the collapse of life as they knew it and the emergence of a collective alternative. Their stories, delivered in deeply human fashion, together outline how ordinary people's efforts to survive in the face of crisis contain the seeds of a new world.

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Everything for Everyone is a collection of fictional interviews covering the events that led our world to the future the authors have created – a near-utopia where people leave in communes that run very differently to the society we know!

Reading this book was a joy and a relief; although it’s fiction, it lays out a clear, practical road-plan of how to get from Now to This Future, and it’s just – if it’s hard to imagine a better world, it’s infinitely harder to work out how to get there, you know? And this book does that. The future of Everything For Everyone maybe isn’t where we’ll end up – maybe isn’t the best possible future we could have, I don’t know, although I like it a lot. But having two very smart people lay out how we could actually fix just about everything, how we could make the world better, how we could have a future that isn’t a nightmare hellscape… It’s reassuring, and it healed a lot of my fears and cynicism. Banished a lot of my own nightmares. Polished my hope clean again.

I really need more people to read it.

My review!

YELLOW – SUNLIGHTThe Dawnhounds (The Endsong, #1) by Sascha Stronach
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, F/F, major sapphic character, major sapphic trans character, minor nonbinary characters
Goodreads

A police officer is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.

Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.

Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.

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It has ‘dawn’ in the title, I’m totally allowed to use it for a sun prompt! Dawnhounds is a weird, wonderful book, fungal!punk science-fantasy drawing from Maori and New Zealander cultures – plus a whole lot of completely unique strangeness that is purely Stronach. It’s a ‘fuck the police’ book with divine rivalries being played out via semi-immortal paladins, and you will not be getting all your questions answered, which is why it’s a very good thing the sequel is out this August. HOPEFULLY WE WILL GET MORE ANSWERS THEN.

(And honestly, even if not, I’ll still devour it, because I CANNOT GET ENOUGH of this world and cast!!!)

My review!

GREEN – NATUREGreenwode by J. Tullos Hennig
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Goodreads

Daring the old gods.
Defying the new.
The making of a legend--and a truly innovative re-imagining of Robin Hood.

Rob of Loxley and his older sister Marion have been groomed from birth to take their parents' places within the Old Religion. Despite this, when Rob finds an injured nobleman's son in the forest, neither he nor Marion understand what befriending young Gamelyn could mean for the future of their beliefs. Already the ancient spirits are fading beneath the iron of nobleman's politics and the stones of Church subjugation. More, the druid elders warn that Rob and Gamelyn are cast as sworn adversaries, locked in timeless and symbolic struggle for the greenwood's Maiden.

Instead, in a theological twist only a stroppy dissident could envision, Rob swears he'll defend the sacred woodland of the Horned God and Lady Huntress to his last breath--if his god will let him be lover, not rival, to the one fated as his enemy.

But in the eyes of Gamelyn's Church, sodomy is unthinkable... and the old pagan magics are an evil that must be vanquished

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I have never been very interested in Robin Hood, so I was completely taken aback by how much, and how passionately, I ended up adoring this! I’ve mentioned elsewhere how much I appreciated Hennig’s challenging of the heteronormative Lady and Lord/Goddess and God set-up that you see in modern Wicca (and plenty of fantasy playing around in quasi-Medieval-Europe settings), and I thought that was done so well. And as the title and cover suggest, there’s a great deal about the relationship of humans, especially pagans, to Nature, and all the magic here is green. But Hennig also just fundamentally writes an incredible story, with gorgeous prose and enough aching Feels to wring your heart out. Greenwode is the start of a series, and is set before Rob becomes Robin Hood – it’s book two that starts retelling the events of the ‘official’ Robin Hood Cycle, and trust me, you’ll want book two on hand when you get to the ending of Greenwode!

TURQUOISE – MAGICThe Last Dragoners of Bowbazar by Indra Das
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown nonbinary MC, Chinese secondary character
Goodreads

Ru is a boy from nowhere. Though he lives somewhere—the city of Calcutta—his classmates in school remind him he doesn’t look like them, and must come from somewhere else. When Ru asks his parents, they tell him they are descended from nomads. But even nomads must come from somewhere. The question, forever on the mind of the boy from nowhere, is where.

Ru dreams things that wouldn’t seem out of place in the fantasy novels his father read to him when young. Fragments of a culture that doesn’t exist in this world, but might in another, where sky and sea are one, and humans sail this eternal ocean on the backs of divine beasts.

Ru dreams of dragons, of serpents impossible. Perhaps Ru remembers dragons.

Alone in a city that’s home but doesn’t feel like it, Ru befriends Alice, his neighbor from the nearby Chinatown. As they grow with their friendship, Ru finds that Calcutta may yet be a home for him. But with his best friend starting to realize that Ru’s house and family hide a myriad of secrets, the question haunts him still—where is his family from? Are they truly from nowhere, migrants to this reality? And if so, what strange wings brought them across the vast reaches of impossibility to here—and what is their purpose?

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I have rarely come across a book that feels so much like pure, breathtaking magic. As if the whole book is itself an enchantment, drawing you into a dream you never want to wake up from. Das’ prose is a spell and a song and a sigh, and The Last Dragoners is a priceless treasure of a book. This is one you carry with you for life, folx; I know I’m never going to forget it. (And not just because Das’ take on dragons is one of my all-time favourites.) No words can do it justice: I’m just going to go ahead and order you to read it!

BLUE – HARMONYA Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Brown cast, M/M
Goodreads

Originally published in 1988, A Matter of Oaths is a space opera with heart, intergalactic intrigue and epic space battles.

When Commander Rallya of the patrol ship Bhattya hires Rafe as their new Web officer, she knows she is taking a risk. As an oath breaker, Rafe has suffered the ultimate punishment – identity wipe – but luckily for him, there's no one else around qualified for the job.

Shunned by his previous shipmates, Rafe is ready to keep his head down and do his job, but his competence quickly earns him respect, admiration, and, in one particular case, love. It's difficult to maintain the glow of acceptance however, when his past is chasing him across the galaxy in the shape of an assassin, intent on dealing once and for all with Rafe, whatever the cost.

Now with a new introduction by Becky Chambers, author of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

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Harmony is maybe not the most obvious theme in Matter of Oaths, but it’s an important and prevalent one. At the most basic level, Webbers – who direct space vessels by making them an extension of their own nervous systems! – have to work in harmony to fly a ship; and the Guild of Webbers is a big part of keeping the two empires of human space balanced and harmonious. To say nothing of how that harmony is threatened, however unknowingly, by poor Rafe! Or rather, by all the intrigue around him – it’s really not any of his fault…

A Matter of Oaths is one of those books that ought to be a household name, but tragically was published at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances to fly as high as it deserves to. I’m VERY glad Becky Chambers et al worked to get it republished, because it blew me away in the BEST way, and you’re just not living your best life if you haven’t read this, okay? Trust me!

PURPLE – SPIRITThe Darkness Before Them (The Soulfire Saga, #1) by Matthew Ward
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, major Deaf character
Goodreads

The first in an exciting, action-packed new trilogy from epic fantasy author Matthew Ward,  The Darkness Before Them introduces readers to a world ruled by a dangerous immortal king, where souls fuel magic, and a supernatural mist known as the Veil threatens to engulf the land.

These are dark times for the Kingdom of Khalad. As the magical mists of the Veil devour the land, the populace struggles beneath the rule of ruthless noble houses and their uncaring immortal king.

Kat doesn’t care about any of that. A talented thief, she’s pursuing one big score that will settle the debt that destroyed her family. No easy feat in a realm where indentured spirits hold vigil over every vault and treasure room. However, Kat has a unique she can speak to those spirits, and even command them. And she has no qualms using her power to her advantage.

Kat’s not a hero. She just wants to be free. To have her old life back. But as rebellion rekindles and the war for Khalad’s future begins, everyone—Kat included—will have to pick a side.

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You can’t say spirits aren’t a big part of The Darkness Before Them; Ward has invented a world that runs on semi-sentient pieces of soul, pieces which power lights, act as home security systems, and even make engines go. It’s a fascinating (if disturbing!) economy and magic system, and inevitably interacts with issues of wealth and class in ways that, shockingly, do not work out well for anyone who’s not super-wealthy. It took a bit of work to keep track of the multiple levels of intrigue playing out, but it was well-worth it; I loved the cast, the world, and am dying to see more of both. But we get the sequel this month; not long to wait now!!!

TRANS – A TRANS LEAD AND AUTHORMany Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC, major sapphic character
Goodreads

A memory-stealing cult.
The ever-watchful City of Eyes.
Making small talk.
Join Droplet as she faces all these horrors and more…

Vigilante shapeshifter Droplet has trained her entire life to take down those with more power than scruples, but she still makes mistakes. When a rescue mission goes wrong, a memory-stealing cult of blood mages escapes with kidnapped captives in tow. To save them, Droplet reluctantly teams up with the outgoing, tenacious Azera. Droplet knows better than to trust a human—she made that mistake once, and that person's betrayal scattered her community across the known world—and she can tell Azera is hiding secrets behind her sunny smile. But if they can’t learn to work together, even Droplet’s own memories could be lost.

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Droplet, our main character, has an interesting relationship to gender – actually, it seems like the whole of her people/species, who are shapeshifters, do. Droplet is a girl/woman, but she regularly takes male forms – she spends a big chunk of this book travelling in a male human body, and many of her non-human animal shapes are male too. It doesn’t matter to Droplet; she just uses whichever shape is most convenient in the moment, and its sex is very rarely relevant.

Which I guess might mean she’s only trans sometimes, but this book needs boosting, so I’m featuring it!

The worldbuilding here is superficially simple but really well-thought-out – this is definitely my favourite take on shapeshifters ever! – and this book is just pure FUN. I mean, yes, there are scary moments and also it is definitely an adventure, so it’s not quite cosy, but I lost count of how many times I ended up gigglesnorting while reading. I adore Droplet utterly, and I must insist we get more books about her, and the shenanigans she gets herself into!

QBIPOC – A BIPOC MC AND AUTHORThe Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, Yohanca Delgado, Eve L. Ewing, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Sheree Renée Thomas
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: QBIPOC MCs
Goodreads

In The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, activist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, exploring how different threads of liberation—queerness, race, gender plurality, and love—become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape…and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms.

Whoever controls our memories controls the future.

Janelle Monáe and an incredible array of talented collaborating creators have written a collection of tales comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts—as a means of self-conception—could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether human, A.I., or other, your life and sentience was dictated by those who’d convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate.

That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free.

Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it’s like to live in such a totalitarian existence…and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the traditions of speculative writers such as Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor—and filled with the artistic genius and powerful themes that have made Monáe a worldwide icon in the first place—The Memory Librarian serves readers tales grounded in the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, but also reaching through to the worlds of memory and time within, and the stakes and power that exists there.

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Still can’t believe it took me so long to get to this masterpiece – if you haven’t read it then you should know it is, in fact, exactly as excellent as everyone has always said it is. This is one of my favourite dystopias – if you can say that? I mean it’s one of the best-worldbuilt I’ve ever seen, not that I want to live in it! The way people are controlled via their memories, and all the ways those who refuse to conform find to resist and/or fight back… So many different QBIPOC perspectives, from so many different places within (and without) this society, all exquisitely written. And I’m not going to lie: that final story? Made me bawl with happy-tears!

Happy Blogiversary to ME, and happy Pride to everyone!

If you’re curious, you can find my previous years’ recs below;
Year One!
(Alas, I somehow forgot to celebrate year 2!)
Year Three!
Year Four!

And if you do your own Pride Flag recs, let me know so I can check them out!

The post 5 Years and Counting = Pride Flag Recs! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

In Short: May

I had minor surgery this month; my husband was supposed to, but his heart stopped under the anaesthesia, so his surgery didn’t happen. He’s completely fine, it just seems to have been one of those one-in-a-million-odds things – there’s nothing at all wrong with his heart – but it freaked the fuck out of both of us, as you can imagine. On a lesser note, we’ve been hit with a truly horrific heat wave that’s left me with constant dehydration headaches; not the best conditions for reading!

ARCs Received

CLEARLY EVERYONE HAS DECIDED THAT IT’S A ‘LET’S SPOIL SIA ROTTEN’ MONTH. I regret NOTHING, and am in fact very gleeful and grateful to all the lovely people who approved me (and/or went and found another way to get me a copy, when the ‘official’ arc was a format I couldn’t read!) I have started several of these already and am swooning at how wonderful they are!

Read

12 books read this month – meaning, fewer than April, which was fewer than March. That’s…really not great.

What WAS great were the BOOKS! My gods. Swordcrossed gave me actual goosebumps and made me weepy (in a good way) MULTIPLE TIMES (Freya Marske has levelled UP, folx, you are not ready!!!); The Daughters’ War is extremely grim but also extremely not; and Saints of Storm and Sorrow and Running Close to the Wind are both going straight onto my best-of-the-year list, albeit for wildly different reasons.

I’m also really glad I read Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies, which was exactly the kind of light read I needed at the time (murder by magic pies!), and that I pushed through and finished The Seep instead of DNFing it. I’m still not sure what I think of it, but it’s beautiful and I’m happy I read it.

To the best of my knowledge, 25% of this month’s books had BIPOC authors. Could be much worse!

Reviewed

Well, I got this month’s arcs reviewed in time. That’s not nothing! But I really do wish I’d been able to write more.

DNF-ed

Four DNFs this month; not unbearable. And The Stars Too Fondly and Cuckoo are both objectively great; I DNFed because they weren’t for me, not because they were bad. The Garden of Delights…I am so conflicted about. I wanted to love it, you know?

ARCs Outstanding

I’ve finished a good chunk of these, so now the job is to write them up! My fingers shall FLY LIKE THE WIND, hopefully!

Unmissable SFF Updates

My Unmissable SFF of 2024 list is a continual work in progress, what with cover reveals, and new books being announced – or discovering books long-since announced, but which I didn’t hear about until just lately! All together, the end of May brings us to a total of 98 Unmissable books!

(The cover reveal for The Scarlet Throne, which was literally today, means that all the books on the list now have their covers! This pleases me.)

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

there were no five star reads at all (out of the May releases I read)one was a four and a half stars read (Evocation)one was a four star read (The Brides at High Hill)one was a three star read (Road to Ruin)two were soft-DNFs, of the I’ll-try-again-later kind (The Z Word and Blood at the Root)one was a DNF, but I have such conflicted feelings about it (The Garden of Delights)one I have not gotten to yet (Death’s Country)three were complete fails (Sins On Their Bones, The Honey Witch, and Keepers of the Stones and Stars)

2/10 – definitely not my best set of predictions! Perhaps June will go better.

Misc

It was Wyrd & Wonder this month, and I got a few decent contributions in! Like Adventures in Discomfort, a rec list of fantasy featuring disabled leads, and my annual lists of magic systems and magical abilities! I did not accomplish everything I wanted to, but one never does, does one?

Looking Forward

June is PACKED full of epic releases, but of the ones I do not have arcs of, I’m looking forward to these two – The Fire Within Them, which is the sequel to The Darkness Before Them, and The Wilderness of Girls, which I really hope is actually fantasy and not just trauma victims being deluded. Fingers crossed!

Now let’s go and have a most excellent Pride Month, people!

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

May DNFs

Four DNFs this month – worse than April, but a lot better than March!

The Garden of Delights by Amal Singh
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Desi-coded cast and setting
ISBN: 1787589080
Goodreads

Amal Singh is an engaging and motivated writer from Mumbai, India, with a long list of short story credits in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Apex, Fantasy and many others.

In the city of Sirvassa, where petals are currency and flowers are magic, the Caretaker tends to the Garden of Delights. He imparts temporary magical abilities to the citizens of Sirvassa, while battling a curse of eternal old age. No Delight could uplift his curse, and so he must seek out a mythical figure. A god. When a Delight allows a young girl an ability to change reality, the Caretaker believes he’s at the end of his search. But soon a magical rot takes root in his Garden, and the Caretaker must join forces with the girl and stop it from spreading. Even as he battles a different rot that plagues Sirvassa, he learns that Delights are always a precursor to Sorrows.

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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.

This is a really, really beautiful book, with a very unique world that I fell in love with – but I found the prose really difficult. It’s hard to explain, because at the same time the prose is also gorgeous, with really incredible imagery, sensual description, and lovely turns of phrase.

But the rhythm of the writing is very…odd? It’s constantly jarring – like listening to bad music. I grit my teeth and thought I would get used to it, or that I could ignore it because the rest of the book is so stunning that dealing with the prose was worth it. But – I’m not sure if my tolerance got worn down or if the issue actually did get worse as the book progressed, but a little after the halfway point I just couldn’t take it anymore.

This is a problem that most readers aren’t bothered by – I’ve talked about writing sounding ‘out of tune’ before, and no one ever has a clue what I’m talking about. So unless you do know what I’m talking about (in which case, please message me, because I so badly want to discuss it with someone who gets it!) you can ignore everything I just said and pick up Garden of Delights without worrying about it.

Setting that issue aside, I do think the dialogue is often pretty terrible, and there was a lot of choppy action – people suddenly saying or doing things out of nowhere. But neither of those are enough to stop this book from being objectively gorgeous and wonderful, and I really hope it reaches all the readers who are going to adore it.

Because I’m so conflicted, I’m not going to give this one a rating – I really don’t know how I feel about it. (Except massively disappointed that I just can’t love it like I want to.)

Keepers of the Stones and Stars by Michael Barakiva
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Gay MC, queer Latina MC
ISBN: 0374314403
Goodreads

Keepers of the Stones and Stars is a witty, young adult contemporary epic fantasy about a cheeky quintet of teens chosen by magical gems to save the world.

Save the world.
Get the guy.

Reed is leading his best he’s just kissed the boy of his dreams, his band is finally taking off, and he’s a shoo-in to getting elected as next year’s Student Council president. But he’s ready to give it all up when his suspiciously aristocratic guidance counselor tells him he has been chosen to go on the adventure of a lifetime.

Because Reed is the first of five Stone Bearers to be chosen by magical gems and granted their powers. All he has to do is unite all five and lead them to seal a portal that will release an onslaught of uncontrollable chaotic magical energies, and destroy the world as we know it. It’s up to the Ruby, Sapphire, Topaz, Emerald, and Amethyst Bearers to save the world, fulfilling their roles in a centuries-old cycle that dates back to 17th century Mughal India and the first Keepers of the Stones and Stars.

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 think a big, BIG part of why I didn’t click with this is that it is not the kind of YA with crossover appeal to Adult readers.

Will actual teenagers like it? Yes, I think so! Some of them! But it is not meant for us, fellow adults of the internet.

And that is okay! It’s great when a YA book also works for adults, but they don’t have to. They’re not meant to. And I’m not going to call this a bad book because it’s written for its intended audience.

Is it a book I’d hand to my teenage siblings? Probably not – while it sounds great from the blurb, I thought the execution was…lacking. The prose is pretty basic, the premise a lot simpler than I was expecting, and the infodumping constant. But also inconsistent: when a magical (potential) villain appears in the early chapters, no one explains who she is, and the main character doesn’t even ask! Even when she keeps being mentioned, referred to, it’s like no one is curious or feels like explaining who (and what) she is!

Reed, aforementioned main character and the magically chosen/destined Leader of the stone bearers, is very annoying – I really disliked how he believed everything he was told without question, and never asked for proof – even of the existence of magic! Come on. But Reed is a delight compared to the Wise Mentor figure, Mr Shaw, who is pompous, patronising, and has pretty alarming attitudes re colonialism and also being friendly with dictators.

I read the first 20%, and I thought there was a possibility that Mr Shaw, and the whole lineage of mentors, might be corrupt, and the story was not as simple as it seemed. But I wasn’t nearly invested enough to stick around to find out.

Queer kids saving the world is awesome, but even judging it as objectively as possible, I wish this had been done better. I think it’s probably an okay, maybe even a fun, read for the right teen, but it doesn’t live up to its potential. Although again, it’s possible the book twists and becomes something less predictable after the 20% point. I just…wouldn’t hold my breath on it turning into something properly impressive.

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Sapphic MC, Black trans secondary character, Chinese American secondary character, nonbinary secondary character, F/F
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

In her breathtaking debut—part space odyssey, part sapphic rom-com—Emily Hamilton tells a tale of galaxy-spanning friendship, improbable love, and found family.

So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace, but then the stupid dark-matter engine started on its own. Now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri and unable to turn around while being harangued by a hologram that has the face and snide attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.

Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship travels deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting; old mysteries come crawling back to life; and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.

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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This is a book that is objectively pretty great – maybe even awesome – but isn’t quite for me.

I can’t point to anything being wrong with it, or done poorly; I pushed myself halfway through the book (instead of quitting at 20%, my typical cut-off point) because it is actually good. The writing and characters are all great. There’s no solid reason to DNF it.

I just…didn’t care. And that’s having read the three major revelations/twists in the first half, which turn The Stars Too Fondly into something VERY different from what I was expecting – and not a bad something! It’s very cool! I like being taken by surprise! The stakes become infinitely higher, and a whole host of new possibilities open up, making it (at least for me) impossible to predict where the story was going to go!

Lots of awesome, in other words!

But something was missing; I wasn’t connecting to any of the characters, I wasn’t invested in the plot, and even though I can see that objectively Revelation the Third is really exciting and unique and I have no idea what direction Hamilton’s going to take it in…I don’t care. I’m not interested, even though I really should be. This should tick so many boxes for me; I ought to be so excited by the worldbuilding and what Hamilton is going to do with it. And I’m just not.

I don’t know why. I do think the problem is probably me, not the book; I would happily recommend The Stars Too Fondly to a whole bunch of my friends, and I think many readers of my blog will love it. Hells, maybe I’LL love it, if I try again in a year or something; maybe I’m just in the wrong headspace right now, and I would love it if I read it at a different time. I hope so.

But at this time it’s a slog to get through, and I’m bored, and I’m tired. So. Call it a DNF-for-now, not a DNF-forever. I’ll cross my fingers. If it sounds interesting to you, I strongly encourage you to pick up a copy. But I’m putting mine aside.

Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer and QBIPOC cast
Published on: 11th June 2024
Goodreads

Cuckoo is a searing new novel from Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin, where a motley crew of kidnapped kids try to stay true to themselves while serving time in a conversion camp from hell.

In the late 90s, five queer kids, whose parents want them “fixed,” find themselves thrown together at a secretive "tough love" camp deep in the scorching Utah desert.

Tormented and worked to the point of collapse by hardline religious zealots intent on straightening them out, they slowly become aware that something in the mountains north of the camp is speaking to them in their dreams, and that the children who return home to their families have...changed.

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 ended up having so many thoughts about this one that I gave it its own review post, rather than the short-ish thing I do here in my DNF wrap-up. So go read that, if you want my take!

Did you DNF anything this month?

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