Siavahda's Blog, page 41

Must-Have Monday #149

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

FIVE books this week!

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

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 15th August 2023
Goodreads

From USA Today bestselling author T. Kingfisher, Thornhedge is the tale of a kind-hearted, toad-shaped heroine, a gentle knight, and a mission gone completely sideways.

*A very special hardcover edition, featuring foil stamp on the casing and custom endpapers illustrated by the author.*

There's a princess trapped in a tower. This isn't her story.

Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?

But nothing with fairies is ever simple.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…

"The way Thornhedge turns all the fairy tales inside out is a sharp-edged delight."―Katherine Addison, author of The Goblin Emperor

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First up is, obviously, the newest book from T Kingfisher! The day I don’t pounce on a new release from her is the day I’ve been replaced by a body snatcher. And I have a special fondness for Kingfisher’s retellings – if you haven’t yet, you NEED to read The Raven and the Reindeer! – so I’m extra excited to see her take on Sleeping Beauty!

(Also, which of the covers do you prefer – the US on the left, or the UK on the right??? I’m leaning towards the US one…)

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Genres: Horror
Representation: Mexican cast and setting
Published on: 15th August 2023
Goodreads

Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda.

As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.

Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.

Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.

When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.

And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.

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I couldn’t care less about the romantic plotline, but vampires in this kind of setting? Particularly horror-vampires, not sexy ones? I am massively intrigued!

Bride of the Tornado by James Kennedy
Genres: Horror, Speculative Fiction
Published on: 15th August 2023
Goodreads

A young woman's secretive midwestern town is engulfed by a mysterious plague of tornadoes every generation–and she must escape it before it claims her.

Stephen King’s The Mist meets David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in this inventive, mind-bending horror-thriller.

In a small town tucked away in the midwestern corn fields, the adults whisper about Tornado Day. Our narrator, a high school sophomore, has never heard this phrase but she soon discovers its terrible meaning: a plague of sentient tornadoes is coming to destroy them.

The only thing that stands between the town and total annihilation is a teen boy known as the tornado killer. Drawn to this enigmatic boy, our narrator senses an unnatural connection between them. But the adults are hiding a secret about the origins of the tornadoes and the true nature of the tornado killer—and our narrator must escape before the primeval power that binds them all comes to claim her.

Audaciously conceived and steeped in existential dread, this genre-defying novel reveals the mythbound madness at the heart of American life.

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Sentient tornadoes??? Yep, you have my attention – that is simply too strange a premise not to check out!

Gimmicks and Glamour by Lauren Melissa Ellzey
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Biracial bisexual MC, F/F
Published on: 15th August 2023
Goodreads

Ashly Harris has a secret she’s been keeping all her life.

To everyone else she’s just a seventeen-year-old party girl and problem senior at Hackley High School. She has always felt alone, and not just because she’s biracial and openly bisexual. Ashly sees faeries all around her, all the time. She has learned to hide her Sight, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is constantly taking the blame for the havoc that the faeries wreak. The only person who knows about Ashly’s ability is her eccentric, yet level-headed best friend, Caris, who might be playing along while also playing with Ashly’s feelings.

As Ashly speeds toward graduation with few future prospects on the horizon, she must protect the classmates she claims to hate from an evil that no one else sees.

This is an accessible story with an interesting premise: The fantasy metaphor for Ashly’s adolescent alienation and despair works well and livens up the plot, especially when a revelation draws Ashly into the throes of a faerie war as well as a rewarding queer romance. A relatable fantasy weaving in real-life issues." - Kirkus Review

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It’s always an odd moment when you come across a YA that you wish you could send back in time to your teenage self! I’d quite like to read Gimmicks and Glamour and Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely back to back and compare them – that could be a fun essay to write… (Yes, I am a nerd who actually likes writing essays.)

Red Dust, White Snow by Pan Huiting
Genres: Sci Fi
Representation: Chinese cast and setting
Published on: 17th August 2023
Goodreads

Who is to say dreams are insubstantial when whole lives can be lived in their pursuit? When an office worker receives a mysterious device promising to transport her to a parallel universe, she assumes it is just another marketing stunt. That night, she visits a fantastical place in her dreams; on waking she returns to her normal life, only to return to the same dream the following night. At first she finds the ongoing dreams bizarre, but the more time she spends in the dream world, the less she wants to wake up. Yet as her fantasy begins to encroach on her waking life, dream and reality collide with drastic consequences. With sharp insight, wry humor and Black Mirror-esque themes, Red Dust, White Snow highlights the blurring of reality and fantasy in our increasingly virtual world.

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The premise here sounds like Black Mirror crossed with Catherynne Valente’s Palimpsest, and is therefore something I simply must read. It’s not clear from the blurb, but a few reviews have mentioned the setting is a kind of futuristic dystopia? So bear that in mind if you give it a go too!

Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!

The post Must-Have Monday #149 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

I Can’t Wait For…Devout ed by Quinton Li

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

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Devout edited by Quinton Li!

Devout: An Anthology of Angels by Quinton Li, Freydís Moon, Dorian Yosef Weber, Angela Sun, Ian Haramaki, Tyler Battaglia, Daniel Marie James, Morgan Dante, Cas Trudeau, Aurélio Loren, Rae Novotny, rafael nicolás, Emily Hoffman
Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Sci Fi
Published on: 29th August 2023
Goodreads

Featuring work by Freydís Moon, Dorian Yosef Weber, Angela Sun, Ian Haramaki, Tyler Battaglia, Daniel Marie James, Morgan Dante, Cas Trudeau, Aurélio Loren, Rae Novotny, Rafael Nicolás & Emily Hoffman.

A collection of stories, poetry, and art dedicated to the angelic.

Here you will find the strange, the creepy, the funky, slightly silly, pieces with feeling. An experience buried deep inside, it might be from another dimension. Something questionable that makes you wonder if your first impression of the world is accurate enough to trust.

Or maybe something human — too human.

How about a feeling between a feeling? Longing, yearning. Conflict between moral and love. World between worlds.

Above all — angelic.

Are we what angels make of us, or are angels what we make of them?

This anthology is for mature audiences due to themes and explicit content. Our genres include, but are not limited to: Contemporary Fantasy Romance, Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Horror, Historical Fantasy Romance, Mythological, Gothic Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror Drama

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Here’s the thing: I am fascinated by angels. (Upon consideration, my Catholic childhood is probably not unrelated.) Considering all the research I’ve done over the years, I’m willing to declare myself an armchair angelologist, if you will. And I flatly adore stories that dig into or speculate about the nature of angels. I’ll read all sorts: angels entirely divorced from religion, angels that are adorable in their incomprehension of humanity, angels that are monstrous, angels from other planets, angels with doubts about their Creator, angels pure in their purpose, angels staging revolutions, angels full of love, angels that are incomprehensibly eldritch. And I follow the #BiblicallyAccurateAngels tag on every platform that lets me.

My point being, I would have been massively excited for Devout anyway.

But it also features a whole bunch of my favourite self-published authors, along with people I’ve heard those authors get excited about! Many if not all of whom are BIPOC or queer or both, which is relevant because a) marginalised authors deserve hype too, and b) authors who are not cishet + while are more likely to hit me with perspectives, ideas, and takes I haven’t seen before, which is always awesome!

So not only is the premise of this collection precisely up my street, I also know I’m in excellent hands!

(Which is usually my biggest concern with multi-author collections.)

It comes out at the end of this month, and I am all but vibrating with excitement!!!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Devout ed by Quinton Li appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday #148

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

Just THREE books this week!

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

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Nigerian MC
Published on: 8th August 2023
Goodreads

The debut fantasy novel from an award-winning Nigerian author presents a mythic tale of disgruntled gods, revenge, and a heist across two worlds

Shigidi is a disgruntled and demotivated nightmare god in the Orisha spirit company, reluctantly answering prayers of his few remaining believers to maintain his existence long enough to find his next drink. When he meets Nneoma, a sort-of succubus with a long and secretive past, everything changes for him.

Together, they attempt to break free of his obligations and the restrictions that have bound him to his godhood and navigate the parameters of their new relationship in the shadow of her past. But the elder gods that run the Orisha spirit company have other plans for Shigidi, and they are not all aligned--or good.

From the boisterous streets of Lagos to the swanky rooftop bars of Singapore and the secret spaces of London, Shigidi and Nneoma will encounter old acquaintances, rival gods, strange creatures, and manipulative magicians as they are drawn into a web of revenge, spirit business, and a spectacular heist across two worlds that will change Shigidi's understanding of himself forever and determine the fate of the Orisha spirit company.

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The reviews I’ve seen for this have been mixed – the most common critique seems to be that Nneoma goes in for a lot of dubious consent? The worldbuilding is supposed to be spectacular, though, so I’ll probably be giving it a go – and crossing my fingers that the sex scenes aren’t as dodgy as some have been saying!

Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
Published on: 8th August 2023
Goodreads

A lyrical and provocative debut novel about newlyweds Wren and her husband, Lewis, who over the course of nine months, transforms into a great white shark.

For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He will retain most of his consciousness, memories, and intellect, but his physical body will transform into that of a great white shark. As Lewis develops the features and impulses of one of the most predatory creatures in the ocean, his complicated artist’s heart struggles to make peace with his unfulfilled dreams.
At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with a college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds. Woven throughout this daring novel is the story of Wren’s mother, Angela, who becomes pregnant with Wren at fifteen in an abusive relationship amidst her parents’ crumbling marriage. In the present, all of Wren’s grief eventually collides, and she meets her fears with surrender, choosing to love fully, now.
An emotional exploration of motherhood, marriage, transformation, and letting go, Shark Heart is an unforgettable love story about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, animals and people—all while examining what it truly means to be human.

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I still remember when I first heard about this book – it was such a wait, WHAT? moment! Shark Heart sounds so incredibly weird that I’m dying to give it a read – but I don’t know if I can handle an unhappy ending, and I really don’t see how you can get a happy ending out of that premise???

Forged by Blood (Tainted Blood Duology, #1) by Ehigbor Okosun
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Nigerian-coded setting and cast
Published on: 8th August 2023
Goodreads

A brilliant new voice brings a brilliant new novel: debut author Ehigbor Okosun's first book in an action-packed, poignant duology inspired by Nigerian mythology--full of magic and emotion and set in a highly atmospheric, complex world in which a young woman fights to survive a tyrannical society, having everything stripped away from her, and seeks vengeance for her mother's murder and the spilled blood of her people.

In the midst of a tyrannical regime and political invasion, Dèmi just wants to survive: to avoid the suspicion of the nonmagical Ajes who occupy her ancestral homeland of Ife; to escape the King’s brutal genocide of her people—the darker skinned, magic wielding Oluso; and to live peacefully with her secretive mother while learning to control the terrifying blood magic that is her birthright.

But when Dèmi’s misplaced trust costs her mother’s life, survival gives way to vengeance. She bides her time until the devious Lord Ekwensi grants her the perfect opportunity—kidnap the Aje prince, Jonas, and bargain with his life to save the remaining Oluso. With the help of her reckless childhood friend Colin, Dèmi succeeds, but discovers that she and Jonas share more than deadly secrets; every moment tangles them further into a forbidden, unmistakable attraction, much to Colin’s—and Dèmi’s—distress.

The kidnapping is now a joint mission: to return to the King, help get Lord Ekwensi on the council, and bolster the voice of the Oluso in a system designed to silence them. But the way is dangerous, Dèmi’s magic is growing yet uncertain, and it’s not clear if she can trust the two men at her side.

A tale of rebellion and redemption, race and class, love and trust and betrayal, Forged by Blood is epic fantasy at its finest, from an enthusiastic, emerging voice.

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I keep getting conflicting info on whether this is Adult or YA, but either way Forged By Blood sounds pretty epic – and you can read an excerpt here!

Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!

The post Must-Have Monday #148 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Sunday Soupçons #22

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 arcs and one of my faves of the year!

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Chinese-coded cast and setting, major sapphic POV character, minor nonbinary characters
Published on: 22nd August 2023
ISBN: B0B9KWC5C8
Goodreads

Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang's The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history—or tear it apart.

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.
Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

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 felt very underwhelmed by Water Outlaws, but I strongly suspect it’s because I was in a bad headspace while I read it. Looked at objectively, Water Outlaws is a very good book, maybe even a great one, with lots of strong threads woven together into an impressive tapestry. The arcs of the various main and major characters are meaty, complex, and immensely satisfying, and Huang places her cast in a complicated world where concepts like right and wrong, justice and vengeance, and even good and evil are murky, all but impossible to define, and sometimes heartbreakingly fluid. In that it’s painfully realistic.

But there’s definitely an element of wish fulfilment and tongue-in-cheek fun winding through the book too, with marvellousIy over-the-top, magical martial arts allowing for anime-esque battles with incredible visuals. And if many writers struggle to write great battle scenes, I can assure you that Huang is not one of them; both the light-hearted examples of supernatural mastery and the dark, desperate fights for freedom are, frankly, spectacular.

This is far from a bloodless book; many of the themes and topics it deals with are ugly and painful, and Huang doesn’t gloss over the viciousness and death that are an inevitable part of fighting for your right to exist. The successes of the bandits mean death for their enemies – there’s no getting around that – and that isn’t pretty. But it shouldn’t be.

(I do wish there’d been some acknowledgement that the Empire’s soldiers are really just cogs in the machine; that it’s a tragedy, and an evil, that they have to die because the people commanding them are rotten, rather than because of any crimes, or even choices, of their own. Instead they were turned into a faceless horde, which was kind of surprising given how much the rest of the book critiques the system they’re all trapped in.)

I was under the impression that Water Outlaws was going to be massively queer and feature a whole lot of gender fuckery, and that’s not really the case? We have several very minor nonbinary characters, and a major POV character is sapphic, but that’s it. And that’s fine, but I just wanted to give a head’s up to anyone else who had the same wrong idea about what they’re in for here. (Although I guess you could argue that pretty much the entire cast is made up of unfeminine women? That’s not an argument I would buy, though.)

Regardless, I thing Water Outlaws succeeds at being exactly what it wants to be – an adventure story that doesn’t try to pretend the world is a simple place; entertaining as hell while leaving you with plenty to think about; and, somehow, a book that manages to feel straightforward despite its crunchy complexity. If it wasn’t quite to my taste, that doesn’t change my enthusiastic recommendation. Definitely receives the Sia stamp of approval!

The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Bi/pansexual MC, Indigenous MC, secondary asexual character, minor disabled Indigenous character
ISBN: B0B3Y98SKH
Goodreads

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

In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.
But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.

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

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

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

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The Thick and the Lean is an almost unbearably delicious book; this was my first experience with Porter’s prose, and suffice to say it made me swoon.

But I didn’t initially know this was SFF! I thought it was going to be set in our world! But nope: Beatrice and Reiko live in a world with two moons, zeppelins, and a three-layered city (if I understood that part correctly), where the dominant religion reveres the Flesh Martyr for defeating an evil witch back in the beforetimes.

WASN’T EXPECTING ANY OF THAT.

ADORED ABSOLUTELY ALL OF IT.

The situation is set up in a way reminiscent of the US; the Indigenous people are marginalised, trapped in poverty, and fetishised by many so-called ‘allies’. The dominant group are white with a creepy-ass religion that considers food and eating as taboo as many religions in our world consider promiscuity and casual sex – whereas in Beatrice and Reiko’s world, sex is casual by default. We grasp all of this very quickly, because the book opens with Beatrice’s puberty as she grows up in an Intensely Religious Group in…a place that feels too big to be described as a commune, but is basically that. And it seems pretty utopic! It’s just that eating is bad, but that’s not really a big deal, because Beatrice and her family and friends take pills that massively dampen the appetite, so eating very plain food that brings no pleasure isn’t a hardship.

But Beatrice develops a secret fascination with, and love for, cooking and food that’s actually delicious. Which is a problem.

Reiko, on the other hand, is a tech genius who gets a scholarship to a top-tier uni, and runs face-first into classism, the struggles of trying to keep up with the super-rich when you’re not, and eventually being pressured to make her art about her people’s culture instead of, you know, the art she wants to make (and rocks at).

This all sounds very dark and grim, but it didn’t feel like that. The struggles Beatrice and Reiko face are rage-inducing, but the book is weirdly…hmm. Not optimistic, really. But it’s beautiful, and so gorgeously sensual, and Beatrice and Reiko are such awesome characters whose stories I loved following! (Even if Reiko’s took turns I was definitely not expecting!) I was fascinated by the worldbuilding – including the secret book that both Beatrice and Reiko have read – and honestly, I love stories where food is a big deal, especially when it’s described so lovingly.

I can’t do it any justice, but The Thick and the Lean is one of my favourites of the year so far!

A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F, minor achillean character, glimpse of a trans/nonbinary character
Published on: 31st October 2023
ISBN: B0BSD3MVY9
Goodreads

In 17th-century London, unnatural babies are being born: some with eyes made for the dark, others with webbed fingers and toes better suited to the sea.

Sarah Davis is intimately familiar with such strangeness—she herself was born marked by uncanniness. Having hidden her nature all her life and fled to London under suspicious circumstances, Sarah starts over as a midwife’s apprentice, hoping to carve out for herself an independent life. As a member of the illegal Worshipful Company of Midwives, Sarah learns to reach across the thinning boundary between her world and another, drawing on its power to heal and protect the women she serves.

When the wealthy Lady Wren hires her to see her through her pregnancy, Sarah quickly becomes a favorite of her husband, the famous architect Lord Christopher Wren, whose interest in the uncanny borders on obsession. Sarah soon finds herself caught in a web of magic and intrigue created by those who would use the magic of the Other World to gain power for themselves, and whose pursuits threaten to unmake the earth itself.

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 really enjoyed this! I was initially a bit disappointed to discover it was only a novella, but A Season of Monstrous Conceptions needed to be; it’s exactly the right length to make the story punch as hard as it possibly can. A short story form would have suffocated it, and forcing it to be a novel would have stretched and padded it beyond repair.

This read more like historical fantasy than horror to me – I never felt disgusted or horrified by the monster-babies, for example, but they and the issues around them might hit harder with readers who have children of their own. And I should probably admit that I didn’t really understand, or buy into, the explanation for why these babies are becoming Other in-utero.

But it’s still a great little book. I really liked the main character, Sarah; I loved seeing her discover London’s underground queer community! There’s a pretty interesting (and from what I understand, historically accurate) enmity between midwives and Men Of Science, which here is not just about medical trade secrets but views on the Other Place and the powers that can come from it. And whether those powers should be used, and if so what for. I wish this had been a little less women vs men – that kind of ‘battle of the sexes’ is something I’m bored of, but it was kind of unavoidable seeing as Rather clearly wanted to stay true to the historical reality, which means no well-regarded women scientists about, alas.

And there’s something very compelling about the Worshipful Company of Midwives; I liked that they weren’t sweet and lovely, but quite unlikable, and I could understand why they kept their secrets close and hoarded their knowledge, why they were so passionately invested in the Other Place. They want power in a society that doesn’t grant them any; I would too.

I wish I’d actually felt a sense of otherness re the Other Place; it never felt really alien to me. But this is still a quick, great read, one that surprised me a number of times (both happy surprises and not), and I very much recommend it for anyone looking for a slightly darker queer historical fantasy!

Do any of these appeal to you? Let me know!

The post Sunday Soupçons #22 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

No More Playing Nice: I Feed Her To the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi/pansexual Black MC, secondary sapphic character
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense
Published on: 29th August 2023
ISBN: B0BZRSBFF6
Goodreads

There will be blood.

Ace of Spades meets House of Hollow in this villain origin story.

Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood.

The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom.

But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.

From debut author Jamison Shea comes I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me, a slow-burn horror that lifts a veil on the institutions that profit on exclusion and the toll of giving everything to a world that will never love you back.

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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~embrace your inner monster
~ballet is the fifth circle of hell
~submissive monster-boys
~the horror is not the supernatural
~let girls be not-nice (or else)

I finished I Feed Her to the Beast in a single sitting.

A SINGLE SITTING.

All 313 pages: gone. Gulped. Devoured.

I regret nothing.

This is a very tightly-written, well-paced book that sweeps over you like a scalpel across your throat, and the biggest part of that is definitely Laure herself. She is such a relief of a main character; a girl, a Black queer girl at that, who is sharp and obsessed and not-nice. But the blurb is a bit misleading, in my opinion; this is not a villain origin story, because Laure isn’t a villain. She’s not likable in the usual sense (although I adored her), isn’t soft and sweet, isn’t what most people would consider sympathetic and doesn’t want your sympathy, either, fuck you very much. She has so much anger in her, but it’s an anger she controls, and when she does gain supernatural power over others, she only uses it on people who really, really deserve it. She is ruthless, but only with herself; she drives herself in practise until her feet are bleeding, makes promises with supernatural entities but only bargains with things that are her own. She doesn’t hurt other people, doesn’t sacrifice others in exchange for magical power, doesn’t sabotage her peers to increase her own chances of success.

That makes her not-a-villain, in my book.

The world had let me starve for too long, and eventually, the hungry stop caring what we eat so long as we’re fed.

But she isn’t Nice, and gods damn that is awesome to see: let more girls be unlikable, especially girls of colour, please and thank you! Give me all the girls who’ll leap into a river of blood and bargain with monsters to get what they want; show me the girls who enjoy the power they win thus without shame, who revel in it. That’s what I want, and Shea delivers and delivers and delivers.

I was going to carve my name into the bones of this ballet.

And Laure isn’t even the only one: the rest of her ballet peers are, honestly, far worse than she is. In fact, the whole world of ballet is stripped of its delicate mystique by Shea’s merciless writing, and what’s revealed is naked horror: the backstabbing, the sabotage, the viciousness – and that’s only from Laure’s peers; the people running the show(s), deciding who makes the cut and why, are, frankly, fucking demonic.

I have never been so glad my mother let me quit ballet as when I was reading this book.

Being a ballerina meant hiding our sharp teeth and claws under pink ribbon and gentle movements, to only show the world perfection.

To be honest, if there’s any flaw in I Feed Her To the Beast, I think it’s that I never understood why Laure was so obsessed with ballet. From everything we see, it’s just needless suffering and cruelty; nothing about it is beautiful, nothing about it at all appeals. We never see anything that helps us understand why the ballet is worth everything it puts Laure through.

I didn’t know what it was like to have friends outside of ballet, people who didn’t care what position you held and how good you were. People who weren’t your competition. What was there to talk about, to gather round for, if not for battle? What was friendship and love without fighting?

(That might not be a flaw, though. That might be deliberate on Shea’s part. But I can’t really go there without going into spoilers.)

Alas, as usual I didn’t find the (supernatural) horror elements at all scary, but on the other hand, I flat-out adored Laure’s attraction to monstrousness and how completely and unselfconsciously she owned it, both in being drawn to things like the garden of toxic flowers, and when it came to kissing monsters.

“What if I told you I wanted to be my most monstrous self all the time? What if I wanted to be a god? Would you pray to me?”

FINALLY A GIRL WHO PREFERS THE BEAST TO THE PRINCE; I feel like I’ve been waiting for a character like Laure for DECADES, and nothing about her disappoints. Literally nothing.

Another thing I’ve been pining for almost forever: the dynamic between Laure and her love interest. It’s not dark – not by my standards, anyway; it’s not toxic, and they don’t hurt each other. (Much.) But Laure is very much the dominant one, the possessor, his queen and his goddess, and I will never not be heart-eyes for monster boys who worship at the feet of a girl with sharp teeth of her own.

“Of course I would pray to you.”

*chef’s kiss*

He even suffered beautifully, his gaze twinkling with awe as he stared up at me, beneath my boot poised to crush him. Beholding me, Laure, the ballerina who bested him, fearsome in my own right.

But to get back to the horror: no, ironically, and possibly intentionally, the whole river-of-blood thing isn’t where the horror in this book actually lies. The real horror is the racism and classism on full display amongst the other ballet dancers, the board and its donors, and even in the ‘friendship’ that has been Laure’s anchor for years. Some of it’s overt and some of it isn’t – some of it’s hidden like razor blades in cotton candy – but all of it is appalling, disgusting.

Maybe that’s part of why Laure never really looked like a monster to me: because she’s surrounded by people I’d actually consider monsters constantly, and next to them, she looks like a sweetheart.

The world didn’t know a Laure that was allowed to want and take.

This is very much a book about girls being allowed to want, to revel, to have power, to be not-nice. I think any reader raised as a girl is going to resonate with all the ways in which Laure has been taught to be gentle and sweet and say thank you for scraps – and will cheer as she finally lets her hunger out of its cage. But it’s almost heartbreaking that she considers herself a monster for that, even if she embraces monstrousness wholeheartedly – because nothing that she wants, or does, or becomes, is really monstrous. She’s ambitious, and obsessively driven, and she’s dominant sexually: so? She feels anger at everyone and everything who want to keep her down because she’s Black and poor and a girl: so? She refuses to give up and bow her head and be walked over: so? So fucking what? Is that all it takes to get a girl branded a monster?

I mean, we all know the answer to that question. But it is rage-inducing.

I Feed Her To the Beast and the Beast Is Me is an intoxicating power-fantasy for girls who don’t fit the NiceTM mould and have no interest in doing so. I devoured it, and it devoured me, and you can bet I will be there for every book Shea writes in the future, because this one is simply phenomenal.

The post No More Playing Nice: I Feed Her To the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

10 Books I Refuse To Let Be Forgotten

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

This week’s prompt is Forgotten Backlist Titles, and this is MOST EXCELLENT, because I’ve read some incredible non-recent books this year that I DEFINITELY need to rave about!

A Matter of Oaths by Helen S. Wright
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Brown MCs, M/M, queernorm world
Goodreads

'A compelling, mind-bending future that's finally come home to the present' – Becky Chambers, author of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

When Commander Rallya of the patrol ship Bhattya hires Rafe as their new Web officer, she knows she is taking a risk. As an oath breaker, Rafe has suffered the ultimate punishment – identity wipe – but luckily for him, there's no one else around qualified for the job. Shunned by his previous shipmates, Rafe is ready to keep his head down and do his job, but his competence quickly earns him respect, admiration, and, in one particular case, love.

It's difficult to maintain the glow of acceptance however, when his past is chasing him across the galaxy in the shape of an assassin, intent on dealing once and for all with Rafe, whatever the cost.

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

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

'Fast paced and inventive ... it held my attention to the end' – C. J. Cherryh

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Most recently read, but originally published in NINETEEN-EIGHTY-EIGHT, is A Matter of Oaths, which deserves all the love and hype and awards in the WORLD! It was re-issued in 2017, but that doesn’t seem to have put it on the radar of everyone who will love it (as evidenced by my only reading it this year!!! HOW DID IT TAKE ME SO LONG TO DISCOVER THIS GEM???) It is marvellous from start to finish, with incredible characters, amazing scifi concepts (like controlling spaceships by hooking them up to your own nervous system!), and a deliciously twisty plot whose impetus doesn’t stop for a moment!

Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1) by Jasper Fforde
Genres: Sci Fi
Goodreads

Hundreds of years in the future, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour.

Eddie Russett is an above-average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.

For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey...

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Significantly younger is Shades of Grey by Jasper Forde, which was released into the wild back in 2009. I vaguely remember hearing lots of good things about Forde’s Thursday Next series – I even read the first book, although so long ago I barely remember anything about it. Shades of Grey, however, is guaranteed unforgettable – set in a world where humans are divided into castes, determined by what colour they can see…because everyone can only see one. This is a world where there is a spoon shortage, people that must be treated as invisible even when they’re naked, and everything from humans to snails are born with barcodes. It’s bonkers and SO addictive, and we’re getting the sequel next year! So really, it’s the perfect time to pick it up.

Kirith Kirin by Jim Grimsley
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Goodreads

In Aeryn, where science has never developed but where magic is quite powerful, a usurper know as the Blue Queen, aided by a very powerful, very old wizard, has ravaged the land. A boy is called out of his own life on a farm to enter a legendary forest and learn magic in order to help Kirith Kirin reclaim his rightful throne to maintain the balance of order. Jessex grows strong in his magical studies and fighting skills discovering his crucial role in the battle against the evil that overshadows his land.

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First published in 2000, I remember seeing Kirith Kirin on plenty of lists of queer fantasy when I started looking for that in my teens – but the blurb didn’t super interest me and I couldn’t find a copy back then anyway. Something nudged me towards it this year, and the book swallowed me whole. This is not the farmboy-with-a-grand-destiny story it sounds like…even if that description is, technically, accurate… And the magic system and worldbuilding are both incredible. Anybody looking to pick it up should be warned that there’s a pretty huge age gap between the main character and his love interest, which did make me a bit uncomfortable, but the book as a whole is so damn great I really couldn’t care that much.

The Spellkey (Spellkey, #1-3) by Ann Downer-Hazell
Genres: Fantasy
Goodreads

The heart of the story is a journey made by two outcasts: Caitlin, a wild girl-child accused of witchcraft and sentenced to exile in the Abbey of the Ninthstile; and The Badger, a disapointing ward of the Abbot of Thirdmoon See, who has been ordered to escort her. As they travel through the Thirteen Kingdoms, they are pursued and observed by a myterious man with red hair who seems to defeat them at every turn and by Caitlin's own dark visions, which haunt her with the fearsome destiny they predict. The answer to it all seems to be Spellkey; finding it and solving its Mystery may mean destruction for the cruel rulers of the Pentacle and a solution for Caitlin an The Badger, who need one desperately since they are falling in love...

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The first book in the Spellkey trilogy came out in 1987 – just a year before Matter of Oaths! – and the omnibus, if you can find a copy, contains the author’s preferred versions of all three books. There’s a beautiful fairytale-esque style to the writing and the world Downer created, but it’s a massively non-traditional fantasy – there’s no conflict as we’re used to seeing it, no battles, no big evil to be defeated. It’s delightful, and strange, and occasionally wry, and I cherish my battered old paperback. I hope it gets reissued sooner rather than later so more people can get their hands on a copy!

In the Eyes of Mr Fury by Philip Ridley
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Goodreads

On the day Concord Webster turned eighteen, the Devil died. The Devil’s real name was Judge Martin, but Concord’s mother called him the Devil. She said he boiled babies for dinner and made lampshades out of human skin. So why did she, who hated him so venomously, have a key to his house?

The key will unlock more than just Judge’s front door. It will also unlock a multitude of stories - where magic children talk to crows, men disappear in piles of leaves, and James Dean lookalikes kiss in dark alleys - and reveal a secret history that will change Concord’s life forever.

Philip Ridley’s second novel (following the sexually charged tour de force Crocodilia) was an instant cult classic when originally published in 1989. Now, for this new edition, Ridley has reimagined the story, expanding the original short novel into the world’s first LGBT magical realist epic. A vast, labyrinthine, hall-of-mirrors saga, its breathtaking imagery and stunning plot twists – covering over a hundred years – reveal Ridley to be one of the most distinctive and innovative voices in contemporary fiction.

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Originally published in 1989, this is another book that got a new edition in a time that should have been more friendly to it – 2017 – but has not received the attention (and accolades!) it deserves. It’s odd! REALLY odd, like magical realism without the subtlety; we have a baby delivered by crows rather than a stork, memories that play on a projector, and potentially-magical biscuits (cookies to yon Americans), and two interwoven love stories binding it all together. I originally tracked down a copy for a friend, and then got curious enough to read it myself, and, just – WOW. I want to twirl this book around the room until everyone agrees to read it. And then everything else of Ridley’s, as well!

The Tale of the Five Omnibus by Diane Duane
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queernorm world, bi/pansexual MCs, major nonbinary character, polyamory
Goodreads

A sorcerous swordsmith desperately searches for the Power that will make him whole. A prince who fled his kingdom and the throne to which he was born now seeks the courage to return in the face of those who want him dead. A woman warrior scarred by her tragic past stakes her future on the strange new life that comes to share her mind. An outcast dragon abandoned by his kind to a solitary fate is drawn into the heretofore-forbidden territory of the conflicts of humankind. And a fire elemental determined to find out about the peculiarities of being human discovers far more than it ever expected. Together they will cross the Middle Kingdoms in pursuit of the single goal that binds them... and discover their destinies, and a world's.

The Tale of the Five Omnibus contains the first three critically-acclaimed volumes of mature fantasy fiction in the Middle Kingdoms series by Diane Duane: The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset. All three appear here in the author's preferred texts, updated and revised from the previous print editions. "Good strong stuff with the right light touch," said Terry Pratchett, adding his voice to the praises of reviewers at Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly ("Expands the limits of the swords and sorcery genre. Exciting, magical, intelligent.")

Reader advisory: All three volumes contain adult / mature themes and situations set in a sexually diverse culture.

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The Door Into Fire, the first book of the Tales of the Five, hit shelves in 1979, but it – and the rest of the series – were reissued with the author’s preferred text when she got the rights back. Like Matter of Oaths, this is a masterpiece of queer SFF I would have expected readers to pounce on when queer fiction started becoming more mainstream… And yet. I will grant that the first book in particular is a little gender-essentialist re human magic, but we also have a nonbinary fire elemental, in a world where group marriage is common and non-monogamy is the default – all of which is arguably less important than the sheer, magical poetry of Duane’s prose. It looks like very traditional old school fantasy at first glance, but it’s no such thing – AND has my joint-favourite take on dragons EVER.

E
V
E
R!

The Fifth Sacred Thing (Maya Greenwood, #1) by Starhawk
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: QBIPOC MCs, Jewish MC, polyamory
Goodreads

Imagine a world without poverty, hunger, or hatred, where a rich culture honors its diverse mix of races, religions, and heritages, and the Four Sacred Things that sustain all life - earth, air, fire, and water - are valued unconditionally.

Now imagine the opposite: a nightmare world in which an authoritarian regime polices an apartheid state, access to food and water is restricted to those who obey the corrupt official religion, women are property of their husbands or the state, and children are bred for prostitution and war.

The best and worst of our possible futures are poised to clash in twenty-first-century California, and the outcome rests on the wisdom and courage of one clan caught in the conflict.

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The Fifth Sacred Thing came out the year I was born – 1993 – which I’m unreasonably pleased about. It’s a beautiful, soul-stirring book that made me believe a working utopia might actually be possible – which no other book has ever done – with a story that confronts the complexities of human nature, violence, and justice unflinchingly and unapologetically. It’s queer as fuck, which I love, but more importantly, it’s the book I come back to every time I start to lose faith in humanity. And I think that’s the kind of book a lot of us need right now.

My review!

Havenstar by Glenda Larke, Glenda Noramly
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Representation: Minor gay character, minor F/F
Goodreads

The Eight Stabilities are islands of order surrounded by lethal chaos—and the order is being swallowed by the unstable. The religious leaders of Chantry try to maintain the Stabilities by ordering the necessity of a once in a lifetime pilgrimage across the chaos. And in that ever-changing world, the most important person is a mapmaker who can make a chart of secure pilgrimage routes…

Keris Kaylen is a mapmaker's daughter. When her father is murdered and a mountain disappears, Keris is betrayed by her brother. Forced to flee into the Unstable, she finds her safety is in the hands of a man bonded to the Lord Carasma, the Unmaker…and her ordered life is turned upside-down. Her survival will depend on a map and a place called Havenstar—but she can't reproduce the map, and Havenstar may not even exist…

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Havenstar was the victim of a publishing nightmare, which resulted in it getting buried shortly after its first release in 1999, but I was lucky enough to stumble upon it when Larke managed to self-publish it decades later. This is a genuinely stand-out standalone, set in a world where reality is fluid and the areas where it isn’t are shrinking generation by generation. It’s wildly original, and I dearly love it for revolving around a skill/art I know so little about – mapmaking! It also refuses to take a simple approach to the good guys and the bad – even the people and institutions you want to hate have damn good reasons for what they’re doing, and the ‘heroes’ are not always perfectly heroic. I adore that kind of realistic moral complexity, and I know a TON of other readers would enjoy the hell out of this if they just knew it was out there!

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells
Genres: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC, brown cast
Goodreads

Every year in the great Temple City of Duvalpore, the image of the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure another year of peace and harmony for the Celestial Empire. Every hundred years the sacred rite takes on added significance. For it is then that the very fabric of the world must be rewoven. Linked by the mystic energies of the Infinite, the Wheel and world are one. Should the holy image be marred, the world will suffer a similar injury.

But a black storm is spreading across the Wheel. Every night the Voices of the Ancestors--the Wheel's constructors and caretakers--brush the darkness away and repair the damage with brightly colored sands and potent magic. Each morning the storm reappears, bigger and darker than before, unraveling the beautiful and orderly patterns.

With chaos in the wind, a woman with a shadowy past has returned to Duvalpore. A murderer and traitor-an exile disgraced, hated, and feared, and haunted by her own guilty conscience--Maskelle has been summoned back to help put the world right. Once she was the most revered of the Voices, until cursed by her own actions. Now, in the company of Rian--a skilled and dangerously alluring swordsman--she must confront dread enemies old and new and a cold, stalking malevolence unlike any she has ever encountered. For if Maskelle cannot unearth the cause of the Wheel's accelerating disintegration-if she cannot free herself from ghosts of the past and focus on the catastrophe to come-the world will plunge headlong into the terrifying abyss toward which it is recklessly hurting. And all that is, ever was, and will be will end.

An intricate, tautly plotted adventure, Nebula Award finalist Martha Wells' fourth novel is her most captivating and exquisitely textured work to date. Follow the many turnings of the Wheel into a realm of danger, fear, darkness, and hope. And prepare to believe freely and fully in the inconceivable and the fantastic.

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Okay, so we all agree that it’s criminal that it took Murderbot to make Martha Wells a household name, yes? As EPIC as Murderbot is, Wells has been writing masterpieces since day one, and Wheel of the Infinite is a breathtakingly beautiful, and unique, standalone that ought to have topped the bestsellers when it was first published in 2000. A no-nonsense, older, hyper-competent MC gradually develops a romance with a younger man – how often do we see that dynamic?! – although that comes a firm second to, you know, saving the world. The worldbuilding is so original – I didn’t recognise any real-world influences anywhere – and Maskelle is a badass you cannot help but go heart-eyes for. If you’re looking for an introduction to Wells’ fantasy, this is a great place to start!

Vellum: The Book of All Hours: 1 by Hal Duncan
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Gay MCs, M/M
Goodreads

An extraordinary, incendiary debut from a rare new talent, Vellum showcases a complex and sophisticated level of writing coupled with a fecund imagination that defies description.

VELLUM: THE BOOK OF ALL HOURS

It’s 2017 and angels and demons walk the earth. Once they were human; now they are unkin, transformed by the ancient machine-code language of reality itself. They seek The Book of All Hours, the mythical tome within which the blueprint for all reality is transcribed, which has been lost somewhere in the Vellum–the vast realm of eternity upon which our world is a mere scratch.

The Vellum, where the unkin are gathering for war.

The Vellum, where a fallen angel and a renegade devil are about to settle an age-old feud.

The Vellum, where the past, present, and future will collide with ancient worlds and myths.

And the Vellum will burn. . . .

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If you like your fantasy with sharp teeth and no-holds-barred magical weirdness, then good GODS is Vellum for you! When the blurb says Duncan has an ‘imagination that defies description’, they are NOT kidding – this completely blew my mind when it came out in 2005, and 18 years later, I can confidently say that I still have not come across anything else remotely like it. (Except the sequel, which you should absolutely also read.) Vellum does not hold your hand – the story jumps between timelines and alternate realities in a decidedly non-linear fashion – but it so, so worth the effort. It’s chilling and breathtaking and vicious and full of wonder, and I want to get down on bended knee and beg more people to give it a try. This book singlehandedly and fundamentally changed my understanding of what a story could be and do, and you deserve that experience too.

There you have it – 10 books that I will never stop yelling about, no matter how old they get!

Have you read any of these? Do you want to? Let me know!

The post 10 Books I Refuse To Let Be Forgotten appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

In Short: July

Not as many reviews written as I would have liked this month, but WOW was there a lot of reading!!!

ARCs Received

An extremely exciting month for ARCs! I’ve already dived into most of these, and my heart is SO FULL of delight with them! Although I admit my jaw dropped EXTRA HARD when I got approved for Doctorow’s Lost Cause – I wasn’t really expecting to make the cut for that one!

Read

WOAH.

WTF.

32 BOOKS READ THIS MONTH.

…ALL RIGHT THEN.

I finally sat down and read the entirety of the Penric & Desdemona series (I’d only read the first three or so, way back) which were wonderful from start to finish (obviously: Lois McMaster Bujold is never not wonderful). I devoured Saint of Bright Doors for the second time (and loved it even more this time around!) and was surprised and delighted by Bored Gay Werewolf. Especial standouts were All the Hidden Things – which I think I adored even more than the first book in the series! – and A Matter of Oaths, which blew me away so hard I had to sit down and write actual fanmail to the author!

I also really loved The Thick and the Lean, although I wasn’t completely satisfied with the ending. Gorgeous prose, though.

To the best of my knowledge, 6.25% of this month’s books were by BIPOC authors. Which. Wow. Is really, really bad. I think that might be a new low.

Reviewed

The Saint of Bright Doors is PERFECTION, but otherwise it was a pretty grim month review-wise – I don’t know if I’ve ever had three negative reviews in a row before! Sigh. And there are so many amazing books I’ve read lately that definitely deserve reviewing, but my spoons, where have they gone???

DNF-ed

I gave up on a few books this month that have been listed as ‘currently-reading’ on Goodreads for a while now, but that I haven’t actually been reading. And don’t want to keep reading. At least not right now. But none of these actually struck me as objectively bad books, which makes a nice change for DNFs!

ARCs Outstanding

I HAVE A LOT OF READING AND REVIEWING TO DO NEXT MONTH.

OBVIOUSLY.

Misc

My submitted prompt was accepted by Top Ten Tuesday! It’ll be the TTT prompt for September 5th, and I am DELIGHTED about it!!! I don’t do TTT myself very regularly, especially lately, but I would like to. No promises, though.

I also made a rec list to celebrate International Non-Binary People’s Day, which I was really happy with – and of course, there was the Mid-Year Freak Out tag at the start of the month! That was fun.

Looking Forward

Lots of books to be terribly excited about in August, not least among them T Kingfisher’s newest book Thornhedge, and the third book of the Desi Trinity, aka Phoenix King! And one book whose cover I can’t display here, because it’s not been revealed yet, is Devout: An Anthology of Angels, curated by Quinton Li. Some of my favourite self-pubbed authors are being featured in it, and I already know many of them write exactly the kind of Weird Angels that I love! It’s up for preorder, and you can find it on Goodreads.

Here endeth the month – may August be awesome for all of us!

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

Must-Have Monday #147

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

August is starting with a bang: we have TEN books this week!

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

Sparks Fly by Birdie Lynn
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: QBIPOC MCs, M/M
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

Arthur Pham didn't expect to spend his final year at the Stonebury Conservatory for Young Mages dating his archnemesis-fake dating, that is.

Arthur's particular brew of perfectionism and anxiety has served him well, landing him at the top of his class. Almost.

The number one spot belongs to Stonebury's most popular student, Mika Rivera-Arthur's sworn rival with a mirthful glint in his eye and an ever-present grin. But when Arthur's tuition check bounces, he must win the fellowship money granted to the top student in his class, or his future will come to a grinding halt.

When a spell reveals that the only obstacle in Arthur's way-Mika-is his soulmate, they enter into a fake dating ploy to stop their classmates' ridicule. On their rollercoaster of falsified romance, Arthur finds himself shoved into more compromising situations with his rival than he ever imagined, and he's horrified to find that he even enjoys some of them.

The real Mika-wickedly charismatic and earnest in equal parts-refuses to fit into the checkboxes on Arthur's meticulous to-do lists. Can Arthur put aside his pride to secure the future he has so desperately dreamed of? Or will his obsession with hating Mika cost him everything?

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Don’t be fooled by the cover; this is New Adult, not YA. By all accounts it’s full of (well-written) romance tropes and is a ton of fun – every review I’ve seen has been glowing, making me very excited for it indeed!

Demigod 12 (Tinkered Starsong, #2) by Gail Carriger
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: M/M
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

Puts the opera back into space opera.

New York Times bestselling author Gail Carriger continues her cozy and engaging scifi about the power of art, celebrity, and found family.

Phex and his pantheon have become demigods and are taking their show on a galaxy-wide tour. Phex is shockingly good at singing but his voice is intoxicating and one wrong note can kill so everyone wants a piece of him - sometimes literally. But the aliens in charge of the divinity are hiding something even more sinister and it’s hurting performers and audiences alike. When his lover is pitted against his pantheon, Phex will have to choose between the family he has found and the god he adores.

Let’s take this show on the road - where the show is divine and the road is through the stars. Be careful, the moment you start listening you may never want to stop, and you just might kill to keep the music alive.

Becky Chambers meets Eurovision in the second of the Tinkered Starsong trilogy (follows Divinity 36) in which the mystery of the Dyesi is finally uncovered.

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The second book in the Tinkered Starsong series, already! I’m not even done with book one yet!!! So I won’t be reading this right away, but you’d better believe I’ll be getting to it asap!

Fit for the Gods: Greek Mythology Reimagined by Jenn Northington, S. Zainab Williams
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MCs, BIPOC MCs
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

An anthology of gender-bent, queered, race-bent, and inclusive retellings from the enchanting and eternally popular world of Greek myth, featuring stories by:

Marika Bailey • Alyssa Cole • Zoraida Córdova • Maya Deane • Sarah Gailey • Zeyn Joukhadar • Mia P. Manansala • Juliana Spink Mills • Susan Purr • Taylor Rae • Jude Reali • Suleikha Snyder • Valerie Valdes • S. Zainab Williams • Wen Wen Yang

Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, and the other denizens of Mount Olympus feel almost as present and larger than life today as they did when they were worshipped as gods. Humanity has been telling and retelling stories about the characters from Greek and Roman myth for centuries—heck, the Romans liked the Hellenic originals so much, they remade them faster than Marvel remakes Spider-Man movies. And from Virgil's Aeneid to Xena: Warrior Princess to Percy Jackson to The Song of Achilles, the obsession has never waned. Yet Fit for the Gods shows how these stories still have a power of metamorphosis that would impress Ovid. Brave, bold, and groundbreaking, the stories in Fit for the Gods will be like ambrosia for those craving fresh interpretations of their favorite myths, and give long-time fans a chance to finally see themselves in these beloved legends.

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I know I’ve said I’m Tired TM of Greek myth retellings – but a) Maya Deane is in it, which makes it a mandatory read for me, and b) it’s a collection built around boundary-pushing retellings! Not generic ones, but ones that are genuinely trying to do something new. So yes, I’m very hopeful that this’ll be great!

Cassiel's Servant (Kushiel's Legacy, #1.5) by Jacqueline Carey
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy
Representation: Queernorm culture, bisexual love interest, bisexual secondary characters
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

The lush epic fantasy that inspired a generation with a single precept: “Love As Thou Wilt."

Returning to the realm of Terre d’Ange which captured an entire generation of fantasy readers, New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline Carey brings us a hero’s journey for a new era.

In Kushiel’s Dart, a daring young courtesan uncovered a plot to destroy her beloved homeland. But hers is only half the tale. Now see the other half of the heart that lived it.

Cassiel’s Servant is a retelling of cult favorite Kushiel’s Dart from the point of view of Joscelin, Cassiline warrior-priest and protector of Phèdre nó Delaunay. He’s sworn to celibacy and the blade as surely as she’s pledged to pleasure, but the gods they serve have bound them together. When both are betrayed, they must rely on each other to survive.

From his earliest training to captivity amongst their enemies, his journey with Phèdre to avert the conquest of Terre D’Ange shatters body and mind… and brings him an impossible love that he will do anything to keep.

Even if it means breaking all vows and losing his soul.

“Decadent and dark, Cassiel’s Servant reveals the secrets of the mysterious Cassiline brotherhood. In this gorgeously realized novel, Carey returns to the world of Terre d’Ange and offers us a new and dazzling perspective on a character we thought we knew.”—Nghi Vo, author of The Chosen and the Beautiful and Siren Queen

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I really didn’t love this, but I can’t bring myself to not include it. And lots of other readers have enjoyed it, so you might too! But definitely don’t pick it up unless you’ve already read Kushiel’s Dart. Do not read Cassiel’s Servant first!

Godhunter (A Tyranny of Angels Book 1) by Isobel Lynn
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

Bryony Moss didn’t plan to become a god, but accidents happen, and giving up immortality once you have it is easier said than done. Convinced her life is in danger, she infiltrates the crew of the infamous Black Armada with plans to dispatch their godhunter before she is discovered. But all her plans begin to unravel as soon as she learns the truth.

Far from the ruthless pirates she imagined, the Black Armada are akin to ruthless librarians, distributing banned books to fight the tyrannical rule of the angels. Once she’s in, Bryony can’t imagine killing any of them. She might even be tempted to join them for real. To top it off, she seems to be falling for the flagship’s navigator, a kind but isolated giant named Michael.

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Everything about Godhunter sounds amazing – becoming a god by accident? Pirates distributing banned books? Angels somehow in charge of everything? GIMME!

Outlaw Mage (The Dageian Puppetmaster, #1) by K.S. Villoso
Genres: Fantasy
Representation: Brown MC
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

Despite Rosha's best efforts, she will never fit in. To her classmates, she is forever an outsider, a girl from the fringes of the empire just lucky enough to have well-off parents. To her teachers, she is either a charity case or an exception to the rule that Gorenten just aren't capable of performing complex magic. Worse, still, she is nothing but a status symbol to her father—a child gifted with magic to show his powerful friends that even people like them could belong in the empire. As if she doesn't have enough problems already.

Haunted by the invisible rules that pull her dreams just out of grasp, she walks out on the eve of her final exams, throwing away her one chance at becoming an official mage of the empire. She practices magic outside the mage council's grasp, one of the worst crimes anyone could commit. A dropout. A failure. An outlaw.

Years later, her father's shoddy business deals have finally landed him in trouble and he disappears without a trace. Rosha reluctantly enters the services of a rich sorcerer, his last known connection. The sorcerer’s sudden death leaves her stranded in a sea of enemies—and the knowledge that the man is the voice behind the ageless, faceless emperor. To protect herself and her family, Rosha must impersonate the most powerful man in the empire. As she becomes everything she has ever hated, she stumbles upon conspiracies that seek to break the empire from within...

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From the author of the Bitch-Queen Chronicles! I think this is set in the same world, but possibly in a different time??? Either way, this sounds VERY up my alley with all the political and magical intrigue!

Wild Spaces by S.L. Coney
Genres: Horror
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

Robert R. McCammon’s Boy’s Life meets H. P. Lovecraft in Wild Spaces, a foreboding, sensual coming-of-age debut in which the corrosive nature of family secrets and toxic relatives assume eldritch proportions.

An eleven-year-old boy lives an idyllic childhood exploring the remote coastal plains and wetlands of South Carolina alongside his parents and his dog Teach. But when the boy’s eerie and estranged grandfather shows up one day with no warning, cracks begin to form as hidden secrets resurface that his parents refuse to explain.

The longer his grandfather outstays his welcome and the greater the tension between the adults grows, the more the boy feels something within him changing —physically—into something his grandfather welcomes and his mother fears. Something abyssal. Something monstrous.

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I always pay attention to Tordotcom’s releases, and this new novella definitely has me intrigued. But nothing bad had better happen to the dog!

This Brutal House by Niven Govinden
Genres: Queer Protagonists
Representation: QBIPOC MCs
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

On the steps of New York's City Hall, five ageing Mothers sit in silent protest. They are the guardians of the vogue ball community - queer men who opened their hearts and homes to countless lost Children, providing safe spaces for them to explore their true selves.

Through epochs of city nightlife, from draconian to liberal, the Children have been going missing; their absences ignored by the authorities and uninvestigated by the police. In a final act of dissent the Mothers have come to pray: to expose their personal struggle beneath our age of protest, and commemorate their loss until justice is served.

Watching from City Hall's windows is city clerk, Teddy. Raised by the Mothers, he is now charged with brokering an uneasy truce.

With echoes of James Baldwin, Marilynne Robinson and Rachel Kushner, Niven Govinden asks what happens when a generation remembered for a single, lavish decade has been forced to grow up, and what it means to be a parent in a confused and complex society.

'Niven Govinden is a true force of fierceness and beauty' Olivia Laing

'A vital book' Andrew McMillan

'Vivid prose reinventing ideas of motherhood, belonging and taking us into the community of drag balls and protest, both personal and political' Jenni Fagan

'A powerful and poetic book' Kerry Hudson

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I’ve been craving a (non-tragedy porn) novel about ball culture, and while I don’t think This Brutal House is the book I’ve been dreaming of, I’m still tentatively interested. It might be too grim for me, but I’d like to try it.

Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

What happens when we imagine loving the people--and the parts of ourselves--that we do not believe are worthy of love?

A transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.

"Required reading."--Glennon Doyle

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.

But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the viciousness with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and ideals she'd built her life around: justice, hope, love, and healing. Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith: she wrote. Whether prayers or spells or poems--and whether there's a difference--she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.

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I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, but a) I’ve loved Kai Cheng Thom’s fiction, and b) …this sounds like a book I really need right now. And maybe you too?

Damned If You Do by Alex Brown
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic Filipino-American MC
Published on: 1st August 2023
Goodreads

Queer Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Filipino folklore in this horror comedy about a high school stage manager who accidentally sells her soul to a demon.

Seven years ago, Cordelia Scott’s abusive father left without a word, and life has been normal ever since. The seventeen-year-old spends her days stage managing the school play (which is going great, if anyone asks), pining over her best friend, Veronica, and failing one too many pop quizzes.

She’s never been sad that her father left, but she knows something is...missing. When her school guidance counselor, Fred, reveals during a session that he’s actually a demon, she learns that something is indeed a piece of her actual soul. Why? She unwittingly made a deal with him to make her father disappear – then bargained to have the memory erased. To make matters worse, Fred is here to make another Help him with a “little” demonic problem, or she’s doomed to spend eternity in Hell with her father.

The deal? Help Fred neutralize a rival demon, who means to do more harm in her hometown than your average demon deal.

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Oh HELL yes! (…pun totally unintended, I swear.) This sounds absolutely awesome; I’m definitely grabbing this one tomorrow! I can’t believe I only found out about it today: INTERNET, YOU ALMOST FAILED ME!

Will you be reading any of these? Let me know!

The post Must-Have Monday #147 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

July DNFs

Six DNFs this month, but I’m happy to say that none of them struck me as bad books – they just weren’t quite for me, or I wasn’t in the right place for them right now. So don’t take their inclusion here as condemnation!

The Princess of Thornwood Drive by Khalia Moreau
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Representation: Biracial Afro-Caribbean MCs
Published on: 19th September 2023
ISBN: B0BRKPZBNG
Goodreads

One year ago, a tragic car accident killed 22-year-old Laine’s parents and left her 18-year-old sister, Alyssa, mentally and physically different. Now—instead of studying animal nutrition or competing as one of the few equestrians of color—Laine is struggling with predatory banks, unscrupulous health care organizations, and rude customers at the coffee shop. That’s why when Lake Forest Adult Day Center offers to take care of Alyssa, free of charge, as long as she’s picked up by four, Laine is nothing but ecstatic.

Alyssa isn’t ecstatic, though. After all, in her mind, there was never a car accident. Instead, she and her parents—the king and queen of Mirendal—were attacked one year ago in the forest. Her parents were subsequently kidnapped and she was cursed. And cursed means she must make do with Laine sending her to Lake Forest’s Home for Changels—a temple caring for mortals such as herself. Perhaps there, she could meet other changels who show her how to embrace her new life.

However, there is a dark prince at Lake Forest, one that has taken a peculiar interest in not only Alyssa but her sister as well. And while Laine finds herself grappling in court after a worker is suspected of serious malpractice, Alyssa finds herself fore-fronting a battle that threatens to destroy not only her and her sister but their entire kingdom.

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

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I think it would be wrong to say this is a BAD book, but wow it is not for me. I do not usually get along with first-person narration, and I really, really did not enjoy the voices of these characters at all. The writing style is very blunt and direct, which is not a bad thing, it’s just something I don’t enjoy. The rich colours in the cover had me expecting really lush, rich prose, and I didn’t get it, alas. I kind of felt like everything was dumped on me at once, with no time to get to know the characters or the situation – again, not inherently a bad thing, just not a stylistic choice I enjoy.

Lots of readers are going to love this, and they’re not wrong to. This is very much an it’s-not-you-it’s-me situation.

The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft
Genres: Fantasy
Published on: 26th September 2023
ISBN: B0BRJ5699W
Goodreads

The first book in a wildly entertaining new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where a married couple team up to solve magical, and often quite odd, mysteries.

The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.
But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake--going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven--the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent antiroyalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.

Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for whatever springs from the alleys, graves, and shadows next.

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 made it to 27% before I called it quits, but this was actually a very interesting reading experience – because I could tell that Hexologists is really quite an excellent book; it’s just not for me. Holding both those truths in your mind at once feels a bit odd.

The sense of humour here doesn’t quite fit with mine, even though I could still mostly appreciate it, and I was hoping for a very different dynamic between the married main characters. But Hexologists is one of those rare books that is exactly what it’s trying to be; tonally, prose-wise, down to all the neat little details, Bancroft has crafted a tongue-in-cheek investigative magical mystery with all sorts of wry and interesting bits woven in. If a quasi-historical setting combined with magical investigations sounds good to you, then I think the odds are high you’ll enjoy yourself with Hexologists.

I may even come back to this eventually – it really is objectively pretty great! – but for now, it’s just not holding my attention and I’m not very interested in seeing where the story goes.

Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai
Genres: Queer Protagonists, Speculative Fiction
Representation: QBIPOC cast
ISBN: B09WHWSX6N
Goodreads

A tale of doom and ambition, loss and revenge, love and murder.

Unwieldy Creatures, a biracial queer, nonbinary retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, follows the story of three beings who all navigate life from the margins: Plum (she/her), a queer biracial Chinese intern at one of the world’s top embryology labs, who runs away from home to openly be with her girlfriend only to be left on her own; Dr. Frank (she/her), a queer biracial Indonesian scientist who compromises everything she claims to love in the name of science and ambition when she sets out to procreate without sperm or egg; and Dr. Frank’s nonbinary creation, painstakingly brought into the world due to complications at birth that result from a cruel twist of revenge, only to be abandoned. Plum struggles to determine the limits of her own ambition when Dr. Frank offers her a chance to assist with her next project. How far will Plum go in the name of scientific advancement and what is she willing to risk?

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This one’s a simple case of me not enjoying the prose, and the book taking far too long (imo) to get anywhere really interesting. I made it to 35% and just didn’t have the patience or interest to keep waiting for the story.

But if you like your SF a bit more literary-fic flavoured, Unwieldy Creatures might be worth checking out. There’s a lot of interesting thoughts and talking about genderqueerness and nonbinary identities and gender in general, and how all those things interact with being a person of colour, especially a biracial one.

The Tropic of Serpents (The Memoirs of Lady Trent #2) by Marie Brennan, Todd Lockwood
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Representation: Secondary asexual+aromantic-coded character
ISBN: 1429956356
Goodreads

The thrilling adventure of Lady Trent continues in Marie Brennan's The Tropic of Serpents . . .

Attentive readers of Lady Trent’s earlier memoir, A Natural History of Dragons, are already familiar with how a bookish and determined young woman named Isabella first set out on the historic course that would one day lead her to becoming the world’s premier dragon naturalist. Now, in this remarkably candid second volume, Lady Trent looks back at the next stage of her illustrious (and occasionally scandalous) career.

Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Mrs. Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grass-dwelling snakes of the savannah, arboreal tree snakes, and, most elusive of all, the legendary swamp-wyrms of the tropics.

The expedition is not an easy one. Accompanied by both an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat, merciless fevers, palace intrigues, gossip, and other hazards in order to satisfy her boundless fascination with all things draconian, even if it means venturing deep into the forbidden jungle known as the Green Hell . . . where her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before.

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I picked this up as a Bedtime Book for the hubby and I – I read the first book years back and hated it, but I want to love this series so badly, you know? A naturalist studying dragons! Everything about that premise sounds amazing – but Brennan’s prose always puts me to sleep, no matter how many times I try. Tropic of Serpents was no different, alas, and reading it aloud at bedtime was just pissing me off with how much I didn’t care.

Argh.

I am vastly in the minority on this one, though – most people I know adore these books, so I wouldn’t take my grumbling as a sign you shouldn’t try this series out for yourself if you’re interested.

Winter of Ice and Iron by Rachel Neumeier
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC
ISBN: 1481448994
Goodreads

In this gorgeous, dark fantasy in the spirit of Jacqueline Carey, a princess and a duke must protect the people of their nations when a terrible threat leaves everyone in danger.

With the Mad King of Emmer in the north and the vicious King of Pohorir in the east, Kehara Raehema knows her country is in a vulnerable position. She never expected to give up everything she loves to save her people, but when the Mad King’s fury leaves her land in danger, she has no choice but to try any stratagem that might buy time for her people to prepare for war—no matter the personal cost.

Hundreds of miles away, the pitiless Wolf Duke of Pohorir, Innisth Eanete, dreams of breaking his people and his province free of the king he despises. But he has no way to make that happen—until chance unexpectedly leaves Kehara on his doorstep and at his mercy.

Yet in a land where immanent spirits inhabit the earth, political disaster is not the greatest peril one can face. Now, as the year rushes toward the dangerous midwinter, Kehera and Innisth find themselves unwilling allies, and their joined strength is all that stands between the peoples of the Four Kingdoms and utter catastrophe.

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This happens to me so often with Neumeier’s books; I was absolutely obsessed with Winter of Ice and Iron – and then abruptly lost all interest. It’s not a reflection on her writing; it’s just that, as I’ve noted before, I need to be in a very particular headspace to enjoy (most of) her books, and I guess I fell out of that headspace and now am terribly bored – despite there being so many reasons not to be!

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t anything like anything of Carey’s, and I have no idea what that comp is doing in the blurb. But the worldbuilding here is very cool, with kings and dukes etc having a bond to the spirit of their land – spirits that can eventually grow into gods! And it’s not just a worldbuilding detail, but something the whole plot revolves around.

Very much planning to come back to this the next time I’m in the mood for Neumeier.

I do wish Neumeier would give us a queer character who isn’t a villain or a sadist, though. So far those are the only kinds of queer characters I’ve seen in her books, and it’s getting old.

Nettleblack by Nat Reeve
Genres: Queer Protagonists
Representation: Nonbinary/genderqueer MC, Black secondary characters
ISBN: B0BF3YTL9M
Goodreads

Subversive and playful, Nettleblack is a neo-Victorian queer farce that follows a runaway heir/ess and an organisation of crime-fighting misfits as they struggle with the misdeeds besieging a rural English town.
The year is 1893. Having run away from her family home to escape an arranged marriage, Welsh heiress Henry Nettleblack finds herself ambushed, robbed, and then saved by the mysterious Dallyangle Division - part detective agency, part neighbourhood watch. Desperate to hide from her older sisters, Henry disguises herself and enlists. But the Division soon finds itself under siege from a spate of crimes and must fight for its very survival. Assailed by strange feelings for her new colleague - the tomboyish, moody Septimus - Henry quickly sees that she’s lost in a small rural town with surprisingly big problems. And to make things worse, sinister forces threaten to expose her as the missing Nettleblack sister. As the net starts to close around Henry, the new people in her life seem to offer her a way out, and a way forward. Is the world she’s lost in also a place she can find herself?
Told through journal entries and letters, Nettleblack is a picaresque ride through the perils and joys of finding your place in the world, challenging myths about queerness – particularly transness – as a modern phenomenon, while exploring the practicalities of articulating queer perspectives when you’re struggling for words.

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I think I’ll end up coming back to Nettleblack at some point, because it’s a very light-hearted romp, with a kind of adorable silliness to it (the MC uses the names of fruits as cursewords!) It’s written in the form of letters and journal entries from a variety of colourful characters, which I quite like. But even with a missing head on the loose, I’ve felt very bored with it for a while; I set it down a while back and have no interest in picking it up again – not right now.

I suspect readers who enjoy non-SFF stories more often than I are more likely to enjoy themselves here. As much as I want to love Nettleblack, it just left me craving some magic or spaceships! But it’s not objectively bad, at all – just not for me, at this moment in time.

Hopefully there’ll be fewer DNFs in August!

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

I Can’t Wait For…To Cage a God by Elizabeth May

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

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is To Cage a God by Elizabeth May!

To Cage a God by Elizabeth May
Genres: Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F
Published on: 23rd January 2024
Goodreads

Join the rebellion to burn down a cruel tyrant in this heartracing new adult fantasy duology, perfect for fans of Shadow and Bone and The Wolf and the Woodsman.

To cage a god is divine.
To be divine is to rule.
To rule is to destroy.

Using ancient secrets, Galina and Sera’s mother grafted gods into their bones. Bound to brutal deities and granted forbidden power no commoner has held in a millennia, the sisters have grown up to become living weapons. Raised to overthrow an empire―no matter the cost.
With their mother gone and their country on the brink of war, it falls to the sisters to take the helm of the rebellion and end the cruel reign of a royal family possessed by destructive gods. Because when the ruling alurea invade, they conquer with fire and blood. And when they clash, common folk burn.

While Sera reunites with her estranged lover turned violent rebel leader, Galina infiltrates the palace. In this world of deception and danger, her only refuge is an isolated princess, whose whip-smart tongue and sharp gaze threaten to uncover Galina’s secret. Torn between desire and duty, Galina must make a choice: work together to expose the lies of the empire―or bring it all down.

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I have been FERAL for this book ever since I came across it on Edelweiss (yes, I spend far too much time browsing upcoming releases on there, WHAT OF IT?), and the cover was revealed this very day!

ISN’T IT STUNNING???

But honestly, with that blurb I would put up with the most hideous cover imaginable, because OH MY GODS? (Unintentional pun is unintentional, honest.) I am HERE for empire-burning, especially when it’s commoners getting to burn it all down (I am TiredTM of enlightened/disenchanted nobles doing the burning, I’ve read that too many times now). And everything about the gods in this world sounds strange and therefore immensely interesting! Gods that are ‘grafted to their bones’? That kind of makes it sound like the human is in control, but the royal family are possessed by, not possessed of, so what exactly is the relationship between humans and gods here? What ARE the gods here? I love, so much, stories that play with divinity and the nature of it, so of course I’m excited to see May’s take.

And what are alurea??? Monsters? A nationality from outside the empire? Some other kind of god or spirit? I MUST KNOW!

Finally, the sprinkles on top – it’s queer. It’s queer ADULT fantasy, not YA, for once. (YA is awesome, but I have been craving some amazing adult queer fantasy, okay?) SO MUCH YAY!

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that I can’t wait for January!!!

The post I Can’t Wait For…To Cage a God by Elizabeth May appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.