Siavahda's Blog, page 4

In Short: July

So first off, to anyone who’s subscribed here, I am so sorry for all the emails yesterday. I am both very bad with computer-y things AND wasn’t able to bring myself to break routine and not post the Can’t Wait and DNFs yesterday – and I probably should have. Meep.

This month we got hit by a heat wave (did anyone NOT? and if so, can I move to your country?) which knocked me flat. We also set out multiple wide, shallow bowls full of water in the yard, and it’s been so lovely seeing birds come to drink and bathe! The magpies especially are a delight to watch. Less delightful has been my war with my local health centre to get them to give me my meds – this has been going on for two and a half months now, I think. Sigh. Thank fuck, once again, for good books! (What would we do without them???)

ARCs Received

I was interested in A Fae in Finance because it looked fun, but didn’t have any plans to request it until I learned that the author is (apparently openly) queer, which nudged it over the line as something I should try and review! Ragwort is the sequel to a book I didn’t adore, but which had awesome worldbuilding – and the ending heavily implied that this instalment was going to be much more my thing! The others are all from my Unmissable lists (two from next year!)

Read

When I completed the Mid-Year Freakout tag at the start of the month, I was really upset to see how few BIPOC authors I’d read – so this month I decided to read only BIPOC authors. (With the exception of The Fellowship of the Ring, which I was reading to the hubby as a bedtime book. We hated it, for the record!)

What effect did this have? Well, I read more books than I did in August – 18 instead of last month’s 13! Several were books that had been on my tbr for ages, and I ended up loving many of them!

The Devourers is one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life, and both Legendborn and The Sign of the Dragon lived up to every bit of hype I’ve seen for them! The Formidable Miss Cassidy was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed The House of Binding Thorns so much more than I did the first book in the trilogy! Ninefox Gambit was objectively excellent, and has made me very curious about the rest of the series. Daughters of Flood and Fury didn’t quite live up to book one – it really should have been split into two books, imo, made a trilogy instead of a duology – but I still really enjoyed it!

Three stunning rereads this month: The City in Glass, which I’m still not smart enough to Get but continue to enjoy immensely; Darknesses, which got me out of a reading slump because OF COURSE IT DID; and To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which I wanted to reread before diving into my arc of the sequel!

If you want to read the mini-notes I wrote on each book, the ones for July start here! (Bluesky thread.)

DNFed

Yet again, some of my most-anticipated releases let me down! I am BETRAYED.

(If I was only reading BIPOC authors this month, how did I DNF two not-BIPOC-authored books? Simple: I wasn’t reading them, but I looked at them and realised I never wanted to continue reading them after July was up.)

Reviewed

I’m really happy that I managed so many non-arc reviews this month! So often I only manage to review arcs, which is a huge shame. (Granted, this month’s arc-review is for one of my favourite books of the year!)

Also, I put the ‘Reviewed’ section after the ‘DNFed’ one to make it easier to count the DNFs as reviews. Because they are! And I realised I should be giving myself credit for them.

Next Up

I’m the moodiest of mood readers, so no promise at ALL that I will in fact read (any of) these next month – but here are the books that, at this moment in time, are at the top of my tbr! (Discounting arcs and August’s releases!)

If you’ve read any of these already, what did you think???

ARCs Outstanding

Luckily, I don’t have many arcs due in August, so I’m hoping I can get a good bit of progress made with these! Clearly I need it.

Unmissable SFF Updates

Some pub dates were changed – one book had to be removed from this year’s list, since it won’t be out till next year, and Whalesong was pushed back but only to October. We’re down to 80 books! I’m sure it’ll be getting longer again soon, though. And one book’s publication date was moved UP: Angel Maker will now be out on September 2nd, instead of September 25th! How often does THAT happen?

2026’s list is steadily growing; there are now 13 books on it!

Because of my BIPOC-authors only rule for July, I didn’t get to most of my July Unmissables (which says a lot about how few BIPOC authors are on the Unmissable list), so I’m not going to go through them here like I usually do. Maybe I’ll include it with next month’s wrap up, along with the August ones.

Misc

I was really happy that I made a LONG rec list of self-published fantasy books for Self-Published Authors Appreciation Week!

There was also a fair bit of back-end shenanigans going on, what with changing how post notification emails go out to subscribers. Y’all missed a lot of me pulling my hair out and weeping over the keyboard. (I exaggerate, but only slightly.)

Much more interesting was the copy-editing I got to do for a micro-press I massively admire! I was asking the editor about something else, and when he mentioned wanting to do a new edition of one of my favourite books, I offered a copy-edit. And he took me up on it! I’m still so delighted. It was so much fun, and I’m really looking forward to seeing his and the author’s responses!

Looking Forward

Next month Mad Sisters of Esi is being released in the US and UK, two years (I think?) after its release in India! I got to read it when it was first published, but I plan on rereading and finally reviewing this incredible fantasy about two sisters, a galactic whale, and a magical island! Teo’s Durumi is the sequel to Ocean’s Gidori, which I read earlier this year and PASSIONATELY ADORED – futuristic Korean sci-fi with really fun retro vibes! Hemlock and Silver probably needs no introduction, but obviously I am HYPED; Automatic Noodle is a novella about robots running a noodle shop that sounds adorable and fun; and House of Dusk is an epic fantasy standalone delivering sapphic princess/bodyguard and also fire-wielding priestesses. The most unexpected release has to be Her Subtle Investigations, because I had NO CLUE we were getting another book in this setting until a couple weeks ago, and I am extremely excited for the promised mercenaries and polyamory!

Now let’s go and have an awesome August!

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

July DNFs

I am so enormously relieved to be getting back to a REASONABLE number of DNFs-per-month! Six is fine. Six is FINE.

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, sapphic love interest
ISBN: 1250910706
Goodreads

A twisted, tangled story about workplace love-affairs, and plants with a taste for human flesh

During a grocery run to her local shopping center, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to make a change and bring some good into her life, so she goes inside and takes a chance. Shell realizes right away that flowers are just the good thing she's been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist who wrote the sign asking for help. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine.

An orchid growing out of sight in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. His name is Baby, and the beautiful florist belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats – nobody he eats – can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He adores her and wants to consume her, and will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves.

This is a story about possession, and monstrosity, and working retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.

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

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The thing is that this is mind-numbing.

Baby, the monster plant that occasionally eats humans and hungers after Neve (the woman tending him) specifically, narrates the book – and the moments where he’s talking in first-person are deliciously creepy!

But the vast majority of the book is him telling us what’s happening in the heads of the humans, functionally third-person, and these people are SO GODS-DAMN BORING. Endlessly mundane, endlessly banal, endlessly dull. I could not give less of a fuck about Shell’s instagram, or all her petty anxieties, or the will-they-won’t-they energy suffusing their friend group! I am not here for all the reflections on how people have, or haven’t, changed since secondary school! When we straight-up had orchids growing out of someone’s face and QUESTIONS WERE NOT ASKED OR ANSWERED, I gave the fuck up. (Past the 50% mark, for the record. I almost DNFed so many times, but then we’d have a split second of really gorgeous creepiness and I’d push on…until I couldn’t take one more minute of it.) The ‘explanation’ Neve gives at that point is so vague no functioning human on the face of planet Earth would accept it, sorry – you’d RUN to the emergency room, you certainly wouldn’t keep hanging around the flower shop that presumably infected you!

And please don’t get me started on the baffling emails from Neve’s ex. I have no idea why they’re included, because they add absolutely nothing. Just pages and pages of her begging a friend to take her seriously but dancing around what exactly is going on, with even MORE pages of how much her life sucks and oh isn’t her inability to strike up a conversation with her coworkers so very WOEFUL. No, woman, it’s pathetic; if you want them to talk to, start talking!!! She doesn’t even have anxiety, she’s just deeply, deeply lame.

Baby is the only character that’s at all interesting, and for some reason the author decided not to focus on him? Inexplicable. Though the way his own opinions suddenly interject into the ‘third-person’ – abruptly reminding you of who’s doing the narrating – had the potential to be very cool, but like. Those moments – along with the ones of Baby being Deeply Creepy about eating people – are just…specks of glitter lost in the grey mud that is the rest of it. Those specks certainly aren’t enough to save this novel.

This book is grey, and I’m so confused by all the positive reviews – they seem like they’re talking about some other book, not the one I read. I needed so much more creepy. I needed the spotlight to be on the man-eating plant! Not the wishy-washy literary-fiction-y mundanity that I read SFF/H to get AWAY from!

This had so much potential – and Griffin is clearly capable of writing marvellous creepiness! So I don’t understand what went wrong here. I want to shake whoever completely failed to edit this; how did the agent or editor NOT address how drowned-out the horror was by the lit-fic nonsense???

Sigh.

I’m cautiously willing to try Griffin again, depending on what a future (or past? I think she’s written a few other things already) novel’s about. She can obviously write! But I need my spec fic to be so much more speculative than this, sorry-not-sorry.

Unsex Me Here by Aurora Mattia
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MCs
ISBN: 164362265X
Goodreads

Unsex Me Here is a prayer book tied together by the strings of a corset. Glamorous ramblers, haunted by the sense of another world drawing near, wander in and out of its inexplicable twilight. From a West Texas town with a supernatural past to a stalactite cavern in the birthplace of Aphrodite, from hotel rooms to gardens to the far horizon of a thought, they seek the source of the disturbance in their minds. Heartbreak is not so far from rapture; holy babble is another kind of gossip. Every pilgrimage is as dense with symbolism as it is refined by desire.

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I loved Mattia’s debut novel The Fifth Wound, which was full of magical imagery and bejewelled prose. The writing in Unsex Me Here is still lovely (though probably too purple for most people – cowards!) but the simple issue is that this collection seems a lot less fantastical, which means that I’m bored.

So this isn’t me calling the book bad! It’s just not what I thought it would be, and therefore I’m not the right reader for it. Alas! I’ll still be paying attention to anything Mattia publishes in the future!

Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Genres: Adult, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Black cast, biracial MC
ISBN: 1668034948
Goodreads

In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.

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I made it to 53%, but I am just SO BORED.

I’m also, like. Side-eyeing the author quite a bit, because I think BIPOC would do just fine without us whites, actually? The society we see coming together in the first half of the book is refreshingly utopic in many ways, but there’s also all sorts of things that can’t be made or done now, and. Why??? You don’t need white people to make meds or run power stations, sir. That’s a really weird idea. Even if we run with the premise that no BIPOC were ever in charge of those things before all the white people died – which, racism is real and also terrible but I just don’t believe that for a second – what on earth would stop them picking up the instruction manuals afterwards? Or contacting people from all the many, many countries where white people were always a minority (radios are a thing! the satellites are presumably still up in space! pick up a phone!!!) and getting help or lessons from them? You’re telling me nobody was capable or interested??? I call bollocks.

(Also Canada and Mexico are right there and you’re not telling me ANYTHING about what things look like there, which is disappointing.)

Magical realism elements started showing up around the halfway mark, but the book is mostly about a dad escorting his (biracial with so much internalised racism) daughter to a place where there are allegedly some white survivors. The daughter gradually unlearning her internalised awfulness is objectively moving but not super interesting (she’s actually pretty unpleasant to read about, since she takes out this internalised racism on everybody else around her, constantly) and nothing else is really happening. I wanted to see so much more of this post-white world, but as I should have expected there was very little focus on that. Sigh!

I saw another review that said this read like it was written for white people, and…yeah, that kinda hits the nail on the head re the tone. It’s much more lecturing me and readers like me about (modern North American) racism, rather than a thought experiment or escapist wish-fulfilment thing for BIPOC readers. It’s not interesting, it’s very heavy-handed, and again, NOTHING WAS HAPPENING.

Calling it quits, doubt I’ll try this author again.

Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Chinese pansexual MC, Chinese MC
ISBN: 0063355086
Goodreads

A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters—one in New York, one in Singapore—who are bound by an ancient secret

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim and using her charms to make ends meet. But they share a once, they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang dynasty China.

A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her—but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.

Razor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale “The Legend of the White Snake,” this is a novel about being seen for who you are—and, ultimately, how to live free.

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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My friends, I noped the fuck out when we got a snake-on-snake gangrape scene. Enough said.

(It’s also written in a very Literary Fiction style that is extremely boring, AND I can’t believe that an ancient magic snake decided to become human in order to…become the Singaporean version of a tradwife. WHAT. With bonus impossible!pregnancy, because OF COURSE.)

GOODBYE.

The Memory Hunters (The Consecrated Book 1) by Mia Tsai
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic brown MC, bisexual MC, secondary MLM character, secondary bisexual character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
Published on: 29th July 2025
ISBN: 1645662128
Goodreads

Inception meets Indiana Jones in this propulsive fungal science fantasy following a headstrong academic and her equally stubborn bodyguard as they unearth an ancient secret that rocks the foundations of their society—and challenges their unspoken love for one another.

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key wants to do research for the Museum of Human Memory. . . and to avoid the public eye.

Valerian IV's twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south.

But when Key collects a memory that diverges from official history, only Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding; her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days.

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything for the truth.

Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

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 pushed and pushed with this one, all the way to 48%, but I was so bored.

The concept of memory-hunting is incredibly cool, but I wanted to see so much more of how it impacted the society that had developed after some kind of apocalypse scenario (there are a lot of references to the Decade of Storms, put it seemed to me that even before that the world wasn’t one we’d recognise. Possibly this is entirely a secondary-world setting and not meant to be a future version of our world? I wasn’t completely certain). Despite seeing inside the museum the main characters worked for, I don’t understand how this effects most people; there’s a religion that memory-diving is extremely important to, but by the halfway mark I still didn’t know much about it, even though one of our main characters is under pressure to become the next high priestess.

Plot-wise…gods, this dragged on! We start with Key and Vale out on an expedition looking for memories away from the city, and that was great, but the moment they returned home the pacing slowed down immensely to very little purpose. Key and Vale’s relationship, which seemed great when they were by themselves, either broke down or revealed itself to be much less great when they were back home. Key is from a wealthy family with a lot of privilege, whereas Vale comes from extreme poverty – and Key has been leaning on their friendship, on Vale’s desire to make Key happy, to avoid a lot of the duties Vale is responsible for enforcing. They get in an enormous amount of trouble for this – Vale loses her next paycheck, which is potentially devastating for the family back home who depend on it – and a) I thought the punishment was extreme and sudden when there was no mention of previous official warnings or anything, and b) …this was all Key’s fault and I never got the sense that she really understood why this was her fault. Yes, she blamed herself and did her best to make it up to Vale, but my impression was that she thought the rules were wrong, not that she’s been completely unfair to Vale.

None of the characters or their relationships ended up interesting me. Vale herself is the most intriguing character, but I quickly got tired of her constantly thinking she wasn’t up to the standards of everyone around her because of her background/poverty; she thinks she’s ugly, she takes everything said to her in the worst possible light even when that makes no sense, and she doesn’t seem to take pride in her skills as an elite Guardian. (She was top of her class in the academy! She can still wipe the floor with almost any other Guardian! I don’t get why she doesn’t appreciate that she’s really great at what she’s devoted her life to!) She’s physically attracted to Key but thinks this is terrible; her boyfriend, Jing, is…narcissistic is too strong a term, but he doesn’t care about her very much and makes that clear (I never understood why Vale keeps hoping he’ll eventually want to say ‘I love you’ and ‘be serious’ when he’s said multiple times that he doesn’t want to, and I disliked how pathetic she was about someone who clearly wasn’t worth her). Key thinks Jing doesn’t treat Vale well enough but doesn’t talk about it, because of course not.

(Jing is clearly in love with his Guardian, Cal, who is in love with him right back, but why would they talk about it like adults???)

Key’s mother is suffocating and controlling and doesn’t hesitate to throw her weight around; the head of the museum is clearly terrible and Key somehow doesn’t notice despite being the woman’s protege. Like. I don’t mind all these characters being unlikable, but who am I supposed to be interested in? Key? Key is passionate about memory-diving but I didn’t actually understand WHY; she’s very excited about a memory she finds at the start of the book, but we don’t know enough about the world to get why it’s important (or at least, I didn’t). I kept waiting for Key to explain to the reader what this memory could mean, to hear her babble (out loud or in internal monologue) like someone talking about their special interest, and it never happened. And yes, Key is attracted to Vale physically, but doesn’t treat her very well (even after they get punished, she still tries to emotionally blackmail Vale into letting her, Key, out of necessary memory-hunter medical treatment!) so I’m not interested in the sapphic pining, thanks.

By the halfway mark, yes, it’s clear that the museum at least is built on some kind of conspiracy to hide truths about the past, and quite possibly the whole tradition of memory-hunting (including the religion I mentioned earlier, of which Key’s mother is the current high priestess). But since I had no hint as to what the hidden truths might be, or why they mattered, I really don’t care. Is this setting even a dystopia? I haven’t seen enough of it to be sure. The dodgiest things I’m aware of are a) memory-hunters needing occasional short-term memory wipes to be able to function, and b) memory-hunters being hunted for their blood, hence why they need Guardians. Okay? Neither of those things make it clear to me that this society is fucked-up and I should want all its secrets exposed.

Prose-wise, I kept twitching at awkward sentences and clunky images, neither of which I remember from Tsai’s debut Bitter Medicine.

telling herself things like validation or personal desire were as distant as the roll of thunder from ten miles away.

…so validation or personal desire are ten miles away? Okay.

She herself was possessed of as many curves as a fence and was leaner than a weasel.

This just sounds really odd to me. ‘Flat as a board’, I get; ‘flat as a fence’…I mean, fences can curve? I think you mean that what the fence is made of – boards, iron bars, whatever – are not curvy. It’s just awkward.

only person Jing puts above himself is Cal.” She was wrong, but Vale figured she didn’t want to know that Jing preferred lying on his back in bed.

I’m still not sure what it means. Is it a sex joke? Vale is usually on top when she and Jing have sex?

“Because you treat me like a friend, not an asset.”

[…]

“As a friend. Not like a friend.”

Am I just being dumb? I don’t get it. I think what is meant here is ‘I treat you like a friend because you are my friend’, but the distinction between ‘as a friend’ and ‘like a friend’…don’t they mean the same thing? What???

48% and I’m bored, don’t care where the story is going, and have no interest in any of the characters, never mind Key and Vale someday getting together. I give up!

When They Burned the Butterfly: A Novel by Wen-yi Lee
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic Singaporean MC, F/F, minor trans character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 21st October 2025
ISBN: 1250369460
Goodreads

A fierce, glamorous sapphic fantasy reimagining the secret societies of postcolonial Singapore, for fans of Jade City, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and the feverish intensity of RF Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy.

Singapore, 1972: Newly independent, a city of immigrants grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters are the last conduits of the gods their ancestors brought with them, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place where magic has not been assimilated and legislated away.

Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley barfight—a girl with a butterfly tattoo–she discovers she’s far from alone.
Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian.

But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it.

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 was so freaking hyped for this, but I can’t stand the prose.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the main character. She is, as other reviewers have said, a bitch, and you know what? It’s great. Give me more unlikable heroines, characters who DGAF about being Nice, who have sharp edges and sharper tongues and will burn the fucking world down for spite. Adeline is *chef’s kiss*

The premise, though, seemed to be very simplistic as the book went on – various criminal gangs draw power from different gods and spirits, granting them different kinds of magical abilities. I was hoping for a lot more on the nature of this connection, what makes a god, where these beings come from – and I especially thought we’d get it because Adeline’s connection to the Butterfly goddess is unique. Possibly it showed up later in the book than I got, but the way it was all framed very much made it feel like we weren’t going to get any explorations into that. Which was disappointing.

But the main problem is the prose. Bear in mind, I seem to ‘hear’ prose in a way the vast majority of readers don’t, so when I have an issue with prose rhythm, it’s almost always something that doesn’t affect others. The fact that Lee’s writing seemed unbearably jerky to me – stopping-and-starting, establishing a rhythm only to immediately break it, using word order that doesn’t sound CorrectTM (to me, I emphasise!) – does not mean it will to you! If you’ve never been bothered by prose rhythm before, you very likely do not need to worry about it bothering you in When They Burned the Butterfly. (I am envious.)

For me, it made When They Burned the Butterfly a chore; every time I set it down, I had zero desire to pick it up again. The dialogue in particular rang very false to me, and while there were occasionally really beautiful lines of prose, such as Adeline’s first moments of Sapphic Awakening–

And she had another something whose articulation was formless on Adeline’s teeth, tart and vivid enough to strike the nerves in her gums, something essential she was gnawing at that wasn’t yet solid enough to spit out. But it turned Adeline’s throat dry and scraped her insides with a terrifying hunger.

–there were a lot more that jarred, where the writing felt ‘out of tune’ and the phrasing was confusingly clunky.

The street constantly smelled sweet of burning chrysanthemums.

The author’s meaning comes through perfectly! But that either ought to be ‘sweetly’ (and possibly it is meant to be and this is just a typo that will be corrected before release day – I read an advanced reader copy, and they do have errors sometimes) or it needs rephrasing.

There had been cholera outbreaks recently, but it didn’t seem to have gripped the actual place in any sense of urgency.

‘There had been cholera outbreaks recently, but you wouldn’t guess it from the atmosphere of the street.’ Or something. ‘it didn’t seem to have gripped the actual place in any sense of urgency’ is just such an awkward way of saying what is meant here.

At least, a shop was a generous name.

‘Calling it a shop was being generous.’

Tragedy could fuel revenge with the right conditions to move it along.

I know what you mean, but! This is not the best phrasing!

which also meant they knew exactly where he would be on days of the week.

…so they knew where he’d be every day, then?

If you’re raising an eyebrow at me right now, with no idea why these quotes bother me, then congrats, you will probably enjoy the prose just fine and can completely ignore my critique there! Again, I am jealous of you.

I should also note that I skipped ahead to read the ending, hoping it would be interesting enough that I’d want to finish the book to find out how we got to it. Instead, I found a wishy-washy, not-an-actual-ending ending, the kind that annoys me immensely. Especially when it’s trying to be gritty, which this definitely was. (The author gets points for doing a thing very few authors are brave enough to do, but it’s a tragic thing that I don’t actually enjoy and which is definitely going to upset a lot of readers.) The epilogue is one long info-dump type summary of events that should have been an entire second book.

(That being said, Tor has had a habit recently of marketing books as standalones – Kerstin Hall’s Asunder, Sandymancer by David Edison, etc – that the authors did not intend as standalones, and I do wonder if that’s part of the issue here? Does Lee intend for there to be a sequel? One set after the events of the epilogue??? Or maybe wanted there to be one but Tor only bought one book, so she wrote the epilogue to…? Try and resolve things? But even if so, the epilogue did not leave me feeling like Adeline’s story was finished. Gah, I don’t know. Whatever the authorial intent, the reading experience was not satisfying, and whether that was Lee’s fault or Tor’s doesn’t make a practical difference, in the end.)

So…yeah. Sigh. DNF. Lots of other early reviewers have loved this, and I would like When They Burned the Butterfly to do well because I want to see more characters like Adeline! But I won’t be finishing this one.

Did you DNF anything this month???

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

I Can’t Wait For…The Flowers I Deserve by Tamara Jerée

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. 

You can find the releases I’m most anticipating this year over on my Unmissable list, but I use Can’t-Wait Wednesday to feature books I’m hopeful about but aren’t 100% sure will be five star reads.

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Flowers I Deserve by Tamara Jerée!

The Flowers I Deserve by Tamara Jerée
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Published on: 14th October 2025
Goodreads

Weeping luna is as common as wildflowers, and in the northern kingdoms, assassination by its floral poison is rampant. Those born with immunity are coveted by heretic clerical orders and the endangered aristocracy—and shunned by a superstitious society.

One so gifted, or cursed, Carlotta embraces her newfound power as the currency to deliver her from a land in the grip of drought. Luxury and beauty, glimpsed only through the portal of her late mother’s letters, become an easy trade to consider in exchange for her life. And looming always in her imagination is the symbol of it all—King Emelia, a demon who rose to power under mysterious circumstances. Rumor claims her to be a monstrous woman like the poison girls who serve and adore her. Yet in the warnings of evil, Carlotta sees her own reflection.

Once initiated into the world of sensual indulgence and ancient magic within the castle walls, however, Carlotta finds that not even a king’s devotion is enough to sate her. As the castle’s ghosts coalesce, Carlotta must also confront what her own dead want for her and, even at the heights of her seduction, what she truly wants for herself.

The Flowers I Deserve is a spicy FFF gothic fantasy novel with lyrical prose and a quiet heart. Content notes are available on the author's website and inside the book.

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I legit GASPED OUT LOUD when I learned that Jerée had a new novel coming out – somehow my book-detective skills completely failed me and I had no idea!

And then it’s THIS?!

We got the cover reveal last week and I’ve barely stopped staring at it since!!! Which, can you blame me?!

And honestly I’d be perfectly happy to pounce on a new Jerée book regardless of what it was about – but this sounds so freaking cool! I think it’s Jerée’s first secondary-world setting? ‘King Emelia’ is so promising, so far I have always fallen in love with worldbuilding that includes women bearing traditionally male titles, it is a marvellous green flag! (If you know of any books that include it, fellow readers, please drop them in the comments!)

Plus, ‘poison girls’??? I love the sound of that! Why are they so coveted though, one wonders? They wouldn’t be able to be food tasters, would they? Unless they can still detect the poison, even being immune? Possibly, possibly… My increasingly anarchist self is gleeful at the idea of an ‘endangered aristocracy’, anyway!

And what about that third F, in the promised F/F/F? There’s no mention of a third person in the synopsis! (I’m assuming the first two will be Carlotta and the king.) Maybe she’s another poison girl? Or a ghost, somehow? HMM!

Obviously I have already preordered, and obviously you should too! If you haven’t read Jerée before, you’ve got time to read her The Fall That Saved Us first, too, which I adored!

The post I Can’t Wait For…The Flowers I Deserve by Tamara Jerée appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #247

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 stuff sneaks in occasionally too.

FIFTEEN books this week!

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

Birth of a Dynasty by Chinaza Bado
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: West African-inspired setting and cast
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

Combining the political intrigue of She Who Became the Sun with the gorgeous world-building of Children of Blood and Bone, Birth of a Dynasty is the start of a thrilling epic fantasy trilogy centered around three families’ fight for power in Ahkebulin, a land where magic is feared, giants are real, and prophecy holds sway. 

We shall not forgive. We shall not forget. We will have our vengeance.

After witnessing the massacre of everyone he’s ever known and loved, M’Kuru Mukundi, the sole surviving member of the High Noble House Mukundi of Madada, vows revenge. M’kuru flees to a small village where he hides under the guise of farm boy Khalil Rausi… unaware that the real Khalil’s father is the bloodthirsty General of Zenzele army, and under the direction of the King’s scheming son, Prince Effiom, was responsible for the murder of M’kuru’s people. When an imposter claiming to be M’kuru shows up in the village, the real M’kuru—now Khalil—must bide his time amongst his enemies, pretending to be everything that he hates in order to get vengeance.

In another part of the country where giants roam free, young Zikora Nnamani, the only daughter of Lord Nnamani, knows nothing of political intrigue—she wants little more than to be a fierce Seh Llinga warrior. But a well-known prophecy places too much potential power on her small shoulders, and—as far as Prince Effiom and the King know—she is the only living threat to their dynasty ruling forever. However, when a messenger arrives to “invite” Zikora to stay at the palace, her family is not in a position to refuse. Before she is taken away, she begins The Rite of Blessing, a magical inheritance that she will need to learn how to use, but that may also bring the world one step closer to the completion of the prophecy that Prince Effiom so fears.

Between scheming ladies at court, backstabbing princes on the prowl, and paranoid kings, M’kuru and Zikora must do what they can, no matter how terrible, to save their people and claim vengeance for their families. But they are just two young people against an entire kingdom—and a prophecy destined to thwart their dreams—and the last thing they can do is trust anyone…even each other.

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I’ve heard very mixed things, but I can’t stop staring at that cover! Can I have it as a poster???

The Memory Hunters (The Consecrated, #1) by Mia Tsai
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic brown MC, bisexual MC, secondary bisexual and MLM characters
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

Inception meets Indiana Jones in this propulsive fungal science fantasy following a headstrong academic and her equally stubborn bodyguard as they unearth an ancient secret that rocks the foundations of their society—and challenges their unspoken love for one another.

Kiana Strade can dive deeper into blood memories than anyone alive. But instead of devoting her talents to the temple she’s meant to lead, Key wants to do research for the Museum of Human Memory. . . and to avoid the public eye.
Valerian IV's twin swords protect Key from murderous rivals and her own enthusiasm alike. Vale cares about Key as a friend—and maybe more—but most of all, she needs to keep her job so she can support her parents and siblings in the storm-torn south.

But when Key collects a memory that diverges from official history, only Vale sees the fallout. Key’s mentor suspiciously dismisses the finding; her powerful mother demands she stop research altogether. And Key, unusually affected by the memory, begins to lose moments, then minutes, then days.

As Vale becomes increasingly entangled in Key’s obsessive drive for answers, the women uncover a shattering discovery—and a devastating betrayal. Key and Vale can remain complicit, or they can jeopardize everything for the truth.

Either way, Key is becoming consumed by the past in more ways than one, and time is running out.

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I really enjoyed Tsai’s debut, but didn’t click with this one. Many other readers did, though!

My review!

Blood Slaves by Markus Redmond
Genres: Adult, Horror
Representation: Black cast
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

What if a mystifying revolt precluded the Civil War and changed history as we know it? The vampire origin story is brilliantly reimagined in this terrifying novel of ancient lore, startling revenge, and immortal emancipation in eighteenth-century America.

In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation.

Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire tribe rendered nearly extinct by plague. Rafazi has roamed the world for centuries with an undying desire to replenish the power that once defined his heritage. In Willie, Rafazi has found his first biddable subject to be turned and to help in a hungry revolt. And Willie desires nothing more than to free his people from malicious bondage. Whatever it takes.

One by one, as an army of blood slaves thirsting for revenge is gathered, the headstrong Gertie fears that no good can come from the vampiric legacy that courses through Rafazi’s veins. Willie knows that only evil can fight evil. And when the woman he loves stands between the reemergence of the Ramanga and the justified slaughter of the oppressors, Willie must make an irreversible decision. Only one thing is certain: on the Barrow plantation, and beyond, blood will spill.

Part historical drama, part supernatural horror, and part alternate history, Blood Slaves is an ingenuous and defiant new creation myth of the vampire, one rooted in both justice and the sometimes-violent means necessary to achieve it.

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I DNFed this, but mostly because it was too gory and horrific for me, not because it was objectively bad. Still a ridiculously cool premise!

The God Slayers (Manifestation Magician) by Patrick Bryce Wright
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Trans Asian-American MC
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

When gods fall... humanity rises.

In the dystopian year 2095, Kenzie Okuda flees the stifling theocracy of the United Republic of America, seeking refuge in the United States where magic is not condemned but embraced as a scientific marvel. As a transman, Kenzie hopes for acceptance and access to the freedom he deserves. Little does he know that this magical haven is about to face its darkest hour.

A mysterious sorcerer unleashes a malevolent force akin to Satan upon the enchanted halls of the magic university, sending shockwaves through the campus. Kenzie, alongside a diverse group of friends, discovers that their individual magical talents may hold the key to stopping the demonic onslaught. However, the elusive caster remains hidden, casting a shadow of despair over their efforts.

Amidst the chaos, Reverend John Paul Smith, Jr., the supreme religious ruler of the URA, arrives, exploiting the chaos to further his own agenda. He proclaims the attack as divine retribution, aiming to impose a tyrannical regime on the U.S. and snuff out the burgeoning magical community.

As Kenzie and his friends form a student taskforce to uncover the truth, they unearth hidden secrets that plunge them into a world darker than they could have ever imagined. Simultaneously, Rev. Smith seeks to fan the flames of a holy revolution, threatening to turn the U.S. into a mirror image of the oppressive URA.

To thwart the impending catastrophe, Kenzie and his friends must unveil the true extent of their powers and forge an unbreakable alliance. Only by facing the shadows within themselves can they hope to confront the external forces that threaten to plunge both their magical haven and newfound freedom into eternal darkness. The battle for liberation, identity, and the very essence of magic itself unfolds in this gripping tale of rebellion and self-discovery.

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On the one hand, I’m excited for science fantasy, which we get too little of; on the other hand, this is apparently set in a sort of Christian Nationalist USA? Post a second civil war? Not sure it’ll be my cup of tea, but I’d like to give it a go!

Beasts of Carnaval by Rosália Rodrigo
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Puerto Rican-inspired setting and cast
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

When night descends, el Carnaval de Bestias rises. 

They come chasing paradise…

Within the shores of Isla Bestia, guests from around the world discover a utopia of ever-changing performances, sumptuous feasts and beautiful monsters. Many enter, but few ever leave—the wine is simply too sweet, the music too fine and the revelry endless.

Sofía, a freedwoman from a nearby colonized island, cares little for this revelry. Born an enslaved mestiza on a tobacco plantation, she has neither wealth nor title, only a scholarly pragmatism and a hunger for answers. She travels to el Carnaval de Bestias in search of her twin brother, who disappeared five years ago. 

There’s a world of wonder waiting for her on the shores of this legendary island, one wherein conquerors profit from Sofia’s ancestral lands and her people’s labor. But surrounded by her former enslavers, she finds something familiar in the performances—whispers of the island’s native tongue, music and stories from her Taike’ri ancestors…a culture long hidden in the shadows, thrust into the light.

As the nights pass, her mind begins unraveling, drowning in the unnatural, almost sentient thrall of Carnaval. And the sense that someone is watching her grows. To find her brother and break free, Sofia must peel back the glamorous curtain and face those behind Carnaval, before she too loses herself to the island…

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Most of the reviews I’ve seen for this have been really positive, though I admit it didn’t work for me.

My review!

A Covenant of Ice (The Crowns of Ishia, #3) by Karin Lowachee
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Indigenous MC, MLM Indigenous MC, MLM amputee MC
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

The exciting conclusion to the gunslinging dragonrider trilogy!

After years of separation, Havinger Lilley has finally reunited with his lover, Janan. He now hopes to heal from the experience that changed his life forever: being bonded to the soul of a king dragon and to the man Raka who died to save it. But this bond is consuming him, making his thoughts and feelings not his own.

Compelled by this to return to the frozen north that was once Raka’s home, Lilley and his companions Janan and Meka make the arduous journey toward a confrontation with the power-hungry Kattakans that could result in another devastating war.

In this final chapter of *The Crowns of Ishia *series, the survival of the Ba’Suon people, their dragons, and the land itself rests on the decisions of Lilley, Janan and Meka.

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I’ve adored this trilogy and am so excited for the finale – but I don’t want it to be over!

My review of book one, The Mountain Crown !

The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by J.R. Dawson
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by J. R. Dawson is a powerful and poignant contemporary queer fantasy. Perfect for fans of Hadestown and Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune.

Love doesn’t die, people do . . .

At the edge of Chicago, nestled on the shores of Lake Michigan, there is a waystation for the dead. Every night, the newly-departed travel through the city to the Station, guided by its lighthouse. There, they reckon with their lives, before stepping aboard a boat to go beyond.

Nera has spent decades watching her father – the ferryman of the dead – sail across the lake, each night just like the last.

But tonight, something is wrong.

The Station's lighthouse has started to flicker out. The terrifying, ghostly Haunts have multiplied in the city. And now a person – a living person has found her way onto the boat.

Her name is Charlie. She followed a song. And she is searching for someone she lost.

From the author of The First Bright Thing, The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World is a moving and emotional story of magic, family and those who leave us alone - but who might not remain lost.

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I didn’t get along with Dawson’s debut, but there was enough promise in it that I knew I wanted to check out her future books. And now we get a new standalone from her! I’m cautiously interested.

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
Genres: Adult, Horror
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

The critically acclaimed author of the “crazily enjoyable” (The New York Times) Whalefall returns with an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war.

Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.

What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.

Angel Down plunges you into the heart of World War I and weaves a polyphonic tale of survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict.

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I love non-fluffy angels, and I suspect one that is at the centre of WW1 horror story will be anything but cherubic!

Bones at the Crossroads (Blood at the Root, #2) by LaDarrion Williams
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, YA
Representation: Black MC
Published on: 29th July 2025
Goodreads

In the sequel to the explosive, instant New York Times bestseller Blood at the Root, Malik returns to Caiman University, the HBCU for the young, Black, and magical, only to find new dangers and new secrets.

It's his freshman year at Caiman University, and all 17-year-old Malik wants to do is be a normal college student. Go to parties, choose a major, talk to girls, and learn some new magic. 

But instead, he's reeling from a summer of discovery, loss and betrayal, and still uncovering the truth about his powers and his legacy as the descendant of a powerful magical lineage. The family he only just discovered is already fractured beyond repair, and the mother he thought he knew—and risked everything to find—might be the biggest danger to the new life he's building. Malik is trying to find his footing in a world threatened by intertribal tension and the rising power of the Bokors. But how he can he use his power to protect a world he's not sure he'll ever fully belong to...

In a wholly unique and electric saga of magic, heritage, and community, Malik confronts the dark cracks of the magical world, and the darkness in himself.  Exploring the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting, this heart-pounding fantasy series is a rich tapestry of atmosphere, intrigue, and emotion.

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This is the sequel to last year’s Blood at the Root, which I’ve seen recced for fans of Legendborn!

The Fall Before Flight by Kristine Castillo Negron
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Amputee MC, queer MC with asthma
Published on: 30th July 2025
Goodreads

Rhu Farrier is determined to save her best friend and end the war between the Risen Union and the Kedrel Empire. She isn’t about to let losing a leg stop her.

Two thousand years after a powerful mage Lessened dragons from enormous beasts to scaled humanoids, war ravages the land of Obsthea once again. Rhu’s mission is kill the Kedrelli emperor, no matter the cost. But when Rhu loses her leg in battle, her best friend Loren is sent to complete the mission in her stead. Rhu and Loren both know he won’t make it to the Kedrel capital alive. He’s not an assassin. He’s a simple soldier—honest and forthright and a terrible liar. Despite her new disability, Rhu journeys to Kedrel to help Loren complete the assassination that should have been hers to carry out.

Daxian Cloud is a loyal dragon. Not like the Oathbreakers—rebels who have forsaken the Oath of Servitude all dragons took during the Lessening. A dragon without the Oath is a dragon without honor. So, when Oathbreakers strike his mistress’s estate, Daxian doesn’t question the order to execute them. Until the hood falls from an Oathbreaker’s face. Until his beloved little sister is revealed to be one of them.

Everest Naught is a frail, asthmatic orphan—a little "nothing" in the world. When he meets a blacksmith's apprentice, his lonely life changes. Everest longs to be powerful, to be more than nothing. But when the time comes to make sacrifices, is Everest prepared for them now that he has something to lose?

The lives of millions depend upon the decisions of these three disparate people. But are the oaths they made to the world ones they can keep?

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Wait wait wait, not only do we get dragons, we get a dragon for a pov character?!

The Tree Who Lived: Tales from the Digital Dryad by Jennifer Kyrnin
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 30th July 2025
Goodreads

The Tree Who Lived – Tales from the Digital Dryad
A short story collection of eco-fantasy, magical realism, and ancient spirits in a modern world.

Dryads still walk among us.
They whisper through fiber-optic roots. They bloom in forgotten corners of concrete jungles. And in these nine powerful tales, they fight to survive—and to connect.

In this collection of speculative fiction blending fantasy and environmental themes, dryads adapt to our changing world with fierce grace. From a grove threatened by invasive fungus to a dryad who loses her tree on 9/11, these stories reimagine mythology for the digital age.

Can a dryad survive when her bonded tree is destroyed in the heart of New York City?

Will a young boy's telepathic connection with a houseplant reveal a new language of empathy?

What happens when ancient nature magic meets invasive algorithms and urban sprawl?

For fans of The Hidden Life of Trees, The Overstory, and The Paper Menagerie, this eco-magical short story collection blends nature, technology, and heart.

Step into the world of the Digital Dryad, where deep roots hold ancient wisdom—and every connection has power.

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I don’t read UF too often… but mostly because very little of it actually gives me real urban magic. But dryads with fiber-optic roots?! YES PLEASE!

The Needfire by M.K. Hardy
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 31st July 2025
Goodreads

A Scottish sapphic Gothic horror debut for fans of Rebecca and The Hacienda.

You are afraid of the border places. You are afraid of the fork in the road.

Fleeing her mistakes in Glasgow for a marriage of convenience, Norah Mackenzie’s new home on an estate far in the north of Scotland is a chance for freedom, a fresh start. But in the dim, draughty corridors of Corrain House, something is very wrong. Despite their warm correspondence, her distant, melancholic husband does not seem to know her. She is plagued by ghost ships on the sea, spectres at the corner of her eye, by winding, grasping roots. Her only possible companion, the housekeeper Agnes Gunn, is by turns unnerving and alluring, and harbours uncanny secrets of her own.

As the foundations crumble beneath her feet, Norah must uncover the truth about Corrain House, her husband, Agnes, and herself, if she is to find the freedom she has been chasing.

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I’ve heard so much pre-release praise for this! We’ve been promised top-tier yearning, a little bit of witchcraft, and female rage!

The Elysium Heist by Y.M. Resnik
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: F/F
Published on: 31st July 2025
Goodreads

A queer sci-fi heist for fans of Ocean’s 8 and Lady Eve’s Last Con!

The Elysium is a decadent, artificially intelligent, space casino where no pleasure is denied to patrons that can afford to pay. It’s easy to rack up debt, and the casino will always find a way to collect. Nobody knows this better than Psalome Shipmen, The Elysium’s highest earning hostess who is stuck working endless hours to pay off the debt she inherited from her deadbeat, gambler father. She’ll endure years of service before she earns her way out. Unless she can figure out how to rob the casino. Pull off the job, and she walks free that very night.

Joining her on the heist crew are a disgraced heiress seeking to rescue her family business, a recovering alcoholic card counter, a religious Jew whose husband refuses to grant her a divorce, and Psalome’s little sister who is dating The Elysium’s artificial intelligence. When sparks fly between Psalome and the would-be divorcee, her abusive husband threatens to drag her back to their home planet as his property. Meanwhile, the little sister struggles to reconcile her loyalty to Psalome with her desire to protect her romantic partner, The Elysium. To make matters worse, the card shark is drinking again and the heiress has a severe case of PTSD triggered by The Elysium’s many security cameras.

If Psalome can’t find a way to keep everyone from self imploding, she can kiss her freedom, her girlfriend, and her sister’s trust, goodbye.

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This sounds like an IMMENSE amount of fun!

Hedesa (Tuyo #10) by Rachel Neumeier
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Published on: 2nd August 2025
Goodreads

Into the Starlit Land

Tano knew his people would need to return to the starlit country -- and he knew his friend Raga would be among those who crossed the mountains into that lovely and mysterious land. Where Raga goes, Tano will certainly go as well.
He looks forward to the journey -- mostly. He's almost certain every Ugaro who accompanies the expedition can be trusted, and he's almost certain the Lau who come along won't cause too much trouble. Most of all, Tano knows the gentle people of the starlit land offer no threat at all. Everyone knows the Tarashana are harmless ...

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I am not caught up on this series, so I can’t dive right into Hedesa, but I mean to get to it asap! THEY’RE GOING BACK TO THE STARLIT LANDS AHHHH!

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 #247 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Cover Reveal: Age of Defiance by Adrianne Brooks

Angels and demons are my catnip, especially when they’re presented in a way I haven’t seen before. When Brooks told me that not only are both main characters Black (already something we rarely get in angel/demon urban fantasy) the male mc has lost his sight and half his wings??? INTENSE GRABBY-HANDS!

And if that’s not enough, check out this ridiculously stunning cover!!!

Art by Barby!

DEFIANCE HAS NEVER HAD TO WORRY ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE…

Mainly because it came and went long before she was born. A banshee with the power to Mark man and God alike for the Reaper, she knows that joining the Church will mean her death. So, she runs, and in doing so, inadvertently frees the Demon Uriel.

Left blinded by a centuries-old war, Uriel has no hope of navigating this new, bloodthirsty world on his own. His Holy Weapon, a shotgun with a mind of its own, will only get him so far without a soul to power it. Uriel knows better than anyone that the damned can’t be saved. But if humanity has any hope of redemption, he and Defiance will need to find a way to do just that.

With the Reaper stalking her dreams, new enemies and old joining force, and the very horsemen of the apocalypse riding out to play, Defiance will learn just how far she’s willing to go to save the unsavable.

Demons lost the Great War.
The Apocalypse was over.
Defiance has known these things her whole life…

But what if she’d been wrong?

Is our demon Uriel meant to be the same figure as the archangel Uriel? Perhaps once an archangel, now fallen? (What war blinded him?) How does the Reaper figure fit with the four horsemen – and why do people think the apocalypse is already over? What the hell (hah) happened? And I’m intensely curious about Defiance’s powers – traditionally banshees don’t choose who dies, they only sort of announce who’s doomed, so it’s an important change to the lore if Defiance can Mark people for death!

And, you know – she can Mark GOD for death?! Capital-g God?! I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!

If you do too, you can add Age of Defiance on Goodreads and preorder the ebook from Amazon – it’ll be available elsewhere too eventually, but it’s only up on Amazon so far!

The post Cover Reveal: Age of Defiance by Adrianne Brooks appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick

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. 

You can find the releases I’m most anticipating this year over on my Unmissable list, but I use Can’t-Wait Wednesday to feature books I’m hopeful about but aren’t 100% sure will be five star reads.

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick!

Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC, M/M
Published on: 24th March 2026
Goodreads

A struggling student, a resident golden boy, and the curse that will bring them this queer, trans retelling is Hamlet as you’ve never read it before

Exploring classism, identity, and the true meaning of revolution, this dark academia novel is perfect for fans of R. F. Kuang’s Babel and S. T. Gibson’s An Education in Malice

The summer before his sophomore year, Horatio Bithersea walks into the university library to find Carson Hamlett, resident golden boy and master magician, cradling his father’s dead body. Life at Elsinore, one of the most prestigious universities in the secretive magical world, simply goes on when the professor’s death is ruled an accident—despite the mysterious circumstances and the bloody scene.

 A year later, Horatio is keeping his head down, attempting to graduate without his out-of-control magic harming his classmates. That changes when the ghost of Hamlett’s father appears and places a curse on Horatio and Hamlett: avenge his death by destroying Elsinore and its heart, lest the ghost robs them of their minds, memories, and their very souls.

Elsinore has given Horatio everything—knowledge of his magical ability, an escape from his abusive family, and freedom to pursue his life as a transgender man—and now he’s to be its doom. As the two uncover more of Elsinore’s secrets Horatio finds himself becoming more and more ensnared in Hamlett’s dark but charismatic web. 

The question is not if Horatio will manage to destroy Elsinore. The question is if Hamlett will destroy him first.

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It is consistently hilarious to me that I don’t care one way or the other about Hamlet the play, but also I have enjoyed so many retellings and get excited about new ones.

I AM EXTREMELY EXCITED ABOUT THIS ONE!

Dark academia is officially dead to me unless we’re talking magic school – AND WE ARE TALKING MAGIC SCHOOL! A magic school that needs burning to the ground, apparently! (Or maybe not: we don’t know yet if the ghost’s hatred of the school is justified. But all things considered, I’d take that bet.)

Plus a trans Horatio with out of control magic??? EEE. And a mindfuckery!Hamlet (which, if you don’t have one of those can you even call it a Hamlet retelling???) I have been promised much yearning, and I’m very much hoping for the kind of – alarming but delicious entanglement we had in Let the Forest In, or that we almost had in Summer Sons. Dark academia is fairly well known for that!

(If you don’t have messed up people obsessed with each other is it even dark academia???)

Most important of all (for moi) I loved the excerpt we got on Nerdist! You can (and absolutely should) check it out here!

Between the premise and excerpt, you can expect to see Thoughts Be Bloody on my 2026 Unmissable list!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Thoughts Be Bloody by Auden Patrick appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #246

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 stuff sneaks in occasionally too.

TEN books this week!

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

Daughters of Flood and Fury (Stormbringer #2) by Gabriella Buba
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Filipino-inspired setting and cast, sapphic MC, F/F, bisexual MCs, queernorm setting
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

In this powerful sequel to Saints of Storm and Sorrow, Lunurin and Alon struggle to unify the archipelago against the returning Codicíans, while Inez embraces her power and makes new allies among the ruthless pirates of the South Sea.

Enthralling Filipino-inspired fantasy for fans of The Hurricane Wars, R.F. Kuang and Tasha Suri.

Several years after the defeat of the Codicíans in Aynila, Lunurin and Alon are fighting to solidify their alliances across the archipelago. But petty rivalries, suspicion and conflicted loyalties threaten to undermine their efforts.

Inez has been training as a tide-touched healer with Alon, but the gentle side of Aman Sinaya's gift does not come naturally to her. When she hears a rumour that her sister Catalina is living among a group of missionaries on a nearby island, Inez embarks on a dangerous journey over the sea. Aboard a pirate ship, she meets Umali, the boat's fierce fire-tender captain. Umali has never been gentle, and she burns brighter than anyone Inez has ever known.

Lunurin and Alon are desperate to follow Inez, but the Codícians are closing in with a powerful armada to retake Aynila. To stand any chance, Lunurin must unify the disparate factions of her forces before the festival of the eclipse, when the world's magic will be at its strongest.

Three goddesses stand behind them. But without human allies, even that power may not be enough to save their islands and the people they love.

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The first book in this duology made my Best of 2024 list, and although I haven’t finished my early copy yet (sorry!) I strongly suspect Daughters of Flood and Fury will make this year’s list! This is anti-colonial fantasy in a setting inspired by the Philippines, with elemental magics (stormcallers! sea-and-blood manipulators! firebenders!) and queer, badass women EVERYWHERE. (The dedication reads: ‘To all the ones who survived, but healed wrong. They broke our halos so we grew teeth.’)

I think Daughters does work as a standalone, but you’d be missing out IMMENSELY if you skipped Saints, so why would you???

You can read my review of book one, Saints of Storm and Sorrow, here!

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer Asian-American MC
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

A deeply dark academia novel from USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw, perfect for fans of A Deadly Education and The Atlas Six who are hungry for something a little more diabolical.

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that’s what Alessa Li is told when she’s kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.
But there’s more to Hellebore than meets the eye. On graduation day, the faculty go on a ravenous rampage, feasting on Alessa’s class. Only Alessa and a group of her classmates escape the carnage. Trapped in the school’s library, they must offer a human sacrifice every night, or else the faculty will break down the door and kill everyone.

Can they band together and survive, or will the faculty eat its fill?

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My DNF review of this was adoring – I only set it down because I’m a horror wimp, not because it’s not fabulous! Much gore, much ick, much dark, fucked-up magic. I want a copy for my bookshelf even if I can never get through it! (Although I am determined to try it again!)

You can read an excerpt here!

Seven Recipes for Revolution (What We Eat Book 1) by Ryan Rose
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy
Representation: Japanese-inspired setting and cast
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

The Bear meets Attack on Titan in this exhilarating, food-based epic fantasy filled with high stakes and monster steaks, perfect for fans of Pierce Brown and Jay Kristoff.

Paprick is a common butcher, carving slabs of meat from gargantuan monsters so elite chefs can prepare magic-granting meals for the rich. But Paprick’s true passion is cooking, and if he can learn the secret art, his dreams of liberating his people and sharing the monsters’ magic with the world could come true. He steals the precious ingredients needed to practise recipes at home, but if he’s caught, he’ll be executed.

As his desperation grows, he ventures into the black market and uncovers a spice imported from unknown lands. Combining it with the last of his stolen meat, he cooks a dish the world has never tasted before, with side-effects he couldn’t have foreseen.

The dish’s magic grows Paprick to kaiju-size, and legends of his powers spread among the people. Immediately, the rulers arrest him, but Paprick convinces them to make him a chef’s apprentice—if they ever want to learn his Recipe. However, his exposure to the world of high cuisine reveals the rot at its centre, and with his new power, rebellion is only a few recipes away…

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The idea of a ‘kaiju chef’ is extremely cool, but this book is EXTREMELY gruesome, so bear that in mind if you dive in!

You can read an excerpt here!

Volatile Memory (The Volatile Memory Duology, 1) by Seth Haddon
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: F/F
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

Ex Machina meets This is How You Lose the Time War: Seth Haddon's science fiction debut, Volatile Memory, is a heart-filled, vengeful sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella.

With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the call goes out that a lucrative piece of tech is waiting on a nearby planet, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.

What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized, and I was alive.

Masks aren't supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.

Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.

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I haven’t gotten along with Haddon’s prose in his earlier books, but I’ve seen so much love for this one that I’m willing to give it a try – especially since it’s a novella.

You can read an excerpt here!

We Who Hunt Alexanders by Jason Sanford
Genres: Adult, Horror
Representation: Brown cast
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

Amelia is a ripper, a monster who feeds on violent people who have so thoroughly forsaken love that they’ve burned away their souls. Unseen and unnoticed by most of society and living as both hunter and hunted, the only emotion rippers feel is anger. But Amelia is different from her fellow rippers and also feels happiness and sadness, fear and love. To her mother, Danjay, that makes Amelia the strangest of all monsters.

Driven from their home by religious zealots, Amelia and Danjay must learn to survive in the city of Medea, where violent men rule and kill anyone who opposes them. Worse, Amelia has never hunted on her own, and her mother is ill and growing weaker by the day. Only a chance encounter with a human who can see Amelia gives her any hope that she might be able to save her mother.

To succeed, Amelia must learn to hunt in an increasingly dangerous city brought to the brink of war by the corrupt, rich and powerful. Amelia will also have to discover if her differences from her fellow rippers makes her weak, as her mother believes, or if she can instead be a new kind of monster that the world has never seen before.

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Jason Sanford writes excellent nonfiction on news in the SFF space, and I’ve been obsessed with We Who Hunt Alexanders since I first heard about it. Will I be able to read it??? I’m very unsure, but I want to try!

Loki: New & Ancient Norse Tales (Myths, Gods & Immortals) by Matt Ralphs
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Genderfluid pansexual MC
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

Loki is a trickster, part god, part giant, brother and nemesis of Thor, now reimagined and reinterpreted with new stories from open submissions.

This latest new book in the Myths, Gods and Immortals series offers an opportunity to explore the many facets of Loki – shapeshifting Norse god, at once an ally of and at odds with the other Aesir. From ancient tales to comics, TV and the movies Loki's tempestuous relationship with the likes of Odin and Thor, his many forms and offspring, and his ambivalent character make him the classic trickster and an inspiration beyond Norse mythology. With a new introduction to the ancient stories, this powerful new title offers fresh perspectives with new perspectives from open submissions across the world. A feast of imagination focused in a classic setting, Loki is a joyful celebration of an enduring character.

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I have no idea who that’s meant to be on the cover – since Loki is traditionally red-haired and the axe isn’t one of his symbols – but I’m hoping that this is a decent collection nonetheless!

Sky on Fire (Aether Saga, 2) by E.K. Johnston
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy, YA
Representation: Asexual MC
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

A fast-paced and thought-provoking queer sci-fi/fantasy novel from #1 New York Times bestseller E. K. Johnston.

Morgan Enni has things to do. A science prodigy in a university full of mage-scientists, she’s notable for having no magical ability, which only increases her ambition and drive to prove herself. Her research has the potential to devastate every aetherworker in the galaxy and shake the crumbled foundations of the Stavenger Empire. It's no wonder she can't find anyone who wants to listen to her, much less fund her expedition.

But Morgan is stubborn, and eventually her work catches the attention of a group of rebels, who hope it might turn the tide in their favour. When they try to recruit the young scientist, they get much more than they bargained for. Morgan Enni has secrets of her own.

Set in the world of Aetherbound, E. K. Johnston continues to entwine Arthurian myth and the history of North Atlantic fisheries in a clever, character-driven space fantasy.

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Early reviewers are divided on whether or not you need to have read the previous book (set in the same universe but following different characters), though for the record I massively enjoyed book one and do recommend it! Johnston’s prose is always gorgeous, and I was delighted when I heard we were getting another book in her science fantasy setting!

The author has described this as an asexual romance, which we do not see nearly often enough!

You can read an excerpt here!

Evil-ish by Kennedy Tarrell
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Nonbinary MC
Published on: 22nd July 2025
Goodreads

A disillusioned teen dreams of fame and villainy in this hilarious and heartfelt young adult fantasy graphic novel from debut author/illustrator Kennedy Tarrell.

Hawthorne Vandercast has big plans: join the infamous Brigade of Shade, move into a glamorous castle, and leave their mundane life as a potion barista behind. But when they finally get the chance to join the Brigade, Hawthorne finds themself overshadowed by Maple, a bubbly, bright, flowery girl who could not look further from evil. After an accident ends in death and suddenly Hawthorne is leading the Brigade, they begin to realize that maybe villainy isn't actually all it's cracked up to be.

Evil-ish spins the classic tropes of good and evil on their heads in a hilarious and tender story about a teenager who feels bigger than their job, their town, and their circumstances...and finds out that what they thought they wanted might not be what they actually need.

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If you don’t think this sounds delightful, you are simply Incorrect!

The Grizzling Princess and Her Knight (The Tale of... #1) by Amy Burns
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 25th July 2025
Goodreads

I dreamt I went to fairyland…

Princess Griselda has never wanted for anything since the moment she was born. Loved by her parents and the people of Estevell, she grew up with the knowledge that her family would do anything for her – even produce a new law to make her sole heir to the throne. /Married or not/

Suddenly, war is declared, and Estevell is sent into conflict with a neighbouring kingdom. Out of options, her exiled uncle is called upon to act as the regent in her father’s absence.

Acting in his own interests, her uncle’s nefarious plots become more complex with each year that passes. When her mother falls mysteriously ill, and her trusted protector is sent away to fight in the war, Griselda must find a way to claim back the crown in her father’s name.

Requesting the help of the famous outlaws, her courtly ladies, and some new winged friends, Griselda must strive to be a leader the kingdom can trust.

Whilst trying not to fall madly in love with the unyielding woman her despicable uncle has established as her personal guard.

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Early reviewers have described the prose of this one as fairytale-style, so if that’s your thing, maybe check it out!

Forfeiture: Humanity Caught in the Act by JP Nebra
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
Published on: 25th July 2025
Goodreads

Hunter-gatherers and their shaman flee murderous loggers in the Amazon. An elderly Inuit woman enacts an obscure ritual in the melting ruins of her ancestral Arctic village. Defenseless under the modern onslaught, the indigneous peoples' only hope is a cultural echo. A memory of how to beckon interstellar explorers who, puzzlingly, have not been seen for eons. Do they even exist?

Tracking the distress signals, the aliens speed back to Earth, a planet they consider a temple of Life. And when they discover the paradisial planet is now polluted and beset with extinctions & ecological destruction, they issue an ultimatum. Humanity has one year and one chance to fix things.

But as the powerful alien leader grows warm to present-day humans and their ways, usurpers in her ranks feel no affection for this untrustworthy species and plot a grim judgement. What will be the fate of Life on Earth?

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Will this be depressing or cathartic or both??? I do not know, but I want to find out!

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

The post Must-Have Monday #246 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sunday Soupçons #40

soupçon/ˈsuːpsɒn,ˈsuːpsɒ̃/ noun
1. a very small quantity of something; a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavor

Sunday Soupçons is where I scribble mini-reviews for books I don’t have the brainspace/eloquence/smarts to write about in depth – or if I just don’t have anything interesting to say beyond I LIKED IT AND YOU SHOULD READ IT TOO!

Two books that I simply cannot do justice to, but I figured even lame mini-reviews are better than NONE. They’re both instant Crescent Classics; they both belong on Best of the Decade lists. Just. WOW.

The Devourers by Indra Das
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Desi MC, queer + nonbinary Desi MC, major nonbinary character, M/NB (or NB/NB?)
PoV: First-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 1101967528
Goodreads

For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination.

LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER •  NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST

On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.

From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman—and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.

Shifting dreamlike between present and past with intoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a reading experience quite unlike any other novel.

Praise for The Devourers

“A chilling, gorgeous saga that spans several centuries and many lands . . . The all-too-human characters—including the nonhuman ones—and the dreamlike, recursive plot serve to entrance the reader. . . . There’s no escaping The Devourers . Readers will savor every bite.” —N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times Book Review

“ The Devourers  is beautiful. It is brutal. It is violent and vicious. . . . [It] also showcases Das’s incredible prowess with language and rhythm, and his ability to weave folklore and ancient legend with modern day loneliness.” — Tordotcom

“A wholly original, primal tale of love, violence, and transformation.” —Pierce Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Red Rising Trilogy

“Astonishing . . . a narrative that takes possession of you and pulls you along in its wake.” —M. R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts

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You know how, very occasionally, a book comes along that leaves you shaken after you’ve read it? Raw and vulnerable and knocked askew, your heart in your throat, your soul trembling, able to see a colour you couldn’t see before?

The Devourers is one of those books.

In a lot of ways, it’s a book I shouldn’t like, and I did actually DNF it three or four times over the years. Don’t ask me what made me pick it up again recently, because I have no clue; I’m just extraordinarily glad that I did. Because despite the gore, and the ick, and the crudeness (there is a great deal of piss and shit and spit) – despite the central plot revolving around a rape – despite the technically-not-cannibalism – despite the frank brutality and grittiness – despite all of that, The Devourers is stunning. I feel slightly ridiculous saying so, but reading it was all but a religious experience – something spiritual was definitely happening inside me, reading this.

I have no idea how to explain. I don’t know how to put it into words. It…is a hopepunk manifesto, actually? It’s the opposite of grimdark? It’s a rejection of cynicism and nihilism, even though it looks, at first, like anything but? It’s a ripping apart of toxic masculinity, and Nice Guy-ness, and misogyny – it’s so incredibly queer, in terms of sexuality and gender (good luck labelling literally any of the cast) – it’s boundary-breaking, Fantasy and Historical Fantasy and Horror all at once, but also something else, something beyond any of those, elevated above all of those. It’s a story-within-a-story (who doesn’t love those?) – actually it’s several stories-within-a-story, complete with at least one unreliable narrator. The prose is beautiful enough to make you weep, it’s so gorgeous it hurts. The worldbuilding is so thrillingly unique, these shapeshifters are fucking terrifying but I loved reading about them, they’re so strange and unhuman and they’re physically nonbinary in their not-human shapes! They mesh with (or inspire) different myths around the world! It’s so COOL! It’s like nothing else I have ever read, ever! The Dragoneers of Bowbazar (Das’ other published book, a novella) did not prepare me!!!

It’s so extremely dark, there are many scenes of the shapeshifters eating humans and since the shapeshifters spend most of their time looking human, that reads as functional cannibalism (even if it technically isn’t, because the shapeshifters aren’t human). There is rape, though thankfully it isn’t graphic, with the intent to impregnate, which I feel is an extra layer of awful on top of the rape itself. There is mass murder. There are several major characters who work very hard to convince you that humanity is fundamentally evil and nothing matters. For the love of fuck, look up the trigger warnings before you pick this one up, because there are so many.

But none of it’s gratuitous, all of it matters, Das is using the ugliness – not even using it for contrast, but using it for and as itself, creating something exquisite out of it. The ugliness, the awfulness, has a point, in a way I’ve rarely seen attempted and even less rarely seen done successfully. I don’t know how to articulate what Das accomplishes with it… I don’t know. But it’s – awe-inspiring. Spectacular. World-changing, for me, really, because it’s rewired my brain, I didn’t know you could do this, I didn’t know you could – take the ugliness and awfulness, and – THIS – with them.

ARGH. I literally can’t. Just – AHHH.

The Devourers is a soul-searing masterpiece. If you can read it, you must read it. It is that simple.

And if you do, maybe you’ll be smarter than me and manage to articulate what I can’t. If so, please come back and tell me. I would so love to know the words for this kind of magic.

Legendborn (Legendborn, #1) by Tracy Deonn
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, YA
Representation: Black MC, sapphic Asian-American bestie, major bisexual character, nonbinary secondary character, MLM tertiary characters, tertiary F/F
PoV: First-person, present-tense
ISBN: B084GB4YZQ
Goodreads

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

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If you’re even vaguely adjacent to the YA SFF space, you’ve probably heard people raving about Deonn’s Legendborn series.

I am here to tell you that the hype? Honestly, undersells it.

Legendborn, book one, is freaking phenomenal. This is clever, incisive fantasy where the characters act like real people (real teens, even!) and nothing is ever handwaved, or justified Because Plot. It manages to be incredibly realistic even while giving us Arthurian magic, and I could not get enough of the way Deonn interrogates common fantasy tropes and tableaus, how she centers the experiences and cultures of people of colour while ticking every box Urban Fantasy fans are looking for.

Bree is a fantastic main character, brave and smart, angry and grieving, refusing to be cowed or broken. Even when she made choices I wouldn’t have, she always made sense; her actions always fit her character, are always the culmination of her thoughts and experiences. (That feels like it should be a given, but YA is especially bad at featuring leads who behave in ways that don’t feel natural to them Because Plot.) And I really loved that Bree – and every other PoC in the book – was allowed to be complicated; she gets scared and frustrated and breaks down sometimes, she doesn’t always know what to do, but she also gets to be soft and joyful. She has to struggle against so much racism (and I appreciated that even her allies fucked up sometimes, even when it made me wince) but she also gets to love who she is, to learn about and be proud of her heritage. She’s allowed to be beautiful, which, let’s be real, Black girls often aren’t.

Alas, I never found the racism unbelievable – it always felt painfully realistic – but I didn’t think Legendborn was preachy or something either. It’s more like…this is just what it’s like to be Black in a society run by white people, especially in the South of the US. Pretending otherwise would be lying. But this is far from racism misery-porn, and I don’t think it distracts from the story. I think it’s a vital, integral part of the story: Deonn pretty clearly set out to write a book where race, and the history of Black people in particular, was not swept under the rug. And it works: it’s a big part of what makes Legendborn so powerful, and so refreshing.

The magic itself, the worldbuilding, is as simple as you’d expect in YA (though I do think it’s an especially elegant simplicity, and I am still delighted that Deonn had worldbuilding that explained why teens and young people are so much at the forefront of the war against demons – so many stories never have an explanation for that!) The…honestly it feels less like an examination and more like an acknowledgement…of race and racism is what elevates it. If you’d dropped this magic system in an all-white cast, it would be entirely forgettable, generic Urban Fantasy. Bree, and everything that comes with her, is what makes Legendborn fucking legendary.

I’m not doing this book justice at all, but all I can say is: if you ever enjoy YA Fantasy, then this is mandatory reading. I can’t BELIEVE it took me so long to get to it! I had the sequels waiting on my ereader before I’d even finished Legendborn, that’s how much I was loving it – and the ending was so much more spectacular then I’d ever imagined, making me SO GLAD I could immediately dive into the next one!

Read it. READ IT. I promise you won’t regret it!

The post Sunday Soupçons #40 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

So Hope-Full It’s Overflowing: Audition For the Fox by Martin Cahill

Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC, major nonbinary character, sapphic secondary character, disabled secondary character
Published on: 16th September 2025
ISBN: 978-1-61696-445-0
Goodreads

“Nimble, sly, and strange as the title character, Cahill has wrought a fine filigree of a tale—with a bold, uncompromising heart.” —Catherynne Valente, NYT Bestselling Author of The Fairyland Series 

“A triumph, a candle-bright and timely pleasure lit up by gorgeous prose and an exuberant love for the world and for hope.” —Cassandra Khaw, author of The Library at Hellebore 

“Fox-fleet and brazen, merry and mischievous, haunted by mercies: Martin Cahill’s Audition For The Fox has the trick of doling delight. The language leaps and laughs, teeming with a trickster’s teasing. This book made me happy: both while I was reading it, and long after I’d finished.” ―C. S. E. Cooney, author of Saint Death’s Daughter

To survive the challenge of a trickster god, a quick-witted acolyte rallies her ancestors with cunning subterfuge and outright rebellion.

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a loveable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must ally with her besieged people and learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

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I received this book for free from the author, who is a friend, in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review – friend or not, I’d have shredded this if it were bad. But it turned out to be one of my faves of the year instead, so I didn’t have to!

Highlights

~nonbinary trickster god
~gorgeous worldbuilding
~laugh in the face of fascists
~(survive)
~hopepunk af

It takes millions of years and impossible heats and pressures and so many different materials to create a jewel. And after that, there are endless hours of cutting, polishing, and designing and creating a setting for it. In the end, it’s a treasure that looks elegantly simple in your hand – but only because you can’t imagine everything that went into its creation.

Audition For The Fox is a jewel: a thousand complexities epitomized into a sharp, glittering radiance, each of its many facets flawlessly cut. It looks so (perfectly) simple – but only until you take a closer look, and what you see then will dazzle you.

Nesi is deeply sympathetic and immensely relatable; she’s a good kid who despite all her best intentions cannot stop messing up. Of the 100 Pillars – deities – in her people’s pantheon, she has been interviewed and tested by 96…all of whom have declined to claim her. It’s crushing, and none of the 3 remaining Pillars look like a good fit for her either. (We’ll come back to this, because the symbolism of those last 3 is important.)(And no, I didn’t mess up the math; there’s only 99 Pillars available, not the full 100, for good reason.) If none of the Pillars choose her, her life is basically over.

So she does something ill-advised and dramatic.

Nesi stood in the Temple of the Divine Embrace and not for the first time, had a panic attack about her future.

Who among us hasn’t been there? Nesi isn’t a blank slate we can all project ourselves onto – she’s a distinct character – but she is enough of an everywoman that we can all see ourselves in her. She’s young, she’s anxious, she’s desperate to find a place for herself, a path for herself. She wants to head out into the world, and can’t yet. She’s scared. Yes, she’s the granddaughter of a god, but that comes with a lot more downsides than upsides; in terms of superpowers, we’re not talking Hercules or Wonder Woman, here.

Nesi is not obviously special, and that is entirely the point. Because in getting thrown back into the past, Nesi has to face off against fascists, and Cahill’s entire thesis statement is that we do not, actually, need heroes to do that.

Or, alternatively: the kind of heroes we need, ANY of us can be.

Just remember. Life is a story. Stories are answers to questions you learn by living.

Nesi is sent backwards in time to the Occupation, when the Zeminis invaded the continent of Oranoya and set about subjugating everyone. It’s reminiscent of the Holocaust; the Zeminis rounded up Oranoyans into work camps, and Nesi has ended up at one that’s pretty famous in her time. The Zeminis are brutal and sadistic, and, with the signature arrogance of fascists everywhere, are very loud in informing the Oranoyans that this is all for their own good.

It’s Nesi’s job to inspire the captives to overthrow their prison-guards.

Not, critically, overthrow the entire Occupation. Nesi isn’t a chosen one; she’s not going to save the world – or in this case, the continent. But she does need to make sure this one rebellion happens, and is successful. Because it’s already happened, in her time.

If it doesn’t happen, the whole timeline could go very differently. For the much, much worse. (And what would that do to Nesi? Would she pop out of existence as the timeline auto-corrects her away? Quite possibly!)

The future is not a given. You must seize it or someone else will write it for you.”

Time-travel isn’t something I’m used to seeing within fantasy – it’s very much one of sci fi’s toys – but what I found most unique about Audition wasn’t the time-travel; it was the approach to rebellion, the philosophy of resistance. Nesi isn’t built for violence – doesn’t have the kind of magic that would let her take on the Zeminis directly – so instead of killing soldiers, she…works on killing the idea of them.

By making people laugh.

Fascism is stupid. It’s a lot of other things too – including deadly dangerous, too often – but it’s fundamentally an incredibly stupid philosophy. And it’s 100% correct to be horrified by it, and outraged by it. You should be both those things.

But we should also laugh in its fucking face. Because it is so fucking stupid. How stupid, to be obsessed with the genitalia of strangers, or believe blond Aryans are somehow better than everybody else, or think there’s a global Jewish conspiracy, or whatever nonsense the latest brand of fuckwit is spouting now. How pathetic, how absurd, yes we should despise them but we should also point and laugh at how fundamentally dumb they are.

Especially because being laughed at is, more than anything else, the thing fascists absolutely cannot stand. They all think they’re the heroes of a video game, or an Epic Fantasy, or something – they’re all LARPing being The Biggest And Baddest And Best – and when we laugh, we shred that delusion. Reveal the cloak billowing regally in the wind to be a ragged curtain, actually. The mighty sword is just a stick. The crown is made of tinfoil.

And they look completely ridiculous.

When we laugh at them, we’re not afraid. Laughter banishes fear. And so it’s an incredibly powerful, incredibly necessary weapon against fascism – it declaws the fascists (and makes them angry enough to make tactically unsound decisions) and makes it much, much easier for others to fight back. It’s always easier to fight when you’re not afraid, or at least less afraid. Laughter makes you realise your enemies are far from invincible, or all-powerful – which means they can be defeated.

Do you see?

The work I do is useless as the hammer, the knife, the roar. But it shines as the smirk, the whisper, the scissor, the mirror. Those in power often only ever see their opponents as worthy when those opponents wield a power similar to the kind they hold themselves; they don’t ever think to look for power in the forms they do not know. It is how I often humble and best both brethren and mortals. From gods to men, trickery levels us all.”

This is not quite the first time I’ve come across the idea of laughing at fascists being both powerful and important, but Audition made me get it, viscerally. The difference between understanding something intellectually and understanding it in your gut, your marrow, your teeth. And that would be more than enough of a foundation for any book – it’s a world-changing shift in perspective – but it’s actually far from the only thing Cahill is doing with this novella. Audition For The Fox is an exploration of the role of tricksters in mythology and culture and daily living; it’s something of an instruction manual for resisting fascism; it’s a thesis on how anybody can be a hero (without ever once setting off my inner cynic or sense of cringe); it’s a case study in the importance of non-traditional, non-glorious forms of resistance; it’s a beautiful paean to community, and especially to diverse community.

And – like the best short stories and novellas – every line of it, every image, every word is deliberate and full of layers and layers of meaning. Pause at any paragraph on any page, and think about it just a little, and there are implications for the worldbuilding, or a philisophical point being made, or another premise in one of the several manifestos Cahill is writing simultaneously – all without every sacrificing the quality of the story.

any slip-up before them could certainly result in eyeteeth meeting eye.

Let’s go back to the moment Nesi chooses to audition for the Fox god, T’sidaan. She has already auditioned for 96 of the 100 Pillars; there are only three left. (The 100th Pillar, remember, is not an option; you’ll have to read Audition to find out why.) These three are: Ghu’Eujo, the Lion of War; Qwi’linis, the Serpent of Assassination; and T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

Think about this for a sec. Fantasy as a genre? Is really fond of the sort of heroes (or anti-heroes) who’d make great acolytes of War or Assassination. Those are the traditional kind of heroes; the expected kind. The big, flashy kinds. (Real-life assassins may not be flashy, but I think we can agree fantasy ones tend to be.) Hells, readers are fans of those kinds of heroes! For good reason: they tend to get exciting, interesting stories.

If Nesi were a hero – the kind of hero who comes to mind when we think the word – then she would go to the Lion or the Serpent. She certainly wouldn’t go to a trickster: since when can tricks save the day? Assassins may be ethically dodgy, but if you’re looking for heroes, tricksters are the ones we heap scorn on.

This is a tableau: Nesi, standing between Lion, Serpent, and Fox. Three choices. Three ways of being a hero; three ways of being, full-stop.

She chooses the Fox.

(Even though she doesn’t at all seem like someone who could belong to a trickster god. She’s flaily and anxious, not cool and quippy. She can’t possibly be suited to T’sidaan. This is not going to end well.)

There’s so much symbolism packed into this moment: Nesi turning away from the obvious, traditional, glorified paths. Choosing, specifically, a path she doesn’t seem suited for; she’s flaily and anxious, nothing like your typical suave, sneaky trickster. Deciding, thus, right then and there, that she can become somebody different; that she can embrace something wildly different from her current self – something many people can’t manage at all. It looks like – ‘weakness’ is the wrong word, and so is ‘cowardice’, but it looks like something negative, to turn away from the traditional heroics; I’m sure many acolytes of War and Assassination would be Unimpressed by those who can’t or won’t walk their paths. But it seems much braver to me to choose the path of the Trickster, which is perhaps much more dangerous when you stop and think about it – tricksters piss off everyone, challenge everything, and they do it without a warrior’s or assassin’s ability to defend themselves from those who want to stop or punish them. So what looks like some kind of weakness – flinching from War and Assassination rather than making an active choice – is anything but.

This moment is Cahill saying: this story is not going to take the obvious, traditional, glorified route. We are turning away from the conventional. (We are turning away from violence – more on this in a bit.) It turns the entire book into proof that anyone, even those who seem completely unsuited, can contribute – can turn the tide – can be a hero. (Which in turn is a reminder to everyone else to never dismiss anyone who wants to help, because the most unlikely-looking person in the world can surprise you, and become someone very different indeed.) It makes of Audition a kind of instruction manual in how to resist evil when you yourself are not capable (for whatever reason) of fighting back violently; when you don’t have the skill-sets of the Obviously and Extremely Badass, here’s what to do. Here’s what any of us can do.

I love it.

Listen well: you can’t trick someone from beyond the grave. I mean, you can, but I don’t advise it. I tell you this as I wish I had told another: survive, above all.

The question of violence in Audition is a little complicated. Tricksters are not, generally, violent, and T’sidaan and Nesi are no exception. Nesi isn’t built for violent resistance in any way, shape, or form, and it’s pretty clear that that’s all that Cahill meant – that this character, in this scenario, isn’t going to use violence for reasons that are specific to her. But I did think the novella came off as a little ‘violence is never the answer’, which is something I dislike these days. (It is so often the purview of the Global North, the white, the rich, the able-bodied; it is so often shoved down the throats of those who are suffering, are oppressed, are inconvenient.) I do think that was unintentional, though, because [View post to see spoiler] Which makes it easier to read as ‘violence is not the choice/option of these characters in this context’, rather than ‘violence is never the answer, ever’. The latter is a serious problem; the former is a relief. (Especially because I didn’t want to read a violent story; especially because I love Audition for what it is, and it would be something very different, if Nesi had gone and become an assassin instead!)

With violence not an option, Nesi’s rebellions are ones that are easy to dismiss from a Big Picture view: small kindnesses, small joys, small reliefs for the other prisoners. But these are the things that keep us human. Kindness, joy, relief are not small things, and they are even more important and powerful when things are dire. Nesi’s acts help bolster her people, help remind them that there are reasons to stay alive, that there is still goodness in the world, that – this one is perhaps especially important – the Zeminis are wrong.

Often before beating someone senseless, officers would say things like, “This is for your own damn good”, or, “Where would you be without us? Soft and useless, sitting in theaters and bookstores and coffee shops wasting your days!” insulted by a culture who cut their teeth on stanzas, not steel.

While the Zeminis are doing their utmost to convince their captives that their suffering is their own fault, that the Oranoyan way of life is both bad and to blame for current events, Nesi is right there being living proof that it’s just not so. She goes to war with despair, and that is critical, because those trapped in despair can’t resist, can’t make change. (This is why fascists work so hard to incite despair.)

I’ll admit, the strangest things happen around you, Nesi. The worst being that I don’t feel so sick to my stomach when I have even the littlest bit of hope some mornings. Stupid, I know.”

Nesi shook her head, the suddenness of the fire in her belly almost startling her as she said, “No! No, it’s not stupid, Una. It’s never stupid to hope. This is not forever. You’re going to get out of here. I promise.”

(I did read this as a critique of, or maybe counter to, the very loud opinion of some liberals that only big dramatic acts ‘count’ as resistance, that only they matter, and everyone who can’t take part in those acts should be despised. No, look: small, quiet resistance matters too. It maybe matters more in some ways, because without the kindnesses and joys and reliefs no one at all would have the strength to resist in the big dramatic ways. The resistance that is human connection is the foundation of everything; without that, there’s no hope, and no chance, for things to get better at all.)

Candle Sainted, those dedicants who were so beloved by fellow mortals, they had earned flames lit in their names.

And hi, I know I’ve been going on about Audition for ages already, but THE WORLDBUILDING! I can’t believe how much worldbuilding Cahill managed to work in to a novella, and I’m equally stunned at how incredibly beautiful this world he’s created is! The lines of longitude in this world are named after different Pillars; instead of fairytales, we have ‘clay and cloud’ fables; demons are so last century, here we have Dragons of Chaos; the god of speed is also the god of doctors because of course he is that makes so much sense! Just wait until you read the creation myth, which is so wonderfully unique and subversive, or the three stories we get of T’sidaan’s exploits with the Spider, the Stallion, and the Turtle! Every tiny detail had me flapping my arms and kicking my feet; even if I didn’t love Nesi and T’sidaan as characters – and excuse you, I very much DO – I would be begging for more books in this setting just to see more of this world!

her anxiety and panic kept floating to the surface, eating her thoughts like sharks in the deep.

I also need to take a second to mention how much I swooned for Cahill’s prose. I highlighted so many lines in my review copy; the ones I’ve quoted in this review are only a handful of my favourites. Even fairly plain prose wouldn’t have stopped me from enjoying this ridiculously beautiful little book – but the masterful way Cahill wields words elevated Audition to starry heights. More, I think the writing acted as another layer of storytelling, reinforcing the central tenets on a meta level – because Audition is very much about beauty; not in the traditional Fantasy way of crowns and silks and treasure, but the beauty of humanity, of love, of community. It’s not only that fascism is stupid, and evil; it’s also ugly, and that which resists it is beautiful, and I think that messaging wouldn’t have hit so hard with less lovely prose to emphasise it.

Beings who will know time and beauty, who will live and tell their own stories of themselves and each other, who will live and love and grow and in their ending return to us and tell us. Tell us their stories! And in their ending, we will tell them ours. Is that not the greatest gift we can give? The chance for others to tell their stories, too?

Audition For the Fox is so densely layered with delights and thought that it still amazes me that it all fits into a novella; Cahill distils what another author would need 300-odd pages to do down to its purest form, to the point that every word is bright, shimmering magic. This is a gloriously hopepunk, breathtakingly beautiful book that is exactly what so many of us need right now; a light in the dark, a rejection of despair, so hope-full it’s overflowing. I have reread so many passages so many times, and I suspect I will be doing so for years and years; it’s a book to hug to your heart, something genuinely special, inspiring in the truest sense of the word. The way it’s lingered with me since I read it, the solace and hope it’s given me over and over, the way in which I find another layer of meaning every time I go back to it… I can’t give it anything less than five stars.

I am, honestly, in awe, and so fucking happy it was written and published.

I love it. I think you will too.

Go preorder it AT ONCE, and then join me in campaigning Tachyon for sequels!

The post So Hope-Full It’s Overflowing: Audition For the Fox by Martin Cahill appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Her Subtle Investigations by Scarlett Gale

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. 

You can find the releases I’m most anticipating this year over on my Unmissable list, but I use Can’t-Wait Wednesday to feature books I’m hopeful about but aren’t 100% sure will be five star reads.

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Her Subtle Investigations by Scarlett Gale!

Her Subtle Investigations (The Warrior's Guild, #3) by Scarlett Gale
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Brown sapphic MC, F/F/F
Published on: 16th August 2025
Goodreads

A Tired Blade

The Knife has long been the Warrior Guild's invisible answer to complicated problems—silent, sharp, and gone before her enemies even notice. She loves the work, loves helping people no one else will, but the years of endless travel—of lonely assignments, empty beds, and temporary allies—have worn her thin. Every new mission feels heavier, and Southport's nostalgic foods and familiar heat stir a deeper ache: the yearning not just for a solid home, but for a shared life with someone to whom she's just Kia, not the Knife...

A Collision Course

Chasing down a string of kidnappings, the Knife crosses paths—and blades—with two surprising Southport natives, both hunting for missing family. Masako wields nature magic with steely fury, but knows almost nothing about Southport's criminal underbelly. Nukunya carries an encyclopedic knowledge of the city along with a dry wit that cuts as deep as any blade. After a violent first meeting the trio form an uneasy alliance, then a true team as their search leads them closer to their quarry… and each other…

A Branching Path

Pinned down and hiding out in a brothel's back room, the Knife finds the lines between partnership, friendship, and romance blurring. Southport—and the people in it—has started to feel dangerously like home, but the Knife's Guild assignments never let her stay anywhere for long. With duty pulling her to one path and the temptation of Masako and Nukunya pulling her to another, she'll have to decide: Is it time to walk away again, or finally lay down roots?

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I am OFFICIALLY the luckiest sod to ever sod, because just a few weeks after finishing what I thought was the last Warrior’s Guild book…Scarlett Gale announced the release date of book three!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

I suspect I’m FAR from the only person who adored the Knife, an important secondary character in the first two books, so I’m ridiculously delighted that she’s getting her own book! AND it’s going to be poly!!! Gale has assured us that this isn’t a love triangle, it’s a love TRIAD, aka my very favourite thing.

MORE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

The series so far has been so soft and escapist, but still meaty with food for thought, and I’m sure Her Subtle Investigations will be the same! I’M SO EXCITED!

(And it looks like this one will work perfectly well as a standalone, but you’ve got time to read the first two books before it comes out, if you want to!)

The post I Can’t Wait For…Her Subtle Investigations by Scarlett Gale appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.